Stolen tells the story of how women who had the misfortune to fall pregnant ‘out of wedlock’ were treated in an Ireland dominated by the Catholic Church. Between 1922 and 1998 over 80,000 unmarried mothers were incarcerated in Irish church-run mother and baby homes. Most were cruelly separated from their babies after birth, their children adopted in Ireland and abroad, rendered untraceable and unaware of their birth story. Other children were fostered out as cheap farm labour. 9,000 infants died in these institutions in these years, a rate that, on occasion, was five times the national average. Survivors reveal the shocking details of their treatment in a scandal that sparked a government inquiry into their fate. In this moving, wholly authoritative work Margo Harkin has produced a definitive account of this shameful history.

Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn.