User:Autarch/Bethany Home, Dublin (childrens home)

Bethany Home was a childrens' home which was run by the Church of Ireland. It opened in 1921 and closed in 1972.

Residents
The home was also described as 'a place of detention for female, non-Catholic[s]' under seventeen and for older women sent there by the courts for crimes ranging from petty theft to infanticide as well as members of 'the poor prostitute class'.

Religious ethos
Although supposedly secular, the home was religious and was known internally as 'the Mission'.

According to Lily Pilgrims' 1956 memoir Far above Rubies "the Gospel was proclaimed to all".

Deaths
A ceremony was held in Mount Jerome Cemetery on 26 May 2010 to remember 40 children who had died in the home, 33 of whom lie in unmarked graves. Those there included former residents of the home.

Research has since shown that 219 children died in the home between 1922 and 1949 :
 * 54 died from convulsions.
 * 41 died from heart failure.
 * 26 died from marasmus.
 * 19 were stillborn.

The highest number of deaths occurred in a single year occurred in 1936, with 29 dead, eight more than were reported to the managine committee.