‘Unmarried Mothers’ in the Republic of Ireland

Introduction

Seventy years ago, on the orders of a maniac, little children and babies were herded into barren camps in Germany and occupied Poland by men in black uniforms. They were starved to death in those camps; sometimes they had hideous medical experiments carried out upon them while alive, so hideous the silence of death was probably merciful. And when they died, their little bodies were thrown into huge pits . . . And in Ireland, where there is still a widespread smugness about our decency and our devotion to the Faith of our Fathers, the Virgin Mother of God, and the efficacy of the Holy Rosary, a pit has been found filled with the skeletons of tiny babies and small children, 800 of them, dumped in the pit which some prefer to call a ‘mass grave’ but is actually a septic tank. (O’Kelly, 2014)

Doubts quickly began to surface questioning the idea that the remains of children had, in fact, been ‘dumped’ in a ‘septic tank’ and a number of news outlets subsequently qualified aspects of their initial coverage (Boland, 2014). In June 2014 the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs in the Irish coalition government announced of an inquiry to be led by Judge Yvonne Murphy (Flanagan, 2014, Department of Children and Youth Affairs, 2014). The inquiry will not be restricted to the Tuam institution, but will examine other Mother and Baby Homes (see Garrett, 2015a). Indeed, it is vital that responses to ‘unmarried mothers’ and their children are subject to contemporary scrutiny because substantial concerns clearly warrant investigation (see also Wilson, Lordan, & Mullender, 2004). Certainly, for much of the 20th century, Mother and Baby Homes functioned as a ‘form of internal exile’ for many women (O’Toole, 2014, p. 12). However, to date there has been no investigation into the role of these residential facilities despite a range of recent inquiries examining how marginalised and stigmatised populations were historically dealt with by the Irish state and various religious orders (see, for example, Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009; Garrett, 2010, 2013a).

Recognising the significance of historical research for social work (Powell et al., 2013), this article aims to deepen our understanding of the Irish ‘unmarried mother’ classification by providing a more expansive contextual account than that featured in the media coverage ignited by the events in Tuam. The focus will mostly be on the ‘unmarried mother’ and, although not seeking to be an exhaustive exploration, focal questions will include: why did these Mother and Baby Homes exist and why did they play such an important role in terms of how the new state charted aspects of social policy (see also Garvin, 1996)? Who were the key individuals responsible for defining the ‘social problem’ of the ‘unmarried mother'? The first three sections of the article refers to policy and practice in relation to ‘unmarried mothers’ during the period leading to the inception of the state in 1922. Related to this question, the discussion will briefly examine the role played by ‘organic intellectuals’ within the Irish polity (Gramsci in Forgacs, 1988; see also Garrett, 2013b, p. Ch. 6). By the mid-1930s, the Roman Catholic Church had established itself as ‘virtually a state within a state’ (Lee, 1991, p. 82) and it was male clerics it who were empowered to act as ‘primary definers', enunciators and articulators of social policy (Hall et al., 1978; see also Inglis, 1998). Section four focuses on how the lack of legal child adoption in Ireland impacted on the way ‘unmarried mothers’ were managed within the state in the first half of the twentieth century. In England, for many decades, the initials P.F.I. (`pregnant from Ireland') were part of the everyday vocabulary of the social workers dealing with ‘unmarried mothers’ arriving from Ireland (O'Hare et al., 1983; see also Garrett, 2000; 2004). According to journalist Fintan O'Toole (2014, p. 12), ‘Ireland's biggest mother-and-baby-home was always England’ in that many women, discovering they were pregnant and feeling unable to keep the child, fled to England. Indeed, between ‘1950 and 1953, the London Crusade of Rescue dealt with 2,178 Irish unmarried mothers of whom 485 had emigrated from the Republic of Ireland’ (Earner-Byrne, 2004, p. 163). Expanding on this often occluded dimension to ‘unmarried motherhood’ in Ireland, the final section of the article will mostly draw on a rarely examined archival source – the annual reports of the Catholic Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland (CPRSI) which had been established to prevent children being ‘lost to the Faith’ (see also Prunty, 1999). ¹

The foundation of the new state and ‘unmarried mothers’

In the nineteenth century, at least twenty-three asylums or refuges which had been established to ‘rescue and reclaim’ women who had ‘fallen’ (Mahood, 1990; Luddy, 1995; Finnegan, 2001). Many of these refuges reflecting the influence of religious symbolism, used the title ‘Magdalen Asylum’ and earliest established was in Leeson Street, Dublin, in 1766. This was a lay asylum, based on one established in London a few years previously, yet a number of others established later were run by female religious orders and were attached to convents. These convent asylums tended to be larger than the lay asylums and the largest Magdalen Asylum in England and Ireland was that which the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge operated in Drumcondra, Dublin. Although such institutions were not exclusively concerned with ‘unmarried mothers’, they remain important because their ethos and modalities of operation were to have a major impact on the character of institutional provision for ‘unmarried mothers’ for over 200 years.

It is also important to try and grasp the wider societal, cultural and economic context in which policies towards ‘unmarried mothers’ evolved in the state which emerged after Ireland had attained a limited measure of independence in 1922. This was a period when the role of women was increasingly constrained and the alternative projects of socialists, feminists and other progressives involved in the struggle for independence were not realised (Lloyd, 1999, pp. 39–40; see also Coquelin, 2005).

[F]ixed constructs of gender played a key role in the building of the new Irish State and became institutionalised in its juridical structure. Despite the declaration of equal rights in the 1916 Proclamation, repeated in the 1922 Free State Constitution, as well as the prominence of Irish women in the suffrage movement, women’s position after 1922 saw a gradual erosion of their political rights. Political and public life were regarded as masculine spheres; women were subjected to efforts by the political and ecclesiastical authorities to confine their activities to the home and to a single identity, the domestic. Among the measures taken were the imposition of marriage bars, restrictions on women’s employment in the civil service (1925), restrictions of industrial employment (1935), the Juries Bill of 1927 which exempted women from jury service, the Criminal Law Amendment Bill of 1934 banning the sale or importation of contraceptives. These efforts on the part of the authorities to restrict women to the home culminated in de Valera’s 1937 Constitution founded on the family unit. (Ingman, 2002, p. 254; see also Beaumont, 1997; Luddy, 2001; Ryan, 1999; Valiulis and O’Dowd, 1997).

Mapping a policy for social workers

In July 1921, even prior to the end of fighting during the war of independence, institutional containment was being mooted as a ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of the ‘unmarried mother’ by the strategically placed and ‘respectable'. In the spring of 1920 Sir Joseph Glynn, former chairman of Galway County Council and an active Catholic layman, was preoccupied with this social question that he hoped to present a paper on it to a ‘meeting of Catholic social workers'. The event failed to take place because, ‘owing to the condition of the country, it was thought premature to embark’ on the type of ‘scheme’ he wished to outline (Glynn, 1921, p. 461). His talk to the social workers was, however, published in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record in 1921.

Glynn’s focal idea was that the solution to the problem of the ‘unmarried mother’ was to be found in ‘combined hostel and factory’ institutional provision (Glynn, 1921, p. 462).

The girl, when she knows of her condition, should enter the hostel and work in the factory until her confinement, returning to the hostel after her baby was born and continuing to work in the factory for six months or a year, after which she could obtain regular work; or if she had to enter domestic service, could place the child with a foster parent. (Glynn, 1921, pp. 463–464)

A Catholic clergyman, the Reverend M. H. MacInerny, was enthusiastic about the approach taken by the religious sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who had set up 22 ‘Rescue Homes’ in England. According to the Mother-General of the order,

mother and the child are received into the Rescue Homes for one year. The greater number at their own request remain two, three, or four years, as the case may require. They are employed in laundry, needlework, knitting, and household duties. (MacInerny, 1922, p. 250)

Illuminating the discourse on ‘unmarried mothers’ at the inception of the state, these interventions are revealing for a number of reasons: first, they confirm the Catholic ethos underpinning a debate whose parameters were mostly defined by men. Second, they show that dominant perceptions of social class dictated that working class women and those of the agrarian poor would receive more punitive treatment. Third, not only do the articles outline the type of institution needed to contain these ‘deviant’ women, but they also seek to prescribe a recommended length of stay and discuss matters relating to clerical versus lay expertise, or the balance to be achieved between them, in the day-to-day running of such establishments. Not insignificantly, MacInerny argued that nuns would cost less than lay staff. Fourth, there are already hints of a concern about Irish women fleeing to England. Fifth, particularly in the contributions of MacInerny, it is possible to identify a ‘policy transfer’ dimension given his evident interest in schemes operative across the Irish Sea (Dolowitz, 2000). This may seem a minor issue, but it serves to undermine accounts which interpret the appearance and evolution of Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland as the product of an exclusively Irish Catholic mind-set or sensibility.

Policy into practice: Separating the ‘first offenders’ from the ‘less hopeful’ cases

Following Irish independence in 1922, the Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 laid down that in ‘each county one workhouse building should be retained as a “county home” in which all the non-medical inmates in the county were lodged’ (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009, vol. 4, p. 21). The workhouses/county homes were the places which would tend to house ‘unmarried mothers’ and, in 1926, there were over a thousand such mothers, with their babies, resident in these establishments (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009, vol. 4, p. 215). Policy began to change, however, in 1927, with the publication of the report of the Commission on the Relief of the Poor (1927). This enormously influential report was informed by debates such as those taking place in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record referred to earlier, but it also extended the analysis given its more intense and targeted gaze on the women who erred. Here, ‘two classes’ of ‘unmarried mothers’ were delineated: ‘those who may be amenable to reform’ and ‘the less hopeful cases’ (Commission on the Relief of the Poor, 1927, p. 68). The language and tone of the Commission suggested a shift toward criminalisation in that it was reported that, in the county homes and Dublin workhouse, there were ‘unmarried mothers’ who were ‘first offenders’ (Commission on the Relief of the Poor, 1927, p. 68, emphasis added): alongside them, although a sizeable minority, there were also women who had ‘fallen more than once’ (Commission on the Relief of the Poor, 1927, p. 68). The Commission advocated, therefore, treatment techniques which set apart ‘first offenders’ from the ‘less hopeful’ cases. Hence, the treatment of the former ‘must necessarily be in the nature of moral upbuilding and, while requiring firmness and discipline, must be characterised and blended with a certain amount of individual charity and sympathy’ (Commission on the Relief of the Poor, 1927, p. 68). This would take place in special establishments and a prototype, the one referred to by Glynn earlier, was founded by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Cork in 1922 (see also Goulding, 1998). Other such Homes were established by the same religious order in Roscrea (Tipperary) in 1930 and Castlepollard (Meath) in 1935. The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul opened a similar institution in Dublin in 1918 and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd opened a home in Dunboyne (Meath) in 1955. In addition, Mother and Baby Homes were provided by local authorities themselves in Tuam (Galway), Kilrush (Clare) and Pelletstown (Dublin). A Protestant-run Bethany Mother and Baby Home was set up in Dublin in 1921 and closed in 1972.

In respect of the so-called ‘less hopeful’ cases – the residue composed probably of those who are the least open to good influences’ – the Commission proposed a period of lengthy detention. In circumstances where an ‘unmarried mother’, pregnant for a third time, applied for relief to a poor law institution, the Board of Health should have the ‘power to detain’ for ‘such a period as they think fit, having considered the recommendation of the Superior or Matron of the Home’ (Commission on the Relief of the Poor, 1927, p. 69):

The term of detention we recommend is not an irreducible period and is not intended to be in any sense penal. It is primarily for the benefit of the woman and her child, and its duration will depend entirely on the individual necessities of the case. We are not in favour of the rigid application of fixed periods of detention…the widest possible discretionary powers should be exercised. The object of the recommendations is to regulate control according to individual requirements, or in the most degraded cases to segregate those who have become sources of evil, danger, and expense to the community. (Commission on the Relief of the Poor, 1927, p. 69)

No legal child adoption but the export of children to ‘lonely souls everywhere’

Legal adoption of children was introduced, in England and Wales, in 1926. Northern Ireland followed in 1929 and Scotland in 1930, but it did not exist in the Republic of Ireland until 1952 (Keating, 2003). Within Europe, ‘only Portugal and the Netherlands were later than Ireland in legislating for adoption’ (Department of Children and Youth Affairs, 2014, p. 15). A form of ‘adoption’ was, however, present in Irish society long before the middle years of the twentieth century. Under the Brehon Laws which existed in Ireland for at least a thousand years, prior to their displacement by Christianity and an imposed legal system, adoption ‘would seem to have been either a private commitment between family and child, a public commitment between clan and child or a combination of both’ (O'Halloran, 1994, p. 6). Such arrangements were frequently entered into, not to promote the interests of particular children, but to forge new family or clan alliances and allegiances (Ni Chonaill, 1997).

In the early 1950s, there had been de facto adoptions and what one writer referred to as ‘the export of Irish children in the name of lonely souls everywhere’ (MPHR, 1941, p. 81; see also Maguire 2002). There was, moreover, a transatlantic trafficking in children with many, living in institutions, being taken to the United States. This issue was raised in the Dail [Irish Parliament] debate on the Adoption Bill (Dail Eireann, 11 June, 1952: cols. 1124–25; also Milotte, 1997; Maguire, 2002). For many years such ‘foreign adoptions' were viewed as ‘an acceptable solution’ to the problem of ‘unmarried mothers’ and their ‘illegitimate’ children (Buckley, 2013, p. 32). Although the numbers cannot be ascertained, hundreds if not thousands of Irish children were sent out of Ireland to America up to the 1970s (Buckley, 2013, p. 32; see also Milotte, 2014). In the 1950s, particularly, many ‘illegitimate’ children, born in Ireland, were ‘handed over’ to childless Roman Catholic couples in the United States. Even though the Church was manifestly hesitant about the introduction of legal adoption, it was often complicit in these covert and legally dubious endeavours. Furthermore, these ‘adoptions’ frequently occurred without a full and rigorous assessments of the potential adoptive parents.

Following independence in the early 1920s, and thirty years before the introduction of legal adoption, there had also been internal and informal ‘adoptions’ with the CPRSI, for example, reporting that seventeen foster parents had come ‘forward with offers to adopt’ and in all, but one case, these requests were accepted (CPRSI, 7^th Annual Report, 1920, p. 12). By the early 1930s, the CPRSI was organising more than 130 ‘adoptions’ each year (CPRSI, 18^th Annual Report, 1931, p. 3). The introduction of a legal form of adoption was championed by the multi-denominational Adoption Society, formed in 1948, and a range of other influential organisations including The Irish Times (Newman, 1951). The Joint Committee of Women's Societies and Women Social Workers – a broad a broad coalition bringing together those seeking to promote the interests of women, children and young people – also played an active role in lobbying for the legalisation of child adoption in Ireland. In the late-1930s the Joint Committee had raised the issue with the Department of Justice and in the 1940s the organisation even drafted an Adoption Bill. A number of proposals featured in the Bill were to become part of the legislation. One proposal, however, that half the Adoption Board should comprise of women was rejected. As well as calling for the introduction of legal adoption, the Committee advocated for ‘unmarried mothers’ to be able to retain their children. Radically, in the early 1940s, it was also critical of the condemnatory character of much of the policy discourse on ‘unmarried mothers’; it argued, for example, that the financial support might be made available to provide for ‘unmarried mothers’ by transferring the money paid to institutions for the upkeep of the ‘illegitimate’ child to the mother herself.

The Catholic institutional hierarchy, most prominently the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Charles McQuaid, played an important role in determining most aspects of social policy. Whyte (1971) has calculated that, between 1923 and 1965, the Church influenced 16 pieces of legislation. Most famously during the so-called ‘mother and child crisis’ when pressure was applied to prevent the Minister of Health, Noel Browne, from introducing a limited scheme of preventative health care for mothers and children (see also McKee, 1986; Barrington, 1987). Despite concerns about infanticide and ‘baby farming’ relating to ‘illegitimate’ children (Buckley, 2013), the introduction of legal child adoption was largely delayed because of opposition from senior tiers within the Church unhappy with the proposed legislation. As one Deputy tellingly remarked in the Dail debate on the successful Adoption Bill: ‘When we saw in the newspapers the statement of the Catholic Hierarchy that legal adoption was not against Catholic teaching, we felt assured that there would be no difficulty in putting this Bill through the Dail’ (Dail Eireann, 11 June, 1952, col. 1115).

The opposition to legal child adoption was rooted in a number of interrelated concerns. The Church remained wary of ‘proselytism’ and of the danger of the babies of Catholic ‘unmarried mothers’ being raised as Protestants. This related to the preference for Catholic institutional provision for ‘illegitimate’ children because this eliminated the threat of adoption by Protestants. Indeed, it was later asserted that the Act was ‘conceived and born in a time of sectarian mistrust and bigotry’ (Good, 1971). It was further alleged that legal adoption would disrupt the pattern of inheritance rights. One officer of the Adoption Society was baldly informed by one rural Deputy that to interfere with the line of succession was ‘like interfering with a stud book’ (in Whyte, 1971, p. 187). A further component of the opposition case was that a law permitting adoption would be contrary to Bunreacht Eireann, the Irish constitution, introduced in 1937; especially to those parts of the constitution which emphasised the role of the family. Concerns were expressed about the ‘natural rights’ of parents being infringed (Dail Eireann, 11 June 1952, cols. 1173–1174). Specifically in relation to a mother’s ‘consent’ to adoption, there were moves to amend the Adoption Bill to make it unlawful to proceed with the adoption of a child of an ‘under-aged’ ‘unmarried mother’ if the consent of her father had not been forthcoming (Dail Eireann, 26 June, 1952, cols. 1757–1759). Partly as a consequence of these constitutional concerns, the Minister of Justice restricted adoption to orphans and ‘illegitimate’ children. Having won the approval of the Church, the Adoption Bill – a private member’s bill – was eventually introduced and became law in 1952 (Whyte, 1971, pp. 275–277). This Act made it plain that adopting parents were to be of the same religion as the ‘illegitimate’ child.

Following the introduction of legal child adoption, social workers – based, for example, in the CPRSI – slowly began to take on an assessment role not entirely dissimilar to practitioners based in the UK. However, the process of adoption was still framed by Catholic social teaching and unwed motherhood remained, for a number of years, still marinated in stigma (see also Garrett, 2015a). Furthermore, legalization did not result in a great rush to adopt in Ireland. In 1954, for example, the CPRSI submitted 141 applications to the new Adoption Board, but ‘the majority of these were in respect of children who had already been informally adopted before Adoption became legal’ (CPRSI, 41st Annual Report, 1954, p. 4). One obstacle was that, for women compelled to relinquish children, even ‘adoption came at a high price’ in that they needed to ‘find between £60 and £100 to cover the adoption fees, a huge sum of money for a young woman who was also generally unsupported by a partner or family’ (Earner-Byrne, 2004, p. 170). Consequently, most ‘illegitimate’ children, if not looked after by grandparents or other extended family members, were placed in institutions. This, and the threat of their incarceration in a semi-penal institution, was likely to be one of the main reasons why so many expectant and unwed women remained intent on fleeing to the England to give birth and have their child adopted. However, many were repatriated to Ireland (Earner-Byrne, 2003, 2004). This issue will be examined, in more detail, in the following section.

‘P.F.I.’: Fleeing to England and facing the threat of ‘repatriation’

Many pregnant ‘unmarried mothers’ fled Ireland because they felt that their ‘secret’ was ‘safer amidst the crowds of an English city’ (CPRSI, 45^th Annual Report, 1958, p. 2). What is more, a temporary and expedient flight to England might avoid their quasi-incarceration and might furnish better opportunities to have a child adopted (see also Garrett, 2008).

This specific type of Irish female migration had featured as a recurring, if minor theme, in a number of official reports produced by the Irish government since the formation of the state in the early 1920s: for example in the report of the Commission on the Relief of Poor (1927) and the report of the Committee on the Criminal Law Amendment Acts (1880–85) and Juvenile Prostitution (1931). In addition, the annual reports of the Department of Local Government and Public Health (1928–45) contained references to these temporary migrations. English-based Catholic ‘rescue’ societies were also keen to send Irish women back to Ireland and the London-based Crusade of Rescue fulfilled an especially prominent role in this respect (see also Garrett, 2003). From the late-1920s, George Craven, the organisation's administrator – embarked on something of a ‘personal crusade the object of which was to force Irish authorities and charities to assume primary responsibility for their citizens and flock’ (Earner-Byrne, 2004, p. 159). He even sent a list of Irish ‘unmarried mothers’ seeking help in England to the Department of Local Government and Public Health in Dublin (Earner-Byrne, 2004). In 1935, the Department dispatched an inspector her to England to investigate the situation and her own extraordinary and entirely unworkable perception was that ‘all Irish unmarried mothers irrespective of the location of conception, should be repatriated’ (Earner-Byrne, 2004, p. 160, emphasis added).

In November 1931, the English Roman Catholic hierarchy convened a meeting of Catholic social welfare societies and officials from the Department of Local Government and Public Health with a view to tackling the problem of the Irish ‘unmarried mother’ given they were perceived as absorbing so much of the attention and resources of the English-based agencies. This meeting appears to have been the catalyst for more sustained and organised repatriation endeavours. In relation to the Irish component of such schemes, the CPRSI was to become, at the behest of Archbishop McQuaid, the lead agency. Preferring to devolve responsibility to the Catholic charitable network, the Irish state remained rather lukewarm and ambivalent about these initiatives: there was an ‘implicit fear . . . if all of these pregnant Irish girls remained at home, the meagre facilities available would not even be able to maintain the illusion of coping’ (Earner-Byrne, 2003, p. 63). Hence, the ‘exportation of such a pressing social problem was implicitly condoned and largely seen as convenient . . . as it relieved the overburdened and inadequate services for unmarried mothers and their children in Ireland’ (Earner-Byrne, 2004, p. 156). Meanwhile, the charities embroiled in repatriation remained largely ‘driven by a desire to save infant souls from proselytisers rather than provide services for unmarried mothers’ (Earner-Byrne, 2004, p. 171).

Repatriation schemes were, it appears, targeted at the category of ‘first time offenders’ discussed in the Commission on the Relief of the Poor in 1927 (Earner-Byrne, 2003, p. 61). In practical terms, the CPRSI defined the process as follows:

It means simply this: that we bring back to Ireland those pregnant girls who go over to England seeking help from already burdened English Rescue Societies. When a girl, pregnant from this country, seeks the assistance of our counterparts in England or Wales, we authorise those to who she turns to offer our help in providing her with ante-natal and post-natal accommodation and with the provision for care of her child. If she is willing to accept our offer and return to Ireland, we arrange her accommodation and promise her help in planning for her child. The English worker provides her with a ticket to Dublin and puts her on a train; our worker meets her at the boat and we interview her at our office, provide her with meals and a ticket to her destination here. Her ‘destination’ is always far removed from her own native place and she herself has the right to choose it. When her baby has been born she writes to us and then we help her in the manner chosen by her. All this work goes on quietly and confidentially and absolute secrecy is guaranteed to each girl. (CPRSI 47^th Annual Report, 1960, pp. 2–3)

Specific concerns centred on Irish women travelling to London. Here, the situation appeared to be ‘particularly bad’ with the Westminster-located Crusade of Rescue still seemingly unable to ‘cope with the large numbers – estimated to be many hundreds annually’ (CPRSI, 41^st Annual Report, 1954, p. 1). The problem, it was claimed, was exasperated because, in England, the ‘opportunities for Catholic Adoption are few’ (CPRSI, 40^th Annual Report, 1953, p. 2). The London County Council (LCC) was also reported to be so concerned about the apparent influx of pregnant Irish women that one of its Children's Officers was seconded to spend six months each year in Ireland trying to find adoptive homes for Irish babies (CPRSI, 42nd Annual Report, 1955, p. 2). The CPRSI was ‘happy to provide office accommodation’ as the LCC officer set about getting ‘relatives to agree to look after those children of Irish mothers who have been abandoned in the London area thus becoming a charge on the LCC’ (CPRSI, 43^rd Annual Report, 1956, p. 2). Meanwhile, in Ireland, welfare workers of the Catholic Social Welfare Bureau, busy with what was called ‘port work', were boarding ships travelling to Liverpool and Holyhead seeking to identify migrant expectant mothers with a view to deterring them making their planned journeys (CPRSI, 43^rd Annual Report, 1956, p. 2).

In May 1948, a provocative and deleted section from a report by Alice Litster posed the question: ‘What have we to offer [the ‘unmarried mother’] here in comparison with the concealment, comfort and facility for adoption offered in Great Britain?’ (in Earner-Byrne, 2004, pp. 164–165). In comparison to Ireland, services may have been somewhat more extensive and conducive, but it would be erroneous to assume that the adjacent territory always presented a wholly welcoming environment. As we have seen, there was always the risk, or threat, of repatriation. In addition, other forms of discrimination might be encountered. A survey published after the Second World War revealed that in terms of maternity services, although they did not receive inferior care when compared to married women, ‘unmarried mothers’ rarely had ‘their babies delivered by doctors’ and that in the past, ‘a few authorities entrusted the delivery of unmarried women to pupil midwives’. Evidence also suggested that ‘unmarried mothers’ were less likely to be given ‘some kind of analgesic or anaesthetic’ (Joint Committee of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Population Investigation Committee, 1948, p. 198). In the mid-1960s there were also

instances of staff discriminating between married and unmarried patients; of nurses who deliberately tried to embarrass unmarried mothers by talking pointedly of adoption, and enquiring loudly whether a girl was returning to the Mother and Baby Home; and of pressure put on mother by nursing staff to either keep or part with her baby. (Nicolson, 1968, p. 111)

Despite its criticism of the length of time women were expected to remain in Irish Mother and Baby Homes, the CPRSI it continued to hold firm to the belief that these institutions – likely to be less strict on the length of stay question in the late-1960s and early 1970s – were the most appropriate location for ‘unmarried mothers'. The organisation remained against the emerging idea that these women and their new-born babies could be placed with families (CPRSI, 56^th Annual Report, 1969, pp. 2–3). However, there was a new plurality in public perceptions by the late-1960s and, what began to be referred to as, ‘single parenthood’ was increasingly likely to be seen as a difficult but still potentially viable alternative (see CPRSI, 55^th Annual Report, 1968; see also CPRSI, 59^th Annual Report, 1972). Importantly, the Social Welfare Act 1973 also entitled such women to maintenance allowances and children’s allowances. In part this was a response to the availability or legal abortion in England following the introduction of the Abortion Act 1967. For the CPRSI this constituted a new ‘temptation of a very serious nature before the distraught unmarried mother’ (CPRSI, 54^th Annual Report, 1967, pp. 3–4). Indeed, it was ‘increasingly acknowledged that Irish girls were travelling to England not in search of anonymous adoption but abortion’ (Earner-Byrne, 2004, p. 171).

Conclusion

In contrast to recent media coverage about circumstances surrounding the deaths of and burials of children in the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, this article has focused on the mothers. Deliberations on how to deal with such ‘deviant’ women were recurrent during the early years of the state with primary definers and government commissions endeavouring to shape how social workers and related groups should engage with them Significant here was the role played by ‘organic intellectuals’ who, embedded in the structures of State and Church, assisted in the consolidation of particular forms of class and gendered hegemony within Irish society.

The crucial distinction delineating ‘first offender’ and ‘less hopeful case’ underpinned dividing practices leading to women being assigned to specific types of facilities. These processes of sifting and sorting were characterised by a powerful class-based rationality because middle-class mothers tended to be accommodated in Mother and Baby Homes whereas working-class women were, ‘by default, thrown upon the county home system’ (Earner-Byrne, 2003, pp. 56–57).

The issue of class permeated most of the debates on unmarried mothers and their children, and informed policy decisions. The official preference for a system of special homes run by religious orders satisfied both the angle of moral rehabilitation and class anxieties. The basic idea was that the county home would be the resort only of the ‘poorest class’, whereas the special hones would be reserved for the ‘better type of girl’ . . . which was social code for women from middle-class backgrounds who, it was deemed, were less likely to fall more than once. (Earner-Byrne, 2007, p. 185)

Emphasising the vital significance of social history for social work, the discussion has focussed on one specific pariah group and highlighted how class and gender expectations dictated how they were dealt with. Similar investigations, drawing on archival sources, have taken place in other jurisdictions examining how unmarried mothers’ were socially constructed and responded to by state and related forms of intervention (see, for example, Kunzel, 1993). Clearly, such an historical awareness is much needed and should inform the questioning of contemporary responses of the state to populations considered to be ‘troublesome’ (Garrett, 2015b).