New Books Network Lorraine Grimes, "Single Mothers in Twentieth-century Ireland and Britain: Pregnancy, Migration and Institutionalization" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Mar 4, 2026
Lorraine Grimes, historian and author of Single Mothers in Twentieth-century Ireland and Britain, studies migration and institutionalisation of unmarried mothers. She discusses why women fled to Britain, the variety of institutions they encountered, differences in care and legal practices, and the lasting legacies of stigma, repatriation and attempts at redress.
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Organized Repatriation Pressured Women Home
- British welfare bodies tracked Irish single mothers and pressured repatriation to shift financial burden back to Ireland.
- A formal repatriation scheme (1930s–1970s) returned women—sometimes without children—often under heavy pressure despite legal residency rights.
Irish Institutions Were Longer and Harsher
- Institutional continuity: Irish workhouses evolved into county homes and mother-and-baby institutions run by Catholic congregations, with harsher, longer stays than many UK counterparts.
- Some Irish institutions retained punitive labour and two-year post-birth residency expectations until late in the century.
Women Prioritized Shelter Over Denomination
- Irish women in Britain accessed a wider variety of institutions regardless of denomination, choosing places of safety over religious alignment.
- Women sometimes moved between institutions of different religious or public sectors to meet needs like anonymity or shorter stays.
