Lorraine Grimes, "Single Mothers in Twentieth-century Ireland and Britain: Pregnancy, Migration and Institutionalization" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Lorraine Grimes
Episode: Single Mothers in Twentieth-century Ireland and Britain: Pregnancy, Migration and Institutionalization (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Date: March 4, 2026

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Overview

This episode explores Dr. Lorraine Grimes’ groundbreaking book examining the experiences of single mothers in 20th-century Ireland and Britain. Using oral histories, archival research, and institutional records, Grimes now presents a nuanced account of how Irish women navigated stigma, migration, and institutionalization due to unplanned pregnancy. The conversation delves into migration drivers, institutional systems, adoption practices, the role of fathers, evolving social attitudes, and the enduring legacies of institutionalization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Motivation for the Book

• Personal and Scholarly Drive:
  • Dr. Grimes began her research in 2016, motivated by understanding what happened to the many Irish women who traveled to Britain while pregnant due to intense social stigma at home ([03:01]).
• Emphasis on Women’s Voices:
  • Central goal: “Make sure that women's stories were central to the research” ([03:45]).
  • Used oral histories with women, their children, institutional staff, and midwives.

2. Sources & Methodological Challenges

• Access Barriers:
  • Major challenge accessing Irish institutional archives due to government restrictions ([05:44]).
  • Easier but still complex to access UK records; relied on welfare organization records, county council documents, and some institutional case notes.
  • Compiled 67 case studies spanning the 1920s–1970s for a robust sample.

3. Why Did Women Migrate?

• Key Drivers:
  • Overwhelming local shame and the influence of the Catholic Church ([09:32]).
  • Lack of employment and economic opportunities provided “cover” for emigration.
  • “...many felt that by kind of using employment as an excuse of a reason to emigrate, they could kind of conceal the pregnancy, hide it” ([10:44]).
• State Response:
  • The Irish state and Church downplayed pregnancies as the reason for migration, insisting women became pregnant after leaving ([09:32]).

4. Perceptions & Institutional Responses

• Organizational Awareness:
  • General Irish public was unaware or silent on the migration due to pregnancy; welfare organizations and the Church were continually in correspondence ([13:01]).
  • Rising costs to British taxpayer and church organizations led to repatriation efforts.

5. The Repatriation Scheme (Deportation of Single Mothers)

• Details:
  • Organized “voluntary” return of Irish single mothers from UK institutions to Irish ones, running from the 1930s to the late 1970s ([13:55]).
  • Coercive in practice: “...being pushed into cars or being told that you must legally leave the country. In some cases they left with their babies. In other cases they left without their children...” ([14:49]).
  • Women unaware that repatriation was officially voluntary; strong pressure exerted.

6. Institutionalization: Ireland vs. Britain

• Irish System:
  • Inherited 19th-century workhouses, followed by county homes, then specialized mother and baby homes ([16:40]).
  • Catholic-run, state-funded. Standard stay was 2 years post-birth; shorter (for a fee) in some cases ([21:43]).
  • “...women entered prior to giving birth...without any doctor present or medical care...no pain relief...worked within the institution...” ([22:18])
• British System:
  • Greater diversity in institutions by type, denomination, and provision.
  • Shorter stays (~6 months), more freedom of movement, less overt religious ethos ([24:10]).
  • Women often moved between institutions of different denominations as needed. Adoptions and care sometimes provided by both Catholic and Protestant institutions.

7. Institutional Conditions

• In Ireland:
  • Reports of emotional and physical abuse, hard labor, denial of proper medical care.
  • “...quite harsh places...emotional abuse, in some cases, physical abuse, and then, of course, not having proper medical attention throughout their pregnancy and childbirth...” ([23:18])
• In Britain:
  • Still hard, but less rigid; sometimes emotionally abusive or punitive if mothers insisted on keeping their child.
  • Notable quote:
    • “She said that from the first day she entered the institution, she said that she was keeping her baby...she was segregated from the rest of the women in the institution because they said that she would be a bad influence...” ([25:14])

8. Adoption Practices

• Ireland:
  • No legal adoption until 1952; pre-1952, adoptions arranged privately by institutions ([27:34]).
  • Social anonymity and avoiding institutionalization drove migration more than legal adoption per se.
• Britain:
  • Legal adoption from 1926; mothers required to consent and sign adoption forms twice (birth and 6 weeks later) ([29:00]).
  • Irish mothers sometimes only signed the first, complicating or delaying formal adoptions; courts sometimes intervened.

9. Outcomes: Returning Home, Secrecy, and the Children

• Return vs. Permanence:
  • Some women stayed in the UK, unable or unwilling to face their local communities ([31:31]).
  • Others returned, often keeping the experience secret for decades.
  • DNA and ancestry research have recently led to long-hidden family links being uncovered, with profound personal ramifications:
    • “...with DNA and ancestry and that whole era now that's, that started, we're finding more and more families are finding people who they didn't know existed...” ([32:36])
• Individual Variance:
  • “Every story is different, you know, and every family is affected...in a different way.” ([33:12])

10. The (Missing) Fathers

• Role and Perceptions:
  • Welfare organizations in the UK tracked paternity and tried to establish affiliation orders (child support), unlike Ireland where this was rare ([34:42]).
  • “On the UK side, they were particularly concerned with the fathers. In Ireland. Less so.” ([37:10])

11. Social Change over the 20th Century

• Britain:
  • Declining institutionalization post-World War II, the Beveridge Report, and gradual welfare policy improvements ([38:03]).
  • 1960s social change, rising empathy and support for single mothers.
  • “...after the Second World War...there is declining numbers in the institutions...and with the women's movement, I think it really begins to change...” ([38:03])
• Ireland:
  • Institutionalization persisted much longer (Magdalene Laundries until 1996).
  • 1970s: Introduction of unmarried mother’s allowance, founding of support group Cherish.
  • More women able to keep and support their children as economic opportunities grew.

12. Continuing Legacies

• Present-Day Parallels:
  • Housing crisis: majority of Ireland’s homeless are single mother families ([41:07]).
  • “The really sad thing is that some of the institutions that were former mother and baby institutions are now being used as emergency accommodation...” ([41:40])
• Ongoing Injustice:
  • Governmental inquiry into mother and baby homes (2021) criticized for sidelining survivor testimony; restrictive redress scheme ([42:50]).
  • “Many people are still feeling unheard in this space and still don’t feel like there’s justice and there’s still I think a long way to go.” ([43:47])

13. Grimes’ Current Work and Activism

• Current Efforts:
  • Remains active organizing survivor events and campaigning with groups such as Flowers for Magdalene’s in Galway ([44:27]).
  • Also works on issues of reproductive healthcare access and domestic violence.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Women’s Voices as Central:
  • “The one thing I wanted to do from the very start was to make sure that women's stories were central to the research.” — Lorraine Grimes ([03:29])
• Institutional Trauma:
  • “They talk about having to scrub floors, quite physically demanding work, long hours...not having proper medical attention throughout their pregnancy and childbirth as well.” — Lorraine Grimes ([23:00])
• On Secrecy and Legacy:
  • “...the heavy, heavy weight of keeping that secret. And I suppose, yeah, the child having been put up for adoption, their secret was kept intact but it was extremely, extremely difficult...” — Lorraine Grimes ([31:55])
• Policy Failures:
  • “Survivors voices were not central to that research. There was hundreds of survivors who came forward, gave their testimony, and then their testimony was not considered as evidence in the final report, which was extremely disappointing.” — Lorraine Grimes ([42:50])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Book Origins, Methods & Challenges: [03:01]–[08:55]
• Why Women Migrated: [09:32]–[12:32]
• Organizational Perceptions & Repatriation: [13:01]–[16:15]
• Institutionalization in Ireland & Britain: [16:40]–[25:14]
• Adoption Practices and Complications: [27:34]–[31:15]
• Long-term Outcomes: [31:31]–[34:13]
• Role of Fathers: [34:42]–[37:36]
• Decline of Institutionalization & Social Change: [38:03]–[41:01]
• Continuing Legacies: [41:07]–[44:20]
• Grimes’ Ongoing Work: [44:27]–[45:25]

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Conclusion

Dr. Lorraine Grimes’ research breaks silences around the lived realities of Irish single mothers in the 20th century, tracing structural, social, and personal complexities—and highlighting unfinished business in the reckoning with Ireland and Britain’s institutional pasts. This episode offers a rich, empathetic exploration of histories that continue to shape individuals and societies today.

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Transcript

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[C]

welcome to the New Books Network.

[B]

Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Lorraine Grimes about her book titled Single Mothers in 20th Century Ireland and Britain, Pregnancy, Migration and Institutionalization, published by Bloomsbury in 2025. Now, this book takes as its subject the many women in Ireland who travelled to Britain when they were pregnant and their local communities were not going to be particularly welcoming or supportive about it to figure out kind of what happened to them. And yes, there were somewhat more options for these women in Britain, but it's not like it was a magical land of unicorns and happiness and wonders and support. It was a very specific sort of environment that these women ended up in. Obviously we're talking about, you know, especially places like London, Liverpool, Birmingham or Glasgow. And this is a topic that obviously has been looked at a lot in terms of Irish history of what happened to these sorts of women in these kinds of situations in Ireland, not necessarily so much in Britain. And this Book kind of helps us understand all sorts of things, right. What those journeys were like. What happened to the women once they were in Britain? Did they go home? What were their own recollections of this? What about the children? Like, it brings together all loads of different things for us to discuss. So, Lorraine, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast to tell us about it.

[C]

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

[B]

Could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?

[C]

Yeah, so this book stems from PhD research that I started in 2016, which is hard to believe that it's 10 years ago now, but really I set out, I suppose, asking the question of, well, we know that so many Irish women, when they experienced an unplanned pregnancy in Ireland, were faced with so much shame and stigma in their local community, entered mother and baby institutions in many cases, but also many. We had this very long history of migration to the UK and back. And I suppose I started with the question of so many women must have emigrated during pregnancy and went over to England and I wonder what happened to them. And I wonder what, I suppose what happened to them. What those journeys were like and. Yeah, what the outcomes were. So I suppose I started off with a kind of a really broad question and sort of just snowballed from there. But the one thing I wanted to do from the very start was to make sure that women's stories were central to the research. So I took a kind of a case study approach to the thesis. And I suppose the book does a little bit too. But the book, I suppose, is really a lot more rich in terms of the oral histories that I interviews that I carried out. So with, with women who entered institutions or who traveled over to the uk, with people who worked within those institutions, with a midwife and nuns, and I wanted to kind of include as many as I could. And I suppose I was really kind of broad in terms of my approach of, you know, who I wanted to speak to. So it included children of these single mothers and those who managed to trace their parents, those who are still searching for their parents. So it stems a kind of a very broad range, but is kind of looking at this overall picture of kind of what happened to women following unplanned pregnancy and migration to Britain.

[B]

Yeah, a lot of really important questions there to lay the foundation for our discussion. And obviously you've mentioned a little bit already in terms of kind of what sources and methods you've brought to answering this in terms of oral history. But can you tell us more about sort of, sort of sources for this and some of the challenges of answering these questions?

[C]

Yeah, I always say that my follow up book will be actually on that exact question of finding sources for this book, because it really has been a whole story in itself. So from the start, as I said, I really wanted to do oral history interviews. And I think the book really comes to life when we hear from those who experienced, who experienced institutionalization and all of these things for themselves. But to accompany that, I do have a lot of archival research. And I mean, access to archives was a major, major challenge throughout the journey of this research. So here in Ireland we had a governmental inquiry into the mother and baby institutions and they published their, their final report in 2021. Now I did not have access to any of that research or, sorry, any of that documentation because of the inquiry. All of the documents were seized. But access to institutional records in Ireland is extremely, extremely difficult. So on the Irish side, I was quite limited. Now on the UK side of things, it was, I will say, somewhat easier, but also not without its challenges. So it really depended on kind of the institution and it depended on, it depended on where the archive was held. So I got access to some county council records which were very helpful. And basically I focused on the welfare organizations that were set up at the time to assist not specifically unmarried mothers, as they were called at the time, but some of them were, and some were set up as kind of organizations to assist women more generally. And I started looking at the organizations and seeing can I find within these organizational records, like minutes of meetings and that kind of thing, to see if can I find any women within, within those circles. And I did, I actually did. And so I kind of went a roundabout way of getting access to, to case studies. And then as I say, I did get access to a small amount of institutional records which did include some, some case notes from, from I suppose, caseworkers at the time, as they were called. And so I really have a quite a mix of archival material within the book, I'd say. But about 67 case cases are found within that mix of records. So it gives a good, a good snapshot of, of what the experiences were like over, over the 20th century. So from the 1920s to kind of the end of the 1970s.

[B]

Okay, yeah, that's definitely helpful to give us a sense of the kind of multiple scales you're operating at.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Talking to individuals, looking at the county level, looking kind of at the levels of government above that, looking at organizations, there's a whole bunch of different kinds of sources that help us get this picture. So let's get into then some of those questions you raised in the beginning. So the obvious one is, if we're looking at migration, why did women from Ireland choose to migrate to Britain from the 1920s onwards? Like, why were they doing it? How many are we talking about? What's our sort of starting foundation of causes and numbers?

[C]

Yeah, so I suppose just to say I start the research in the 1920s and the reason for that is the foundation of the Free State in Ireland in 1922. But that's not to say that immigration started at that point. I'm sure it was. It went, you know, spans well beyond the 1970s and prior to the 1920s. But I suppose I was conscious that throughout the 20th century in particular, there was a lot of shame and stigma associated with unmarried motherhood in Ireland. And I suppose in the foundation of the Free State in Ireland, the Catholic Church was recognized, was given kind of a special recognition within the Irish Constitution 1937, and were very strong at community level and at kind of that national level as well. And I suppose I was kind of. I wanted to look at the. The reasons why, but also the supports. So at kind of, at a kind of a national level, the Irish government said that they were concerned about the number of Irish unmarried mothers, as they were called, leaving the country, entering, entering Britain. And they said they were very concerned that they were becoming pregnant in Britain rather than they were leaving because they were pregnant in Ireland. So it's quite interesting. Their argument was that they were not leaving because they were pregnant. They were leaving and then becoming pregnant in England. But we know that this kind of. There was a lot of hysteria around high migration from Ireland to Britain in the early years of the Free State. And this was a cause of concern. This was due to the lack of employment in the country, the lack of industry, and I suppose again, just around that kind of shame and stigma at community level. And I'm sure many felt that by kind of using employment as an excuse of a reason to emigrate, they could kind of conceal the pregnancy, hide it. And. And in some cases, women did put their children up for adoption and come back and come back home and had never told family and friends. And it's only in later years with DNA and that. Yeah. That these family members are being uncovered that were unknown of before. So, yeah, it's kind of opened up a whole. A whole new kind of chapter for many families in Ireland anyway.

[B]

Yeah, that really gives a sense of just how intense the shaming would be, if that's kind of the decision that women were being driven to. Can you tell us more about how this migration was perceived by sort of particular organizations? So, obviously you mentioned the Church earlier also talked about welfare organizations or other institutions. Like, was it sort of. No one talked about this or was it that people were talking. Those organizations were talking about it, but in particular ways. What did that look like?

[C]

I would say that the general public were not aware or did not talk about the levels of migration because of pregnancy. But within the welfare organizations and within the Church itself, there was communication. And I found letters of communication between organizations and between. Between bishops, priests and church officials that they were quite concerned with. On the UK side, they were quite concerned with the number of Irish, you know, single mothers entering institutions in England. And they had written to the Taoiseach, so the Irish Prime Minister, to say that they were concerned with these numbers and that they were, you know, relying on British taxpayers money and, you know, the Catholic Church in England to sort of fund these Women's Day and institutions. And they requested money from him towards the. Towards the stay. What kind of resulted from these discussions? And there was much correspondence over and back about the, you know, the cost to these organizations. And what resulted in that was the organization of what they called a repatriation scheme. Now, the repatriation scheme was essentially organized deportation of Irish single mothers from institutions in the UK back to institutions in Ireland. And this ran from the 1930s until the end of the 1970s. So when I came across this, I was particularly interested in this scheme because under legislation, you know, Irish single mothers had just as much the right as anyone to live and work and have children in the uk. But, yeah, this was an organised scheme that was targeted at returning those home. And speaking to some of the women who were repatriated, they spoke about not knowing their legal right to day, and they have described, you know, being pushed into cars or being told that you must legally leave the country. In some cases they left with their babies. In other cases they left without their children and left their children and institutions to be later adopted by families. And so, yeah, the question of consent around repatriation, I think, is. Is an important one. And although officially there was, it was to be a voluntary scheme. We know that from oral history interviews, that they definitely were unaware that it was voluntary. And Manny felt heavily pressured into returning back.

[B]

Yeah, that's definitely very important to keep in mind, especially given what you mentioned earlier in terms of prioritizing the voices of the women in all of this. Thinking then about kind of some of these institutions that the women are interacting with. Obviously one of the words in the subtitle of your book is institutionalization. So can we unpack a little bit about what that means and sort of how and why this developed first in Ireland?

[C]

Yeah, so I suppose institutions existed long before the 20th century in Ireland. So we had, I suppose, the workhouses of the 19th century, which were imposed under British imperialism. And so they existed, and many of the institutions were in those same buildings as the workhouses. So they were sort of a continuation of institutionalization in a way. But of course, the nature and the need for the institutionalization changed over time. And with the foundation of the Free State in Ireland, we had a continued scheme of these workhouses. They became county homes, and many single mothers entered county homes. And then we had the formation of mother and baby institutions. And they were particular institutions for single mothers. And the reason for this was that the government at the foundation of the Free State, they asked religious congregations to find, to sort of establish institutions particularly for single mothers and their children, because they were, I suppose, taking up space in the county homes, and the county homes were not particularly for single mother. So they wanted an institution that was particularly for them. So it kind of stemmed from that. Prior to the workhouses, then you had the foundling hospitals the century before. And so these were around the UK and Ireland as well. So we follow a similar kind of pattern of maybe following the institutions that were in the uk. But I suppose Ireland's history of institutionalization spans much longer. And the last institutions in Ireland, the Magdalene Laundries, the last one closed in 1996. So while we have the same or similar institutions, we ran them for much longer and the conditions tended to be much harsher as well.

[B]

Hmm, okay. That's definitely helpful to get a sense of what's happening in Ireland. Are these the same sorts of institutions that single mothers from Ireland entered when they went into Britain?

[C]

Yeah, so when they, when they went to Britain, I, I suppose naively thought that many of them, because they were Catholic, would have only entered Catholic institutions because the Catholic Church was so strong in Ireland. And then I found that actually Irish women and Irish Catholic women, they entered Protestant institutions, they entered all sorts of institutions. So in the UK you have, you have a similar setup to Ireland where there was institutions run by the local authorities, and then you had religious run institutions as well. And so they really, I suppose, are quite different in terms of the standards across the institutions, in terms of their policies. Around the length of stay or, you know, the cost to enter. So there's kind of more of a variety. And Irish women entered institutions and I suppose they, in some instances I could see that women might enter one institution for a certain length of time, then enter another institution of a completely different religious congregation or sector, and then enter a different type of institution again. So they use them to their advantage too, because, I mean, women needed a place to stay. These institutions were a service that they could use. And so they weren't necessarily concerned with their religious affiliation. They, they needed a place to stay. And you can see that when it came to adoption as well, many Catholic women or, you know, likewise Protestant women use Catholic organizations, vice versa. So they're not necessarily concerned with the religious affiliation. They're more concerned with, with the well being of the child and their own wellbeing as well.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, that is interesting to see kind of more of a range going on than just sort of assuming Catholic equals Catholic. Can you give us more of a sense of kind of what these places were like? Like, for example, what sorts of care was or wasn't available? How much did this cost? Like what were the actual sort of options on the ground once the women got to Britain?

[C]

Yeah, it was very interesting to see the difference and I suppose the range of differences between, between the institutions in Ireland and across the UK and then throughout the decades as well. So I'll talk a bit about the institutions in Ireland first. And so in Ireland, these special mother and baby institutions that were specific to single mothers, they were funded by the government, they were run by Catholic religious congregations. And they did, I suppose they entered, women entered prior to giving birth. So they usually would have given birth in the institution without any doctor present or medical care and money described having to give birth without any form of pain relief and. Yeah, or any kind of medical attention, proper medical attention being given. And then the policy was to stay in that home for two years after giving birth. Now some women did manage to leave before that and you could pay to leave earlier than two years. But the general policy was that a woman stayed for two years in that home. Within that time she worked and she worked within the institution. So whether that be kind of attending to gardening or laundry, kind of a small work like that, and then her child stayed in that institution as well until it was put up for adoption. So that was, I suppose, the general policy. Now many women speak of how harsh the conditions were within the institutions. So although they were to attend to like a light kind of amount of housekeeping and that kind of thing. They talk about having to scrub floors quite physically demanding work long hours and. Yeah, and it being quite. Quite a cruel place to be. A lot of emotional abuse, in some cases, physical abuse, and then, of course, not having proper medical attention throughout their pregnancy and childbirth as well. So quite harsh places in the UK then, because you have a kind of a wider variety of institutions. They really do. You do have kind of a wider, I suppose, variety of the practices within those two. But in general, the women stayed a much shorter length of time. So women stayed about six months in the institutions, and there was kind of less focus on the religious ethos and, you know, repentance for your sin. That wasn't as heavily enforced, it seems, in the religious institutions in Ireland. So there tended to be a little bit more freedom to come and go from the institutions. So they could enter during their pregnancy. They could leave, give birth in hospital, come back, stay a couple of weeks, maybe go and stay with family, and then maybe come back again. So there tended to be a little bit more leniency around the length of stay in terms of the conditions within the institutions. Again, these really range as well. I spoke to many women who entered institutions across England, and they did speak of similar instances of, you know, emotional abuse. And I spoke to one woman who. She said that from the first day she entered the institution, she said that she was keeping her baby. Her baby was not gonna be put up for adoption. She was adamant that she was keeping her baby. And so she was segregated from the rest of the women in the institution because they said that she would be a bad influence on the rest of the women. So still quite harsh treatment within the institutions as well. But as we move, I suppose later and later into the 20th century, the institutions, they start to change because the numbers in the institutions become less and less smaller and smaller. And so actually, the focus on adoption, which is heavily focused on throughout most of the 20th century, coming into, I suppose, the 70s and then in the case of Ireland, into the 80s and 90s, there's less of a focus on having to put your baby up for adoption. And there is a little bit more talk around choice. So, yeah, overall, though, very harsh conditions within the institutions.

[B]

Yeah, no, definitely. And as you said, the pressure around adoption is a really big part of that. So let's talk in more detail about how that worked. So if a woman said, yes, I agree, or thought she didn't have a choice and had to agree, like what sorts of processes did and didn't exist for those children to then come be adopted. Like what happened after that moment of decision.

[C]

Yeah. So I'll talk a little bit about Ireland and how it was different to the uk And I'll speak a bit more to that. So in Ireland, we didn't have legal adoption. And I was quite interested to see if in the 20s were women migrating to England. Exactly. Because there was legal adoption in England at the time. I suppose I can say that I don't think it was necessarily a major reason why they emigrated. I think it was down to wanting anonymity and to try and avoid institutionalization in Ireland was more the case, but nonetheless interesting. So in Ireland, we had the 1952 Adoption Act. For the first time, it introduced legal adoption. That's not to say adoption didn't happen before that. It did. And it was organized, I suppose, through the institutions directly with adoption families. And so priests, nuns in the congregations would have arranged adoptions prior to legal adoption. So then in the UK it was quite different because they had legal adoption from 1926, and it was more regulated. And there was adoption societies and they. Yeah, I suppose there was adoptions organized within the institutions as well. Like, they would arrange for them to be adopted from the institutions, but the mother had to sign for consent for the adoption, and then she had to sign again six weeks later. Now, when it came to Irish women in the institutions, many of them didn't stay for six weeks. It might have been quite costly to stay for that length of time. And some of them might have given birth, signed the first adoption papers straight after the birth and then returned home. And therefore the second set of papers that's supposed to be signed six weeks later may have went unsigned. So from oral history interviews, I know that in these cases, these had to be brought before the courts. And in some cases, the adoption did go ahead. Judge had to rule in that instance that it either would or it wouldn't. But we know that some adoptions did go ahead despite these unsigned papers, but it left some children kind of in a. In a limbo situation where the mother had returned and they had no way of contacting the mother. And so it sort of delays that adoption process for them. But in some cases, some women believed that they had signed the adoption papers and therefore the adoption was done, not realizing that they needed to come back six weeks later and sign release forms. So that made things quite complicated for the Irish population in particular.

[B]

Yeah. What happened sort of further on from this? Like, did the mothers go back to Ireland? What happened to the children? I mean, you've kind of hinted at it earlier in terms of people not finding out in some cases for decades. But what did the sort of longer term implications and outcomes of this look like?

[C]

Yeah, and I mean, in some cases women stayed in the UK and they went on to work there and build their lives there. And you know, having spoken to some women, they said they felt like they could never return to Ireland and face their local community because some of them might have known that they left because they were pregnant at the time and finding it quite difficult to sort of come back and face close family and friends. For others. Yeah, some, some women spoke about saying that they were going to England for work or to do a course, you know, some kind of training, going over to the uk, giving birth and then, and then coming back. And they spoke of the difficulty of, you know, keeping that secret and the heavy, heavy weight of, of keeping that secret. And I suppose, yeah, the child having been put up for adoption, you know, their, their secret was kept intact, but it was extremely, extremely difficult to, to, to sort of face family and friends and everyone, again, who, who didn't actually know. And yeah, as I alluded to earlier, there has been kind of in the last couple of years, I suppose, with the, with DNA and ancestry and that whole era now that's, that started, we're finding more and more families are finding people who they didn't know existed. So that has major repercussions for families. And I mean, in some cases, you know, the children are finding their, their extended families for the first time and this is what they've been searching for all their lives. Other cases they're discovering that their parents are not who they thought their parents were. And it can be really difficult. So yeah, so it affects everyone very differently. And you know, it, you know, it depends on, I suppose each situation is so unique and I'm always struck by, no matter who I speak to, every story is different, you know, and every family is affected by this in a different way. So yeah, just each story and how unique it is. It's just something that always strikes me.

[B]

One thing I've noticed in our conversations, even with the differences between each family as you've very correctly highlighted, we've talked about some big institutions, right. Obviously the church, really big deal in Ireland, and wealth organizations and women and their families and the children, we have not once mentioned the fathers. So were they important or relevant at all to any of this?

[C]

Yeah, it's really funny because when I was doing my research, that was a question that I said I really want to include them. I really want to include them from the start. And what was very interesting, and what I was not expecting was when I looked through archival records on the UK side, the welfare organizations were quite concerned about who the father was, whether he was Irish or British or of another nationality. And they were quite concerned where conception took place, whether it was in Ireland or it was in the uk. And they sort of. You asked women these questions and therefore would they could be sent repatriated, as I said, sent back to institutions in Ireland based on these answers. So it's interesting that the welfare organizations themselves were quite interested with the fathers. And one kind of difference between Ireland and the UK as well is the welfare organizations in the UK were I suppose, better at supporting women to go for affiliation orders through the courts. So this was to get a maintenance payment towards the upkeep of their child and sort of to have the father pay maintenance and to kind of have this paternal relationship. In Ireland, there was definitely less of a focus on this. So there was legislation for affiliation orders, but the number of cases that actually were brought to court and the number of successful cases were extremely small. And then as it kind of went throughout the 20th century, we see kind of more and more emphasis of, you know, the father, you know, should be involved. And I suppose there was. There was more of an emphasis of kind of trying to, I suppose, get the couple to marry or to stay together more so than there was at the start of the century. So it starts to change, you know, when our interpretation of one parent families, I suppose as the century moves on, begins to change as well, particularly in the UK from the 60s with the women's movement, we see a kind of a distinct change around then. But it was quite interesting that on the UK side they were particularly concerned with the fathers in Ireland. Less so.

[B]

Yeah, I found that really interesting in reading the book. So thank you for telling us a bit about it here. If we're talking then about changes sort of over the course of the century, then you've mentioned the women's movement and what that did to the kind of interest in the role of fathers. When and why do we see institutionalization as a quote, unquote solution for these unmarried mothers? When do we see that declining in Britain and Ireland and for what reason?

[C]

Yeah, Britain, it starts to decline much earlier. And I mean, even after the Second World War with the beverage Report and the introduction of, I suppose, social welfare and Social Security, there's more of a, I think, understanding or maybe empathy towards single parents, although they weren't included as a particular cohort to, you know, there wasn't an unmarried mothers allowance introduced until much, much later. I think there, there is declining numbers in the institutions, we can see that for sure. And after, you know, during the Second World War, some of the institutions were rebranded or repurposed and some of them indeed were hit, were struck and you know, the building no longer stood. So actually we see a decline in the number even after the Second World War of women entering the institutions and being supported by extended family. And I suppose maybe a kind of a change in how, in the perception of single motherhood and with the women's movement, I think it really begins to change as well. You know, we see the introduction of an unmarried mother's allowance for the first time. And when I spoke to women who became pregnant in kind of the 1970s, they said to me that they could see that, you know, their colleagues in work were men and they had families and they were able to support their families on their salary. So you know, why they. And the big push at the time was for equal pay for equal work. And so some of those women who did manage to work in kind of, I suppose those higher paying jobs were able to continue to work and, and you know, keep their children for, you know, what was essentially the first time a large number of them were able to do that. And so I think from the 70s really it begins to change. In Ireland we had the, the introduction of unmarried mothers allowance in the 1970s as well. And that group that was set up, the first group for Irish or sorry for unmarried mothers, Cherish, still runs today and supports one parent families in Ireland today. So it's quite interesting that that work continues.

[B]

Yeah. Speaking of things that continue, what are some of the other legacies of all of this that we still have?

[C]

Yeah, I see in Ireland today like we are experiencing a huge housing crisis at the moment. And the majority of homeless people in Ireland are actually one parent families who are mostly, you know, single mothers with children. And I think the lack of accommodation is, it's a huge issue that we still have not solved. So although we don't have institutions per se, we still have this massive lack of housing and proper support for one parent families. And the really sad thing is that some of the institutions that were former mother and baby institutions are now being used as emergency, emergency accommodation at the moment. So I suppose it really is a continuation of more or less the same. So that's one of the things that kind of continues. And I mean we still have institutions to a sense of like we have direct provision centres they're called in Ireland. Here I pass institutions that are for those seeking asylum. We know the conditions within these institutions are extremely harsh and they are communal living. They're supposed to be on an emergency basis. But we know that people live in these places for up to seven years while a wait now comes. So it's. Yeah, there's many aspects of this that unfortunately still continue. And then as I say, kind of the ongoing search for family members as well is something that is still continuing. And I suppose coming up to sort of more recent legislation around redress and the, I suppose the governmental inquiry that we had in Ireland as well, I suppose the legacy of that. Many people were very, very disappointed after that report came out, first of all because survivors voices were not central to that research. There was hundreds of survivors who came forward, gave their testimony and then their testimony was not considered as evidence in the final report, which was extremely disappointing. And then I suppose from that the access to institutional records is still extremely difficult. And then the redress scheme that was set up for survivors has been such a small amount and not only that the criteria is extremely restrictive. And so yeah, so I think many people are still feeling unheard in this space and still don't feel like there's justice and there's still I think a long way to go.

[B]

And is this something you're continuing to work on or do you have any current or upcoming work you'd like to give us a sneak preview of?

[C]

Yeah, so I am still kind of an activist in the space on this. I'm actually organizing an event in Galway this coming weekend and I'm in a group called Flowers for Magdalene's in Galway here. So I'm still very much kind of in touch with survivors and continuing to work in this space. My own day to day work unfortunately is not related to this area of research any longer but I have kind of worked in follow up areas around kind of access to reproductive health care and I've worked on research around domestic violence in Ireland. So I suppose in areas of, of justice and you know, and women's rights, but just in, in different areas.

[B]

Well, it certainly does sound like there's quite a lot to continue with on this topic. So anyone who wants to learn more can of course read the book that you wr that we've been discussing titled single mothers in 20th century Ireland and Britain. Pregnancy, Migration and Institutionalization, published by Bloomsbury in 2025. Lorraine, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[C]

Thank you so much, Miranda it's been great.