How I discovered the missing children that Ireland tried to forget

For more than a decade Catherine Corless defied ridicule and disbelief in her search for the shocking truth of what happened at Tuam's mother and baby home

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Tuam, the largest town in County Galway, has two cathedrals – one Catholic, the other Protestant – which gives it the distinction of being a city. For more than a century it has boasted three primary schools and four post-primary schools, all under the custodianship of the archbishop and tutored by religious orders. A holy city. A great industrial town. But what was never said was that Tuam had a darker side.

I grew up on a farm about three miles away and knew nothing of the mother and baby home nearby. I had only a vague memory of a batch of gaunt, desolate children being herded into the classroom at school, always a little later than the rest of us, and always let out before home time. We were instructed by the nuns not to mix with those children, told that they carried disease. They did not continue into the higher classes and were soon forgotten.

But 50 years later, when I was asked by the local historical society to contribute a chapter for its 2012 edition, those children flashed before me. It was through talking to elderly residents in the town - some willing to talk, others not so - that I found out about the home.