Mother and Baby Homes: Women who gave birth expected to do 'the decent thing and disappear'

Limerick survivor Ann O'Gorman has tried for many years to trace her daughter Evelyn. Picture: Brendan Gleeson

The institutions examined by the Mother and Baby Home Commission had little to do with informal adoptions before legal adoption was introduced in 1953, the report has found.

Investigators found little evidence of mothers trying to get their children back after they “surrendered” them for adoption, while the evidence they did find appears to have centred around the reclamation of children who were old enough to work.