The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
THERE were “continuous requisitions” for coffins at the old County Clare Nursery in Kilrush, according to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation Final Report, which was published on Tuesday. The County Clare Nursery, which was on the site of the Kilrush Workhouse on the Cooraclare Road, was open from 1922 to 1932 and it appears a very large number of children both were born and died there. According to the Commission’s report, “The death rate in Co Clare institutions is very high when compared with the numbers in the baptismal record. As the nursery was the only institution for ‘illegitimate’ children in Co Clare it is probable that at least the majority died there.” Between 1923 and 1932 there are records of 168 so-called ‘illegitimate’ infants dying in institutions in Clare, with 27 passing away in one single year, 1926. This figure does not include slightly older children who died in the institutions during the same years. A …
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