Tuam mother and baby home: the trouble with the septic tank story

[intaglio]

131. Let's take your apologist crap and destroy it

I did not dispute your figure for the amount paid by the Free State to this hell hole per inmate. I pointed out that the income these failed carers derived from the women and children in their "care" was not limited to that payout and that religious institutions in Eire had large tax exemptions. I had forgotten that the families of these women had to fork out for the privilege of having their daughters put there.

So let's look at your figure for modern in patient care at a modern hospital that is fine.

Now compare the cost of perinatal care at during the 1930s and 1940s:
A doctors examination - about 5 shillings for a GP to 1 guinea (£1/1/-) for a consultant but most doctors did not charge charitable institutions (source my Grandfather who was a consultant in the UK at that time and my father who qualified in about 1940);

A midwife in attendance for a day - between 10/- and £1, assuming that none of the nuns had a midwifery qualification in which case the care would be free. (source for costs my grandmother who was a qualified nurse at that time and my father);

With a complex birth the midwife would be expected to do most procedures (turning a breech, forceps deliveries and entangled umbilical cord) but a doctor might be summoned to do an episiotomy (the preferred alternative to caesarian at the time) even though it often crippled the mother. Surgery would be performed at the nunnery but anesthesia would be minimal and aftercare would be at that so called home.

Therefore the maximum that would be charged to the Tuam nuns for pre-natal care, birth with surgical intervention and post-natal care would be about £20.

Now let's examine the income separate from the state money and the donations of £100. Families at the time would often send "pocket money" to their poor "fallen" children in excess of the donation, but this did not go direct to the mother, it was kept in trust by the Sisters. Then the mothers would be expected to work hours a day for the benefit of the Church who was being so generous in supporting them - you know like the Magdelene Laundries. Then there were the charitable collections made to support the poor girls. Lastly there was the infamous baby scoop style adoptions where none of the money went to the mother, it all went to the institution.

Given all of this and the minimal accounting that went on at the time the Tuam Home probably turned a profit of between £50 and £100 per annum per mother.

About survival rates. Nice try but we were talking percentages over a long period; the apparent small numbers of deaths of infants does not change the comparative percentages.