Peter Laban, usually you get things right, but this time you misinterpreted the numbers:

Thread #154680   Message #3634206
Posted By: GUEST,Peter Laban
18-Jun-14 - 04:43 AM
Thread Name: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns
Subject: RE: BS: Dead babies and Tuam Bon Secours nuns


Meanwhile, deathrates in the Tuam Mother & Baby Home are being looked at more closely an astonishing 79% of babies born there didn't live through their first year : irish Times article

The article says, Almost 80 per cent of the 796 children who died in the Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam did not live to see their first birthday. Note that the report says that 10 of the 796 children died of a form of malnutrition when they were between 2 and 12 months old - no information about malnutrition before 2 months or after 12 months, so we don't know the whole story there.

And while we know that over a period of 36 years the home lost an average of 22 babies or children a year, we don't know how many were born there - so we can't determine the death rate.

I read somewhere that the capacity of the Tuam home was 200, and I'm gathering that means 200 unwed mothers. Some other article said that the young women stayed in the home for a year. So, I'm guessing the number of births was 200 a year or fewer. If there were 22 deaths a year and 200 births, that makes a death rate of about ten percent. But that's just a guess - we need an accurate number of births to determine an accurate death rate. I've seen estimates of a twenty percent death rate at Tuam, which sounds more credible to me. Twenty percent is certainly a serious problem, but not as shocking as 79 percent.

-Joe-