Alison was a reporter for the Irish Mail on Sunday and was documenting the case of Bethany Mother and Child Home, when a woman, Anna Corrigan, read her articles and decided to contact Alison.Īnna Corrigan contacted Alison to tell her that her, Anna, two brothers were buried in a mass grave in Tuam in Co Galway. In 2014 the story was brought to the attention of journalist Alison O’Reilly. Most of the children were infants and had died at the Home during its years of operation (1925 – 1961).

In 2013, Ann Glennon, a public servant at the Galway Health Service Executive registrar for births, deaths and marriages, at Corless’ request and expense, retrieved the names of the 796 children who had death certificates listing “The Tuam Home” or the “Tuam Children’s Home” as place of death.

In 2012, local historian Catherine Corless published an article about the home in the annual Journal of the Old Tuam Society.Īt that stage she did not have the names of all of the children who had died there. The burial site was nothing more but a septic tank. For the next 35 years the burial site was tended to by a local couple, who also built a small grotto there. It was re-sealed shortly afterwards, following prayers at the site by a priest. The number of bodies was then unknown, but was assumed to be small. Locals speculated that these were the remains of victims of the Great Famine, unbaptised babies,and/or stillborn babies from the Home. One would expect this would have been investigated, but that was not the case. They found a hole or chamber “filled to the brim” with children’s skeletons underneath a concrete slab. In 1975, two boys, ages 10 and 12, were playing at the site of the former Mother and Baby Home. Unmarried pregnant women were sent to the Home to give birth. The Home was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order of Catholic nuns, that also operated the Grove Hospital in the town. It was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children.

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home (also known as St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home or simply The Home)that operated between 19 in Tuam. Unfortunately since 2014 it has become know for all the wrong reasons. It is second-largest settlement in County Galway.

My Name Is Bridget by Alison O'Reilly