The legacy of silence - Ireland's magdalene laundries and mother & baby homes
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How does the new film "The Lost Children of Tuam" bring attention to the Tuam Mother & Baby Home?
Now, big night tonight for Catherine Corliss. A new film based on her campaigning work on Tomb, Mother and Baby Home has its red carpet premiere in Dublin. The film The Lost Children of Tomb, which goes on general release next week, has Liam Neeson as one of its producers and will undoubtedly highlight once again what happened in residential homes and institutions. to discuss the wider societal legacy of the mother and baby homes in more detail. I'm joined now by sociologist Louise Brannigan, author of The Fallen, The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland's Legacy of Silence. Louise, good morning to you.
Morning, David. How are you?
Very well, thanks. Now, this new film, The Lost Children of Tum, is the latest in a number of films and movies and novels and documentaries that we've had about this issue. Do works of art like that help us to contextualise what actually went on?
And so I'm going to give the worst kind of academic answer, which is yes, of course, and no, not fully. Yes, in that, you know, that this film arrives at the most important moment. You know, the excavations, the excavations are ongoing at Tuam. So it's going to draw attention to that.
Why do artistic works like films and documentaries matter for understanding historic abuses?
And we can't lose attention to that. But also at the same time, people are campaigning to have the same treatment down in Bessborough, as well as other mother and baby institutions. So it brings, it has a kind of political purchase. And of course, that film's not a historical film. It's a story about one ordinary person who did an ordinary thing and went and found what was there to be known that these children had been dumped and buried. I guess the... The no element of that is my own concern and my own interest. It's not so much in who is to blame, but is how do we sort of understand how this happened? What are the social, cultural, political conditions that allow these horrors to persist, but also to seem plausible to people, to seem ordinary, to seem necessary and an acceptable thing to do when someone became pregnant outside of marriage?
And in that way, I haven't really seen anything historical that's pushed into that direction. But I think the artworks, the movies, documentaries, there's been so much incredible stuff. And artists have had to work really hard with survivors to keep this history in the news.
Yeah, I mean, before we talk about the wider issue, just can we focus in on Catherine Cordes for a moment? Because what she did was pretty extraordinary in terms of highlighting an issue, in terms of herself digging into it. digging into what went on and exploring the records and finding out all that information.
What motivated Catherine Corless to investigate the Tuam burial records?
And it wasn't popular with a lot of people.
No, no. And I think the thing that's also about Catherine's story that I find so moving is that her own sense in her own family, that there was some fog of shame that her mother had carried and that she had wanted to understand that. And that led her out to this bigger cultural story, this bigger historical story about Tiumin finding the absence of birth records and the absence of absence of death records and burial sites. But yeah, she's an ordinary person who did something extraordinary, except the thing I find so remarkable about it is she went to an archive. She asked for the materials they gave them, but she also knew to identify what was missing. Why were there no burials? And then, of course, she wrote her first piece on it and got nothing.
And as so many people and ordinary people have been forced to do, then had to turn to the media, then had to try and get more attention for this. The thing about this is, of course, this is not a historical film. This is work that was done 10 years ago. And yet it's taken all of that time for this exhumation to have happened. You know, I think Alison O'Reilly, the journalist who broke that story with her, wrote, I thought when I broke the story, this would have happened immediately. It took a decade.
It's, I mean, obviously, looking at the work that the team is doing there, it is extremely complicated and difficult archaeological work, isn't
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How does the new film "The Lost Children of Tuam" bring attention to the Tuam Mother & Baby Home?
0:00–1:11
2
Why do artistic works like films and documentaries matter for understanding historic abuses?
1:11–2:33
3
What motivated Catherine Corless to investigate the Tuam burial records?
2:33–3:54
4
How did the Tuam exhumation process unfold and why did it take a decade?
3:54–5:37
5
What is the broader legacy of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and mother‑baby institutions?
5:37–6:33
6
Why does the silence around these institutions persist and how can candor break it?
6:33–7:47
7
How did personal experiences, like being born in Bessborough, shape the guest’s perspective?
7:47–8:50
8
What role should lawyers, historians, and artists play in the public conversation about these histories?
8:50–11:04