Susan, John, Martin and Alan Redmond. Barbara, Roger, Sharon, Judith. Ciara and Jamie; Jake, Jodie and Caleb; Mark, Amie and Laureen. And I nearly forgot Gemma and Shannon and Shane. All the Redmonds, Darcys, Finns, Sinnotts, Whittys, Curtises and Fortunes scattered around the world. For Dolly Costello, and all the family and remembering Willie Costello (RIP). Hi to all the Merciers and thanks to Paul and Mel for all the encourgagement and advice!
Friends: Peter ‘Circut 3’ Fitzpatrick and all the Fitzpatricks, Pat ‘Pappie’ Donovan, Neil Michael, Mary O’Donovan, Antonella Brusco, Ruairí O’Dwyer, and a special Hey! Hey! to Liam, Tatjana and Felix Bodenhamski!
The entire Castlepollard group – thanks to all of you for your love and support over the years brothers and sisters particularly: especially Geraldine Cronin, Ruth Noonan, Paul, Jenny from Wexford, Michelle from Wexford!, Chris Finnegan, Mary Creighton, Mary Borg, Kim Fleming and Mary W., Bernie McG, Mary ‘Bookie’ Kenny, Mike Byrne, Una O’Neill-D’Arcy, Ken and Marion Matthews, the heroic Ray Loftus and his brilliant crib mate Mal K. Gerry Russel, Rosie Rogers, playwright Jacqueline Nolan, Joseph Ennis, Michelle and Liam and Philip Burke, the very special Rita Kelty and the wonderful Christy, my special twinnie Ann Harrington and all the ’64 babes. Geraldine McArdle, Mary O’Donovan, Ciaran Adams, Susan Flanagan, Marita Maher Ryan, Carmel Ziemann, Declan Kelly, Jackie Keegan, Stephen Quinn, Theresa Carroll, David Cretzan, Marie McGee, Noreen Briddigkeit Quinn, Mary Joyce, James Dowd, David Rogers, Ann F. Boukater, Margot McG, John Hegarty, Mary Mulligan, Mono Monaghan, Nancy Polka, Anne Larrigan, Irene McGuire, John Ginty, Jennifer Hayden, Mary Nasri, Fiona Crosbie, Peter Shelton, Lily Bracken, Rosaleen Toher-Ginty and Mickey (RIP), Kateleen Tuite, Fidelma Mullen, Maeve Hackett, Jenny Leavy, Mary Butt, Maureen Nelson McGovern, Manon McGinty, Marion Hoban, Jimmy Malone, Michael Fitzpatrick, Kelley Blaylock, Bert Versey.
A special shout to the ’67 party girls, Princess Miriam Barry, Edel Morrison, Laureen Murphy-Shaw. Our Banished brothers and sisters: Ann Biggs, Kevin Di Palma, Frank Uccelini, Patrick Wolfe, Mike and Mary Kay Daniel (best hugs ever!!), Mary Beth Cronin Ferrini and family, Patricia Zuclich-Ford, Winnie (RIP), Judi VanBuskirk, Michael Terence Murphy, Marge Skinner, Kathleen Kampmann Taché, Maureen Collins Giordano, Maureen Dillon-Bowers, Mary Murry-Alexander, Linda Boyd-McCullough, John R. Hoge, Erin McCormack-Staats, Tom Ferstle, and Jimmy and Charmaine Walsh (welcome home, guys!). And everyone else in the group.
The Coalition of Mother And Baby home Survivors (CMABS): the incredable Derek Leinster, the fabulous Clodagh Malone, the fighting Theresa Hiney Tinggal, and all our friends: the wonderful Rosemary Adazer and sticky bun Margeret McGuckin! Carol Linster, Nancy Saur, Colleen Anderson, Joyce McSharry, Victor Stephenson (RIP), Dr. Niall Meehan.
Wider community: the wonderful Therese Nolan, Finbarr O’Regan, Christopher Kirwan, Karl O’Kelly, Anthony Kelly, Ruth ‘shoes and strong coffee now!, Mercy B. River, Linda Dublin and Maria Keating-Dumbell, Adrian McKenna and the fabulous Maria Teresa Mullen.
To Maureen Sullivan, hero of the Magdalene Laundries and a special shout out to Rose O’Brien Harrington and her Aunt Ester who spent 70 years in a Magdalene Laundry and all the Magdalene Ladies.
All the industrial school survivors and their supporters, Jack C., Robert Artane, Oliver Whelan, Séan A., Rob Nortall, John Deegan and Sean Boswell.
Supportive people and organisations: Michael Nugent, Ashling O’Brien, Jane Donnelly, Milana Milasaukaite-Kearns, Philip Garland and Audrey Muddiman. Best wishes to our northern brothers and sisters still fighting for justice. A very special thank you to everyone at the the Public Interest Law Alliance.
Media: Tanya Gold, Sharon Lawless and all at Flawless Films, Conall Ó Fátharta, Joe Little and crew, Claire Scott, Steven O’Gorman and Alison O’Reilly.
Political: A very very special shout to the totally awesome Clare Daly TD and brilliant Rhona McCord. Also Mary Lou McDonald TD, Robert Troy TD, Gerry Adams TD, Colm Keavney TD and Anne Rabbit TD and Billy Kelleher TD and everyone in all the offices.
The international crew: Martha Shideler, Warren Musselman, Gwen Berndt Soldelius, Princess Julia Freebourne, Clayton and Jes, and all the Adoption Voices crew especially Caroline D’Agostino, Kate Mitchell, and the ever generous Jacqui Haycroft, June Hamilton, Lisa Floyd (x), Maggie Watanabe, Cat Henderson, Lesley Pearse, Maggie Smith, Julie Kelly from Anti Adoption; Mary Macaskill Cannon, and Lizzy Howard and btw, you’re all mad bastards, just like me lol. A very special thanks to Georgiana ‘perfect timing’ Macavie and Valerie Andrews and all the international Origins crew. Huge shout out for the Vance Twins, Jenette and Janine, you rock!! Arun Doyle (Against Child Trafficking), Rolie Post and all the hardcore activists around the world.
A massive thanks to my literary agent, Jonathan Williams and all at Merrion Press: Conor Graham, Fiona Dunne, Myles McCionnaith, Dermott Barrett, Eileen O’Neill, and Peter O’Connell of Peter O’Connell Media.
Sincere apologies if I missed anyone. There are just so many decent and wonderful people in my life.
10% of all author royalties will be donated to good causes.
Foreword
As Ireland gears up for yet another national debate about women’s reproductive rights with the 8th Amendment referendum, Paul Redmond’s The Adoption Machine is a timely reminder of how women and girls who ‘got into trouble’ were dealt with in the early years of the new state, up to the end of the last century.
This book is a personal story and a crusade, one of the first and clearest accounts of conditions in the misnamed Mother and Baby Homes, a cruel mix of Victorian and Catholic morality, institutions which he describes ‘were generally a cross between a maternity hospital with no doctors or nurses and a low-to-medium prison’.
This was the worst manifestation of the repression of women, the collusion of Church and State to restrict reproductive rights. Fear of women’s sexuality created an entrenchment and an over-reaction that led to intrusive levels of supervision on a parish basis into the lives of young women and men.
Irish women, especially those from the working classes and rural poor, who became pregnant outside of marriage during the greater part of the twentieth century, were considered a great shame; they were castigated as sinners, shunned, tainted and ultimately cornered. Removed from their families and communities and hidden behind the grey walls of ‘Mother and Baby Homes’ to give birth in secret. They were completely isolated and helpless when their children were taken from them. This book documents how initially the children were neglected and starved and often died in alarming numbers while nobody noticed or cared. Later the potential for the religious orders to earn enormous sums of money from adopting out the children, often illegally, became a thriving industry with babies delivered to Catholic couples from Ireland, Britain and the United States.
The relentless journeys of natural mothers and their children to deal with the scars of that separation are brutally and yet sensitively told in this contemporary account. This is a lived and living history, of lives still unfolding and quests still incomplete – all the more powerful because you know that this is now.
This is the biggest scandal of Independent Ireland, the biggest cover-up, the bitter result of Church and State collusion, and yet there is very little said about it in the national narrative. Often confused with the Magdalene Laundries, which specifically didn’t take pregnant girls, the Mother and Baby Homes never made the headlines until Catherine Corless made her claims of 800 dead babies in Tuam, ultimately forcing a commission of investigation which is presently ongoing.
Paul Redmond was instrumental in the campaign to secure that investigation. Born in Castlepollard Mother and Baby Home in the 1960s, Paul’s personal story is interwoven with the history of Castlepollard and all the Homes. His personal journey was one made all the
