Bessborough Mother and Baby Home

Bessborough Mother and Baby Home PDF Author: Michael Dwyer
Publisher: Michael Dwyer
ISBN: 1399938703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Bessborough was Ireland's most notorious Mother & Baby Home. From 1922 to 1998 almost 20,000 women and children passed through its doors. In the first book of its kind, historian Michael Dwyer takes us inside Bessborough. Using an array of historical sources, Dwyer pieces together the relationship between the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts who ran the home, the local authorities who paid them to maintain women and children there and the state departments who oversaw its operation. Dwyer charts Bessborough's 76 year history and addresses the many controversies surrounding the Mother & Baby Home from vaccine trials to the extraordinarily high infant death rate and the mystery which still surrounds the location of over 800 infant remains.

Bessborough Mother and Baby Home

Bessborough Mother and Baby Home PDF Author: Michael Dwyer
Publisher: Michael Dwyer
ISBN: 1399938703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bessborough was Ireland's most notorious Mother & Baby Home. From 1922 to 1998 almost 20,000 women and children passed through its doors. In the first book of its kind, historian Michael Dwyer takes us inside Bessborough. Using an array of historical sources, Dwyer pieces together the relationship between the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts who ran the home, the local authorities who paid them to maintain women and children there and the state departments who oversaw its operation. Dwyer charts Bessborough's 76 year history and addresses the many controversies surrounding the Mother & Baby Home from vaccine trials to the extraordinarily high infant death rate and the mystery which still surrounds the location of over 800 infant remains.

The Light In The Window

The Light In The Window PDF Author: June Goulding
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448146143
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
'I promised that I would one day write a book and tell the world about the home for unmarried mothers. I have at last kept my promise.' In Ireland, 1951, the young June Goulding took up a position as midwife in a home for unmarried mothers run by the Sacred Heart nuns. What she witnessed there was to haunt her for the next fifty years. It was a place of secrets, lies and cruelty. A place where women picked grass by hand and tarred roads whilst heavily pregnant. Where they were denied any contact with the outside world; denied basic medical treatment and abused for their 'sins'; where, after the birth, they were forced into hard labour in the convent for three years. But worst of all was that the young women were expected to raise their babies during these three years so that they could then be sold - given up for adoption in exchange for a donation to the nuns. Shocked by the nuns' inhumane treatment of the frightened young women, June risked her job to bring some light into their dark lives. June's memoir tells the story of twelve women's experiences in this home and of the hardships they endured, but also the kindness she offered them, and the hope she was able to bring.

Girls Like You

Girls Like You PDF Author: Jacinta O'Connell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781786051370
Category : Ireland
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Girls Like You... tells the story of 'Margaret', the name assigned to the author while in Bessborough House Mother and Baby Home. After spending seven months in the home 'Margaret' gave birth to a baby girl in September 1973. Written with pathos and humour, Girls Like You... is a reflection on growing up in the early 1970s in the Irish Midlands. It is a story of love and loss, secrecy and abandonment, forgiveness and integration. It deals with the fallout of this period of Irish history on one individual and her immediate family while exposing the cost of an Irish solution to an Irish problem, a cost which still reverberates in society today as the truth slowly trickles out.

Banished Babies

Banished Babies PDF Author: Mike Milotte
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781848403727
Category : Adoption
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Dublin, summer 1980; Kate Bush is on the radio, Nadia Comaneci is cleaning up at the Olympics and in one house by the Liffey, a spiky but sensitive ten-year-old girl is minding her troubled ma and her two brothers. But when a tragedy splits the family apart, the girl realizes that the only person she can depend on is herself.

Republic of Shame

Republic of Shame PDF Author: Caelainn Hogan
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1844884465
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
'At least in The Handmaid's Tale they value babies, mostly. Not so in the true stories here' Margaret Atwood '[A] furious, necessary book' Sinéad Gleeson Until alarmingly recently, the Catholic Church, acting in concert with the Irish state, operated a network of institutions for the concealment, punishment and exploitation of 'fallen women'. In the Magdalene laundries, girls and women were incarcerated and condemned to servitude. And in the mother-and-baby homes, women who had become pregnant out of wedlock were hidden from view, and in most cases their babies were adopted - sometimes illegally. Mortality rates in these institutions were shockingly high, and the discovery of a mass infant grave at the mother-and-baby home in Tuam made news all over the world. The Irish state has commissioned investigations. But the workings of the institutions and of the culture that underpinned it - a shame-industrial complex - have long been cloaked in secrecy and silence. For countless people, a search for answers continues. Caelainn Hogan - a brilliant young journalist, born in an Ireland that was only just starting to free itself from the worst excesses of Catholic morality - has been talking to the survivors of the institutions, to members of the religious orders that ran them, and to priests and bishops. She has visited the sites of the institutions, and studied Church and state documents that have much to reveal about how they operated. Reporting and writing with great curiosity, tenacity and insight, she has produced a startling and often moving account of how an entire society colluded in this repressive system, and of the damage done to survivors and their families. In the great tradition of Anna Funder's Stasiland and Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea - both winners of the Samuel Johnson Prize - Republic of Shame is an astounding portrait of a deeply bizarre culture of control. 'Achingly powerful ... There will be many people who don't want to read Republic of Shame, for fear it will be too much, too dark, too heavy. Please don't be afraid. Read it. Look it in the eye' Irish Times 'A must read for everyone' Lynn Ruane 'Republic of Shame is a careful, sensitive and extremely well-written book - but it is harrowing. It would break your heart in two' Ailbhe Smyth 'Hogan's captivatingly written stories of people who were consigned to what she calls the "shame-industrial complex" puts faces - many old now, and lined with pain - to the clinical data ... Brilliant' Sunday Times 'Utterly brilliant. Please read it' Marian Keyes 'Riveting, immensely insightful and horrifically recognisable' Emma Dabiri '[A] sensitive, can't-look-away book ... Through moving stories, Hogan shows how the past is still present' NPR

Legacies of the Magdalen Laundries

Legacies of the Magdalen Laundries PDF Author: Miriam Haughton
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526150794
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This collection raises incisive questions about the links between the postcolonial carceral system, which thrived in Ireland after 1922, and larger questions of gender, sexuality, identity, class, race and religion. This kind of intersectional history is vital not only in looking back but, in looking forward, to identify the ways in which structural callousness still marks Irish society. Essays include historical analysis of the ways in which women and children were incarcerated in residential institutions, Ireland’s Direct Provision system, the policing of female bodily autonomy though legislation on prostitution and abortion, in addition to the legacies of the Magdalen laundries. This collection also considers how artistic practice and commemoration have acted as vital interventions in social attitudes and public knowledge, helping to create knowledge and re-shape social attitudes towards this history.

Bessborough

Bessborough PDF Author: Deirdre Finnerty
Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland
ISBN: 9781529340396
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
'I read Bessborough in one sitting, veering from fury to devastation within a matter of pages. A vitally important book.' Louise O'Neill 'A powerfully important book that demands to be read' Irish Examiner For over seventy years, Bessborough House, a grand country mansion on the outskirts of Cork city, operated as one of Ireland's biggest mother and baby institutions. Women and girls who walked up its stone steps were warned never to reveal their true identities and gave birth to babies they would not be allowed to keep. In Bessborough: Three Women. Three Decades. Three Stories of Courage, a trio of remarkable women confined there in the 60s, 70s and 80s, tell their truths. Their vivid accounts take us right inside the walls of the secretive institution and give us a deep insight into how their experiences impacted their lives afterwards. The result is a stark portrait of a system that split families apart -- and a moving account of love, loss and reconnection.

My Name is Bridget

My Name is Bridget PDF Author: Alison O'Reilly
Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd
ISBN: 0717180433
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
In 1946, twenty-six-year-old Bridget Dolan walked up the path to the front door of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Alone and pregnant, she was following in the footsteps of more than a century's worth of lost souls. Shunned by society for her sins and offered no comfort for her pain, Bridget gave birth to a boy, John, who died at the home in a horrendous state of neglect less than two years later. Her second child was once again delivered into the care of the nuns and was taken from her, never to be seen or heard from again. She would go on to marry a wonderful man and have a daughter, Anna Corrigan, but it was only after Bridget's death that Anna discovered she had two brothers her mother had never spoken about. In the aftermath of the explosive revelations that the remains of 796 babies had been found in a septic tank on the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, she became compelled to try and find out if her baby brothers' remains were among them. Here, Anna and Alison O'Reilly piece together the erased chapter of the life of Bridget Dolan and her forgotten sons, reminding us that we must never forget what was done to the women and children of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

Holding Her Breath

Holding Her Breath PDF Author: Eimear Ryan
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1844885488
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE KATE O'BRIEN AWARD 2022 'A stunning debut from this new Irish talent' STELLAR _____________ A young woman comes of age in the shadow of her family's tragic past When Beth Crowe starts university, she is shadowed by the ghost of her potential as a competitive swimmer. Free to create a fresh identity for herself, she finds herself among people who adore the poetry of her grandfather, Benjamin Crowe, who died tragically before she was born. She embarks on a secret relationship - and on a quest to discover the truth about Benjamin and his widow, her beloved grandmother Lydia. The quest brings her into an archive that no scholar has ever seen, and to a person who knows things about her family that nobody else knows. Holding Her Breath is a razor-sharp, moving and seriously entertaining novel about complicated love stories, ambition and grief - and a young woman coming fully into her powers. __________ 'A beautiful coming-of-age story told with impressive skill and lightness of touch . . . I absolutely loved it' LOUISE O'NEILL 'Whip smart observations and addictive prose' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Precise, sure, engaging, and a joy to read' RODDY DOYLE 'Effortlessly weaving together a gripping, multi-layered plot, while maintaining a profoundly tender touch, Ryan has marked herself as a captivatingly original voice in Irish literature' HOT PRESS 'A moving debut with a satisfying conclusion' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Brilliant, vivid - I enjoyed this book ENORMOUSLY' MARIAN KEYES 'Enthralling' IMAGE 'A nimble account of student life with a darkly enjoyable undercurrent of secrecy and emotional turmoil' SARA BAUME 'A truly compelling read, and one I wholeheartedly recommend' BUZZ 'Through the dark sky of our times, Eimear Ryan arrives like a comet, a bright talent scorching through every page' DOIREANN NÍ GHRÍOFA, author of A Ghost in the Throat 'Brilliantly realised, gripping, and moving . . . This is absolutely the real thing' KEVIN POWER 'Written with a wonderful clarity and insight, Holding Her Breath lingers in the imagination. Beth's unravelling and re-ravelling is drawn with great skill and empathy. A brilliant debut' DONAL RYAN

Philomena (Movie Tie-In)

Philomena (Movie Tie-In) PDF Author: Martin Sixsmith
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101636025
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller The heartbreaking true story of an Irishwoman and the secret she kept for 50 years When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to a convent to be looked after as a “fallen woman.” Then the nuns took her baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption. Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Philomena’s son was trying to find her. Renamed Michael Hess, he had become a leading lawyer in the first Bush administration, and he struggled to hide secrets that would jeopardize his career in the Republican Party and endanger his quest to find his mother. A gripping exposé told with novelistic intrigue, Philomena pulls back the curtain on the role of the Catholic Church in forced adoptions and on the love between a mother and son who endured a lifelong separation.