Bessborough was Ireland's most notorious Mother & Baby Home. From 1922 to 1998 almost 20,000 women and children passed through its doors. In the first book of its kind, historian Michael Dwyer takes us inside Bessborough. Using an array of historical sources, Dwyer pieces together the relationship between the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts who ran the home, the local authorities who paid them to maintain women and children there and the state departments who oversaw its operation. Dwyer charts Bessborough's 76 year history and addresses the many controversies surrounding the Mother & Baby Home from vaccine trials to the extraordinarily high infant death rate and the mystery which still surrounds the location of over 800 infant remains.

Vols. - include the Shorthorn Society's Grading register for beef Shorthorn cattle; v. - include the society's Herd book of poll shorthorns.

'I read Bessborough in one sitting, veering from fury to devastation within a matter of pages. A vitally important book.' Louise O'Neill 'A powerfully important book that demands to be read' Irish Examiner For over seventy years, Bessborough House, a grand country mansion on the outskirts of Cork city, operated as one of Ireland's biggest mother and baby institutions. Women and girls who walked up its stone steps were warned never to reveal their true identities and gave birth to babies they would not be allowed to keep. In Bessborough: Three Women. Three Decades. Three Stories of Courage, a trio of remarkable women confined there in the 60s, 70s and 80s, tell their truths. Their vivid accounts take us right inside the walls of the secretive institution and give us a deep insight into how their experiences impacted their lives afterwards. The result is a stark portrait of a system that split families apart -- and a moving account of love, loss and reconnection.