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Hundreds of dead infants’ remains have been found buried in sewers at an Irish convent.
The was used as a home for unmarried mothers in Tuam, Ireland for several decades.
It was closed in the early 1980s.
The find has backed up a historian’s claim that up to 800 children may lie in an unmarked grave at the home.
The historian said the bodies of the children aged from 35-week-old foetuses to three year-olds, died between 1925 and 1961.
The Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation began test excavations at the site of the children’s burial ground on the Dublin Road housing estate in Tuam, County Galway in October last year.
The Commission was established following allegations about the deaths of hundreds of babies at the convent.
It said “significant quantities of human remains” were discovered in at least 17 of the 20 underground chambers they examined earlier this year.
In 2014, the Archbishop of Dublin said that “if something happened in Tuam, it probably happened in other mother-and-baby homes around the country.”
The commission is now investigating 17 other church-run institutions.
Government records show that in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the mortality rate for “illegitimate” children was often more than five times that of those born to married parents. On average, more than one in four children born out of wedlock died.
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