The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home operated between 1925 and 1961 in the town of Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children. The Home was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order of Catholic nuns. Unmarried pregnant women were sent to the Home to give birth.
In 2012, the Health Service Executive raised concerns that up to 1,000 children had been sent from the Home, for the purpose of illegal adoptions in the United States, without their mothers' consent.
In 2017 the Home was investigated and excavations carried out found a significant quantity of human remains, aged from 35 foetal weeks to two to three years, interred in old septic tank. Carbon dating confirmed that the remains date from the time the home was operated by the Bon Secours order. No burial records exist for 796 Taum children.
The mothers were required to stay inside the Home for one year, doing unpaid work for the nuns, as reimbursement for some of the services rendered. They were separated from their children, who remained separately in the Home, raised by nuns, until they could be adopted – often without consent.
Some women who had had two confinements were sent directly to nearby Magdalene laundries after giving birth, as punishment for their perceived "recidivism”.