“I became pregnant and when my mother found out I was taken immediately to a doctor and within a very short period of time I found myself in a Good Shepherd mother-and-baby home.”

This is part of one woman’s personal testimony about her experience of mother-and-baby homes in Northern Ireland.  Her account has been published along with a number of others, running to hundreds of pages and made available on the Quote oral history website run by Queen’s University Belfast, external (QUB).

Those who experienced life in workhouses and Magdalene laundries have told their stories and the transcripts also include evidence from children born in the homes.  The testimonies have been anonymised but have been published with the full permission of those who gave them.  One woman, referred to as LC, was sent to a Good Shepherd mother-and-baby home when she became pregnant, aged 17.  “I was just told I was going and that was it,” she added.

“I was put in a car with the local parish priest and my mother and off I went.”

LC’s baby was adopted against her wishes but later in life she was able to reunite with her adopted child.  A mother referred to as HS also entered a Good Shepherd home when she was pregnant, aged 19.  She said that she was made to feel “isolated and sinful” there.  DH, meanwhile, was born in a mother-and-baby home and then adopted.  The impact that it’s had on me as a person has been significant,” he said.

DH had begun a process on reuniting with his birth mother when he was in his 30s.

Stigma of pregnancy outside marriage

Mother-and-baby institutions housed women and girls who became pregnant outside marriage.  There was stigma attached to pregnancy outside of marriage and women and girls were admitted by families, doctors, priests and state agencies.  The laundries were Catholic-run workhouses that operated across the island of Ireland.  About a third of women admitted to the homes were aged under 19 and most were aged from 20 to 29.  The youngest was 12 and the oldest 44.  A number were the victims of sexual crime, including rape and incest.  Numbers of entrants peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before a rapid reduction in the 1980s.  The oral evidence had informed a major Stormont report into mother-and-baby homes and Magdalene laundries in Northern Ireland, which was published in January 2021.  It found that 10,500 women went through mother-and-baby homes in Northern Ireland and 3,000 were admitted into Magdalene laundries.  The report detailed often harsh conditions and abuse suffered by some of those admitted to eight mother-and-baby homes, a number of former workhouses and four Magdalene laundries in Northern Ireland.  Some women said they had been detained against their will, were used as unpaid labour and had to give up babies for adoption.  The experts from QUB and Ulster University who carried out the research for the 2021 report had said they intended to make some of the transcripts of evidence “available for consultation by members of the public”.  That has now been done with full transcripts of testimonies from 24 individuals about their experiences.