When Thomas Garavan was 12 he found out that his mother had a sister he never knew about. Over the following years, he was to discover that there were five other aunts and uncles whom he’d never heard about, all of whom along with his mother had been committed to Tuam Mother and Baby home when they were toddlers. The UCC academic set about tracing all of them and opening them up to the reality that they had siblings and extended families that they never knew about in a society where children committed to institutions grew up as second class citizens. Professor Thomas Garavan is this week’s guest on the podcast.

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