Fifteen-year-old Eileen disappeared on a quiet Sunday evening in February 1954. She was at work when it happened. Eileen was a maid at a bed-and-breakfast in a large Georgian townhouse in inner-city Dublin, where she remade the crumpled beds, bundled the laundry into bags, ready to be collected, and smoothed the white linens across the breakfast tables. Each week she was paid ten shillings, and she lived in the small maid’s quarters located in the attic of the B&B. This was not just a handy living arrangement but a necessary one. Dublin was not Eileen’s hometown; she had arrived in the capital the year before as a runaway, escaping a life that she could not bear.Article continues after advertisement
Eileen was born in 1939 at a Mother and Baby Home. These Homes were clandestine institutions run by Catholic nuns, places for women and girls who had had sex outside marriage, and found themselves pregnant, which was a catastrophic social taboo. Ideally, after the baby was born, the mother would leave them behind. She then returned to her normal life carrying her private shame, but with her social standing intact. The nuns then took it upon themselves to make arrangements for the illegitimate child.
