A LOCAL woman was left distraught after she visited the graveside of a relative at Mount St Lawrence Cemetery last weekend.
The woman was with her 10-year-old son and both were horrified to find human bones lying on top of a number of graves.
She brought him to assist with research for a school project on the famine.
“At first we thought they were animal bones, but there were jaw bones with teeth still in them that could only have been human,” the woman, still in shock, told the Limerick Post.
“There were also hip bones, a femur and other remains that looked like fingers.
“My son was fascinated but I found it spooky. I couldn’t believe the bones would just be lying around like that. It seemed so disrespectful to the dead”.
The Limerick Post visited the graveyard and saw the bones, just as they had been described.
The most disturbing sight was part of a skull sitting in the middle of an old plot. There were three molar teeth still attached to the jaw bone.
Atop another grave sat a bone with a prominent joint, which once would have been attached to a hip or shoulder socket.
A local undertaker told the Limerick Post that it is known for bones to have been unearthed in the opening of graves, but “they are usually buried again”.
Cemeteries superintendent Flan Haskett said he couldn’t comment on whether the bones were human or not, or how they would have got there, and that he would need to see the remains in question.
