My Name is Bridget: The Untold Story of Bridget Dolan and The Tuam Mothers and Baby Home

by Alison O'Reilly

Overview

In 1946, twenty-six-year-old Bridget Dolan walked up to the front door of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Alone and pregnant. Bridget gave birth to a boy, John, who died at the home less than two years later. Her second child was once again delivered into the care of the nuns and was taken from her. She would go on to marry a wonderful man and have a daughter Anna Corrigan, but it was only after Bridget's death that Anna discovered she had two brothers her mother had never spoken about. Anna became compelled to try and uncover any information she could about her baby brothers. What followed was the revelation that the remains of 796 babies were buried on the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Anna was left to wonder, were her brothers among them? Here, with Alison O'Reilly, she pieces together the mystery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780717180424
Publisher:	Gill Books
Publication date:	01/08/2019
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Moment of Truth 1

1 The Path to Home 18

2 The Place of Shame 27

3 Life and Death 36

4 The Stories behind the Headlines 47

5 Haunted by What Was Left Behind 62

6 The Mystery of Tuam's Lost Babies 78

7 Forwards, but Never Forgetting 103

8 Dirty Old Town 118

9 Kicking Down Doors 136

10 Chasing the Truth 157

11 The Right to Rest in Peace 178

12 Resistance and Persistence 199

13 Snapshots of Stolen Lives 218

Epilogue: Living with the Past 259

Postscript, February 2018 271

Appendix: Death Records - Tuam Mother and Baby Home 280

Editorial Reviews

12/03/2018
Journalist O’Reilly’s uneven first book recounts the heartbreaking treatment of unwed mothers and their babies in 20th-century Ireland and of the efforts to make this information public. In 2014, news broke of a mass grave of 796 young children in an unused septic tank in Tuam, County Galway. The remains were linked to St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, operated by Catholic nuns from 1925 to 1961. The Catholic Church, which ran most of the country’s medical institutions, including the baby homes, considered unwed mothers and their children sinful and unworthy of humane care; children at St. Mary’s often died from neglect. O’Reilly focuses on Bridget Dolan, who was 26 when she became pregnant in 1946 and was sent away by her doctor and priest to deliver and give up her infant, and other women like her, whose stories are included to show the scope of this scandal. The second half of the book loses energy as O’Reilly turns to Anna Corrigan, Bridget’s daughter from a later marriage, and her efforts to learn what happened to her mother and brothers while they were at Tuam (her mother never spoke of it to her; it’s unclear whether her brothers died or were illegally adopted, and whether, if dead, their bodies were among those in the septic tank). Narrating Corrigan’s investigation after recounting the investigation’s findings deflates the narrative tension, yet the story remains a sobering account of widespread malfeasance, abuse, and mistreatment. Illus. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly