Religion
In reply to the discussion: Tuam mother and baby home: the trouble with the septic tank story [View all]struggle4progress
(126,683 posts)Pamela Duncan
Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 10:17
... The deaths in these institutions are generally caused by an epidemic of some kind, measles, whooping cough, etc, which spreads quickly among the children and wipes out the weaklings, the 1933-1934 local government report notes.
It says the nurseries are laid out to accommodate too many children and the provision for isolation is not adequate, before going on to list steps being taken to confine the size of nurseries in Tuam and Sean Ross Abbey ...
In its report for 1927, the department refers to figures compiled by the registrar general for 1925 and 1926 showing the mortality rate among what it called illegitimate infants was five times the rate of those born within marriage. A third of those who died failed to reach their first birthday ...
It is recognised that illegitimate infants are handicapped by constitutional and environmental disadvantages, which tend to have a heavy incidence of infant mortality, but even when allowance has been made for these adverse factors, the death-rate of such infants is still disproportionately high in view of the experience in other countries, the report says ...
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/extent-of-child-deaths-in-dublin-home-revealed-1.1840247
The article contains an informative interactive graph on
Infant mortality rates per 1,000 births in Ireland: 1923-1950