Excavation Work Begins At Site Of Former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home

TUAM, IRELAND - JUNE 15: John Sennen Kelly, a Tuam Mother and Baby home survivor who lived the first five years of his life at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home takes one last look around the remembrance garden as he pays his last respects ahead of the site closure on June 15, 2025 in Tuam, Ireland. From 1925 to 1961 hundreds of children died at the St Mary's Mother and Baby home, a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children, in Tuam, County Galway. It was run by the Bon Secours order of Catholic nuns and this type of home was common across Ireland for many decades. Test excavations at the site took place in 2016 and 2017 and a mass burial site was found in a former sewage tank containing the remains of 796 babies and toddlers, ranging in age from 35 foetal weeks to two to three years. Work will finally begin tomorrow morning on the excavation of the site and exhumation of the bodies of the children buried beneath the garden and playground area of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby home site. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)