Extended Essay

The Mother And Baby Home, Tuam, County Galway (1846-1961)

Outline plan
Define and Justify
I have decided to research the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam County Galway. I found this
topic was worth researching because it is a very interesting yet a sad part of Gallways
history. What makes the mother and baby home interesting is that even though it was open
in 1995, the mass grave of 796 children was only discovered in 2014. I chose to research
this topic because my grandad was adopted from the home. I also decided to research this
topic because it is history in my local area.

Aims
Firstly, I aim to have a better understanding of The Mother And Baby home, secondly, who
ran it and finally, what happened there and why it was shut down. I would like to know more
about the women that were there and what happened to them and their children.

Approach
I will be typing up my project on Microsoft Word. Word is easy to use so I can easily edit my
project. I have gathered my information from websites and accounts from people at the
Mother And Baby Home. I have will take feedback from my teacher and use it to better my
essay.

Sources
1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54693159 BBC News. “Irish mother and
baby homes: Timeline of controversy.” Retrieved from BBC News, accessed on 23
february 2022
2. https://tuamhomesurvivors.com/about/tuam-mother-baby-home Tuam Home
Survivors Network. ‘The Tuam Mother & Baby Home’. Retrieved from Tuam Home
Survivors Network, accessed on 23 December 2022.

Evaluation of sources
My best source was source number 2. Source 2 was very relevant to my topic; it got straight
to the point and gave me the information I needed for the essay. It had accounts from the
women that stayed at the home which I found very interesting.
Source 1 was a good source but not as good as source one. It has pictures of the home and
tells you how and where the remains were found in Tuam. This source gave me some
information I didn’t need and was not as interesting as my first source but was very helpful,
nonetheless.

Essay
The Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway was originally known as a
‘Workhouse’. The home was built in 1841 under the Irish Poor Laws. Like many of the other
workhouses, it had been designed by Poor Law Commissioners' architect George Wilkinson
to house around 800 people. The workhouse opened in 1846, during the Famine. The
building had dormitories that could house up to 800 people and had an infirmary.
British troops took over the workhouse in 1916. The occupants were evicted, and the home
was turned into a barracks. During the Irish Civil War in 1923, 8 IRA Volunteers were
executed at the Barracks. In 1925, it was taken over by the Bons Secours Sisters.
As a result of the closure of all the workhouses in the county by the Galway Board of Health,
the building became available. The order of Bon Secours Sisters, led by Mother Hortense
McNamara took over the Tuam Workhouse in 1925 and converted it into "The Home". Four
women stayed with the Sisters all their lives, their names were Bina Rabbitte, Annie Kelly,
Mary Wade and Julia Devaney. These women remained in the home until it closed.

For the next 36 years, unmarried mothers and their children were sent to this home. The
conditions in Tuam were not good. Woman and children were cramped
together because of how overcrowded the home was and research would
later show that on average, a child from the home died every two weeks
between 1925 and 1961 from malnutrition and sickness

The nuns that ran the home were paid £1 a week by the goverment for every mother and
child that stayed at the home. After 12 months the mothers had to leave the home but the
babies stayed. They were kept there until they were adopted, fostered or until they were old
enough to be sent to Industrial schools. There were some complaints of fostered children
being exploited. “An effort was not always made to find the home that most suited the child
or the child that most suited the home. The allowance given to foster parents was not always
spent on the child's welfare".
In 1973 a report by an official inspector who visited the Home said some of the children were
suffering from malnutrition, and 12 out of 31 infants examined were described as "emaciated
and not thriving". It was also reported the home was overcrowded with 271 children and 61
mothers staying there. 34 per cent of children died in the home in 1943. The report also
states.The death rate amongst infants was high. The Medical Officer in attendance was Dr.
Thomas B. Costello, an elderly doctor, who according to some residents hardly ever
visited The Home.
In 1961 the home closed. Most of the occupants were sent to similar institutions, such as
Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea. The building lay mostly disused until its demolition in 1972. A
Playground and a new housing estate was built on the site.
In 1975 two young boys discovered skeletal remains in a concrete structure while playing
near the site of the former home. Locals assumed it was a famine grave and a priest was
called to bless the site before the structure was re-sealed. Following the incident, residents
treated the site as an old burial ground, eventually erecting a memorial garden with a
Catholic shrine.

Many survivors did interviews about their experience in the home. ‘I was told by a nun: “God
doesn’t want you, you’re dirt.”, “Her mother called her a ‘prostitute and a whore’. Three of her
uncles were priests and her parents were worried about how her pregnancy would affect
them.” These are just two of the hundreds of accounts from survivors in the long-awaited
final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation. The witness
testimony is broken down into a number of segments. The first is the circumstances of their
pregnancy and admission to a mother and baby home. “Three generations, three single
mothers – it was in the mid-1950s that a witness, born in a mother and baby home, was later
told by her mother that she had become pregnant having been raped by a priest. She said to
the Committee that her own mother, the witness’s grandmother, had also been born to an
‘unmarried mother’. – testimony from 1950.

Review

The mother and baby home is a huge part of Irish history and i really enjoyed learning about
it,. It was nice to be able to learn about where he came from. I learnt a lot of facts about The
Mother And Baby Home from this essay that I did not know before it. I learnt about the home
and before it, the women there and what them and their children were put through.