Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 425 - Ireland's True Houses of Horror

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

In 1975, two young boys in Tuam were exploring the grounds of one of Ireland's abandoned Mother and Baby Homes when they lifted up a loose concrete slab and found several tiny human skulls hidden underneath. Over three decades later, this discovery would lead to the uncovering of another massive and shocking Catholic scandal, centered around some of the worst crimes committed against young women and their babies in modern world history.  True Tales of Hallow's Eve 4. Hope to see you there! Here's the ticket link: https://www.moment.co/scaredtodeathMerch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. And you get the download link for my secret standup album, Feel the Heat.

In 1975, two young boys in Toome, Ireland, ages 10 and 12, were exploring the grounds of the abandoned Toome mother and baby home next to a housing development. They hopped over the wall and, being curious kids, they did some poking around. And underneath a large concrete slab, they found something shocking. Tiny human skulls. A lot of little skulls, other bones, and the remnants of what these children were wearing when they died. They told their parents and their parents and other locals who would hear about it assumed

it was a famine grave. From when over a million Irish died between 1845 and 1852 in mass starvations caused by the loss of years worth of potato harvest due to blight. Or perhaps it was a grave for years worth of stillborn babies from the former home for so-called fallen women. They were wrong. What it really was, was physical evidence of one of the greatest and least talked about tragedies in modern Irish history.

The Tuam Home was an Irish mother and baby home, which might sound pleasant in name, but for thousands of mothers and babies, it was anything but pleasant. It was a house of horrors. And it was one of many. Ireland had over a dozen of these homes. And it was one of many. Ireland had over a dozen of these homes, and they were places for Irish communities to send young single mothers to be hidden away in shame, and to be punished for their sins of sex outside of marriage. At these homes, women and girls were routinely physically and verbally

abused by nuns and forced to do a year's worth of hard labor or more to quote, pay for their sins. And their infants were also punished. They were seen as being the spawn of the devil for their great sin of being born a bastard. These infants were starved, abused, not properly cared for medically, neglected, cruelly separated from their mothers so they could not even be breastfed. And they died needlessly from diseases at rates astronomically worse than in the general population or thanks to outright criminal abuse and neglect. And the babies that didn't die in these homes were punished in other ways. Many of them would be physically and sexually abused in one of Ireland's many industrial schools or sent to live with uncaring and abusive foster families or essentially human

trafficked, sold in an illegal adoption market Mothers were forcibly separated from their children most never saw them again And what happened to their babies was done without their consent to make matters worse the staff Overwhelmingly Catholic nuns didn't even bother to properly track their deaths Thousands of babies were buried in mass graves across Ireland with no coffins no funerals No blessings and without even being given proper burial records. Just thrown out like they were no better than trash. Toome wasn't even the worst of the homes when it came to mortality rates.

Others had higher numbers of child deaths. However, Toome is the home that got international media attention. The home that broke this story to the press and the home that exposed the dark secrets of all of Ireland's horrific mother and baby homes. A long overdue official investigation began in 2015 after claims came out that hundreds of babies were buried in a mass grave on the Tuam Homes property. This sparked the Tuam babies controversy leading to international outrage.

What type of culture allowed this to happen? How did the Catholic Church influence governmental policies and the citizens of Ireland in such a way that they willingly sent their daughters, sisters, friends to these terrible, outrageously abusive institutions? How could so many nuns, supposed emissaries of a loving and forgiving God, treat young women and their newborn babies so cruelly and carelessly. What was life like for these women and babies inside the homes? And what did the investigation's final report reveal about all of the homes in Ireland? All of this and more on this week's October. Let's talk about real houses of horror scarier than any haunted home.

Why do so many of us use misguided notions of God to legitimize treating each other so incredibly cruelly addition of Time Suck? This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. Well, happy Monday and welcome to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins, Suck Vader, a guy who's been listening to quite a bit of Duran Duran because of last week's subject and quite a bit of the cranberries thanks to this week's subject and you are listening to Time Suck. Thank you for listening. Thank you if you've been listening for a long time. Thank you. This is your first episode.

Hail Nimrod. Hail Lucifina. Praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. Just one quick reminder before story time that it is Lindsay and I's fourth annual scared to death live show Haunted Halloween true tales of Hallow's Eve horror. This Thursday we will be recording from New Orleans for the first time this year and also for the first time. In addition to Lindsay's fan submitted True Horror Tales, I'll be sharing a new nightmare fuel that will not be released on the regular Scared to Death podcast feed. Go to moment.co slash scared to death to join us this Thursday, October 24th at 6 p.m pacific time 9 p.m eastern time. And then you can re-watch it all the way through November

7th. I was wrong. I think I said last week a week before you get to rewatch it even longer two full weeks You can even not watch it live on Thursday October 24th and watch it for the first time on Halloween or whenever until November 7th Just go to moment co slash care to death for tickets and now you wonderfully curious motherfuckers It is topic time. And it is a heavy topic today. One that really got my blood boiling. Irish mother and baby homes were places where for decades Irish families routinely sent their daughters under immense pressure by their local priest to do so when their daughters had gotten pregnant outside of marriage.

And why were they sent away for that reason? To be hidden away in shame. And why were they considered so dreadfully shameful? Why has Ireland historically been so hung up about women's bikes? Why shouldn't they have been able to be ridden? Was there something wrong with their kickstands? Were the chains rusty? Were their handlebars bent? Not enough air pressure in the tires? Why was it so taboo to take these women's bikes off the trail, ride them down through a ditch, jump them off some ramps, do some cool tricks? But for real, how did the unique pervasiveness of Catholicism and Irish culture support this practice

and these institutions? Let's find out. Before jumping into a timeline today centered specifically on the Tuam Home, but we will talk about other things as well, but centered on it, gonna need to establish a lot of context to make sense of these institutions creation and why the people of Ireland just accepted what was happening inside their walls to the young women and children trapped there. Ireland, as it turns out, has a shockingly dark history concerning how unwed mothers and their children have been treated. I'm guessing a fair amount of you will be very surprised by a lot of the information I'll be conveying this week. I know I certainly was.

When I went over our researcher Olivia Lee's initial notes and did my own further digging and I just kept getting angrier and angrier. Generally in America a nation that has the most people of Irish descent in the world over 36 million compared to less than 6 million people actually living in Ireland we revere the Irish and their culture. We love St. Patrick's Day. Hard to find a city without at least one without at least a one Irish pub. In 1991, our Congress designated March as Irish American Heritage Month. One of our most eaten foods is the potato, popularized in American cuisine by Irish immigrants. Some of our most celebrated sports teams are named after some aspect of Irish culture, like the Boston Celtics, Notre

Dame's Fighting Irish, with its spicy little leprechaun for a mascot. There's an Irish themed gift shop that only sells Irish products less than a mile down the street from my studio right here in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. No other country in the world is represented with an equivalent gift shop in town. We love Ireland here in America. Of course we do. Again, we have more people of Irish descent than any other nation in the world. But this episode isn't going to be part of our Irish love fest. This episode is going to be about wearing green, eating corned beef hash, drinking a pint of Guinness. It's about the dark side of Irish culture. It's about Ireland's very, very dark history. Dark and recent when it comes to women and children. And there is one and only one institution to blame for this sordid history and that's the Catholic

Church. If you're Catholic and this episode pisses you off, I hope you don't take that anger out on me because I didn't do any of this shit. Don't shoot the messenger. I am just reporting the facts and then sharing how disgusted I am by these facts. And I should be disgusted and so should you. So should anybody with a good moral conscience. What happened was disgusting. And the Catholic Church does bear all of the blame for what happened to the abused Irish

women and children I will be discussing today. Just know that I don't intend to make any Catholics feel bad about their faith when I present an episode on a topic like this. I really don't. I should have done this disclaimer on certain episodes in the past. I won't be harsher in my treatment of these offenders in this episode, as I would be if the subject were a true crime serial killer, for example. Only this time the monsters, they wore collars and habits, and they were monsters. And it would be intellectually

dishonest of me to treat them differently and pull punches than, say, a serial killer. I know there are good priests and nuns out there. I have met them. I've been taught by them. Unfortunately, historically, there have also been so many bad ones. Okay, structure-wise, say I'm going to start with an overview of how Irish culture in general viewed children until recent decades. Then we will move on into how the Irish have historically viewed their women. After that we will talk about the rise of various kinds of group homes in Ireland, illustrate how the church came to take over these homes and all other aspects of Irish life.

It was incredibly pervasive. And that'll lead to a discussion of just how Catholic Ireland is and has been, how the church came to be so uniquely powerful in Ireland. Then we'll jump into a timeline and walk to the rise and fall of the now infamous mother and baby homes in Ireland, paying special attention to the Tuam home since an investigation into a secret mass grave from this home is what led to an investigation to all of these homes. So let's begin with the historical Irish treatment of children. For decades in Ireland babies were seen largely as an important source of protein.

Corned beef hash originally was corned baby hash. Yeah, babies were routinely eaten in Ireland for centuries. Birth control was outlawed and also the nation was extremely poor so it does make a sick kind of sense. It became common practice to keep your first four to five babies, but after that the rest were generally eaten. Sorry, no, no, it wasn't quite that bad actually. I'm sure at least a few babies were eaten in Ireland, but it wasn't the norm. Babies were sadly not always but often seen as burdens though in Ireland because they couldn't work for the first few years of their lives and their families were often extremely impoverished. It wasn't until the age of seven or eight when children began to be really valued,

seen as being useful to the family because they could start working and stop being whiny, helpless, toothless, chubby little fucks who literally shit themselves every day. Illegitimate children and orphans in the overall culture almost never had any value and were only seen as burdens. While numbers don't exist because records were not kept and no one wanted to talk about it, Irish historians looking into this seem to agree that unwanted babies were frequently dumped by their mothers on church doorsteps or other public places in the 19th and 20th centuries, likely for centuries before as well. These children often ended up in workhouses,

sweatshops where they were incredibly exploited, physically abused, too often sexually abused as well. If there were no work if there was no workhorse in the town the children would be sent to the nearest workhouse. Sadly for years and years there were no regulations or laws on how to care for abandoned children in Ireland. The first act of Parliament for the prevention of cruelty to children commonly known as the Children's Charter, was passed in the UK, which included Ireland at the time, in 1889. This enabled the state to intervene for the first time in relations between parents and children. But they rarely did. The police could arrest anyone found ill treating

a child, though an injury at home if a child was thought to be in danger, but again they didn't do this very often, the Act included guidelines on the employment of children and outlawing begging as well. But again, I keep saying this, but rarely enforced. The Children's Act 1908 established juvenile courts and introduced the registration of foster parents. The Punishment of Incest Act 1908 as well made sexual abuse within families a matter for state jurisdiction rather than intervention by the clergy. Fucking crazy that as recently as 1907 in Ireland, the Catholic Church decided how sexual abusers within families would be punished. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.

Until 1982, teachers were literally legally allowed to hit kids in Ireland. Until 2015, Irish parents could legally go fucking ham on their kids. Hit them how they saw fit. And until recent decades, bastards, children born outside of marriage, were almost never protected by the law even when the laws existed. They often had no one looking out for them, and those who could look out, who should look out, frequently looked the other way. Crazy how many just looked the other way considering the abuse of children in Ireland

occurred on such a massive scale for so long. Captain Thomas Coram was one of the first in the UK to challenge the notion that children from poor families were essentially worthless and undeserving of any rights. He opened the London Foundling Hospital in 1739, a place that was not like a modern hospital at all, think hospitality as far as hospital as opposed to medical care. It was a group home, dedicated at least in theory to the education and care of exposed and deserted young children. And I'm including this here since Ireland didn't gain independence from the UK until 1921. Back in the 18th century, there were virtually no childcare for the lower class children throughout Britain, Ireland, except for church orphanages.

And while Coram's heart might've been in the right place to help children and practice his homes, not great places for kids to grow up. His ideas were modern, but his hospital actually was not a good place for babies to be living, kids to be living in. It was a rundown building, very dirty. The kids staying there suffered from hunger and disease, leading to infant mortality rates much higher than in the general

population. Following in Corm's footsteps, two of the governors of the Foundling Hospital took part in founding the first of many Magdalene Laundries. Other institutions started off in Dublin, Ireland. These were not places to bring your clothes and dry clean, at least not like a laundromat. That's not all it was. It was more of an asylum slash prison, where women would be used as free labor to do some sewing and washing of clothes, but also a lot of general cleaning, cooking, other domestic work. These laundries were for so-called fallen women, sex workers, women with criminal records, unmarried mothers or just girls who didn't listen to their parents and or devote themselves fully enough to the Catholic faith. And prior to the establishment of these new group homes for unmarried mothers, there were

already homes for unwanted Irish children. Terrible terrible homes. A law providing for a house of industry in Dublin was enacted in 1703. This house of industry offered housing for beggars, vagabonds and enacted in 1703. This house of industry offered housing for beggars, vagabonds, and starting in 1730 deserted children under the age of 12. Oh and the mentally insane. What a great idea. Let's put little kids under the age of 12 into the same facility as adult vagabonds and the insane. What could go wrong? I'm sure that no kids were ever horrifically physically

and or sexually abused here. Nah, not a chance. The first workhouse in Dublin is now St. James Hospital. Abandoned babies and children were sent to this workhouse as young as five years old and they would be most often sent to an apprenticeship at the age of 12. And by you know this apprenticeship I mean they would be you, used as slave labor. Dublin's Foundling Hospital was even worse for kids than Coram's. It was infested with lice and other bugs, rats and diseases spread quickly. Of the 51,000, approximately, children that lived there between 1796 and 1826, over 41,000 died.

And more than 2,000 babies just simply vanished. That's fucking crazy. Over 80% of the kids that live there died or vanished before reaching the age of adulthood. What the actual fuck? Was the staff just using these babies for soccer balls? Were they playing hacky sack with kids? Were they seeing how far they could just shoot them in cannons just for funsies? Over 2000 babies just going poof. Will they loan these babies out to magicians? No, they're probably a fucking murdered or died via neglect and were buried in secrets or were trafficked on the black market for cheap labor.

Uh, check out this horrific example of what little care was given to unwanted babies at this time in Ireland. Lifters, the title of lifters was designated for women who were paid to remove unwanted and abandoned babies from parishes around Dublin or just wherever else they could find them. So many babies were being abandoned in Ireland in the days before birth control. Well, birth control is very recent. So just in a long, long time ago, that a whole niche industry formed around this. These lifters, I'll explain why I'm laughing here in a while. Birth control very recent in Ireland, like shockingly recent.

Anyway, these lifters would sneak into churches at night, put six to eight babies in a fucking bag, like a burlap sack, and carry them to the family hospital or an equivalent institution. Just tossing babies in a sack. During the journey many of the baby's arms and legs, ribs, you know, frequently be broken. Of course! How is this real? There's people carrying around newborn babies in a fucking sack like an evil version of Santa Claus. Instead of bringing a bunch of toys to good boys and girls, bringing a sack of bloody babies to various

institutions to be further abused if they're not already dead. Well, these babies would often be drugged to keep quiet. Numerous babies would die on the way to these institutions and then were just unceremoniously thrown out like trash. Wow. Jesus Christ, literally Jesus Christ, what the hell was going on with so many of your followers here, right? Can't abort a fetus? No way. That'd be murder. That'd be a terrible sin. No, much better. Just let the babies be born, then let them die via abuse, neglect, or due to a degree of carelessness I consider tantamount to murder. That's totally okay. Hail Mary full of grace. To get the babies inside the Dublin Foundling Hospital, a baby was taken out of the baby bag,

placed on a turning wheel outside the walls. baby was taken out of the baby bag, placed on a turning wheel outside the walls. Then the lifter rang a bell, alerting the doorman of the new arrival. The wheel then rotated, carrying the babies inside. This contraption was appropriately named the baby wheel. Just dropping off actual babies, like an Amazon delivery driver drops off packages. For those babies that survived their journey, hell awaited. Founding children were routinely starved, often died of starvation. What little food was given to them was garbage. They were served shit like porridge, infested with beetles and earwigs,

bread full of mold. They would drink dirty water from filthy cups. They were almost never given shoes. They wore rags, were forced to perform child labor, routinely were beaten with shit like a thick leather strap if they didn't work hard or fast enough When their feet would swell or their hands would blister they would still be expected to work Just orphan any type shit, but much worse and not just a movie

Instead of milk for newborns and others little babies nurses would feed them a mixture of flour and water often mealy flour When they wailed thanks to malnutrition, injury, or sickness, they were beaten and or drugged to keep quiet. And not surprisingly, they often died. So often. Over 50% of infants admitted between 1750 and 1760 died before they reached the age of two. So many kids died so frequently they would be buried by the literal dozen.

12 bodies would be thrown into the same hole covered with some quicklime. When it rained, their remains would frequently be exposed to the elements, just delivered in a fucking sack and then tossed out like trash when they died. Their mass graves would be accompanied by no marker, no remembrance, their names written into no records. They meant nothing in life. Why should anyone care what happened to them in death? Way back in 1758 a report for the Irish House of Commons detailed the horrific conditions of the hospital lady Arabella Denny a wealthy Irish aristocrat and philanthropist Read the report and demanded to take over she cleaned things up made a clock system to remind nurses when to feed the babies

But still despite her efforts things far from great and infant mortality remained abnormally high. So that's how little care was given to children deemed bastards. Now let's look at their mothers. Let's transition to the how the Irish treated women in general actually. Life for Irish women was completely fucked until very recently. I had no idea just how brutally and oppressively patriarchal Ireland was. And this treatment was a direct representation of Catholic values at the time in the country since the Catholics truly ran the government and controlled Irish culture to such a degree as I will

illustrate soon. In the early and mid 20th century women in Ireland had a hell of a time getting and or keeping jobs thanks to what was called the marriage bar. Women were required to resign from their jobs by law once they got married. How crazy is that? And this shit was going on recently. For government jobs, the marriage bar was in effect from 1924 until 1973. For primary school teaching, the marriage bar was in place from 1932 until 1958. And in the private sector, the marriage bar was also observed informally for most of the 20th century.

Women also, thanks again to the Catholic Church, zero access to contraceptives. All of them were literally illegal to buy or sell in Ireland beginning in 1935 and they were not sold until February of 1980. 1980. And the church was pissed about the change. It was still a huge deal in Ireland for the government to go against the church's explicit wishes in 1980. Still a huge deal now. And even in 1980, you had to have a prescription to get birth control. And that was

for like the pill, condoms, spermicides, that kind of shit. Still illegal in 1980. You could not legally buy a condom at a store in Ireland until 1985. Unreal. Irish women just seen as having little value outside of being fucking broodmares. Women had very little property rights until recent decades. Single women could not buy land for themselves without a man's help until 1957. From 1927 to 1975 Irish women were banned from sitting on juries. Abortion not legalized in Ireland until January 1st of... want to guess? 2019. This became legal five years ago. And if this episode doesn't make it painfully clear to anyone listening how harmful forcing women to bring all babies to term can be, well, nothing will. And it gets worse. Divorce

also not allowed. Oh, fuck yeah, bro! Make those Irish lasses submit to their hot, hard, Irish Lord Father Daddy's dripping in Guinness. The modern Irish Constitution in 1937, to their hot, hard, Irish Lord Father Daddy's dripping in Guinness. The modern Irish Constitution in 1937, a constitution personally approved by the Archbishop of Ireland who for sure made changes to it behind the scenes before approving it, a dude who vowed to never get married, made divorce illegal. That makes sense that we have guys who know nothing about marriage helping, you know,

pass marriage legislation. A lot of sense. Very good. Divorce did not become legal until 1996. Could not get divorced in Ireland until 1996. Ireland didn't pass its first domestic violence law until 1976. That was when the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act was enacted and this law gave courts the power to issue borrowing orders for the first time and provided victims with civil protection orders for the first time. 1976. Marital rape. Not criminalized until 1990. Think about all of that. You could legally rape your wife in Ireland in 1989.

A woman who could not legally divorce you for doing so. And if you just go back another decade to 1979, the wife you could legally rape who could not divorce you could also not use contraceptives. And if she then got pregnant from the rape, could not get an abortion. Go back just three more years and you could legally hit her too. Beating your wife was viewed by the courts as discipline. What the fucking fuck Ireland? It's bumming me out. It's gonna make me view Lucky Charms in a very different light. Like I'm still gonna eat it because it's easily my favorite junk food cereal of all time. And I know it's not made in Ireland, but I'm gonna

probably eat it with some anger in my heart. Why must you make me sad, frosted, and magically delicious Lucky Charms? Very disappointing to my ancestors. I have a pretty good chunk Irish heritage on my dad's side. And apparently, of course it's on my dad's side. And apparently we have until recent years been backwards as fuck. Bunch of women hating weirdos. My Irish ancestor, they would be so ashamed of me.

So ashamed of my failure to get Lindsay to submit. My daughter Monroe also does not submit to my authoritie. I mean within reason she does. But not totally. Living with two women who seem to think they're 100% equal to me? What? Crazy times. My Irish male ancestors wouldn't be able to process it. But seriously, you see the terrible picture all this paints with Ireland. And why was it like this? Because Ireland was a nation ruled by patriarchal priests. Male priests who for most of the 20th century told male politicians what to do. And all these men, these very patriarchal men, clearly did not see women as being even in the ballpark of being their equals.

They were treated like children, but also as sexual objects. While numbers don't exist, many an Irish historian discussing this subject states that for many women who got pregnant outside of marriage, it was often due to incest, rape, or a complete lack of sexual education. Some women were even raped by priests, the very people who would send them to these homes to be hidden away in shame. Irish women, especially unwed pregnant Irish women, were living in their very own horror movie. And the church was the monster. The church who preached about the devil was the devil. The church despised single mothers and treated them like contagious diseases.

Needed them to be separated from the community so that their moral impurity would not infect the masses. Pregnancy outside of marriage was literally treated like a crime, a very serious crime. Now back to some of these Irish institutions built to reform Ireland's fallen women. Lady Denny, who we met briefly earlier, opened her Magdalen laundry in June of 1767. Unmarried and unwanted pregnant girls

under the age of 20 were admitted, often forcibly by their families, and they would be forced to work in exchange for accommodation, clothing, food, and religious instruction. These women would often spend between 18 months and two years in the laundry, but really asylum, where they were reformed and where they were only ever allowed to leave if they had a wedding offer, a job offer, or were permitted to return home where their parents could keep a close eye on their dirty fucking bicycles, make sure no one else was ever riding it without first putting a ring on their handlebars.

Seriously though, the girls admitted this place would have their heads shaved upon arrival. This was originally, in theory, done for life's preventative reasons, but the staff soon realized it was just a good form of punishment and humiliation. Strip them of their feminine sexuality, and Lucifina wept. Residents were issued house names erasing their previous sinful, disgusting, cock-loving, or at least not properly cock-defending identities, damaging their self-esteem further. Women inside the laundries were called inmates. They were forced to wear prison-like uniforms. They were divided up into groups. Sex workers would wear one color. Single mothers wore

another. Did I mention that it didn't matter who impregnated these women or if the sex was consensual? That many of these fallen women were raped sometimes by members of their own family, sometimes by priests, and that the rapists were never punished, even if these women named their attackers. In 19th century Ireland incest, for example, was literally not a crime. You can be found guilty of raping your daughter, but the punishment would be the same as if you had raped anyone else. And likely even if they're a witness you probably wouldn't be found guilty just the way it worked. Rape cases rarely tried in court and even if the attacker was miraculously found guilty the maximum punishment was imprisonment for two years. Glory be to Gilead! Blessed be the

fruit. The 1800s in both Britain and Ireland were characterized by mass institutionalization. This was seen as a magical answer to all of society's problems. Sex workers, unmarried pregnant women, orphans, criminals, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, alcoholics whose alcoholism kept them from being able to hold down a job, etc. They were also just locked away in various institutions. All these people were different from the respectable people of Victorian society. These respectable people viewed them as a burden and a waste of tax money, reinforcing a cycle of stigmatization and shame and basically giving the people who worked at these institutions

permission to abuse them however the fuck they wanted to. I mean, who cares? They're not even real people. They're poor. They're poor. They're sinful and they're poor so you know what? Fuck them. Now let's see how this attitude and abuse continued into more modern times in the 20th century right after today's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those ads. If you don't want to hear anymore get the entire catalog ad free and more by signing up to be a space lizard on patreon for five bucks those ads. If you don't want to hear anymore, get the entire catalog ad free and more by signing up to be a space lizard on Patreon for five bucks a month. Thank you space lizards.

And now let's learn about how the UK's attitude towards the lower classes merged with a very conservative iteration of Catholicism in Ireland in the 20th century to make life hell for unwed mothers and their children. In December of 1921, the month of Irish independence, Catholicism became the preferred religion of the state and national identity of Ireland. In the early and mid 20th century, almost everyone, literally in Ireland, was Catholic. It was one of the most Catholic, if not the most Catholic, nation in the world. I'm talking between 90-95% of the population

was Irish, or excuse me, Catholic, and as recently as 1970, 90% of these Irish Catholics attended mass weekly. They were not just Catholic in name, they were dedicated. Being Catholic was practically synonymous with being Irish and this meant that for most of the 20th century almost every Irish politician was also Catholic and regularly attended church and tithes. If not all of them. I didn't look into every single politician in the 20th century, but 99% or higher. You couldn't get elected if you weren't Catholic.

Before the modern constitution of Ireland was passed in 1937, the Archbishop of Armagh, aka the primate of all Ireland, Cardinal Joseph McRory read over every line and approved it with some corrections. Catholicism was the only religion given a special provision in this Irish constitution. McRory was considered the most powerful man in Ireland from 1928 to 1945. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Catholic Church ran shit in Ireland for most of the 20th century. How? Why? Largely because the right to be Catholic was a large part of what Ireland fought for when

it fought for its independence. The Catholic Church was considered as a big a part of Irish identity as speaking Gaelic, and both had been banned for many years under British rule or relegated to the shadows. And now with their preferred religion back on the table for all to worship as publicly and enthusiastically and as often as they would like and with the Irish wanting to take them, make themselves distinct from their English oppressors. It was cool to be Catholic as fuck in Ireland. If you weren't Catholic you were seen as not really being Irish. To truly be Irish was to be Catholic that is how ingrained in Irish culture Catholicism was. And because Ireland was still a very poor nation, being very Catholic was also one of the only ways a lot of Irish could truly express their Irishness.

And being a morally superior Catholic became the best thing an Irish person could strive to be. The Brits had more money, but thanks to their obviously inferior Anglican Protestant bullshit fake-ass fuck and no pope having church, they clearly did not have the upper hand morally. And now beginning in the 1920s, moral superiority, grounded in Catholic faith, becomes the foundation of Irish culture. And what was the best expression of this superiority? Chased Irish women. Women's bodies, their sweet sweet bicycles, became the battleground on which a war of moral superiority was fought.

And this is how pregnancy outside of marriage became such a huge deal. While you could theoretically keep the actual fuck in a secret, you couldn't hide the frequent results of that fucking in a nation where trying to use some form of birth control was seen as being the rough equivalent of walking into church, pissing on a Bible, taking a shit in a priest's mouth and making him eat it while simultaneously renouncing his faith and agreeing to be face fucked by Satan himself. An unwed pregnant girl or woman was the worst. They were living proof that maybe Irish Catholics not so pure in Christ-like after all. So to keep the whole nation from crumbling into moral decay, to keep the rest of the

world from finding out that the Irish maybe weren't quite as righteous as they let on, these women needed to be hidden. And where to hide them? In various asylums slash prisons slash concentration camps given cute little titles like Mother and Baby Home. Yay! In 1925, when the Tuam Home first opened, Ireland was still a new country. The majority of the population after centuries of British subjugation and

exploitation still incredibly impoverished. They lacked job opportunities. The church, as I mentioned, had a lot of influence over government affairs and local county governments, impoverished as they were, just like the people, could do little to give financial support to poor families in these homes. So the church with their massive tithing-built coffers stepped in with strings attached of course. Big, heavy, Ireland is now essentially a theocracy kind of strings. And institutions ran by the Catholic Church were the ones providing resources for most

people now, which gave the church even more power over the people of Ireland. And during this time, with their theocratic crackdown on behavior seeming to be immoral, behavior overwhelmingly related to sex outside of marriage, the Irish Church and its puppet of a state incarcerated more women per capita in various institutions than literally any other country in the world. 30,000 to 50,000 in the Magdalene laundries alone. And incarcerated is the correct word choice here because these mother and baby homes were truly no better than prisons. And now before we get into

today's timeline and really focus on the Tuam home, let me back up a bit and explain a little bit more about how the Catholic Church took over Ireland. How the Irish people fought off British subjugation, only to be subjugated by their priests. For centuries of British history, the British monarchy battled between Catholic and Protestant Christianity, which affected Ireland greatly during its time under British control since Ireland was much more reluctant to make the jump to Protestantism as England was. Protestantism in Ireland became associated with the military conquest and colonization of Ireland by Britain, which many in Ireland became associated with the military conquest and colonization of Ireland by Britain, which many in Ireland of course hated with every fiber of their

being. In 1695, to discourage Irish Catholicism, various penal laws were passed that prohibited Catholics from owning land, voting, holding public office, practicing their religion. Catholics could also be fined or imprisoned for participating in Catholic worship. And then the Banishment Act of 1697 banned Catholic priests from the UK, required that those found after May 1st 1698 be imprisoned and transported the fuck out of the country. And even before these laws were passed, a number of Irish priests were executed by the British government for essentially the crime of being Catholic.

Those laws not repealed until 1829. By that time what remained of the Irish Church was unsurprisingly extremely poor and disorganized, so they now sought help from other Catholics in France to strengthen their churches. Large numbers of nuns and some priests as well from French orders were sent west took over religious institutions. These orders were primarily the Bon Secours, the Good Shepherds, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, and the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. And these nuns took control of the industrial and reformatory schools across Ireland.

Thanks in large part to French help, the Catholic Church as an institution in Ireland blossomed now in the 1800s, particularly during the religious Renaissance that took over the country after British Parliament emancipated Catholics in 1829. And a large number of workhouses, laundries, and foundling hospitals were built and filled to the rafters with Irish women and their babies. Many of the workhouses were originally owned by the government and were meant to offer minimal assistance to people in need. Unmarried mothers started flocking to them for resources and in the 1850s with the boost in the

power of the Catholic Church there was a push to institutionalize these places in a very religious ways. The state entrusted the church to implement social policies and the church went just a tad bit overboard in enforcing conformity, doctrine, and tradition. The Magdalene Laundries began to admit, only admit pregnant women on the condition that their babies be taken and raised separate from them and then sent to a workhouse or industrial school when they came of age.

Came of age, I don't know why I added that there. The women, free from child-rearing duties, worked around 100 hours a week, six days a week, and too often for the rest of their short lives. Clearly overworked and also underfed, they were hungry, exhausted, and depressed. Many women ended up working in these places for years, dying on the properties, ending up being buried in mass graves. According to Paul Jude Redmond, author of The Adoption Machine,

by the early 1900s, single mothers were considered sinners, fallen women, strumpets, prostitutes, brazen hussies, jezebels, riddled with venereal diseases, tramps and sluts, while illegitimate babies were similarly vilified as bastards, weaklings, runts of the litter, and the spawn of Satan. By 1900, it was standard practice to send unmarried pregnant women to workhouses so they could be separated from the quote respectable poor. They were truly seen as the lowest of the low. Catholicism's traditional prejudices against single mothers and illegitimate babies combined with rigid Victorian values made for a recipe of disaster for these women and children.

By 1900, the industrial and reformatory schools in Ireland had a negative reputation because the former inmates could not function in society and they were in extremely poor health. Britain accepted that institutionalization was a failed practice and gradually phased out these homes and schools. Almost all of the world phased them out, but not Ireland. Ireland doubled down on a really, really bad idea. The Catholic Church had fought hard for control of these institutions and they did not want to give them up. After the country gained independence in 1922, the church quickly attained ownership of almost all of these

institutions in the country. In 1924, the Department of Education reported that there were more children in industrial schools in Ireland than in all of the UK, which is crazy because the combined population of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland in 1924 was approximately 27 million while the population of Ireland was only around 3 million. So Ireland had around nine times as many kids grown up in sweatshops per capita than its neighbors. And it would put a much bigger percentage in these schools than its neighbors in the coming years. While Britain closed its last industrial school in 1933, Irish institutions continued to increase in attendance during the 1930s.

And some of these institutions were the mother and baby homes. Pellistown was the first mother and baby home in Ireland, and set the standards for the other homes. It was formerly an auxiliary unit of the South Dublin Union's Workhouse. There are no records of how it transitioned from a workhouse to a mother and baby home, but it is thought that Pelletstown was founded in the late 1800s while some sources list either 1904 or 1906 as the year of its inception. Records indicate that by 1918 it was officially listed as a mother and baby home.

Women stayed here for up to two years and then most often left their children behind when they were discharged. Despite no longer having access to their baby, they had to continue providing money for raising the child even if the child was with the foster family. How fucking cruel and unfair. Same treatment not applied to the fathers. They weren't sent anywhere. They didn't have to financially help raise a child or children they fathered. Pellistown other mother and baby homes, were initially called special institutions. Originally the church wanted to isolate single mothers from the workhouse populations. In September of 1922, the Federation of Dublin Charities, under the control of the Archbishop of Dublin, submitted a

proposal to the new Irish government for management of single mothers. This proposal aimed to remove mothers from the workhouses. It was accepted by the government because the government did what the church told it to do. And single mothers were transferred out of workhouses and into so-called special institutions ran by nuns from various religious orders. Paul Jude Redmond, the author I quoted earlier,

describes these homes as follows. The original mother and baby homes were across between a maternity hospital with no doctors or nurses and a low to medium security prison. The mothers were punished while again the fathers, often rapists, abusers, or men who cheated on their wives, never had to face consequences for their actions. As time passed, more and more homes were founded and the most widely known mother and baby homes were the Bethany Home, Kilrush mother and baby home, Bezboro mother and baby home, Tuam mother and baby home, Firmoy

nurseries, the Regina Chaley Hostel, Sean Ross Abbey, St. Jared's, Don Boyne and Castle Pollard. And things didn't change much in these homes for the next two to three decades. And why would they? Ireland's bishops still controlled government affairs. The church drove national legislation regarding divorce, contraception, women's rights, homosexuality, and more. Speaking of homosexuality real quick, literally illegal to be a homosexual or in a homosexual relationship or commit homosexual acts in Ireland till 1993. Things finally began to modernize in Ireland in the late 1960s when the sexual and countercultural revolution that began in America reached Ireland.

Ireland became more accepting of modern ideas like women's liberation and feminism, a little bit more accepting. The economy approved, this prosperity and new economic freedom weakened the church's hold over the people, finally. But although its grip was slightly weakened, the church would still keep Ireland in a cultural stranglehold for another 20 plus years. The church's hold over Ireland was finally really kind of broken, even though Ireland is still very Catholic, in the 1990s thanks to journalists exposing major sex scandals involving underage girls, underage boys, sexual assault, rape, pedophilia, right, between the priests and these kids finally being exposed.

There's a Wikipedia list titled Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals in Ireland, and there are 49 links to different pages. And within many of those pages there are still more links to other incidents. By the 2000s the church was under continual social attack due to exposed history and ongoing cultural culture of sexual abuse and cover-ups of abuse. The traditional highly conservative and blatantly misogynistic values of the church no longer aligned well with modern society also. In the 1970s over 90% of Irish people still identified as Catholic and just under 90% still attended Mass at least once a week, like 89.1%. But by 2006, while 87% of the Irish still identified as Catholic, only 40% of Irish

Catholics attended Mass weekly. And then by 2022, the number of Irish who identified as Catholic dropped down to 69% and only 30% attended Mass weekly. In 50 years, church attendance dropped from 90% to 30% and continues to drop. And although many Irish still identify as Catholic and Ireland is still one of the most Catholic nations in the world per capita as far as just people who identify as Catholic, the church's power and control has weakened immensely and continues to steadily weaken. has weakened immensely and continues to steadily weaken. And as today's episode illustrates, holy shit is that a good thing. Power corrupts.

And the Catholic Church had way too much power in Ireland for way too long. And that power absolutely corrupted the shit out of it until it was fucking rotten. And the Tuam Home, which our timeline will largely revolve around, operated from 1925 to 1961, during the height of the Church's power in Ireland, and the height of its corruption. Now let's go through this timeline of this hell on earth for Irish women and children,

and the investigation that finally exposed all the pain and suffering to the women and children who lived there long after the institutions had shut down for good, unfortunately, right after today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. I know it hasn't been that long since the first one, but better to get this out of the way now as it'll be less intrusive than taking the break later. Thank you for listening to those sponsors. Hope you heard some deals you liked. And now let's jump into the timeline,

examining how these mother and baby homes operated and more and how an investigation finally brought many of the crimes committed in these homes to light. In 1925, a former workhouse in Toome that housed destitute adults and children was converted to a mother and baby home. The building had been in use since 1846 and was originally owned by the Galway County Council. And a quick few words about the town of Toome before we go further. Toome, even though just under 10,000 people live there, is the second largest settlement

in Galway County, a large and very rural county on the central west coast of Ireland, historically it is a particularly Catholic county in a very Catholic nation, and Toome itself is so Catholic the centerpiece of the town's coat of arms is a cross. The city was built around a monastery, built in the early sixth century. The town was also built just a few miles from an even earlier monastery, built in the 5th century. The town's most famous site is arguably the Tuam High Cross, erected in 1152 CE, one of the most remarkable examples of medieval Irish art and architecture. The cross, over five meters in height and carved from sandstone, featuring intricate scenes from the Old Testament, was built to commemorate the appointment of the first archbishop of Tuam,

back when the town was one of the most important ecclesiastical centers in all of Ireland. The town is also home to St. Jarllys College, a very small and very religious equivalent to a high school here in the U.S. that the Archbishop of Tuam personally oversees. There is also the Archbishop Michael College, another very small, very religious secondary school. Also High Cross College, also St. Patrick's, all ran by various orders of the Catholic Church. For primary schools, aka grade schools, we got St. Patrick's Primary School, another Catholic school, there's a Gaelic language school, named something I could not pronounce correctly if a fucking gun was to my head, and finally a public

school, Educate Together National School. As you can see, nearly all of the education to them is directly overseen by the Catholic Church to this day. The small city, again, of less than 10,000, home to two massive cathedrals, the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to them, built in the 19th century and home to the Archbishop, and St. Mary's Cathedral, built in the 12th century and the former home of the Archbishop. There are a large number of smaller the 12th century and the former home of the Archbishop. There are a large number of smaller Catholic churches as well like the Church of Our Lady and St. Nicholas, St. Joseph's Church, St. Coleman's Church, Sacred Heart Church, and on and on and on.

I found one small evangelical church inside a commercial building downtown. Looks like it literally seats about 10 to 15 people. Not kidding. In fold-out chairs. In a room about the size of a small living room or maybe a large bedroom. And that's it. Everything else it seems, according to looking around on Google Maps. And there were over a dozen over other little churches I didn't already name in this city of, again, less than 10,000 people. All Catholic. And that's today.

I can't find definitive proof, but I would that back when the Tuam home was in operation literally every single church in the area was Catholic as was every school as was at least 99% of the population and I bet they all went to mass. Would have been concerning to the community if you didn't you'd be an outcast, a pariah, an other and I just lay all this out to illustrate that if you lived in Tuam you were Catholic. Everyone you knew was Catholic. You went to Catholic school. Your kids went to Catholic school. You went to church regularly.

So did your kids. No one was more powerful in your community than the Archbishop. The church ran this town. Had immense influence over the lives of literally all of its residents. It would be essentially suicide to stand up against the church. Okay, that context is established. Now back to the workhouse that became the Tuam home. Originally built in 1846, it was ran by the county government, was a place where the unemployed could go for housing or employment. It was built under

the Irish Poor Laws, a series of acts of Parliament first passed in 1838, intended to address widespread social instability due to widespread and persistent poverty in Ireland. The workhouse was designed by poor law commissioner's architect George Wilkinson to house up to 800 people. The building had dorms, an infirmary, and a so-called idiots ward. Sheds were built later to house additional inmates and fever victims. An additional so-called fever hospital was also later constructed nearby. In 1916 British soldiers took over the workhouse and evicted all the occupants made at their barracks.

During the Irish Civil War in 1923, eight IRA volunteers were executed at the workhouse, some of the last to be killed in this war in Ireland. And while Ireland had already technically achieved independence in 1921, if you confused frequent fighting between various Irish revolutionary factions would continue through 1923 and for much longer in sporadic outbursts of violence around the country. In 1925 all the workhouses in the county were shut down by the Galway Board of Health making them available for a new purpose. The Order of Bon Secours Sisters led by Mother Hortense McNamara now stepped in and took over ownership

of the workhouse and tomb and converted it into the home. The first sisters to run the home were Mother Euphrema and Monsignor Gabriel. Sister Priscilla Berry was one of the original nuns to work there and she would continue to work there for the rest of her life. Reverend Peter J. Kelly was the chaplain. Four women, Beena Rabit, Annie Kelly, Mary Wade, Julia Davini, remained in the home with the sisters until it was shut down. A group of mothers and children lived in the workhouse and

Glenamaddy were transferred to the home in 1925. It's a little town less than 20 miles away. And those women and children would be the first occupants of the infamous Tuum home. The county council paid the nuns a pound per week for each mother and child in the home. Initially after 12 months the mothers had to leave but often their children would stay until they were adopted, fostered, or sent to industrial schools. Some women would take their babies with them when they left but unfortunately that was the exception to the rule. Within just a few years of opening there were already complaints of children and women being exploited in this home.

Despite these complaints unmarried mothers and their kids would continue to be sent to live at Tuam for three and a half decades. And as I believe I mentioned earlier the Tuam home was one of many such homes. 18 in total would later be investigated after a mass grave was found in Tuam. About 35,000 single mothers were giving birth each year in the early 1900s, a number that only increased as the population grew, so a lot of homes were needed. Because of those numbers, the mother and baby homes pushed to or passed max capacity pretty much right from the beginning. Sadly, it seems as if there was literally only one home in Olive Island that was similar, but actually somewhat kind to mothers and babies and that was the Dublin hostel Regina Chaley. It was the only place all the way until the 1970s that supported

unmarried mothers who wanted to actually raise their kids. This so-called unconventional home, how crazy! What? Moms want to raise their babies? Why the fuck? Opened October 5th, 1930. Run by the Legion of Mary, another Catholic organization. And between 1930 to 1998, by the way Legion of Mary, sounds militant, I just picture a bunch of fucking Karens in habits. Just fucking angry all the time. Oh God, pull up the drawbridge, the Legion of Mary approach. Between 1930 to 1998, 5,631 mothers and 5,434 children were admitted. The staff never received direct state support for maintaining the mothers and children. They relied on benefactors who were not righteous women hating pricks,

and they didn't distinguish between first and repeated offenders. That is what women who had more than one child out of wedlock were called, repeat offenders. It accommodated women in mental illnesses, women who had a criminal record, and women who would have been rejected from other mother and baby homes for just whatever reason. Seems that they at least tried to do things the right way. They helped young mothers instead of punishing women already punished by a society that was wildly misogynistic and reductive when it came to women. Women already punished by the fucking horrible fathers that couldn't be bothered to be decent humans and help raise these children. The women had no choice but to carry to term ones pregnant.

Sadly though, even this place, the best mother-in-home in all of Ireland, is still a nightmare for many. Later statements from many women who lived there indicated they had been raped by benefactors, by priests, by other staff members, members of parliament who had oversight at the facility and more. So the benefactors did by priests, by other staff members, members of parliament who had oversight at the facility and more. So the benefactors did suck actually. My god. Also because Ireland had been so anti-sex for so long, many of the women who got pregnant and ended up there got pregnant in part because they were literally so ignorant they didn't know how sex worked. To a degree that many didn't know they had been raped because they didn't know what rape was exactly. I mean they had an idea but not the specifics.

Many of them also victims of incest. Also even this house, the best house, filthy and dilapidated. There were regular outbreaks of disease. It was bad enough that Regina Chaley was shut down in 1963, condemned as being unsafe. The rest of Ireland's mother and baby homes, not as good as this one. When the homes first opened, none of them had running water or electricity. All the women and children were trapped in rooms like prisoners, treated like prisoners. Women who escaped would literally be captured and returned to the home by the police, forced to do hard labor. This is crazy because they're not criminals.

Sometimes mothers will be kicked out for insubordination, but then their kids would be kept, even if the women wanted to take their babies with them. It's just savage. Most homes have physically abused women, some women sexually abused in homes over the years, and every home emotionally abused these women. Survivors have testified in recent years that the nuns would do shit like whip them with leather straps, slap them in the face, and more. Some nuns even did shit like holding women's heads underwater as punishment, half drowning them. That'll teach them a lesson. Mothers also abused by being given nothing for pain relief while giving birth, receiving no stitches

afterwards even if obviously needed, and then they would be sent back to work just a few days later, already having been painfully separated from their babies they were not allowed to breastfeed or bond with. Women at most of the homes were condescendingly referred to as girls, even if they were not allowed to breastfeed or bond with. Women at most of the homes were condescendingly referred to as girls even if there were women in their 30s or 40s just another part of the humiliation of living in these homes. Nuns also routinely threatened women or children who misbehaved but sending them to a worse institution like one of Ireland's mental hospitals or as they were more often referred to than lunatic asylums. And at the two of

them home, mothers were separated from their babies and required to do a year's worth of unpaid labor for a year to pay off their debt. Debt to whom? To Irish society. For making Ireland look bad, they were expected to contribute by cooking, cleaning, caring for sick kids, other labor. Women who cared for the children would later talk about the lack of basic supplies like diapers they were given. Some women's entire days dedicated to cleaning children who just didn't have diapers. And the children stayed until they were fostered, adopted, old enough to go to industrial schools or as often was the case in all these homes until they died.

Now let's hear a personal tale of how destructive these places were. Michael O'Flaherty, born at the Tuum home. And the day after Michael was born, his mom tried to go see him, but a nun stopped her and literally told her, go mind your own business, your baby's gone. Oh, what a great nun. Oh, what a great representative of Christ. That sounds like something Jesus would say, right, to a new mom? Get out of here, you slutty bitch.

Don't cry over spilled milk, stolen babies and shit. So saith me, Jesus. Get the fuck out of here, you slutty bitch! Don't cry over spilled milk! Stolen babies and shit! So sayeth me, Jesus! Get the fuck out of here! Nuns refused to tell her which baby was hers or that he was in the same building as her and yet she was required to stay for 12 months after giving birth. 12 months of not knowing which of the babies she lived in, maybe even helped care for, was hers. She would say that she wanted to take him away from the place, but she didn't know where he was. Didn't know who he was, couldn't find him. After giving birth, mothers were often coerced into a consent form and decided one,

giving up the rights of their kids, and then later prevented from learning any information about their children, and their children never given any information about them. Michael lived it to him until the age of five. He has no memories of his time inside, only his life after. After he was fostered out, he was subjected to daily abuse and still no one would tell him who his real mother was. He told an interviewer at CNN, I was treated low caste. He weren't in the same genes as they were. Michael was eventually sent to a second family who lived on a dairy farm. They made him sleep in a

shed by himself, far from the family home. No insulation, no heat, no running water, no electricity. Just a little kid living in the shed by himself. Never ate with the family. Forced to work at the farm from sunrise to sunset. No one ever hugged him. No one ever told him they loved him. He said, I felt like a slave. You wouldn't do to an animal what was done to me. Michael was eventually able to track down his mother, Patricia, and they reunited in 1998. Decades, decades later. He found out that his mother, Patricia, had been banished from the parish where she had attended church as a child when she left the home, where her family still attended church.

Right? Just a week after she got back from two, they were like, get the fuck out of here. Local priests told her family she brought too much shame on them in the community. Didn't want her anymore. That walk in pile of shit of a priest apparently was not very familiar with the forgiveness aspect of his faith. I Have a special hatred for people who bend scripture of any faith to punish the faithful I would truly love to get a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire like Lucille Negan signature weapon the walking dead and just be left alone in a room with people like this

People who've been maybe tied to a chair and I would love to introduce them to my gospel the gospel of righteous motherfucking vengeance One where the only God is a God of pain and suffering God who gives no forgiveness then put the whole fucking snuff film on video send it to other priests as a warning What happens to those who hide their sadism and arrogance behind twisted notions of God. In this episode, fucking continually enrage me for two and a half days. I had to take breaks to go walk around, calm down, because I would get so fucking angry I couldn't focus, just mostly daydreamed about killing these motherfuckers. Another personal story from someone born into them comes from John Rogers, who participated

in a documentary about the home. You can find the whole thing on YouTube. It's called Children of Shame. If you're interested in this subject I recommend it. John was born at the Tuum home separated from his mother at the age of one after having minimal contact with her before that. When he was an adult they were finally reunited and he asked his mom what life for her was like growing up. She told him John I didn't have a childhood. I imagine most of the women sent to these homes did not. They were probably beaten and starved for affection, treated like shit before they finally

got pregnant, right? And then sent some other place to be treated worse. Life was hard for John and to him. Characterized by constant physical abuse, he told the documentary team that he and other kids were beaten for everything. If a little kid didn't wash themselves, if they're assigned sync, they get beaten with a leather strap. When he was finally adopted out to a foster family like the previous survivor, he was treated like a hired laborer, never shown affection, never told that he was loved, and then mocked at school when he would leave home for being a quote bastard ostracized from other kids. Another two of them home survivor Christina Carroll told CNN, I have a memory of being hungry all the time. I was so hungry I remember one of the nuns asking me to feed a small baby. I gave the child a little bit and

then ate the rest myself. When I finished the nun beat me because I took the baby's food. Children who survived infancy and early childhood in these shitholes were often adopted, fostered, or sent to industrial schools, workhouse schools, ran by the church where abuse was even more common. An estimated 35,000 women went to all the mother and baby homes in Ireland from 1925 to 1926. At least 9,000 babies died during that time. True number, so difficult to obtain because of the church's secrecy when it comes to infant and child deaths and their refusal to fully cooperate with investigators to this day. So, you know, numbers might be a lot higher.

In addition to these deaths, at least a thousand infants sold during this period to Americans, specifically via illegal adoptions. Institutions would fake death certificates for these kids so that if their moms did somehow track information on them down, they would just think their child had died. Ugh. Many women sadly would try and track down their children.

Despite what the churches said, most of these women did want to raise their babies. The church would act like, no, they didn't even want them. Bullshit. They had no intentions of giving them up. They were devastated by the loss and the children suffered too from the lack of love and affection from their mothers. All of this is so unnecessary. Thousands and thousands of babies adopted out of these homes in Ireland in shady ways. Legal adoption, huge problem in Ireland in the 20th century. Our prospective parents could just come for a tour of a mother and baby home, just pick out a baby

like they were picking out a fucking kitten or a puppy from the pound. They fill out an application, nuns would approve it. If they paid enough money, they'd get the kid they wanted. And none of this was legal. Most of the babies who were adopted were wanted by their birth mothers. Most of the moms did not know they were signing forms to give up custody of their kids when

they did so. The most common time to sign forms was directly after giving birth, right? No painkillers, very emotional, very confused, and then, hey, sign this by some nun who's going to fucking beat him if they didn't. Thousands and thousands of babies would end up being listed as the biological children of married couples who adopted them. The church would be complicit in helping produce illegal forms to make this all look legit.

When birth certificates were forged the words birth certificate would be printed on the top of the adoption certificate estimated that around 100,000 mothers in Ireland in the 20th century lost their babies to forced separation or adoption illegal or immoral but legal, in a variety of different types of homes. This was all so pervasive that today in Ireland, one in eight families have been affected by illegal or forced adoption. Some historical researchers have stated that for some of the mothers the process of being forcibly separated from their child more traumatic than if the child had died because of the constant state of grief and the not knowing what happened to their kid.

And again the children suffered as well right they would suffer from a higher rate of mental illness learning disorders long-term health effects than the general population do it is thought to their forced separation and their time in these homes life was especially horrific for the babies put in so-called reject wards within these homes mixed-race babies or disabled babies put in the reject wards and these homes. Mixed-raced babies or disabled babies put in the reject wards and according to an article in the Irish Mirror treated like animals. And you know what that actually that actually does make sense. The priests and

nuns they did know that Jesus hated non-whites. Of course a loving and forgiving God would also be super racist. That makes sense, right? Adds up. Especially towards babies. I mean what a wise, merciful God. Oh, praise white Jesus, protector of white souls. Everyone knows I'm speaking sarcastically, right? In many homes, cots will be empty literally every day because babies died so often from abuse they experienced in the reject wards. You know, but they weren't white, so no one cared. Not even God, right? It was discovered by some Irish Mirror journalists that in some homes, these infants were even subjected to medical experimentation. Used in vaccine trials, for example, witnesses would later report seeing nuns inject children with unknown substances. And then when

they died, if they weren't tossed in a mass grave, their bodies were donated to a place like Trinity College for further medical research This is straight-up World War two Nazi concentration camp level shit And it was happening all over Ireland for decades and the Catholic Church directly responsible for all of this Some women who escaped from these mother-and-baby homes left the country often traveling to Britain where women were treated a little bit better Within these women were often captured brought back by clergy who hunted them down with the approval of the local church and the help of these women's families. Fucking crazy town.

Family members betrayed these women by revealing their locations. Somehow the church, given authority to have these adult women arrested, forced back into these homes. Even though having a baby outside of marriage again, not illegal. Now let's get into more of the details regarding how the women were initially sent to these homes and what their daily life was like. Most of the time, the process began with an unmarried woman or girl telling her mom she's pregnant. Since this was considered to be women's business, the woman's father

typically wasn't informed unless, you know, he was the one fucking his daughter that he probably had an inkling or at least he would pretend not to know. First solution to this problem was to try and locate and speak with the father of the baby and get the couple to get married and as soon as possible. If the father could not be found or just chose to lie and say, no I never had sex with her, no she's a liar, or that he would just said, you know, I'm not gonna marry her, you know, sometimes the girl's parents would then try and pretend that the baby was theirs, but if that didn't work out, you know, if they just didn't want to do that,

now the parents would speak to the local priests. And the priest would contact someone working in one of these homes and make arrangements to get the girl locked up. Then to save the parish and the family so much shame. The priest and the parents would lie. They'd make up a story to explain the girl's absence. Right? Lying. Definitely a good part of being a priest. Most families would say that their daughter was offered a job in England. In many, many cases, the girl would be actually in a home near where she lived. Near where she went to school. While her classmates thought she was, you know, over in England or wherever,

she was in fact just across the block. Just on the other side of the wall that she walked by on the way to school, whatever. Trapped in a prison where she was not allowed to receive visitors. How surreal. Many of the parents who had daughters sent to these homes told their daughters to never come back once they got out. Because they didn't want them to ruin their family's name and reputation. Imagine that!

Some 15 year old girls raped. Or just dared to have sex with a guy, heavily pressured her to have sex. Or just wanted to have fucking sex with some guy. She's pregnant then she's banished from her family Separated from all of her friends banished from her local parish, right? She has her baby taken from her forced into indentured servitude abused for at least a year by fucking ruthless nuns Then released back into society having no one to turn, with essentially a scarlet letter burned into her forehead, lost in a country where so-called fallen women are despised, where hardcore workplace discrimination against women is the norm. Man, so many heartless, stupid fucks running shit. When a new mother would arrive at a home, she would take an intake processing or go

through intake processing. Nuns would record details about her in ledgers, then explain the rules of the home. The girl was then given a new house name, right? Their birth name no longer used, their identity destroyed. They're given a uniform of a shapeless dress, underwear and clogs, regardless of breast size, not allowed to wear bras. The girls had their hair cut short, if not shaved, to quote, purge them of their vanity and pride and to ensure they could not escape. The girls were often told to never speak to each other outside of conversations regarding work duties to try and not make friends right this was punishment. They were all underfed forced to do unpaid hard labor

even while pregnant for around 12 hours a day all because they got pregnant in a nation that forbid birth control. They were treated worse than death row inmates are treated in American prisons today for the crime of having sex. Now let's look a bit in more detail about what a normal day was like inside these homes. Days typically started between five and six AM. Yeah, awesome. Nuns and women recited prayers together, bathed, then went to daily mass.

There they would listen to fire and brimstone sermons from local priests that sermons intended to focus on the sins of lust. How dare you use your bodies in the way nature designed them to be used? How dare you enjoy the only bodies you'll likely ever have? How dare you take occasional breaks from the stress of intense poverty and the madness of life in general and just enjoy simple carnal not hurting fucking anybody pleasure for a few minutes here and there. I have no tolerance for the opinions of anyone who aligns sex with shame at this point in my life anymore. Fuck you doing. This is, this is, oh my gosh, she's so stupid.

You know what, no, it's worse than that. It's life is hard, life is brutal, especially for the poor and downtrodden. To forbid them from using birth control, to deny them the pleasure of at least guilt-free sex, it's not just stupid, it's cruel. Fuck anyone who still promotes that needless shame. After mass, the women went to the nurseries

to feed and bathe children, not necessarily their own children though, most often not their own, since they typically didn't nurseries to feed and bathe children. Not necessarily their own children though. Most often not their own. Since they typically didn't know which child or children were theirs. The children were then washed, have been left alone in cots or bassinets with literally no human interaction for the entire previous night. So that's fun. So they were almost, you know, always highly distressed.

Almost always filthy, not being changed for hours and frequently had rashes in bedstores. It had some extra unneeded cruelty. In some homes, mothers were kept close enough to their children to hear them crying all night, but not allowed to comfort them. Also in some homes, when women were told who their babies were, they would only get to spend 30 minutes to an hour a day with them, which ended up being even more cruel when those babies would then just disappear, illegally adopted away from them without their knowledge or informed consent. Now back to the daily schedule for women and girls in Tuam. After cleaning the babies, the women went to breakfast, usually two slices of bread, a bit of margarine, a mug of tea in the summer.

In the winter, the bread was replaced with some shitty porridge. Dinner would be served at noon, usually consisted of potato stew with mystery meat and vegetables. The nuns seemed to believe that the girls in their care, these fallen women, were unworthy of proper food, and the nuns themselves would eat much more high-quality fare. In most cases, the women would not eat again until breakfast the next day. Following dinner, or lunch as we think of it here in the States, the rest of the day was spent working.

Pregnant women returned to clean or work the nursery. A single woman would be responsible for 10 to 16 babies. After the women gave birth, they would work on farms. Excuse me, they can be loaned out to like nearby farms sometimes, work in these laundries. All unpaid labor. All designed to pay off their debt to society. After the women worked all day in some homes, they could see their babies for again about 30 minutes. You know, what a mercy. In others, they could do things like knit or write home if their family still even spoke with them. They would generally work 12 to 14 hours a day six days a week. Nearly every day was the same with virtually nothing to ever look forward to.

Birthdays were not celebrated. Neither were holidays in the sense of how we celebrate them now. You could just get like some some extra masses and a bit less work on holidays like Christmas and Easter. On Sunday, the day of rest, when not attending mass, women could quietly walk around the grounds, think about the shameful shit they'd done to get there, write letters, sew, pray, try not to fucking kill themselves, etc. Sundays were a popular day to escape because women were in church clothes instead of their uniforms. If they escaped, the nuns would report them for stealing the clogs or any other part of the uniform they escaped with.

That's how they would use the police to bring them back. Technically, whatever they were wearing was something that had been stolen. But also then if they escaped naked, they'd be arrested for being indecent. Then instead of putting them in jail and dealing with a theft charge, the police would just bring them back to the home. As punishment, some of the girls would be whipped, their heads shaved down further down to the skin, maybe be locked in a room for days or weeks in solitary confinement given only stale and or moldy bread and a water diet.

Now before jumping back in the timeline, what was giving birth at these places like? Well, in short, it was wonderful. It was great. The highly trained doctors were compassionate and gentle as they were competent. The nuns stopped being pieces of shit, and they would hold the mothers hands, you know, help them focus on their breathing, tell them that everything was going to be okay, remind them that they were beautiful souls, that it takes two to tango. They shouldn't be held solely responsible for their pregnancies, you know,

and that their babies were going to be given love, care, and compassion. You know, that's the most important thing. That's more important than a ring or ceremony. No, these mothers were treated like cows, given birth, more than like women. Most of the homes never had a full-time doctor on staff. A 1934 act required that at least one midwife be employed at all times, but that law routinely not followed. In most cases, nuns with very little understanding of childbirth, and nuns who seem to fucking

hate other women, uh, put in charge of helping deliver the babies. A clinically untrained nun being in charge of helping deliver a baby makes about as much sense as a clinically untrained priest dishing out marital advice. Oh, you've never been married, father? Then SHUT THE FUCK UP! Uh, if there were any serious medical problems during delivery, there was no doctor to help. Death during childbirth, not uncommon. Also, how compassionate is this? Women worked until the very day they went into labor.

Then while given birth, they were forbidden from making any noise, they'd be yelled at and or hit for crying out in pain. Most of the mothers weren't even allowed to lay in a bed while in labor until the 1960s or 70s. They'd had to fucking stand there or sit in a chair, push out their devil spawn. Delivery rooms had no medical equipment except for hospital beds and forceps.

And there was, as I mentioned, no pain relief medicine or stitching up after birth because those things were considered luxuries. And these fallen women in their devil spawn did not deserve luxuries. In a best-case scenario, women were allowed to stay with their babies for a couple days after birth, but typically nuns would separate mother and infant immediately following birth. Bonding, again, rarely allowed. Rest feeding forbidden for most mothers. If a child wasn't allowed to go home with their mother or adopted or fostered out as an infant, they stayed until they were transferred to another institution.

Sometimes mothers returned from work to find that their baby was gone. They'd be given no heads up. Other times mothers were told to dress up their children and carry them out to the front room to personally give them away even when they did not want to. If the mother protested, she was often told shit like, get over it! You knew this day was coming. What else did you expect? How could you possibly look after a child? Look after a child on your own. After a baby was sent away, a plan was now put in place to transition the mother out of the home. And again, they typically work for free for a year

at the home after being released, before being released, excuse me. Before they left, they were told it was illegal to try and find their babies, and they would go to jail if they got caught doing so. Also told it was a sin to have a relationship with their child, which is nonsense. Even if that child was an adult and initiated contact. This is this is insane.

Now let's meet another former resident. In 1932 a fucking super gross dirty devil child named Mary entered the Tuum home. Over second day, uh, excuse me, go ahead over seven decades later. This fucking Mary somehow had the balls to speak to the Daily Mail about her experience and not just continue hiding in shame like the devil sin rat she was. Mary said, I remember going into the home when I was about four. There was a massive hall in it and it was full of young kids running around and they were dirty and cold. There were well over a hundred children in there and there were three or four nuns who minded us. The building was very old and we were left out in the odd time.

Sorry, just kind of weird lingo for me at least. But at night the place was absolutely freezing with big stone walls. When we're eating it was in this big long hall and they gave us all this soup out of a big pot which I remember very well. It was rotten to the taste but it was better than starving. The children rarely bathed, wore the same clothes for weeks. Mary said we were filthy dirty. I remember one time when I sold myself, the nuns dunked me down into a big cold bath. How do those nun bitches look at themselves in the mirror after doing shit like that? Adding them to the list of people I want to take the fucking barbed wire baseball bat

to. I wonder how long it would take me to kill a rotten nun if I only hear on the stomach with a bat. I wouldn't mind finding out. 1934, Sheila Toohey died at the age of nine inside the Tooham home. She would later be identified as the oldest child to have died there. Her remains buried in a mass grave with hundreds of other children. Also in 1934, the registration of the Maternity Homes Act passes in Ireland. This act declared that the church was required to keep accurate records, but in reality

the church could still do whatever the fuck it wanted and was rarely challenged by the state. And when it was challenged, it was generally just for show and not like really challenged. It would be political suicide for a politician to go against the church in a meaningful way. Although churches were now required by law to register births and deaths in their homes, they almost never did. They usually did keep some sort of internal records, but you know they didn't actually pass it on anything. They did record Sheila's death. If they hadn't Sheila's death most likely would have been covered up by thousands and thousands of others. most likely would have been covered up by thousands and thousands of others. March 1935 reports indicate that Tuam housed 31 mothers and 191 children that

month. During that year 113 mothers would be released from the home, 60 would be sent home to their families, 4 sent to positions which most likely meant indentured servitude or farm work, 3 got married. The other 46 just kicked out into the cold, unwanted, with no job prospect, nowhere to go it seems. 66 children discharged that year. 17 would return with their birth mothers. That's good. At least 32 adopted out. The rest would go to live with relatives or be sent to workhouses or just die and be tossed into a pit. Local government reports normally provided useful stats about mother and baby homes, but during the 1930s, excluding 33 and 34, there are no records of child deaths, even though a lot

of kids certainly died. Two most likely didn't report for most of the years because the church didn't want the true numbers out there to damage their reputation. 1933 shows 120 admissions and 42 deaths. That's a 35% mortality rate compared to a 19% child mortality rate for the nation in general. For comparison, the child mortality rate at that time in the US, 10%. Kids in these Irish mother and baby homes dying three and a half times as frequently as American kids. Clearly they were being seriously abused, neglected, malnourished. Also a 35% mortality rate was the number the church felt comfortable reporting. How high was the rate for the other years when they

didn't keep records? 50%? 60%? Higher? In April of 1944, Ireland's Health Board completes an inspection at Tuam and writes a report. 271 children lived in the home with 61 single mothers, 333 people total, far over the maximum capacity of 243. One child was described as miserable and emaciated. Another child described as delicate. Yet another child had their hands growing near their shoulders, but received no special medical attention. Guessing that child suffered from Focumelia or some similar deformity.

Guessing the nuns told them they had that deformity because their mom was a fallen woman and they were a devil spawn. That's what they get. In 1945, some US airmen stationed in Britain learned how easy it was to adopt an Ireland. They visited to them shortly after Easter that year when the home was having some equivalent of a clearance sale, pretty disturbing. Five dollars for a bag of five babies. Yeah, just selling babies by the fucking bag now The airmen quickly found out that not all the babies were alive or in good working order

But usually two or three pretty good shape and the rumor is they just took the healthiest babies out of the bag and Toss the rest in the trash and that's not true. But doesn't it feel possible in this story? Now these airmen were able to buy some white babies. At the time there were far fewer white babies available for adoption in America and a lot of people feared adopting a baby who looked white. But then they could find out later, in fact, mixed race. The horror. What would the neighbors think? Irish babies were guaranteed by mother-and-baby homes to be white.

Irish babies were guaranteed by mother-and-baby homes to be white. That's a fucking weird guarantee by these nuns, these priests, and of course, we guarantee. We guarantee this is a white Christian baby. The nuns all too happy to sell babies to Americans with little to no paperwork, no background checks, you know. If you were a pedo into babies, holy shit was a shopping good in Ireland in the mid-20th century. A report from 2012 on Tuam and similar institutions suggested the church earned anywhere from 30 to 50 million in today's dollars from illegal baby sales in the 20th century. 1947 an inspector visited the Tuam home and wrote a report where he noted that virtually all the children were suffering severely from malnutrition.

Not surprised. 12 out of 31 infants were quote emaciated and not thriving. all the children were suffering severely from malnutrition. Not surprised. 12 out of 31 infants were quote, emaciated and not thriving. And that is sad. Home is still grossly overcrowded. 271 children, 61 mothers living there. 332 in total with the maximum capacity for this facility at this time, 243.

Child death rates also abnormally high records showed that in 1943 34% of children died 1944 25% 1945 23% 1946 27% in the US during those years the rate varied between 5 and 6 and a half percent so the kids these homes dying about five times as often as kids in the state states I couldn't find stats from Ireland on children and not just infants from these same years. The report recommended an inquiry into the cause of the high death rates, but that wasn't done. At the time, the home did have a doctor though, kind of. The medical officer in attendance was Dr. Thomas B. Costello. He is described as being elderly, and residents reported he almost never visited.

So that's fucking cool. Hell yeah. Hey, hey somebody wake up Dr. Costello. Tell him that there's an emergency at the Tuam home so then he can say who gives the bloody shit and just go back to sleep. The 40s put even more stain on the mother-and-baby home system. More strain not stain because the economy was struggling after the war meaning the homes homes got less funding, rationing also affected food and supplies in the homes. Also thanks to an epidemic of rock hard soldier cock, number of illegitimate births grew 47% from 1939 to 1945. It's almost like they should have birth control.

1952 new adoption laws created in Ireland that regulated and controlled illegal adoption, at least on paper. The 1952 Adoption Act meant to combat the illegal baby trade and get proper records for adoptions, but the church reluctant to endorse the act. Their reasoning, I love this, they said they were worried. The Protestants would start to adopt Catholic babies. Why would that be a problem? Would they treat them even fucking worse? People are insane Hard not to start hating humanity in general to the degree Karl Panzram did when I you know first heard about this shit

Now just fuck us all let the bombs drop all of them. Let dystopia begin. Let's just go extinct The world would be more than fine without us. Oh the world will thrive without our parasites of a species. I don't really want humanity to go to extinct. I just you know, I most of the time I would like to see most of humanity die. This 1952 act was Ireland's first standalone adoption legislation and an adoption board was set up to manage the new adoption system. And this act of the board ended up clearly being overseen by the church. The act provided for the court ordered permanent severing of all relationships between biological moms and their kids. Oh hell yeah.

Fake birth certificates now were made legal and would be issued to the new family so children could never know they were adopted. It sealed adoption files for life for all parties involved. Biological moms couldn't even know if their child was alive or dead. Even if there was a medical emergency, the board would refuse to release medical records. A lot of good minds, a lot of good empathetic minds, with a lot of people with incredible, just rock solid moral compasses working on all of this. This legislation is still in place in Ireland today.

Many of the babies born at Toome stayed until they were seven or eight years old at the home and then were sent to industrial schools. After 1952 when new laws were passed to prevent children from being used as slave labor at these schools, the church just ignored those laws. Two of them still made few efforts to place children in loving homes. There was also suspicion now that the nuns were faking deaths and still selling babies abroad. Around this time something called second layer institutions became more commonplace in Ireland. As the mother and baby homes overflowed, second layer institutions held children too old for homes but too young for industrial schools. Most of these institutions were essentially your

your standard orphanages. There was now more of a proper tier system for the children of unwed mothers. The first tier was the mother and baby homes, you know, was the mother and baby homes, where kids could stay from birth to the age of five even though some kids would stay years longer than this. Second tier were these new orphanages for kids between the ages of five and seven. Third tier were the industrial schools for kids aged seven to twelve. And the Magdalene laundries were the fourth tier, at least for girls from ages 12 to adulthood. Boys would often be put in apprenticeships or given to farmers to be used as slave labor or just let out to go try and survive on their own. Sadly, many of the girls who began their lives

infants in mother and baby homes became targets for sexual predators as they progressed through the rest of the tiers and before they left this horrible system they would get pregnant as teens and be sent back to tier one as a single mother now who had often been raped or molested to become impregnated and start the vicious cycle all over again. That is a horror movie. How incredibly sad and depressing. These girls have been given absolutely no sex education, been told their whole lives they were worthless devil spawn. They were so starved for love and affection they became the perfect targets for predators who would often be the priests supposed to be watching out for them.

1955 Rose McKinney is sent to the Tooham home as punishment for getting pregnant outside of marriage. Decades later she will speak to the Irish Mirror and tell them that nuns who worked at Tooham were quote anti-Christ's. She told the journalist, I am deaf in one ear from the beatings I got around the head from that lot. When she was old enough to make a proper escape attempt and couldn't stand it any longer, one day she jumped the back wall. She said a rotten priest was the one who first put her there. When Rose became pregnant in 1955, he came to her home, demanded she move into a tomb to give birth.

She was only 15, one of the youngest girls there at the time. Rose and another girl conspired to escape. They ran outside, jumped the back wall, as I mentioned. She went home and a few days later, the police arrived with two nuns. The nuns came into her home to take her back, but she sat on a chair with her dogs and said, "'Get out of here or I'll set my dogs on you.'"

Nuns left, never bothered her again. Hail, Rose McKinney. I wish those dogs would have fucking torn at least one of those nuns just to shreds. 1961. The Tooham Mother and Baby Home finally shut down. After becoming so dilapidated it looked about to collapse and the remaining residents were transferred to other mother and baby homes where their hell on earth would continue. And it seemed for years like all the sins that occurred at the Tooham Mother and Baby Home at the hands of the nuns who ran it would never be made public.

But in 1972 or excuse me, not but pause. In 1972, the original Tuum Home was demolished and construction as was planned to create a new council-owned housing estate aka low-income government-subsidized housing. Three years later, in 1975, two young boys were planning the site. This still hadn't been developed into housing, and they found skeletal remains on the grounds of the former Tuam home. Barry Sweeney, age 10, and his friend, Franny Hopkins, age 12, playing on the property, hopped over the boundary wall to inspect a slab of concrete inside the grounds. The concrete slab was about the size of a large coffee table. It was the only one in that

entire area of lawn. Being naturally curious, the boys lifted it up and made a horrifying discovery. Barry Sweeney later told the Irish Times, there were skeletons thrown in there. They were all this way and that way. They weren't wrapped in anything and there were no coffins. He saw about 20 total skeletons. Inspecting further, they found a sort of makeshift crypt in the ground filled with small human skulls. Immediately they ran home to find their parents and told them what they saw. His parents told him or their parents told him not to worry that a priest was coming to bless the site so the people resting there could be at peace.

Hilarious. Wrong person to notify. No one covers up crimes against children quite like a Catholic priest. Literally the most notorious group on earth for doing specifically that. Franny Hopkins went on to be a war veteran but to this day he is more disturbed by finding those skulls as a kid than any of the death and destruction he saw in the Middle East fighting in various conflicts. Word got out the neighborhood about what Franny's buddy Barry had found and many locals assumed it was just a mass grave site as I said at the beginning of the episode left over from the potato famine of 1845 to 1852 or that it was a grave site

specifically for stillborn babies a priest came to bless the site oh that's nice and the structure was resealed and then promptly ignored and not investigated by the church I mean they didn't need to investigate they knew what they did the government did not investigate either after this incident residents of Toome treated the site as an old burial ground and erected a memorial garden with the Catholic Shrine. Few years later construction still had not started for the housing estates and now a few local mothers went to the area and found a hole beneath the area that had been shoddily resealed. Poking around in the dirt a passageway was revealed. Poking around in the dirt, a passageway was revealed. A woman named Mary Moriarty saw stairs leading down, and then found little bundles wrapped in rags in an underground tomb.

She returned later with another woman who used to work at Tuam. Before even arriving, the woman told her there were, of course, babies in that hole, as she had often put them there. Exploring further, a network of tunnels was found to have spread out to some septic tanks on the edge of the property. The nuns used these tunnels to literally put dead babies into sewage containers. So they weren't just tossed out like they were garbage. It was worse. Literally often thrown into a tank full of human waste. Fucking nuns doing this. Now after almost beating them to death with a bat, I'd like to throw them into a tank

of literal shit and just let them starve to death. But still, nothing's done. Church makes no apologies. The government authorizes no investigation. Jumping decades ahead now, 2012. Amateur historian and local Irish woman, local Irish hero, Catherine Corliss, publishes an article titled The Home in the annual journal of the Old Tuam Society, a local history journal. She had spent years researching the history of the Tuam Home.

And her article described the poor living conditions and how a staggering number of children lost their lives in the home. From 1925 to 1961, most of the kids died from diseases. She did acknowledge that the deaths took place when Ireland had a high infant mortality rate, but questioned why there were no records of where hundreds of babies were buried. She'd learned about 798 child deaths to them but could find no burial records for any of them. The youngest only 10 minutes old, the oldest 9 and a half years.

Catherine and Galway County Council archivist Patricia McWalter had worked together to cross-check the records to make sure the babies were not accounted for elsewhere. They were not. Six mothers between ages of the age of 24 and 42 also died and remained unaccounted for as well. She concluded that the children were buried in an unmarked graveyard at the back of the home. Locals attended to the area planting flowers and constructing a memorial. Catherine studied some old maps of the building. She found an 1840 survey map that showed a space she thought was a sewage tank for an old workhouse. Later maps showed a sewage tank in that same spot.

She was sure it was a sewage tank because the records of the workhouse board meetings published by the Tuam Herald reported problems with overflowing. Tuam got public water in 1937, but the home used that tank from 1925 to 1937. And soon she would feel certain there were bodies buried in and around that tank. Catherine's report in the local research journal ended up getting read by others, who then shared the story to still others who kept sharing it.

And eventually it got international attention from some major news outlets. Catherine herself is a mother of four grown children, which is partially why she put so much time and effort into researching the Tuam babies. While Catherine was a child still in school, the Tuam home was still in operation, and she remembers how the Tuam children were separated from the other children. She said, I remember a group of little children kept at the back of the class. They were cold looking and pale, and they were thin, and they were silent. They were afraid to open their mouths. At break time, the rest of us would get out, and they were silent. They were afraid to open their mouths. At break time the rest of us would get out and they knew not to move until the room was empty. They were treated as a different

species. They were little kids. They would go back to the home and there was no kindness, no nothing for them. All because they happened to be born out of wedlock. How stupid is that? Religion should never ever be used to punish people, especially children, in ways like this. And for anyone who thinks some version of, well you know it's just God's way and I'm not going to question it. Well then, what the fuck? How are you living that kind of life? No, I say fuck that and fuck that God. I would rather risk going to hell than worship a fucking cunt like that. Catherine remembered how the children would come to school as well. She'd say, they were segregated and put to one side of the classroom.

They were called the home babies and we were told not to mind them. They came in 10 minutes after us and left 10 minutes earlier and we were not allowed to mix. People in the town remember the sound of the children marching down. They used to wear clogs in the winter and there would be a line of them with a minder in the front and the back with a big stick. Yeah, none carrying a big stick that she would use to beat these poor children if they dared to do something like, I don't know, speak without being spoken to or laugh at a silly joke. Basically, if they acted like happy normal kids, they were beaten. Katherine had no idea she would find

something as dark as a mass grave when she began her research. She'd long had a passion for historical research. She'd spent 10 years researching her own family history. Catherine was, like many women in Ireland, virtually forbidden to work for decades. And so she was a stay-at-home mom and housewife. And when her children were older and busy with their own lives, research became a great way to keep her mind active. She initially wanted to write up a brief history of the tomb home. And all the mother and

babies, but when she started interviewing locals, one of them told her about a supposed secret graveyard on the grounds. She told the Connuct Tribune, I was talking to people in the vicinity and someone said there was a plot for unbaptized babies across the road. I got a little hint it was something more than that, so I went digging further. In September of 2013, Catherine Corliss began a personal mission to collate the death certificates of the 798 children who died at the home. In all but two cases, she could not find any burial records. She ended up having to file a bunch of freedom of information requests to locate the death records. Each time she wanted to look at a death certificate, she would have to pay four euros. She would spend over three thousand euros. She told the Irish mirror it was worth the cost because,

quote, if I didn't do it nobody else would have done it. Catherine learned all the names, ages, places of birth, and causes of death for many of the children this way. And she estimated that out of the nearly 800 unceremoniously buried about 200 ended up inside that old sewage tank with the rest buried nearby. February of 2014 the Canuck Tribune publishes an interview with Catherine Corliss about her campaign for a permanent memorial for the two-and-babies. She wanted a plaque with all the names she had located placed on the grounds. And Galway County and the Bon Secournons did end up donating money for that plaque. She said, you know what? I take everything I said back. I take it all back. I take it all back. Sorry about it. Sorry about all the nasty words for these Catholics in this

story. No, no, no. No, they fixed it. They totally fixed it. I mean, yeah, the nuns abused, you know, women and babies. You know, I mean, by the thousands for decades. And unceremoniously threw the babies into a fucking sewage tank when they died, often as a result of their treatment at the hands of said nuns. But those same nuns, to their immense credit, offered to pay for a plaque. So, you know, even Stephen in my book. June of 2014, after weeks of public speculation and media coverage, the Irish government now orders a nationwide commission of investigation into all of Ireland's mother and baby homes. In his statement, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said babies born to unwed parents were treated as an inferior subspecies

for decades in the Republic of Ireland. The chair of the Investigatory Committee was Judge Yvonne Murphy. Her assistants were Professor Mary Daly and Dr. William Duncan. January of 2015, the Commission was tasked with investigating practices in the mother and baby homes from the foundation of the Irish state in 1922 all the way until 1988. The Commission was asked to look at the living conditions, mortality rates, general causes of death, burial arrangements, and unwilling participation in vaccine trials for homes across the country. Also asked to investigate adoption processes and whether or not birth mothers were able to give consent for their children to be adopted. October 9th, 2015.

The Commission also performed a geophysical survey of the Tuam graveyard. October 1, 2016. The Commission began to test excavations at the Tuam home. On March 4, 2017. The Commission confirmed they found a significant quantity of human remains during their Tuam excavations. Tests on a small number of remains found that they were children ranging in age from premature babies to three

year old toddlers, and that all died during the home's operational period. The committee said the remains were found in a large underground structure divided into 20 chambers, and that the structure appears to be related to the treatment of sewage or wastewater. Yeah, it's a fucking shithole, literally. Literally a shithole.

The remains dated back to the 1930s when Tuam stopped using the tank for sewage and started to use it for infant burial Also in 2017 the bond secure order issued a statement saying that they handed all death records They had to the state after they closed home The records first went to Galway County Council then to the Western Health Board then the Health Service Executive Then to the Tulsa Child and Family Agency Health Board, then the Health Service Executive, then to the Tulsa Child and Family Agency. March 7, 2017, Prime Minister Enda Kenny makes a public address where he describes the burial site as a chamber of horrors. April of 2018, Catherine Corliss is honored for her investigative work at Ireland's People

of the Year awards. Well done Catherine. And I love this even more, she refused this same year an invitation to have a private audience with Pope Francis. She said the Vatican was, quote, too fond of power. Hail Catherine Corliss. Good for her. And I agree. Historically, no institution on earth has been more power hungry than the Vatican.

And no institution on earth has ever abused their power more than the Vatican. And I know the Catholic Church has done a lot of good things too. But holy shit, no institution in history has done more bad things. In October of 2018, Ireland's minister for children, Catherine Zippone, announced that she thought the discovery of all the children's remains was, when viewed in the right light, quote, kind of funny. Her remarks were met with outrage across Ireland of course they were she tried to clarify her remarks the outrage only grew she

made it worse when she said quote look I know that at the end of the day this is all terribly sad don't don't get me wrong but I'm just saying that everyone knows the babies are poopy poopy diapers poopy babies you know and so it is also kind of funny when you look at it the right way that a bunch of dead poopy. Poopy diapers, poopy babies, you know? And so it is also kind of funny when you look at it the right way that a bunch of dead poopy babies are tossed into an underground poop chamber. Kind of fitting or ironic or something. It's like where should we toss these poopy poopy babies? Maybe we should flush them down the toilet like we do with regular poop. But you know we can't do that because they

clog the pipes, you know? So why not just walk them right into an old poop tank and throw them directly into the poop? I mean, I mean I can see how they thought if it's good enough for poop Well, I guess it's good over poopy babies. That's that's kind of funny to me under intense pressure She resigned shortly after that terrible statement and of course, that's fucking crazy talk. No, she never said that She announced plans for a forensic excavation of the tomb site She wanted the remains of each child to be exhumed, identified, and given a respectful burial.

Re-burial, I guess. October 23, 2018. The Irish cabinet approves a measure to exhume the bodies. The exhumation would cost between 6 million to 13 million euros. The Bon Secours sisters donated 2.5 million euros. That's crazy I mean, why why were they even asked to donate that no one should have accepted that money. They already gave a plaque Catherine Corliss was thrilled

the exhumation exhumation Why is that word so hard for me now the I notice a zoom? I know how to say Asian, you know Exhumation the exclamation of god damn it the exhum. I know how to say asian. You know, exhumation. The exclamation, oh, god damn it. The excumate, fuck it. The exhuming project would now not only search inside the sewer tank, it would search the grounds outside the sewage tank. She had been insisting there were more bodies in the area and now the government was listening

to her. An expert technical group reported to Catherine Zappone that the Tuam situation had no comparable case in Ireland or in any other country. There were multiple factors that made it unique. The significant quantity of juvenile remains, the intermixed state of the remains, how they were put in subsurface chambers with limited access. What was happening to babies in Ireland was uniquely evil. March of 2019 the Commission outlined their conclusion on burial arrangements at the homes in their fifth interim report. The report stated that a total of 802 children died during the operation of the tomb home.

12 mothers also died, most of them from childbirth complications. Many think these numbers are wildly low, that the true numbers, which we will never know thanks to shoddy record-keeping and the Catholic Church's habit of literally never fully coming clean and admitting to the true scope of their horrors they've inflicted upon the faithful, will likely never be known. The committee discovered that the remains were not in a sewage tank per se, but in a second structure built within the decommissioned sewage tank. They still did not know the exact purpose of the chamber, but they concluded it was related to the treatment slash containment of sewage. Or wait, yeah, it was a, just admit it! A fucking shithole.

They said the second structure is from 1937. The report dismissed claims that the structure was built specifically to be a burial chamber, or crypt. It just ended up being used for that purpose. They couldn't determine exactly who buried the babies, but it, quote, seems likely that the burials were conducted on the instructions of the Bonsukur sisters. The representatives for the nuns told the inquiry team that the order was shocked and devastated and apologized for failure to properly bury the children. And that's good. That's good. Thanks, nuns. All is forgiven, you know, for, uh, you know,

your order being complete soulless fucking monsters for decades. No big deal. Don't even worry about it. Uh, hope your order lasts for many more years. You guys are so great, such a big fan. You apologize, gave a plaque, gave some money, and you make amends. Everything's good. Don't even worry about all is just some water under the dead baby bridge This report also stated that Tuam was not the deadliest mother and baby home. For example more than 900 children died at Bezboro Mother and baby home, but they couldn't identify where they were buried They only located 64 of those 900 plus bodies. Rez probably thrown in a fucking ditch Maybe just I don't know used his bait to go fishing off the Coast of Ireland or something. Guess who hasn't helped the mothers

who lost their babies there find the remains? Oh, the church, those rascals. They'll probably eventually apologize. They'll buy another plaque. They'll make it right. April of 2019, the commission reported their discovery that at least 950 additional children died in Dublin area homes from 1920 to 1977,

that their bodies were sent to various medical schools for anatomical studies. And when the students were done studying those bodies, they threw them in the trash. Ireland's minister for children, Catherine Zappone, wrote to Pope Francis, asked if the church would accept responsibility and make reparations. And he responded that he wishes to assure her of my prayerful solidarity and concern for this sad situation. And I pray in particular that efforts made by the government and by the local churches and religious congregations will help face responsibility for this tragic chapter in

Ireland's history. Oh Francis you motherfucker give the victims money! Make a formal apology to the world for your sins. Well not yours but know, the priest and nuns. Anything less than that's bullshit. Come on. Until then, you know, you can shove those prayers up your ass. July 13, 2020, Catherine Corliss wrote a letter to the Vatican asking for the Catholic Church's approval for the reburial of the babies. The Vatican responded and gave support for reburial, but no money, so who cares? That same month, Casmon received a letter from the Papal Nuncio in Ireland telling her that he agreed with the Archbishop of Tuam's opinion that there should be a dignified reburial of the babies.

Oh, that's great! That's good job! I concur we shouldn't just bury babies, you know, after careful consideration. I concur that we shouldn't just toss dead babies into a shithole. But again, no money. October of 2020, former Toome residents expressed concern over a new law that could restrict their access to the commission's investigations. After all the hard work, now their documents were at risk of being sealed for the next 30 years. To hide more of the churches and the Irish government's sins until all the mothers abused these institutions were dead? Classy.

Residents insisted that urgent legislation was required to protect the information from being destroyed or redacted after the Commission's final report. Ireland's new Minister for Children, Roderick O'Gorman, explained that the Commission developed databases which could assist family tracing services, but since they had a lot of personal info, the Commission felt obliged to redact identifying details from said database. So it would not be helpful. The minister said that new legislation allowed a copy of the databases to be given to the child and family agency Tulsa to assist family tracing though. That same month, Catherine Corliss announced she was saying goodbye to her faith. She said she no longer wanted to have anything to do

with the Catholic Church that had been such a massive instrumental part of her life. She told News outlets that in her opinion, the nuns of Bon Secours sisters felt no remorse. She said, my mind goes back to the nuns covering it up, putting them down there, one on top of the other. They were human beings. They were discarded. The nuns left in 1961. They left and closed the gate without marking the graveyard. And it's because they were illegitimate. It was just a horrific idea of discarding beautiful little babies, children, toddlers, in a big horrible old sewage tank.

How could they possibly do that? Yeah, exactly, Catherine. How could they do that? Well, because they were pieces of shit. They were fucking phony Christians. That's the answer. Fuck those nuns. Fuck all the priests, bishops, and archbishops they were in league with. October 25th, 2020, Irish President Michael D. Higgins signed the bill on mother-and-baby home records, making it a law that witnesses could choose to have their names left on records of their evidence.

The Commission's secrecy during their entire time of operation made survivors believe they were being repressed. The Commission refused to give survivors a transcript of their evidence and rejected requests for survivor testimony to be made publicly available. The Commission said they were operating under the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004. The Act states that evidence has to be given in private unless a witness requests the evidence to go public and the Commission grants the requests. The Commission also withheld evidence about parents from the witnesses. The Retention of Records Bill 2019 proposed to retain for not just 30 but for 75 years all documents made by three bodies that previously investigated or made payments to survivors of industrial and reformatory schools. And this would of course remove the

opportunities for survivors to obtain a copy of their own testimony during their lifetime. And this all illustrates to me that the Roman Catholic Church still has Ireland's government by the fucking balls. January 10th, 2021, the inquiry's final report is leaked just days before publication. Two days later, January 12th, 2021, the final report is published. The Prime Minister said he would issue a formal apology over the appalling level of infant mortality. The report details an oppressive and misogynistic culture that stigmatized unmarried mothers and their children for decades.

The full report is 2,865 pages long. The inquiry concluded that across 18 institutions, over 9,000 children died, 15% of all children ever in the mother and baby homes. The commission made 53 recommendations, including compensation and memorialization. Main points of the report were, over 9,000 of 57,000 babies died inside the homes. Over 56,000 women were incarcerated in the homes. 5,616 of them under the age of 18. Some of them, oh boy, get ready to get even angrier. Some of them under the age of 12, under 12 years old. So pregnant 11 year olds were punished for having sex even though they

had obviously been raped. Having more fantasies about beating people to death with the bat now. This is just so outrageous. The admission of underage girls rose in the 1960s, remained high until the 1980s. The Irish state had the world's highest proportion of women sent to mother and baby homes in the 20th century. For the entire century, Ireland punished single mothers for the sin of being impregnated, consensually or otherwise, more than any other nation on earth. Many of the women suffered emotional abuse, were subject to denigration and derogatory remarks, there were no findings from the committee of widespread physical abuse despite a lot of testimony of beatings and brutality.

And that should tell you that despite all the bad shit the committee uncovered, even worse shit not revealed. Hidden by the church without a doubt as far as I'm concerned. The tomb and Killrush mother and baby homes had the worst conditions. There was no evidence that women were forced to enter the homes by the church or state. Instead they were forced there by their families because of a lack of support, excuse me, and paternal involvement. Bullshit. More whitewashing by the church. Recommendations were made by the committee regarding compensation and memorialization, as well as scholarships for further research on all the children who died. The commission found no evidence of sexual abuse. The women did suffer from emotional abuse, especially during birth. The homes were a cold understaffed

environment. No one showed the residents any kindness and no one cared for or counseled the women. But no sexual abuse? Bullshit. Numerous women have claimed to have been raped in these institutions, some by priests. They are minimizing how terrible this was. From 1922 to 1998, 1,638 children were put up for foreign adoption. 1,427 of those children went to the US. Tuum sent out 36 of those children. Excavations from November of 2016 to February of 2017 found a significant quantity of human remains. They identified 978 child deaths associated with the Tuam home. They located death records for 972 of those children. Most deaths happened before

1950. Child deaths spiked in 1926 when there was 41 in 1936 when there was 51. From 1942 to 1947 there were 305 total child deaths, one out of every three children in the home or in the homes. The report stated that the majority of the physical and emotional abuse came from outside of the Tuam home. Oh from townspeople or other school children. Survivors were extremely upset by this claim because it contradicted their direct testimony. So this committee is garbage. This committee is a fucking puppet of the church, right? Yeah, they're admitting horrible things but not nearly as much as they should. The report then

tried to claim that in the 1990s living conditions were much better than the 1920s, another claim that contradicts survivor testimony. The report placed the majority of responsibility for these atrocities on the women's immediate families who supported and contributed to the homes. The commission wrote, it must be acknowledged that the institutions under investigations provided a refuge, a harsh refuge in some cases, when the families provided no refuge at all. cases, when the families provided no refuge at all. Fuck off. Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin said the report details, A dark, difficult and shameful chapter of very recent Irish history.

It holds up a mirror to aspects of our past, which are painful and difficult, and from the present-day perspective often hard to comprehend. What has been described in this report wasn't imposed on us by any foreign power. We did this to ourselves as a society. Yeah, kind of. Grow a pair of balls, Martin. Condemn the Roman Catholic Church directly, for they did impose this upon Irish culture and no one else. This all happened under their watch and as a result of their cultural guidance. It was their priests, their nuns, alone, who decided that single mothers and their bastard babies were disgusting and subhuman. Their priests, their nuns led the charge of punishing both mothers and babies for the sins that their religion

invented. But Martin will never strongly condemn the Catholic Church in Ireland because that would be political and cultural suicide. An organization called the Group of Survivors of Mother and Baby Homes said they had mixed feelings about the report. Another group, the Coalition of Mother and Baby Home Survivors, said this report is fundamentally incomplete as it ignores the larger issue of the forced separation of single mothers and their babies since the foundation of the state as a matter of state policy. Survivors believe the report has absolved the church and state of any real guilt. Irish First Mothers Group said the report fails to find that mothers were coerced into

giving up their children. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission said that a systematic change is needed regarding how Ireland treats survivors. January 13, 2021, the Sisters of Bonsacour issued a formal apology to all the women and children who lived it to them. In 1921, the Sisters of Bonsacour issued a formal apology to all the women and children who lived it to them. They admitted that the nuns, quote, did not live up to our Christianity when running the home.

We acknowledge in particular that infants and children who died at the home were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way. For all that, we are deeply sorry. That's a fucking weak-ass formal apology. Failed to live up to your Christianity? How about sorry for consistently being the fucking worst? For being ruthless fucks and fake Christians for an entire century at least. The Prime Minister apologized on behalf of the state in the Irish Parliament saying, we had a completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy. And young mothers and their

sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction. That's a little better of an apology. Still not enough. February 28th, 2021, the Commission dissolved. And that is where this story ends. At least for now. You made it back. Barely. my business relationship with them, but then they threaten to kill me and my family if I didn't share this ad. By they I mean Bob, and I don't think Bob's kidding. I think he'll do it. He doesn't have anything to lose. So alright Bob, here's your fucking commercial buddy. Hope it helps. Hey!

It's me! It's Bob! It's Bob from Bob's Banable Banzai Fruit.ps! What's the deal? What's the deal? What's the deal? No one's buying my adorable little fruit trees. Have you ever even seen a Bonsai Leprechaun Dwarf nectarine tree? It's a real thing. And I can make one for you if you just give my little fruit a chance.

I got evicted. I took my little orchard with me. Now I'm living in the fucking woods. In a makeshift shelter. I'm not sleeping because the deers, it turns out, they fucking love tying fruit. I have to patrol my little orchard around the clock and hit them with sticks to keep them away.

My dogs have run off. I got nothing. Another of my delicious tying fruit on a website just saw them. Bob's Bountiful Bonds I have fruit dot bit. So please just fucking buy my fruit before the park rangers find me. I'm living out here like Jeffrey Lundgren. Oh, the only face I have to shit on is my own. Speaking of shit, yeah, I do use my own waste

fertilizer. It's not gross. It's called being resourceful. Thank you. Stop fucking around. Do you even know how delicious tiny pears are? What about jackfruits? You ever have one of those? Yeah, me neither. I'm working on it. The tiny ones are still huge if you just can't accept that fruit doesn't have to be big to be good. Right now! You buy a bottle of BOSBASA fruit, I'll piss! You can save my fucking life! Go to BOSBASA fruit piss!

Right now I'll just go fuck the next day and try to eat my adorable little nectarines. Is that what you want? On your conscience? I can't get a life like this! Let's go fuck the next day and try to eat my adorable little nectarines. Is that what you want? Are you conscious? I can't keep living like this! Either sad words or I'm coming for dinner as fans! Okay! I'll take my clothes off, I'll show you guys! I'll pay for my money!

I keep seeing spots when I stand up, my toes are numb. What does that mean? Ah, I thought I fought a bear last night. It turns out it was just the hydrated... Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol, Bob's Metamol it was just the hydrant. Bob's been on my b- fruit of his! Bob's been on my b- fruit of his! And I just close qu- quakes together, god damn it! I'm making time for a j- summertime fr- don't make me do something I'll regret! Huh!

Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh! Holy shit. God, I hope this is gonna be the last fucking ad for that piece of shit. I'm talking, I am talking to the police. I am talking to the police currently about what kind of charges I can file against him.

So hopefully he either sells a lot of fruit this week or the authorities find him and bring him in. Okay, who knew, who knew that running a bonsai business could be so stressful? Some final thoughts now about today's madness. What a sad, sad story. What sad history. And what a powerful illustration of why religion and political power should not mix like this. I find it very interesting how in America you'd be hard-pressed to find many citizens who would think, for example, that Iran's theocratic government is a good one based on the teachings of another Abrahamic religion, Islam. You know, life for women in Iran is fucking horrific as a direct result of this religion. You know, I would love to see most of the members of the Iranian government just be fucking beheaded. Why? Check out what they do to their women.

In the last 45 years since the Islamic revolution that made Iran a Muslim state, the age of marriage for women was reduced from 18 to 9. Nine years old. They did bring it back up more recently to 13. 13, okay. For years, women were banned from studying most subjects at the university level. So-called morality police can and do arrest women and beat women for wearing what they feel is wearing too much makeup, dressing too lewdly. Women have been routinely raped and beaten by morality police, not prosecuted or punished. Women can't divorce their husbands, but men can divorce women. Polygamy became legal, but only in cases where men could have multiple wives. Women, not allowed,

of course, to have multiple husbands. Wearing a hijab for women became mandatory. Can be punished by 60 lashes with a whip. Family protection courts that have previously protected women and children abolished. Roughly 150 women have been stoned to death in Iran between 1980 and 2009 for crimes like adultery. It's thought that this continues. Birth control currently illegal in Iran. Abortion illegal in all cases unless a medical professional diagnoses a life-threatening maternal disease or fetal anomaly before the 19th week of pregnancy. Women banned from a variety of occupations, even when a woman is allowed to work a certain job.

Her husband able to legally ban her from working there. If he states that he feels that her job has gone against their family values. And a woman in this instance again not allowed to divorce her husband. And I could go on and on and on. And again I'm guessing we can all agree that what is happening in Iran super fucked up. And we can all, I think we're being rational, reasonable, not emotional. We can blame Islam for all of these misogynistic laws and behavior. And using the same logic we need to be able to hold Christianity accountable and blame it as well when the shoe fits. Historically, all the Abrahamic

religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, wildly misogynistic. And again, don't shoot the messenger. These are facts. These are facts. And I know that they are not always interpreted as being misogynistic by many faithful, but they can be interpreted as being so and have been interpreted for most of history. Ireland in the 20th century, a great example of what that looks like, and it is why I will never, never, never, never, never, never want any religious justification for any secular law. It's why in this nation, if this nation, excuse me, ever becomes a theocracy, oh, I will be getting the fuck out as soon as possible. You should have the right to believe in whatever you want to believe in.

Worship who you want, but please, keep this kind of shit away from me and my family. I have far too much respect for my wife, my mother, my grandmother, my daughter, all the other women in my life, just women in general, to pretend that any of this is godly and anything other than madness, justified in ancient text, written without exception by men, men who clearly saw women as little more than sexual property and not as equals. Be better than the men who subjugated the women of Ireland for far too long. Be better than the women who chose to go along with it and subjugate and punish fellow women rather than stand up to men and question their interpretation of their faith.

Life is hard enough with the inevitability of death that awaits us all with the random suffering brought on by disease, tragic accidents, financial calamity, natural disasters, war, etc. So let's just be kind to each other when we can. Let's help each other when it's so easy to do so. Let's not pass laws that hurt one another like this. Let's not make anyone of another gender or ethnicity or age or sexual preference feel less than. And let's, when it comes to religion, always choose to interpret things in the most loving, humanistic way possible.

I mean, isn't that how you want to see your God if you believe in one as a loving, compassionate entity? Not some cruel motherfucker who's like, yeah, fuck those, fuck that 11 year old girl. Right? Not as some needlessly cruel chauvinistic motherfucker who if they existed in human form, hopefully, they would be someone you despise. Let's take care of each other, meat sacks. Let's be better than those who chose to look down on marginalized young women and girls in Ireland who didn't need judgment and punishment. They needed compassion and help. And in this case isn't that what the biblical Jesus would have given them? Compassion and help. Time shock top five takeaways. Number one the Toome Home was one of the worst mother and baby homes in Ireland because of the extremely high infant mortality rate and conditions inside.

Toome nuns buried at least 796 babies in unmarked graves. Buried many of those 796 in a former sewage tank. These children ended up being called the children of shame because no one cared about them. No one wanted them. No one believed they were worthy of even a proper burial after a horrible life. And this was Toome's best kept secret for decades. Number two, the research of local amateur historian Catherine Corliss exposed the Toome home for the entire world to see and led to an inquiry into all the mother and baby homes in Ireland. Other individual authors and organizations had pushed for this over the years but her article on the 796 babies is what sparked international notice and outrage. Number three, illegal adoption was a huge problem amongst the

homes. Babies were taken without their mother's consent, sold in the black market so the church could make millions. Some of these children don't even know that they are adopted now today and if they find out they cannot access any of their original information because Irish law states that all adoption records are sealed for life. Number four, the commission's final report was published on January 12th, 2021 confirming what many already knew about the homes. An abnormal amount of infants died, these homes had many illegal practices and the conditions inside were horrific. Many survivor groups were not satisfied with how parts of the report contradicted their direct testimony about physical abuse, racism, vaccine trials, and mass burials of babies.

5. New Info In June of 1947, baby John Dolan died inside the Tuam home. Anna Corrigan, John's sister, told her family's story to the son over half a century later. She said her mother Bridget was sent to tomb in 1946, and Bridget never told Anna she had two brothers, John and William. William also would be born in the home in 1950, when Bridget was sent back for being a repeat offender.

Bridget was forced to leave John at the home when she was discharged, but also had to pay five shillings a week for his upkeep. And Anna believes none of that money went to baby John and that he starved to death in the home under the direct watch of the nuns. A report from the home described John as a miserable, emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over bodily functions, probably mentally defective. John was just 15 months old when he died. He lived in horror for those 15 months, punished for the crime of being born a bastard. There is no death certificate for William. He

was born into him. He died into him and no one knows how. If you want to read more about the story of John and William Dolan and their mother Bridget, you can read My Name is Bridget, the Untold Story of Bridget Dolan, the two mother and baby home by Allison O'Reilly, for a detailed account of one woman's story inside this shithole. Bridget'san, the two mother and baby home by Alison O'Reilly, for a detailed account of one woman's story inside this shithole. Bridget's story is the same as hundreds of other unknown women, and for many she is a symbol of what all the women went through in these terrible homes. Time Shuck, Top 5 Takeaways! Ireland's real houses of horror has been sucked.

Hoo-wee! That was a heavy one. Thank you. Isn't it weird that stuff like that is heavy though when we talk about so many serial killers? I get so jaded. I'm like, oh man, I need a fucking serial killer episode as a palate cleanser. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help in making Suck. Start with the queen of bad magic, Lindsay Cummins. Thanks also to Logan Keith helping to publish the episode designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com. Thank you to Olivia Lee for her research once again. Also thanks to the

all-seeing eyes moderating the Cult of the Curious private Facebook page, Mod Squad for making sure Discord keeps running smooth, and everyone over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. And now the updates. Updates! Get your Time Sucker updates! Our first update this week comes from strong stomach sucker Jack Ottoway who writes in with the subject line of Short suck 17 who was in the attic the Hinterkijwijk axe murders. Oh Lord of the suck keeper of secrets master of bait

I have an unrelated story that may add to the idea that the old pervert may have killed himself with the Matic And just as a reminder the Matic is essentially the axe. Back in college, I took a forensic anthropology class. One of the classes we looked at, one of the cases, excuse me, we looked at, was one of a man that was found with a large butcher's knife in his forehead. Yikes. He was found alone with the knife in his head and numerous wounds to his face. Originally, it was believed that the wounds were either hesitation on part of the killer or that the victim was fighting back. Upon further investigation though and looking at the angle of the wounds, they determined that the victim had wedged the knife to where it was pointed up in their own skull

and then he proceeded to headbutt the knife multiple times in an attempt to kill himself. Oh my god, I'll let me this up as you mentioned that the old man had a lot of damage to his face and you would question the likelihood that someone could kill themselves in such a way. Potentially he had done something similar. Given how poorly the crime scene was handled, we will never know where the Matic was in relation to where the bodies were located. This would be important because this whole idea gets thrown out of the window if the weapon was in fact moved away from the body. Your humble servant, Jack. Three out of five stars. Don't change a thing.

Jack, man. Damn. Yeah, you may have solved this case. servant Jack three out of five stars don't change a thing. Jack man damn yeah you may have solved this case maybe the terrible incestuous abuse of dad did kill his family in that story and then just use the axe on himself that is so crazy to think about somebody doing that what a wild way to go out I cannot imagine just a headbutting a butcher's knife into my head. Man the shit people have done to themselves in this world is just mind-boggling. Thanks for that nightmare. But seriously, thanks. Second update is from possible Yakuza member Jason Pyle. He wrote on the subject line of episode 421, the Yakuza, or Yakuza, Japan's

notorious and inked-up gangsters. Dear Dan, this is my first time writing in, but I've been a fan of your comedy since Crazy with a capital F. Thank you for everything you do. And the Bad Magic Team, you guys are my favorite podcast to listen to. Oh, fuck you. In regards to the Yakuza episode and the tattoo art, I remembered an article I read that talked about a doctor in Japan that would make deals with people, pay them to donate their skin after they died, so that he could preserve their tattoos. He cleans and preserves their hides and displays the tattooed skin as an appreciation of the art. He even has full body suits on display.

It's a wild story that I thought you might enjoy. Thanks again, Jason. PS, here's a link to the article. And the article title is The Body Suit Collector, Dr. Fukushi Masachi and the art of preserving tattooed skin Man Jason, thanks for the kind words and holy shit Yeah, this guy opened a museum based entirely on displaying people's skin Like some people display deer heads or bear rugs. I mean it does look cool I don't know if I'd want to own a room full of dead people's skin. I guess I'm approved when it comes to dead bodies. That being said, he did do a good job of preserving those body suits. Never heard of anyone doing that before.

Okay. Now for a third update. Inanonymous Spaces are writing again. This time with a subject line of writing in on doctor's orders. Greetings, TimeSuck Gang. I am writing in on doctor's orders. Let me explain. I currently work in medical sales,

have a variety of product lines, and help Medicaid and Medicare patients. Some of the most vulnerable folks out there. My career is very rewarding and challenging at times. I bet. Navigating that mess. I meet with social workers, nurses, and doctors. So I've always heard about Cummins law and thought some of those stories were made up, but no longer. I was listening to The Elvis, Time-sick episode of my car, like I do anytime I travel to work, which is 99% of the time, but this time it was different. I get my marketing material and go in, ask for the doctor,

that I've been trying to meet with for months, and wait patiently in one of the exam rooms. The doctor knocks and comes in, I introduce myself, I just hear your voice loudly say, and that was The Elvis diet of two sandwiches a day that probably causes obesity. I start to panic, go for my phone. I don't know how to happen when I'm standing there stunned. I don't know what to say.

The doctor looks at me puzzled and goes, huh, is that the new episode of Time Stuck on Elvis? I immediately give a sigh of relief telling him yep. And if he had a continuous glucose monitor, he might still be live today. We talked about being space lizards. He told me how your podcast helped get him through his residency. Flash forward a few months later when I had to go visit this doctor and he tells me, Hey, did you ever write in about being cummins lot because I haven't heard it on the show. I told him I did. He probably hasn't got to it. Sorry, Dr. J for procrastinating. So I'm writing in on doctor's orders now. Thanks for all you and the team do and if you read this on air if you can give a shout out to my buddy

Johnny Campos and Eddie the cat who got me into this beautiful community. Keep doing what you're doing Dan. Keep changing lives. Well, alright anonymous space lizard. Thank you. I don't have your name, but I'm sure your friends will know that this beautiful community. Keep doing what you're doing, Dan. Keep changing lives. Well, alright, anonymous space lizard. Thank you. I don't have your name, but I'm sure your friends will know that this is you. And yeah, so cool. I'm so glad you ran into another time sucker in the wild. Thanks, Johnny Campos. Thanks, Eddie the Cat. Thanks, Doctor. Whoever you are. Glad you're Doctor now. And yeah, I love that you're here. I hope you all stick around.

And now one more from a Down Under sucker. Aaron Burgess, probably not a rock spider, who writes to him the subject line of the Snowtown murders suck. I'm from Salisbury. G'day, Dane. The time's up to him. I'm not going to try to do that accent again. I've been a long time listener to the podcast. Was excited this week to see that you had sucked the Snowtown murders. I grew up in Salisbury, South Australia in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, and as a child and a teenager, I vividly remember the extensive coverage the bodies and barrels attracted during that time. Were we shocked at all when the news broke? Not at all.

South Australia has long been regarded as the home of all the sickest murders in Australia, and my home patch of Salisbury for a long time has been some kind of epicenter of weird shit. and my home patch of Salisbury for a long time has been some kind of epicenter of weird shit. In 1990, my school was saddened by the news that Constable David Barr, the father of a couple of my school friends, had been stabbed to death by a psychopath in broad daylight at the Salisbury railway station. In 1993, we were dismayed by the senseless murder of Suzanne Pohl, who had been stabbed 40 times by a guy who tried to rob the office supply stores in Salisbury where she worked part-time. She was discovered by her husband who was worried when she didn't come home from work.

The murderer remained at large until 2022 when his DNA matched blood from the scene. He roamed the community for 30 years. What an arse wipe. In the 2000s, we were constantly bombarded with the story of David Hicks, a weirdo who used to walk the streets of Salisbury in military fatigues before flying to Afghanistan and joining up to fight with the Taliban. He ended up in Guantanamo Bay. 2008, the Parafield Gardens House of Horrors hit the headlines. Six adults who forced 21 kids to live in revolting conditions in government housing in a suburb next to Salisbury. The kids were starved and the house was full of human feces,

cockroaches and maggots. Then in 2022, the murder of Jeffrey McLean, killed by his ex-girlfriend and her friends with acid and a log splitter. Yikes! Stuffed into a wheelie bin, stored in someone's house for a couple of weeks and dumped behind a warehouse in Salisbury South. At times, I feel lucky to have turned out a well-adjusted, healthy, fair dinkum meat sack having grown up under the tall gum trees of Salisbury. Thanks for again sucking my home patch and if you're ever down under give us a hoi, I'll show you around. South Australians are generally good eggs and it's a great place to live if you know how to avoid the murderers, the brown snakes, and the redbacks. And the rock spiders. I added that.

Hail Nimrod, Aaron Burgess, Adelaide, South Australia. Well, Aaron, congrats on surviving your childhood. I actually do truly hope I get there one day. My youngest child, Monroe, graduates high school in two years. And after that, all bets are off as to where Lindsay and I will be. We've talked about traveling all over the place. Ideally, recording shows while we travel to different locations around the world for a while. I gotta hope that happens. It's such a big world. There's so much to see and learn about. Wow. Thanks for the invite and

shedding more light on Adelaide. Still sounds safer, actually I will say, than literally any American city. We are a nation full of murder. So much. Still got that Wild West mentality in the blood I guess. Love hearing from suckers around the world from around the world. Hope to hear from some Irish suckers after this one. Ideally some lady Irish suckers telling me that shit is better, much better now. Which I think it is. That would be nice. Thanks everybody. Thanks Time Suckers. I needed that. We all did. Well thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. I know it was a rough one.

Scared to death Time Suck each week. Short Sucks, A Nightmare Fuel, and the Time Suck and Scared to Death podcast feed some weeks. Please, don't pick on single moms this week. Are you really any better than they are? I doubt it. I'm not. So how about we all help them instead of piling on and we just keep on sucking. One more quick thing here. Just a quick thing that I was a little worried about doing in the episode. I just, you know, I honestly, I thought it would probably be probably just too, too dark. But I'll include it here. It's a recipe that was uncovered in the Journal of a Nun.

He used to work at the, you know, two mother and baby home. It's a recipe she wrote down called, it was found there when they actually, you know, going through the ruins and stuff. It's a recipe she wrote down called Irish Bastard Baby Stew. It's pretty fucked up. But here's the ingredients. It's five pounds of potatoes, one pound of carrots, half pound of celery, half pound of peas, two onions, two gallons of beef broth, one bottle of red wine, one cup of a young woman's tears, one bastard baby of at least eight pounds. I will spare you the preparation since it's pretty horrific.

Apparently as the sister wrote, quote, this stew will feed eight to twelve people and is the closest thing to heaven that has ever touched my lips. I do feel bad for the babies, but if your Lord didn't want them to be eaten, why did he make them so tasty? It's crazy. That's crazy. That's crazy. Totally true. Definitely didn't make that up to try and lighten up such a dark episode by going even darker. With a recipe for fucking baby-based stew. Come on. You can't be upset now! Just like a plaque makes things better, so does a clown honk. Oh, it's just you can joke about anything you want. If you throw a clown honk after it, it's a comedy law. This episode was not sad in the least.