The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.
In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.
Wait what? 20 deaths a year and because there is a death certificate there is no fouls play?
The article mentions “tens of thousands” of births but doesn’t state the numbers of people that were at this particular site. The infant death rate ranged from over 60/1000 down to 20/1000 for developed countries and higher for worldwide estimates.
Lacking numbers for the number of births there’s no way to compare to the averages, but yeah 20 deaths per year could very well be a normal rate. We tend not to think a lot about infant death rates because it’s not a fun subject, but it’s it’s a historical fact.
I get that people are addicted to being outraged, but a higher infant death rate over 60 years ago compared to today’s rate may not be something to get super emotional about until there’s specific allegations of foul play or at least some data to indicate there was something out of norm besides improper disposal of the deceased.
There were death certificates so the government at the time was aware of the number of deaths, and they didn’t seem to think it was out of the norm. Though it’s possible they just didn’t care. But in that case the government would be complicit in this so there should be hard questions asked about the government, not just the church. But that doesn’t seem to be happening, so it seems the controversy is just about corpse disposal 60 to 100 years ago.