A house full of secrets, lies... and mass burials
BRIDGET Dolan was 26 years old and eight months pregnant when she first entered the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in 1946.
She gave birth to a boy, John, who died the following year on June 11, 1947. His death certificate described him as a ‘congenital idiot’, despite being born a healthy baby.
Tragically, Bridget found herself back in the Home three years later when she again found herself pregnant with no-one to turn to.
After giving birth to her second son, William, Bridget left the home and went to work for the Bon Secours nuns who gave her a job in their hospital in Glasnevin in Dublin.
It was at a dance hall in the city that she met her future husband, 50-year-old bachelor Bill Corrigan, who himself had been incarcerated in Glin and Kilkenny industrial homes and had worked hard all his life as a truck driver. The couple courted for a number of months before they got engaged and married. Their only daughter Anna was born in 1956.
Looking through their wedding photos in late 2017, Anna realised that not a single member of her mother’s family attended the wedding. Despite everything Bridget had been through, it seemed her family were not willing to be by her side on the happiest day of her life.
Bill and Bridget had found comfort in each other after they had kept the secrets of their respective missing families from their friends. Bill’s own sister Mary Mollie had been sent to an industrial school in Loughrea, Co. Galway, after their mother Annie Corrigan died from TB.
Mary Mollie died from pneumonia in 1918 but Anna has never been able to locate her grave.