IRELAND
The Irish News
ALLISON MORRIS
16 March, 2017
WHEN reporting the awful, needless, miserable deaths of almost 800 babies and toddlers at a Catholic-run mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway it is easy to dismiss the shameful episode as a sin from a bygone era.
However, the truth is much more unpalatable.
The home only ceased to operate in 1961, the year my own mother turned 17. That was the same age as many of the young mums locked behind the walls of the institution and also the age I was when I found out I was pregnant with my son.
While I was cared for and my child adored by my family, the young women of my mother and grandmother’s generation were ostracised and forced into joyless workhouses, their children forcibly adopted or dead within months from neglect.
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