The following year, in 1935, it was reported that Tuam held 31 mothers and 191 children at the end of March, reflecting its status as a holding centre as much as a Mother and Baby Home. It is interesting to note what happened during the year when 113 mothers were released. Sixty returned to their families, forty were sent to positions, which undoubtedly meant menial jobs as domestic servants or to farm work; three were married. Of the sixty-six children who were discharged, only seventeen left with their mothers, while almost twice that number, thirty-two, were boarded out. The rest went either to relatives or what were referred to as ‘suitable institutions’. The missing numbers, which are not specified, are the children who died.
The LGRs mention Tuam year after year and provide useful statistics but the numbers of children who died are notably absent during the whole of the 1930s, with the exception of 1933/34. That year shows 120 admissions to Tuam and that forty-two babies died. Any mortality rate extracted from these figures would be only a rough guide to the real figure but that rate is believed to be 35%. The omission of the numbers of deaths in the homes during the 1930s is actually divided in two. Tuam and Pelletstown facts and figures omit deaths during the 1930s while the three Sacred Heart homes have their deaths published year after year. Clearly someone did not want the government to be embarrassed so details of the deaths in the public homes were surpressed, while revealing the private homes’ mortality rates for all to see. Tuam was similar to Bethany in that the nuns did not embrace legal adoption after 1952. Before that time, many of the babies born in the home stayed until they were 7 or 8 when they were transferred to industrial schools. After 1952, many children were still boarded out or sent to industrial schools, despite the availability of waiting families who wanted to adopt children. An official report about Tuam and Bessboro from 2012 was suppressed but unearthed by Conall Ó Fátharta in the Irish Examiner. It revealed a suspicion that the nuns were faking deaths and illegally selling the babies abroad.
There have been several first-hand accounts from Tuam that surfaced after the Tuam 800 story in May 2014. Conditions were grim and the buildings were old and decrepit. Overall, Tuam easily qualifies as one of the worst Mother and Baby Homes. The home closed in 1961 and is included in the Inquiry into Mother and Baby Homes.
Fermoy Nurseries
The LGRs mention the ‘Nurseries’ in Fermoy, Co. Cork, in the late 1920s and early 1930s but practically nothing is known about exactly what type of institution it was or how it functioned. It is noteworthy that Kilrush Mother and Baby Home was also referred to as the ‘Nurseries’ but, other than mentions in the LGRs, nothing is known about the Fermoy Nurseries except that it was used to hold unaccompanied babies. It is unknown if it accommodated single mothers in another part of the building. Numbers are impossible to estimate.
The Regina Coeli Hostel
Frank Duff is one of the most interesting and in some ways the most radical individual in the story of Ireland’s treatment of single mothers and their babies. In him, the most vulnerable in Irish society had a rare champion who saved thousands of mothers and children from disaster.
Duff was born into a middle-class family and attended Blackrock College, a private school on the southside of Dublin. He joined the civil service in 1908 where he served with distinction until he left in 1934. Duff was a devout Catholic and genuine Christian in the charitable sense of the word. He firmly believed it was his duty as a Christian to actively help his fellow human beings. He was never an ‘armchair activist’ but a man of energy and action who devoted his life to the betterment of others. He was not without his flaws and could be deeply stubborn. In later life, he lost his hearing and when arguing would state his position and then pointedly turn off his hearing-aid. Duff was a velvet radical at a time when very few people dared to oppose the official policies of the Catholic Church.
Duff founded the Legion of Mary in 1921 as a lay Catholic organisation, and membership involved meeting up and saying prayers before going out to visit the most marginalised and forgotten in society. His legionnaires visited people who were sick, lonely and desperate alongside providing support for juvenile offenders and former prisoners whom they assisted in rebuilding their lives. The Legion is currently the largest international organisation ever founded in Ireland and boasts an astounding four million active members and another ten million auxiliary members around the world.
As discussed earlier, the north and south Dublin Unions merged in 1918 and the northside workhouse was closed and abandoned for a while. It was situated in north-inner-city Dublin just south of what is now the Broadstone bus depot. During the War of Independence, the British government managed to find a single solution to two of its problems, just as they had rid themselves of countless tens of thousands of orphans and bastards to the frontiers of the Empire, to conveniently populate it with white Christian ‘stock’. Now it found itself overrun with First World War veterans who were suffering from shellshock (an early term for post-traumatic stress disorder), and a strange assortment of warmongers who simply missed the violence and military life. Ragtag former soldiers were recruited into an ill-disciplined army force and shipped off to Ireland. They proceeded to drink heavily, run amuck and terrorise the countryside by taking pot-shots at men, women and children working in the fields. The ‘Black and Tans’ as they were known, because of their uniforms, which consisted of military surplus, took possession of the former northside workhouse and used it as their headquarters and barracks. After the Treaty, the Black and Tans withdrew and once again the old workhouse was left derelict.
Enter Frank Duff. He persuaded the authorities to give him part of the workhouse as accommodation for homeless men and it opened in 1927 as the ‘Morning Star’ hostel. The narrow road leading up to the entrance was renamed ‘Morning Star Avenue’ and Duff later moved his mother into a house beside the hostel which had been the residence of the workhouse doctors.
On 5 October 1930, a segregated section of the former workhouse was opened for women and named Regina Coeli. At this time, around 70% of institutionalised single mothers were still in workhouses around the country and the rest were in Mother and Baby Homes. Duff’s hostel was opened as a counterpart to the adjoining Morning Star but while the first women who entered the hostel were homeless, word quickly spread that Regina would admit single pregnant girls and single mothers with children. While Britain saw several organisations founded in the twenty years from 1900 to 1920 to represent and assist single mothers, Ireland would have to wait another fifty years before ‘Cherish’ was founded by single mothers to lobby for official recognition and support. Yet in 1930, when practically no one would defend single mothers for fear of being labelled a supporter of sin, here was a devout Catholic, famously obedient to the Church, opening a hostel that admitted single mothers and supported them in keeping and rearing their babies. Regina very quickly became a hostel exclusively for single mothers. It remains a testament to the depth of Duff’s compassion that it housed and supported single mothers and illegitimate children when the rest of society disowned them and imprisoned them in institutions.
The buildings of the old North Union Workhouse were dilapidated and damp when Duff took possession. The women and their children slept in the large dormitories without any privacy and an open turf fire burned for most of the day as the only source of heat and cooking facilities. It was at times overrun with vermin and lice; bed-bugs and illness were rampant. But, for all its failings, it was the only refuge in Ireland for single mothers and was a place where they were treated with respect and dignity by the volunteer staff. It was an oasis in a country that despised single mothers and their ‘bastards’ and Duff was a saviour and saint to the residents of Regina.
The hostel was chronically underfunded from the start and the buildings were in need of constant maintenance but they muddled through. It was run by ‘indoor sisters’, voluntary members of the Legion of Mary who opted to live in the hostel for room and board. They were called ‘Sister’ by the residents, although they were not nuns or qualified nurses. The residents had to pay a nominal sum to stay but Regina would accept bottles or jam jars if a deposit could be redeemed. Duff and the staff did their best to brighten