‘The Lost Children of Tuam’ is a powerful tribute to Catherine Corless’s relentless search for truth
Mary Coyne, one year; John O’Toole, seven months; Margaret Linnane, four months; John Creaven, two weeks; Nora Mary Howard, four months; Dolores Conneely, seven months.
These are some of the names from the death records of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, said aloud in The Lost Children of Tuam, the new film about amateur historian Catherine Corless that was screened at the Galway Film Fleadh on Saturday evening.
The names of children who died at St Mary’s home echoed back from the audience in the film’s moving final scenes, depicting people gathering to remember at St Mary’s grotto rather than attend the visit of Pope Francis.
The Pope would not be answering Catherine Corless’s questions about her uncovered findings that the remains of 796 children had been found without proper burial in a sewage tank and under the foundations of an estate playground.
In 2017, American journalist Dan Barry brought Corless’s work to a global audience through a New York Times feature. The article explored not only her findings but also the lives behind the records – “the Marys, Patricks, and Johns” whose names appeared on death lists for reasons such as intestinal tuberculosis, measles, influenza, whooping cough and marasmus, also known as malnourishment.
Shortly after publication, Barry received a call from Liam Neeson expressing interest in bringing the story to the screen, a development that ultimately helped propel the project towards becoming a feature.
The film follows Tuam native Corless, portrayed by Monica Dolan, as she uncovers one of the darkest chapters in modern Irish history. What begins as a local history project for an evening research course develops into an investigation that would force Ireland to confront its treatment of unmarried mothers and their children.
Driven in part by her own family history and questions surrounding children born outside marriage, Corless becomes fascinated by the lives of the so-called “home babies” she remembered from her childhood – children who lived at St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, operated by the Bon Secours Sisters in a former workhouse in Tuam.
The film opens with scenes of ordinary rural life. There are cows to tend, tea to be poured, family members calling in and out of the house. Corless is not presented as an activist, politician or academic.
As her research deepens, she spends countless hours making phone calls, searching archives and walking the grounds where St Mary’s once stood. Her determination eventually leads her to Barry Sweeney and Frannie Hopkins, who, as young boys decades earlier, discovered small skeletal remains in an underground chamber on the site.
Famine bones, according to the story at the time.
But Corless uncovers evidence showing the underground sewage remained in use until 1937 – therefore the bones under the concrete slab could not have been that of the famine.
If the remains were not from the famine era, then whose were they? The question becomes the driving force of the story.
On a hunch, Corless requests a small sample of death-record copies relating to children who died at the home. As she painstakingly cross-references the names against burial records, a disturbing pattern begins to emerge.
Hundreds of children appear in official records, yet there is no evidence of corresponding burials.
Corless’s efforts were validated when a test excavation dig in 2016 uncovered more remains in the grotto of the former institution.
Historical maps overlaid against the modern housing estate revealed the extent of the underground structures beneath what had become an abnormally large playground layout.
The latest Tuam update covers the period from April 1 to May 31, 2026. © ODAIT
One of the film’s most powerful moments comes when Corless receives confirmation that remains associated with the home have been found. The unthinkable had been true all along.
On average, one child died each fortnight between 1925 and 1961.
It is estimated that about 9,000 children’s remains have been identified across 18 former mother and baby institutions throughout Ireland. In 2021, both the State and the Bon Secours Sisters issued formal apologies for the suffering experienced by women and children within the system.
At its heart, however, The Lost Children of Tuam is not simply a film about historical wrongdoing. It is about silence – that of institutions, communities and a country that struggled for decades to confront uncomfortable truths.
The shame that motivated local authorities, the Bon Secours Sisters and even local residents.
The Lost Children of Tuam serves as both a tribute to Catherine Corless and a memorial to the children whose names open the film and whose legacy will linger long after the credits roll.