When Maria Cahill was six weeks old, she and her mother were repatriated from Britain to stay in one of Ireland's secretive mother-and-baby homes. They were part of a programme in which thousands of unmarried women were repatriated over four decades.
Philomena Cahill was 19 when she gave birth to Maria in Hendon in 1954.While she was in the city, she met Maria's father.In recent times Fiona has largely taken over the process of letter-writing and making requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
The next record in the sequence is from the ledger book at Castlepollard "mother-and-baby home" in County Westmeath - where Philomena and Maria arrived in May 1954.Philomena spent two years there - which, at the time, was the standard period for the so-called "moral rehabilitation" of unmarried mothers who were labelled as "first offenders".
Since what is now the Republic of Ireland became independent from the UK in 1922, Irish emigrants to Britain have had almost all the rights of British citizens - including residence, healthcare and social security. In Ireland, the Catholic Church feared that children born to Irish women in England would be lost to the faith.
For example, in 1967 the researcher Mary Frances Creegan recorded a case involving a woman who had moved to England at the age of eight - but was sent back to Ireland when she became pregnant years later. For instance - a welfare organisation in Liverpool docks reported contact with 1,947 pregnant Irish women from 1926-1930.There are recorded instances of women being sent to Ireland from various other places - including Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and Portsmouth.Dr Grimes said: "There were informal, underground arrangements - through priests, through parents - that didn't feature in any official records.
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