Further research required to uncover mother-and-baby past

MOTHER-AND-BABY home researchers say more time could yield further details about occupants' experience of Coleraine's Welfare Hostel.

A 550-page Stromont-commissioned report, published last week, found that 10,500 unmarried pregnant women went through church and local authority-run institutions.

Most of the report concentrates on eight or nine homes and Magdalene Laundries when entrants were subjected to harsh and humiliating treatment.

It touches only very briefly on ‘welfare hostels’ in Belfast and Coleraine which were the new name given to workhouse facilities in the early 1900s.

*Full story in this week's Chronicle*