Tuam Mother and Baby Home—Interview with Alison O’Reilly

July 7, 2022

Tuam Mother and Baby Home—Interview with Alison O’Reilly

Tuam is an idyllic town in Ireland. It is the second-largest settlement in County Galway. Unfortunately, since 2014, it has become known for all the wrong reasons.

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home (also known as St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home or simply The Home) in Tuam, operated between 1925 and 1961. It was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children. The Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic nun religious order, managed The Home and also operated the Grove Hospital in town. Families arranged for unmarried, pregnant women to be sent to The Home to give birth.

In 1975, two boys, ages 10 and 12, were playing at the site of the former Mother and Baby Home. They found a chamber “filled to the brim” with children’s skeletons underneath a concrete slab. One would expect the police to lead an investigation, but that was not the case.

Locals speculated that these were the remains of victims of the Great Famine, unbaptized babies, or stillborn babies from The Home. The number of bodies was then unknown but was assumed to be small. It was re-sealed shortly afterward, following prayers at the site by a priest. For the next 35 years, the burial site was tended to by a local couple, who also built a small cavern there. The burial site was nothing more than a septic tank.

Local historian Catherine Corless published an article about The Home in the annual Journal of the Old Tuam Society in 2012.

At that stage, she did not have the names of all of the children who had died there. 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. Most of the children were infants and had died during The Home’s years of operation (1925-1961).

Back in 2014, journalist Alison O’Reilly came across the story. Alison, a reporter for the Irish Mail on Sunday, was covering the case of the Bethany Mother and Child Home. During this time, a woman named Anna Corrigan read Alison’s articles and reached out to her.

Anna Corrigan contacted Alison to tell her that she, Anna, and two brothers were buried in a mass grave in Tuam in Co Galway. Two brothers she was not aware her mother had; she believed she was an only child. Her mother, Bridget, kept that secret for all her life. After that, Alison got in contact with Catherine Corless, and the story brought international attention; even the New York Times covered it. Alison also wrote a book about Anna Corrigan’s mother.

https://www.bookdepository.com/My-Name-is-Bridget-Alison-OReilly/9780717180424?redirected=true&utm_medium=Google&utm_campaign=Base1&utm_source=IE&utm_content=My-Name-is-Bridget&selectCurrency=EUR&w=AFFPAU9S9V2QFLA8VT10&gclid=CjwKCAjwiJqWBhBdEiwAtESPaOTVXExVJ-6Trnvm9Fc17F2fe72NXhqFeArvH-8qLG1K_NLuxUDTkhoCtL0QAvD_BwE

Last week, I interviewed Alison about the story of the Tuam Mother-and-Baby Home and the Bafta-winning documentary she was involved in. I left the interview unedited because I think it is important to get the story across with all the emotions it evokes.

On The Home’s property, children’s bodies are still to be found buried in that septic tank.