IRELAND
Irish Central
Cahir O’Doherty @randomirish September 02, 2016
To be poor and the child of a single mother were among the most dangerous things that could happen to you in the Ireland of the last century.
So dangerous, in fact, that now we have a Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, established in February 2015, to find out exactly what happened to the thousands of vulnerable women and children who lived and died in 14 homes between 1922 and 1998.
We need an investigation because we don’t know what happened to so many of them, of course. Irish society fell silent and looked the other way over the seven decades when these mothers and children were disappeared without a word of protest from most of us.
1998 is only 18 years ago, so all of this unfolded within the lifetimes of most people reading these words right now. It’s staggering too think the last Magdalene Laundry only closed its doors in 1996.
News of what happened to the inmates – that’s what they were called – of the Catholic Mother and Baby homes has rightly made international headlines since the Tuam scandal, but the fate of Protestant mothers and babies has garnered fewer column inches, although the statistics are no less alarming.
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