Social History of Medicine Vol. 19, No. 2 pp.

261–277

Managing Motherhood: Negotiating a Maternity

Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930 –1954
Lindsey Earner-Byrne*

Summary. There has been a considerable body of research into maternal and child welfare in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Britain and western Europe. The emphasis has been predomi-
nantly on the role of fertility decline, war and the emergence of social medicine. This article examines
Ireland in relation to these demographic, social and medical trends. It concentrates on the develop-
ment of maternity and child welfare services in Dublin between 1930 and 1954. The Irish demo-
graphic profile, and specifically high levels of infant mortality, resulted in a preoccupation on the
infant and a campaign to counteract gastro-enteritis. This led to a restructuring of health services
both locally and nationally. It is argued here that the relations between the Irish state and the
Roman Catholic hierarchy were crucial to the development of maternity and child services. The
role of religious competition, and latterly sectarianism, is also revealed as having been a central
ingredient in the development of social services for Irish women and children. Tensions concerning
religious control, the domain and limits of charity and the spectre of state control all played a role
in the shift towards the development of a comprehensive maternity service in modern Ireland.
Keywords: maternal and child welfare; mortality; ante-natal; gastro-enteritis; Roman Catholic
Church; Archbishop John Charles McQuaid; Saint John’s Ambulance Brigade; Catholic Social
Service Conference; mother-and-child controversy

In western Europe, social services for mothers developed as part of a general concern in
relation to population growth or decline and the recognition of an increasing need for
such provision, particularly in the wake of the huge losses suffered during the First
World War.1 In Great Britain, many initiatives in the area of maternal and child welfare
were motivated by a desire to replace soldiers’ lives with infant lives.2 Ireland’s population
had been in decline since the Great Famine in the mid-nineteenth century. Despite
nationalist convictions that political independence would reverse that trend, the 1936
census revealed that the decline continued.3 The Irish demographic malaise was princi-
pally caused by high mortality rates, high emigration, and a low marriage rate, rather

*School of History and Archives, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail: lindseyearner@
yahoo.com
1
Bock and Thane (eds) 1991; Porter 1999; Digby and Stewart (eds) 1998; Lewis 1981; Fildes et al. (eds)
1992; Dwork 1987.
2
Digby in Digby and Stewart (eds) 1998, p. 75.
3
Ireland’s demographic profile was one of a late marriage age with high fertility, high mortality and high
emigration rather than the western European norm of declining fertility. Cotts Watkins in Gillis, Tilly
and Levine (eds) 1992, p. 279; Walsh in Cosgrove (ed.) 1985, p. 133. The 1936 census caused consider-
able disquiet among contemporaries who began to fear that Ireland would follow the path of Britain,
Germany and France in terms of cumulative fertility decline. See Department of the Taoiseach, S9684a;
Census of Population 1939; Cousins 1999, p. 41.

& The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.
All rights reserved. DOI 10.1093/shm/hkl038
262 Lindsey Earner-Byrne

than fertility decline or the ravages of war. Throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, the
Department of Local Government and Public Health, voluntary organisations and the
medical profession advocated a policy of counteraction: a reduction of infant mortality
to offset a decline in population.4 The mother emerged as central to the issue of
family health. However, an analysis of the development of maternity services reveals
that motherhood was by no means the primary concern.5
This article analyses how the journey to establish comprehensive health and welfare
services for mothers and children involved vested interests in civil society, from lay and
religious activists to medical and political elites. The fate of voluntarism and charity, the
balance between morality and secular entitlement, and the interdependence and emer-
ging tensions between the Roman Catholic Church and the Irish state all featured in the
debates and controversies that surrounded maternity provision in Ireland.

Dublin: The Centre of Maternity Policy

At the beginning of the twentieth century Dublin city, the capital of Saorstát Éireann, had
one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country and was the most proactive in its
response. Much of the story of maternal health and welfare in Ireland came to be focused
on the capital as the site of the longest established tradition of maternal care. The city
possessed three maternity hospitals. The Rotunda Hospital (1745), the Coombe Hospital
(1823), and the National Maternity Hospital (1894), all worked in close co-operation with
Dublin Corporation and represented a forceful lobby for improved pre-natal care.6 By
1932, all three were running pre-natal clinics.7 These hospitals also referred needy
patients to relevant voluntary organisations in the city. Dublin was famous for its intricate
network of charitable organisations, which were crucial to the development of welfare
services.8 All these factors made the capital a centre of religious rivalry, controversy
and experiment and, from a historian’s perspective, a perfect window into the emergence
of welfare consciousness.
In 1932 the Irish infant mortality rate was 72 per 1,000 live births, while in Dublin the
rate was 100 per 1,000 births.9 Infant mortality demonstrated a reverse geographical
pattern to maternal mortality: Irish infants, particularly after the first month of life,
died more often in urban areas than rural.10 The Department of Local Government
and Public Health lamented that in urban districts ‘unemployment, bad housing, defec-
tive sanitary conveniences and indifferent scavenging arrangements’ were ‘attended
with baneful consequences on infant life’.11 A policy of health management during preg-
nancy was needed to reduce the deleterious impact of city life. It was no longer sufficient

4
Coey Bigger 1917. For an articulation of the counter-policy, see Department of the Taoiseach S9684a, NAI.
5
Hoggart noted the same in relation to initiatives in Britain. Hoggart in Digby and Stewart (eds) 1998,
p. 150.
6
By the mid-1940s, the three hospitals catered for 80 per cent of the city’s births. For histories of the three
hospitals, see Browne (ed.) 1995; Feeney n.d.; Farmar 1994.
7
Solomons 1932, p. 382.
8
Prunty 1998, p. 239.
9
Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1932 – 33, p. 54.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
 Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930–1954 263

that a birth be attended. It now had to be managed.12 The mother became pivotal to
infant survival. Thus her domestic conditions, diet and enlightened attitude to hygiene
were seen to be crucial to the campaign to protect infant life.13 In 1932 Dr Kerry
Reddin, who was in charge of the maternity and child welfare services for Dublin Corpor-
ation, noted:
Large numbers of babies die in the first month of life. Many of these deaths are
directly attributable to conditions in the expectant mother which can only be met
by intensive pre-natal work, propaganda and improvement of the midwifery
service.14
Although ante-natal supervision was considered potentially beneficial in reducing
maternal mortality and morbidity, it came increasingly to be considered more effective
in protecting the infant before and after birth than the mother. This was because
maternal mortality remained an obstinately substantial component of Irish mortality, irre-
spective of ante-natal supervision. As the Department of Local Government and Public
Health noted in 1934, despite improvements in many areas of general health, no ‘definite
advance has been made towards reducing maternal mortality’.15 The average maternal
mortality rate for the period 1922–31 was 4.75 per 1,000 births, and in 1936 the rate
was still 4.7 (Table 1).16
Impotence felt in the face of the ‘unyielding character’ of maternal mortality gave rise
to a greater focus on infant mortality.17 This coincided with a growing conviction that a
supervised pregnancy was the most effective weapon against infant mortality and child-
hood debility.
The ‘discovery of the fetus’ was not unique to Ireland: it reflected a European anxiety
concerning the quantity and quality of populations.18 In Ireland, as elsewhere, this
concern manifested itself in a focus on infant mortality.19 The mother received increased
attention once the connection between her health and well-being and her infant’s survi-
val had been established. The mother and child dyad that developed in the first part of the
twentieth century was part of a general conversion to the principles of preventive medi-
cine. Curative intervention had been confronted by its own limitations within the context
of widespread tuberculosis, venereal disease, puerperal sepsis, and gastro-enteritis. As
these diseases proved difficult to cure, the emphasis shifted to prevention.20 Pregnancy
and motherhood became linked to two infections, puerperal sepsis and gastro-enteritis.

12
Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1932– 33, p. 52.
13
Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1932 –33, p. 55; Collis and Sheehan
1942, pp. 31 –4; Collis and Minabbawy 1942, pp. 43– 5. Catholic Social Service Conference 1944.
14
Reddin 1932, p. 218.
15
Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1934– 5, p. 92.
16
Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1934 – 5, p. 92; Report of the Depart-
ment of Local Government and Public Health, 1936 –7, p. 71.
17
Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1927– 8, p. 41.
18
Shorter 1983, p. 164.
19
There were obviously other manifestations of this focus on population, such as eugenics. Never influential
in Ireland, eugenics emerged in Britain, France, Germany and America during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. See Jones 1992, pp. 80 –95.
20
Porter 1999, pp. 143 –4.
264 Lindsey Earner-Byrne

Table 1. Maternal mortality, 1923– 54

Year N Rate

1923 328 5.23

1924 330 5.21
1925 312 5.03
1926 329 5.38
1927 291 4.80
1928 318 5.37
1929 283 4.85
1930 294 5.04
1931 272 4.75
1932 280 4.98
1933 296 5.16
1934 304 5.25
1935 297 5.10
1936 299 5.14
1937 237 4.19
1938 267 4.69
1939 218 3.89
1940 227 4.01
1941 209 3.68
1942 163 2.86
1943 162 2.51
1944 176 2.69
1945 176 2.63
1946 163 2.39
1947 148 2.39
1948 124 1.88
1949 129 2.01
1950 99 1.56
1951 103 —
1952 92 1.42
1953 83 1.33
1954 69 1.1

Source: Compiled from summaries in Annual Reports of the

Registrar-General, 1922 –52, and Report of Vital Statistics,
1973, p. xxxv. See also Clear, C., in Doherty and Keogh (eds)
2003, p. 205.

Thus pregnancy became simultaneously associated with infant survival and infection
thereby placing it in the realm of preventive care. A clean and safe delivery would, it
was hoped, protect a mother from puerperal sepsis and possible death, thereby
improving her infant’s chances of survival.21 A carefully managed pregnancy would

21
The death of a mother was seen as a crucial factor in reducing an infant’s chances of survival. See Spring-
rice 1981 [1939], p. 19. Loudon notes that the belief that maternal mortality and infant mortality were
connected was firmly established by the 1920s. He provides compelling evidence that there is in fact no
 Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930–1954 265

leave a mother strong, well nourished and able to breastfeed her infant, thereby reducing
the risks of infant mortality. It was the latter aspect of protection that formed the main
plank in the strategy to reduce the infant death rate in Dublin.
In 1938 a survey of conditions in Dublin suggested that 60 per cent of mothers were
unable to breast-feed due to malnourishment.22 Public health officials were less con-
cerned about middle-class mothers who opted to bottle-feed their infants, because
these women were not making this decision as a result of malnutrition. Furthermore,
they could afford good quality milk, thus minimising the risks of gastro-enteritis for
their infants. However, the inability of a poor mother to nurse by the breast because
she was underfed involved issues of public health.23 The Medical Officer of Dublin had
also noted in 1938 the ‘supreme importance of breast-feeding, for which there is no ade-
quate substitute’.24 He concluded that children who were breastfed had a much better
survival rate than those fed by the bottle.25 Despite the anxiety regarding Dublin’s
infant mortality and increased understanding that maternal health was crucial in ensuring
survival, maternity and child welfare remained largely the preserve of voluntary groups
until a controversial mother-and-child-scheme was introduced in 1954.

Carving up Welfare: The Politics of Religion

The Notification of Birth Act, 1915, increased local authority reliance on voluntary services
by encouraging, but not obliging, them to provide or sponsor maternity and child welfare
services.26 The Women’s National Health Association (WNHA) and the Carnegie Trust
were the first to build on the opportunities that this legislation provided.27 The WNHA
began negotiations with Dublin Corporation following the 1915 act and secured the
first grant for its baby clubs in 1916. By 1932 there were twelve such clubs in the
city.28 The Carnegie Trust commissioned a study of maternal health in 1917 and
funded the establishment of a model childcare centre at Lord Edward’s Street in
Dublin. The Infant Aid Society, another non-denominational voluntary group, distributed
free milk to needy expectant or nursing mothers and took over the administration of the
Free Milk Scheme, inaugurated by the Fianna Fáil government in 1933. Finally, the Saint
John’s Ambulance Brigade ran three centres specifically for expectant mothers, where

definite correlation between the rate of maternal mortality and infant mortality. This is born out by
research in the Irish context where, if anything, rates of maternal and infant mortality demonstrated
an inverse relationship. Loudon 1992, p. 483. See Reports of the Department of Local Government
and Public Health, 1922 –1950.
22
Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1938– 1939, p. 37. Clear examines
the decline of breast-feeding in Ireland; Clear 2000, pp. 126– 43.
23
Loudon notes that the benefits of breastfeeding in combating infant mortality could ‘not be exagger-
ated’; Loudon 1992, p. 486.
24
Russell 1938, p. 55.
25
Ibid.
26
Cameron 1916, p. 202. See also Lawson 1919, pp. 479– 97. These financial provisions were only
extended to urban areas in Ireland.
27
The Women’s National Health Association (WNHA) 1907 was instrumental in raising public awareness
regarding tuberculosis, infant and maternal mortality and the impact of poverty on health. See WNHA
of Ireland 1957; Ó hÓgartaigh 2000, pp. 99– 103.
28
Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1931– 32, p. 56.
266 Lindsey Earner-Byrne

they were fed and clothed.29 None of these organisations were Roman Catholic, and
although Catholics worked in them and received help from them, they were not in a con-
trolling organisational position. Ironically, in view of future controversies, neither the
Roman Catholic Church nor the state sponsored the first initiatives in maternity services
in Dublin. From the foundation of any legally based maternity and child welfare service
(1915), voluntary contribution was either non-denominational or Protestant.
The only specifically Catholic input before 1941 was the National Maternity Hospital,
patronised by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. It was noted by contemporaries
in the medical profession that the Roman Catholic Church was almost wholly unrepre-
sented in charitable maternity and child welfare projects. This was in stark contrast to
their involvement in many other voluntary areas.30 Indeed, there were rumblings
within the Dublin diocese itself about the possibility of Catholic organisations losing
ground to other denominations. The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Edward Byrne, was
approached in early 1931 by members of his flock about the possibility of establishing
a Catholic congress to co-ordinate and promote Catholic projects.31 His reply was charac-
teristically wary: he considered such congresses ‘dangerous’.32 Archbishop Byrne was
particularly cautious with regard to lay Catholic organisations and offered little encour-
agement to bodies such as the Legion of Mary, which endeavoured, among other
things, to help unmarried mothers and their children. Byrne relied heavily on the
advice of Fr John Charles McQuaid who kept the Archbishop abreast of Protestant and
‘non-sectarian’ activity in relation to child welfare. McQuaid realised that, if the Catholic
church did not take its place in the charitable arena in relation to maternal and child
welfare, Protestant organisations would fill the vacuum. However, with an ailing arch-
bishop in command, he could do little more than recruit influential friends to help him
in his mission to protect the Catholic poor by safeguarding the supremacy of that
denomination in relation to family welfare.33
McQuaid succeeded Byrne as archbishop of Dublin in December 1940 and one of his
first creations was the Catholic Social Service Conference (CSSC).34 The CSSC, estab-
lished in 1941, was a federation of some 39 Catholic charities involved in social work
for Catholics not dissimilar in principle from the congress suggested by the Catholic
Truth Society in 1931. McQuaid was fully aware of the looming importance of welfare
and determined to oil the wheels of the Catholic welfare machine. He read widely on
developments in Britain and believed that if the Irish Catholic hierarchy were to maintain
its strong position and safeguard its flock it would have to play a central role in this area
and thus head off state encroachment. The most influential department of the CSSC was
the Maternity Department, later renamed the Pre- and Post-Natal Department. Its main

29
Saint John’s Ambulance Brigade is a non-denominational organisation; St John’s Ambulance Brigade
1950, p. 17.
30
MacSweeney 1940, p. 54.
31
Edward Byrne (1872 –1940) was Archbishop of Dublin from 1922 until his death in 1940.
32
Revd. P. Dunne to J. P. Flanagan of the Catholic Truth Society, 8 March 1931, Byrne papers, Box 4.
33
For much of the last decade of his life, he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. During this period,
McQuaid befriended men like Dr J. Stafford Johnson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbanus
(1942 –8). Sheehy 2003a, p. 168.
34
Purcell 1991; Sheehy 2003b, pp. 215– 20.
 Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930–1954 267

concern was with infant health: ‘The health of the newborn infant depends very much on
the mother’s condition, and this depends largely on a proper diet.’35 As a result, mothers
who attended the conference’s maternity centres were fed for the three months before
and after birth to ensure lactation.36 By 1943, the seventeen maternity centres of the
CSSC were feeding 500 mothers a day.37 At these centres nuns and lay workers
served food, and dieticians and doctors were invited to give talks on infant health and
other welfare topics.
McQuaid was eager to stake a Roman Catholic claim to maternal welfare, in particular,
and family welfare, in general.38 Like the Irish Medical Association (IMA), he believed that
whoever got the mother got the family. The protection of Catholic children meant the
protection of the next generation of souls and this was the prime motive behind much
of the social work McQuaid undertook during the 1940s and 1950s.39 From the
outset, he pitched his organisation against other ‘non-sectarian’ and ‘non-catholic’
agencies, deliberately placing his maternity kitchens in the same area as those of the
St John’s Ambulance Brigade, thus compelling Catholic mothers to choose CSSC services.
When the Brigade finally shut down one of its kitchens, McQuaid noted in an internal
memorandum that the brigade had been forced to ‘give way a little’.40 Mothers were
crucial to the Roman Catholic Church’s interpretation of family morality and, as such,
had to be protected from any suspect influence, state or charitable. This was even
more the case when that influence appeared under the guise of assistance. For
McQuaid charity had to run along denominational lines since charity and spiritual
welfare were opposite sides of the same coin.
This denominational dimension caused problems for both Protestant and Catholic
workers who had co-operated to protect Dublin’s mothers and children. Mrs Nora
Reddin, describing herself as a ‘catholic worker’, wrote to the Irish Times in 1943 to
express her dismay at the conference’s decision to open centres in areas where others
already existed. Referring to the closure of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade’s kitchen
on Merrion Square, she expressed concern that sectarianism might be the motivation
behind the CSSC’s geographic policy.41 But, for McQuaid, ignorance or anti-Catholicism
motivated any such reaction to the CSSC’s mission. In an address to his maternity depart-
ment in 1943 he explained:
I need not remind you that we have not wished to put out of existence any insti-
tutions or organisations, but this fact has not been understood and some persons
have looked and still look askance at us, but after all we in the CSSC are only enter-
ing into a sphere proper to ourselves, caring for our own poor.42

35
Handbook of the Catholic Social Services Conference 1945, p. 23, McQuaid papers.
36
St John’s Ambulance Brigade had initiated this feeding policy in 1925.
37
CSSC financial statement, 1 June –30 September 1943, p. 3. McQuaid papers.
38
McQuaid’s mother died in childbirth; Cooney 1999, p. 21.
39
Prunty noted that the battle for souls in the charity market descended into virtual sectarian warfare
during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Prunty 1998, p. 238.
40
This was noted in McQuaid’s handwriting on the minutes for the Meeting of the Executive Committee,
6 November 1943. McQuaid papers.
41
Irish Times, 28 December 1943.
268 Lindsey Earner-Byrne

Dublin Corporation proved unwilling to solve the problem. An internal memorandum to

the Department of Local Government and Public Health noted that any redistribution of
dining halls operated by the CSSC would not be possible. The archbishop had advised the
corporation that the policy of locating CSSC maternity centres so that they seemed to be
in conflict with St John’s Ambulance Brigade’s centres was deliberate. The CSSC would
not, therefore, co-operate with attempts at redistribution. The corporation noted: ‘The
whole difficulty is seemingly an insuperable religious one.’43 The corporation also
made the decision not to find an alternative use for the St John’s Ambulance Brigade
on the grounds that it ‘would not be acceptable to the Ecclesiastical Authorities’.44
This decision sent out a clear message that Catholic supremacy in terms of social services
was more important than increasing the supply of maternity centres for needy mothers.

The Role of the State: The Politics of Welfare and Health Care
The Second World War was experienced as a period of ‘emergency’ in Éire. Spared the
direct carnage of war, Éire faced a population drain primarily caused by increased tuber-
culosis, infant mortality and emigration.45 The ‘emergency’ highlighted the appalling
social conditions in which many Irish citizens lived. Gastro-enteritis, caused mainly by
poor hygiene and contaminated milk, reached epidemic proportions in the first few
years of the war.46 In 1943 the Department of Local Government and Public Health estab-
lished a committee of inquiry into the causes of high mortality. Dr F. C. Ward, the Parlia-
mentary Secretary of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, kept
Archbishop McQuaid abreast of the committee’s findings, informing him that the com-
mittee had confirmed an undeniable link between breast-feeding and infant mortality.
Breast-fed babies stood a much better chance of not contracting gastro-enteritis. Since
the infection was responsible for one-third of infant deaths in 1942, this was a significant
discovery.47 The committee acknowledged that ‘mothers who are ill-nourished cannot be
expected to feed their infants’ and recommended that ‘they should be advised both in
the pre-natal clinics and as part of their instruction in the breast-feeding of infants to
make full use of opportunities for free meals’.48 Evidently, kitchens were regarded as a
vital line of defence against maternal malnutrition and infant mortality.
The Minister for Local Government and Public Health, Séan MacEntee, was profoundly
affected not just by Ward’s research on gastro-enteritis but also by the Beveridge Report,
which extended the remit of the state in relation to welfare provision.49 As a result of

42
‘Transcript of an address by Archbishop McQuaid, at the Pre-Natal and Post-Natal Welfare meeting’,
9 June 1943. McQuaid papers.
43
Mr O’Nuaillain of the Public Health Section of Dublin Corporation, 14 June 1948. Department of Health.
44
Ibid. Emphasis in original text.
45
Daly 1997, p. 249.
46
Fitzgerald 1946b, p. 145.
47
Preliminary findings of the departmental committee on gastro-enteritis in Dublin, contained in Ward’s
letter to McQuaid, 9 June 1943. McQuaid papers, Department of Local Government and Public Health.
48
Ibid.
49
The political reaction to the Beveridge Report in Ireland was very cautious with many politicians expres-
sing the belief that any similar system in Ireland would violate Irish Catholic understandings of family
responsibility and the role of the state. See Dáil Éireann Debates, 23 November, 1943. Department of
the Taoiseach, ‘Social insurance and allied services, Beveridge Report, 1944 – 45’. However, it was
 Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930–1954 269

both those factors and his own concern regarding the population problem, MacEntee
decided that the Irish health services needed to be improved as a matter of urgency.50
A first step was the creation of a separate Ministry of Health. His announcement was
greeted with wry scepticism by a medical profession that had been advocating a separate
ministry since the foundation of the British Ministry of Health in 1919.51 In March 1944,
he informed the Cabinet that there was an urgent need to extend maternity and child
welfare services.52 The topic now emerged as a key benchmark of change in the
public health sector.
The obdurate problem of gastro-enteritis and infant mortality brought another signifi-
cant twist to the history of maternity services. In 1943, Dr James Deeny was appointed
Chief Medical Advisor to the Department of Local Government and Public Health.53
Deeny, a northerner not recruited from within the civil service, would ruffle feathers
and destabilise comfortable working arrangements between vested interests in Irish
society: the government, the medics and the religious hierarchy. The department
Deeny entered was reviewing a series of options on the future of the health services,
and its primary focus was on infectious disease and maternity and child welfare.54 In
the light of the increased incidence of infections such as tuberculosis, venereal disease
and gastro-enteritis, Deeny recommended that any new health department should
possess increased legal powers to control the spread of disease. In June 1944, Ward
drew up a new Public Health Bill to deal with the problem. By the end of the drafting
process, maternity and child welfare had been included. The association of pregnancy
and infant mortality with infectious disease encouraged the Department to take a
more interventionist approach than had been justified in the past. This extension of
maternity and child welfare services was logical. Indeed, when Deeny was developing
his plan he deliberately chose what he believed to be an innocuous title: ‘The
Mother-and-Child Scheme’. These simple words were to ring in the ears of politicians,
the medical profession and the Catholic hierarchy for years to come.
When the new Health Bill was published in 1945, three events delayed its passage: the
resignation of Ward, the creation of the new health department, and a change of govern-
ment.55 The bill was far-reaching in the degree of power it transferred to the state with
regard to compulsory school medical inspections, the detention of those suffering from
infectious disease, and maternity and child welfare.56 It elicited intense opposition in

noted in medical circles that the Report had led to a ‘rapid growth of interest in social medicine’. See Ryle
1948, p. 289.
50
MacEntee was influenced by demographic debates in other European countries, for example Sweden;
Department of the Taoiseach ‘Ireland Population Statistics’.
51
Anon., March 1944, pp. 28– 9; Cox 1919, pp. 638 –41.
52
Minister for Local Government and Public Health Memo: ‘Urgent problems relating to public health
which must be dealt with’, March 1944, Department of the Taoiseach.
53
Farmar (ed.) 1985, p. 8.
54
Department of the Taoiseach.
55
Ward resigned on 26 May 1946 due to minor tax irregularities. Fianna Fáil was defeated in the general
election of 1948; Whyte 1980, pp. 138 –54.
56
See a copy of the Health Bill of 1945. Part IV dealt with the control of infectious disease, the issue of
maternal health, and the inspection of school children was dealt with in the part XI miscellaneous
section; Department of the Taoiseach.
270 Lindsey Earner-Byrne

political, medical and religious circles. However, much of this anger centred on the control
of infectious disease. Opposition to the maternity and child welfare aspects of the bill
emerged more slowly. The IMA, alarmed by the statist thrust of the legislation, was con-
cerned about the fate of voluntary hospitals, and angered by a lack of consultation, and
by Ward’s criticism of the leaders of the organisation as ‘rabid politicians’.57 More con-
cerned with appeasing the Catholic hierarchy, Ward allayed McQuaid’s concerns regard-
ing compulsory school inspection and the issue of parental rights. However, the
Archbishop had no significant objection to the mother and child aspect of the bill at
this stage.58 The central arguments against the scheme were formulated between
1946 and 1947. By that time, politicians, the medical profession and the Catholic hierar-
chy had had time to tease out the implications of the 1945 bill, a process informed by
developments in the National Health Service in Britain and Northern Ireland.59 The prin-
ciple arguments centred on the threat posed to the medical profession, the sanctity of the
family and the moral fibre of the race.
The medical profession’s case against the scheme convincingly married the defence of its
professional integrity with a moral need for charity. It was claimed that both would be jeo-
pardised by a free health service for mothers and children.60 As one doctor noted, a state
that usurped a family’s responsibility to provide for itself ‘destroys, first of all, the family and
the dignity of those Professions whose privilege it is to serve it’.61 To him, it seemed that:
[T]he state in the name of progress or patriotism or public health or any other aspira-
tion of the national being, which fails to preserve and jealously guard the legitimate
rights of the family are in reality retrograde, leading in the direction of barbarism.62
By late 1947, this sentiment was shared by members of the IMA and mirrored in the hier-
archy’s objections.63 The Minister for Health, James Ryan, had pushed through with the
reorganisation of the health services.64 In August 1947, and despite opposition, the bill
was enacted. It incorporated a free universal mother and child scheme, covering children
up to 16.65 In October 1947, the Catholic hierarchy sent a statement to the government
outlining their reservations, stressing that the act was contrary to religious principles since
it allowed the state excessive powers in relation to family welfare and autonomy.66 The

57
Fitzgerald 1946a, p. 65.
58
Memo O’Súilleabháin to Taoiseach, 27 February 1946 regarding the meeting between Ward and
McQuaid on the 7 February 1946. Department of the Taoiseach. See also McQuaid to Ward, 5 March
1946. McQuaid papers, AB8/B/XVIII/14, DDA.
59
The NHS was introduced into Northern Ireland after ‘bad tempered argument’ in July 1948; Farmar 2004,
p.155.
60
Dr J. McPolin, who employed papal encyclicals to reinforce his argument against state medicine, was the
best-known example. He was not alone in expressing such extreme convictions. Barrington 1987, p. 181.
61
MacNamara 1946, p. 109.
62
Ibid.
63
The underlying fear of the IMA was the potential loss of fee-paying clients. Dr S. McCann (IMA) noted
during a meeting with Dr Noel Browne: ‘which ever doctor gets the mother and children almost invariably
gets the remainder of the family practice’. See ‘Note of IMA deputation to Minister of Health’, (24
October 1950), p. 4 in Department of the Taoiseach.
64
Dr James Ryan (1891 –1970), Minister for Health and Social Welfare from 1947 –8 and 1951– 4.
65
Health Bill, 1947, section 21, p. 12.
 Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930–1954 271

hierarchy was perturbed by the intention to educate mothers ‘in respect of mother-
hood’.67 They found this clause vague and alarming, not least since it entered the
moral sphere and provided a potential for education in birth control.68 Furthermore,
the act did not allow for free choice of doctor. This meant that a Catholic woman
could be forced to attend a Protestant doctor who dissented from the Catholic stance
on family planning.69 In response, the government stated that the new powers were
not absolute but subject to democratic approval and that there had been no change in
principle, merely an extension of existing policy and practice.70
A few days later Fianna Fáil was replaced by the first inter-party government. The new
Minister for Health, Dr Noël Browne, was young, inexperienced and an idealist. Browne
proved to be difficult to work with and was not fully supported either by his own party or
by the Cabinet.71 His task was not made easier by the fact that both the hierarchy and the
medical profession had become convinced that a battle must be fought to define the
boundaries of control and to stave off state intervention. A ‘formidable union of
scalpel and crozier’ was therefore forged to destroy the mother-and-child scheme.72
Maternal welfare became pivotal to ascertaining who controlled the development of
the Irish welfare state. The IMA, which had no desire to suffer the fate of its British
counterpart and become a state-salaried profession, launched a sustained campaign
against the scheme.73 Similarly, while McQuaid invoked his work in the CSSC as proof
of his commitment to maternal welfare, mothers were not his primary concern.74 The
Irish Catholic Church fought to maintain an established working relationship, according
to which the state sought to ‘supplement not supplant’ voluntary effort in the field of
social services and welfare provision.75 McQuaid viewed the mother-and-child scheme
as the battleground for an inevitable clash between church and state and one that
would establish the balance of power in relation to welfarism. He regarded conflict as
necessary and inevitable, and believed the defeat of the mother-and-child plan to be
vital. Browne, however, failed to push through the scheme, not because of the
medico-religious resistance to it, but because the government would not provide full
support for it and was happy to use religious and medical objections as an escape
route.76 J. A. Costello, the Taoiseach, or head of the Irish government, communicated
privately with McQuaid, allegedly describing Browne as an ‘embarrassment’.77 As a

66
Statement of the Irish hierarchy on the Health Act, 1947, p. 1; McQuaid papers. Also in Department of
the Taoiseach.
67
Statement of the Irish hierarchy on the Health Act, 1947, p. 2.
68
Barrington 1987, pp. 186 –7, 190.
69
However, prior to the enactment of the mother-and-child scheme in 1953, the poor did not have a choice
of doctor under the dispensary system.
70
Memorandum for the Taoiseach, sent to the hierarchy, 12 February 1948; McQuaid papers.
71
See Browne 1986, p. 162; Cooney 1999, pp. 252– 76; Desmond 2000, pp. 114 –34; Horgan 2000,
p. 104; Barrington 1987, p. 219; Whyte 1980, p. 205.
72
Jackson 1999, p. 310.
73
MacClancy 1944, p. 3.
74
McQuaid to Browne, 8 February 1951; McQuaid papers.
75
James Staunton, Bishop of Ferns, to Taoiseach, J. A. Costello, 10 October 1950; McQuaid papers.
76
The potential cost of the scheme was obviously a matter of serious concern and was one of the main
reasons for a lack of Cabinet support.
272 Lindsey Earner-Byrne

result of these meetings with Costello, McQuaid reported to the standing committee of
the Catholic hierarchy that Browne was the main obstacle to dropping the scheme.
Browne had evidently played into the hands of his enemies, but it is hard to imagine
how he could have succeeded in the context of the divided first inter-party government.
When Browne finally resigned in April 1951, in the face of medical and clerical opposi-
tion and flagging Cabinet support, McQuaid believed he had won the welfare war. He
confided to the Papal Nuncio:
That the clash should have come in this particular form and under this Government,
with Mr Costello at its head, is a very happy success for the Church. The decision of
the Government has thrown back Socialism and Communism for a very long time.
No Government, for years to come, unless it is frankly Communist, can afford to
disregard the moral teaching of the Bishops.78
The medical profession also argued that the mother-and-child scheme had been ‘largely
inspired by Socialist conceptions from England and from other sources tainted with
Marxian ideas, entirely alien to our traditions’.79
Despite McQuaid’s conviction, neither the scheme nor the controversy ended there. It
was precisely the publicity given to the issue that made it into a problem that had to be
resolved. Following Browne’s resignation he published his correspondence with the
Catholic hierarchy and allowed the Irish public to see the inner workings of religious
and political lobbying. In 1952, with Fianna Fáil back in government, political negotiations
restarted. A compromise was arrived at, but McQuaid viewed it as a defeat: in appearing
to concede in principle, the government had in fact only given way on detail.80 McQuaid’s
correspondence to the Papal Nuncio in both 1952 and 1956 revealed that he never
forgave Fianna Fáil for what he described as ‘the very noteworthy socialisation of our
country’.81 For the Archbishop of Dublin, the Health Act of 1953 was viewed not in
terms of possible benefits to mothers, but as the first ‘official move of anti-clericalism’.82
In terms of the history of the social services Eamonn McKee provides a perceptive analysis:
‘The mother-and-child controversy provided a rare though misleading glimpse of the con-
flicts born of social change.’83
Under the new health act, mothers in the poorest income bracket were entitled to a £4
maternity grant, free choice of doctor and a free maternity service for mother and baby
up to six weeks after birth.84 Although the scheme was never extended to women in the

77
McQuaid kept notes on the meetings of the standing committee in which he documented his contact
with the Taoiseach. McQuaid’s report for the standing committee of the hierarchy, 16 January 1951;
McQuaid papers.
78
McQuaid to His Excellency, the Most Reverend Ettore Felici, 15 April 1951; McQuaid papers. See also
Cooney 1999, p. 252.
79
O’Briain, August 1952, p. 228.
80
The compromise allowed for free maternal and child services for mothers and infants up to six weeks of
age. Women in the top income group could make use of the free scheme if they paid £1 per annum to
the health authorities; Barrington 1987, p. 229.
81
McQuaid to Most Reverend, Albert Levame, D. D., Apostolic Nuncio, 14 April 1956; McQuaid papers.
82
Ibid.
83
McKee 1986, p. 194.
84
Report of the Department of Health, 1953– 54, p. 21– 2.
 Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930–1954 273

upper-income group, lower and middle-income mothers could avail themselves of it.85
McQuaid’s maternity centres also continued to cater for the needy of inner city Dublin
and the new Dublin of Cabra and Crumlin into the 1970s.86 Despite the fear that volun-
tarism would disappear and charity would be replaced by the state, the government in
fact never provided sufficient services to eliminate the need for other forms of assistance.
Nevertheless, the new health services made medical care a right of citizenship. In particu-
lar, they made maternal and child welfare a prime focus of an emerging health culture.

Conclusion
During the first half of the twentieth century, the international preoccupation with state
power and population development led to an increased emphasis on motherhood as a
determining influence on national vitality and public health. The First World War had a
tremendous impact on the public health and welfare concerns of most western European
states. In Britain (and Ireland), France, and Germany separation allowances were intro-
duced for the wives of soldiers between 1914 and 1915. In Germany, the War Ministry
made child health a national priority in 1914, and the infant health movement blossomed
during the war. In France, the government granted separation allowances for mothers,
and established a Central Office of Maternal and Infant Assistance to encourage breast
feeding and foster child protection.
The First World War was also a catalyst in the formation of maternal feminism, as
women attempted to construct a female equivalent to the citizen-soldier paradigm:
the mother-citizen. In France, Germany, Italy and Norway, feminists declared motherhood
to be ‘a social function’.87 In inter-war Britain, Labour women campaigned for ‘state
endowment of motherhood’ and improved maternity services.88 Although most mater-
nity and child welfare initiatives in Britain were focused more on infant protection than
maternal welfare, the women’s lobby ensured parliament remained under constant
pressure to consider mothers’ needs.89 Many of these women’s groups in Britain and
France campaigned for the welfare of working mothers and their infants.90
For much of the twentieth century, Ireland had one of the lowest rates of married
women who were active in the workforce. France, for example, shared Catholic creden-
tials, but crucial cultural differences, a much higher proportion of working women and
the influence of Catholic employers in instituting welfare programmes led to programmes
to protect working mothers and their children.91 Thus maternity leave, breast-feeding
breaks and state subsidy of child-care were all measures that were designed to encourage

85
The 1953 Health Act was superseded by the 1970 Health Act. Eligibility for maternity services was
means-tested until 1991, when eligibility was extended to include all women; See Kennedy 2002, p. 68.
86
McQuaid papers.
87
Bock and Thane 1991, p. 8; Kovan and Michel 1990, pp. 1076 –1108; Pedersen 1989, pp. 86 –118;
Digby in Digby and Stewart 1998, pp. 67– 90; Lewis in Digby and Stewart 1998, pp. 208– 28.
88
Thane in Bock and Thane (eds) 1991, pp. 208 –28; Lewis in Bock and Thane (eds) 1991, pp. 74 –89.
89
Lewis 1981, pp. 35 –9.
90
Lewis in Bock and Thane (eds) 1991, pp. 73– 92; Offen in Bock and Thane (eds) 1991, pp. 138 –59; Thane
in Bock and Thane (eds) 1991, pp. 93 –118.
91
Pedersen 1993.
274 Lindsey Earner-Byrne

fertility and protect infants. In Ireland, only measures that supported the culturally valued
idea of the stay-at-home mother were given official or public support.
Irish social feminism was considerably weakened by the absorption of large numbers of
women into religious life and religious organisations. Maternalist politics did not have a
forceful resonance in a society permeated by Catholic social teaching, which made any
discourse concerning state power, citizenship rights and feminism fraught with suspi-
cion.92 When the Irish Housewives’ Association (IHA) protested outside the Department
of Health in defence of Browne’s free maternity scheme in April 1951, the organisation
was dismissed as representing a minority Protestant vision of citizenship and mother-
hood.93 The lack of a feminist campaign for maternity provision in Ireland meant that
the issue was dominated by the medical profession, religious leaders and the state,
without an organised feminist articulation of women’s health and welfare needs.
Motherhood, more than any other issue, muddied the line between the social and the
medical, the political and the spiritual, between civic duty and state responsibility. Pre-
cisely because it became such a crucial ‘boundary issue’, intervention was both permitted
and resisted.94 The clash between assistance and intervention was not peculiar to Ireland:
anxiety about the quality and quantity of the population generated maternal welfare pol-
icies throughout Europe and in parts of the United States.95 The cultural and social char-
acter of each country gave rise to different policies. But there was one common feature:
motherhood became an issue of public debate and concern.

Bibliography
Primary sources
Byrne papers, Dublin Diocesan Archives.
Cameron C. 1916, Report Upon the State of Public Health in the City of Dublin for the year 1915,
Dublin: HMSO.
Census of Population 1939, vol. V, part 1: Ages, Orphanhood and Conjugal Conditions, Dublin:
Stationery Office.
Coey Bigger E. 1917, Welfare of Mothers and Children, Dublin: Carnegie United Kingdom Trust.
Cox M. F. 1919, ‘A Ministry of Public Health for Ireland’, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry
Society of Ireland, 13, 638– 41.
Dáil Éireann Debates (Parliamentary Debates) 1922– 54.
Department of Health files, National Archives of Ireland.
Department of the Taoiseach files, National Archives of Ireland.
Irish Times.
Lawson W. 1919, ‘Infant Mortality and the Notification of Births Act, 1907, 1915’, Journal of the
Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 13, 479–97.
McQuaid papers, Dublin Diocesan Archives.
Reports of the Department of Health 1953– 1954.
Reports of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1922–1950.
Solomons B. August 1932, ‘Rotunda Annual Report’, Irish Journal of Medical Science, 80, 381–443.

92
There were bodies such as the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers who cam-
paigned for mothers and children. However, they did not focus on maternal rights or launch any political
campaign on the issue.
93
The IHA, although non-denominational, had a predominantly protestant leadership; Tweedy 1992.
94
Immergut 1992, p. 1.
95
Bock and Thane (eds) 1991; Skocpol 1992.
 Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930–1954 275

Secondary sources
Anonymous 1944, ‘A Ministry of Health?’, Journal of the Medical Association of Éire, 14, 81, 28– 9.
Barrington R. 1987, Health, Medicine and Politics in Ireland, 1900– 1970, Dublin: Institute of Public
Administration.
Bock G. and Thane P. (eds) 1991, Maternity and Gender Policies and the Rise of European Welfare
States 1880s–1950s, London: Routledge.
Browne A. (ed.) 1995, Masters, Midwives and Ladies-In-Waiting: The Rotunda Hospital 1745– 1995,
Dublin: A. and A. Farmar.
Browne N. 1986, Against the Tide, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Catholic Social Service Conference 1944, Food Supplies: Food and Dietetics, Dublin.
Clear C. 2000, Women of the House: Women’s Household Work in Ireland, 1922– 1961, Dublin: Irish
Academic Press.
Clear C. 2003, ‘Women in de Valera’s Ireland, 1922– 48: A Reappraisal’, in C. Doherty and D. Keogh
(eds), De Valera’s Ireland, Cork: Mercier.
Collis W. and Minabbawy D. M. 1942, ‘Investigation into the Conditions of Malnutrition in the Chil-
dren and Wives of Unemployed Men in Dublin: Expectant mother’, Journal of the Medical Associ-
ation of Éire, 11, 64, 43 –5.
Collis W. and Sheehan N. 1942, ‘Investigation into the Conditions of Malnutrition in the Children and
Wives of Unemployed Men in Dublin: Children I’, Journal of the Medical Association of Eire, 11,
63, 31–4.
Cooney J. 1999, John Charles McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland, Dublin: The O’Brien Press.
Cotts Watkins S. 1992, ‘Demographic Nationalism in Western Europe, 1870– 1960’, in Gillis J. R.,
Tilly L. A. and Levine D. (eds), The European Experience of Declining Fertility: A Quiet Revolution
1850–1970, Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
Cousins M. 1999, ‘The Introduction of Children’s Allowances in Ireland, 1939–44’, Irish Economic
and Social History, 26, 35– 55.
Daly M. E. 1997, The Buffer State: The Historical Roots of the Department of the Environment,
Dublin: Institute of Public Administration.
Desmond B. 2000, Finally and in Conclusion: A Political Memoir, Dublin: New Island.
Digby A. 1998, ‘Poverty, Health and the Politics of Gender in Britain, 1870– 1945’, in Digby A. and
Stewart J. (eds), Gender, Health and Welfare, London: Routledge, 67 –90.
Digby A. and Stewart J. (eds), Gender, Health and Welfare, London: Routledge.
Farmar T. 1994, Holles Street 1894–1994: The National Maternity Hospital—A Centenary History,
Dublin: A. and A. Farmar.
Farmar T. (ed.) 1995, The End of an Epidemic: Essays on Irish Public Health 1935–65 by James Deeny,
Dublin: A. and A. Farmar.
Farmar T. 2004, Patients, Potions and Physicians: A Social History of Medicine in Ireland, Dublin: A.
and A. Farmar.
Feeney J. K. n.d., The Coombe Lying-In Hospital, Dublin: S. A. Roantree.
Fildes V., Marks L. and Marland H. (eds) 1992, Women and Children First: International Maternal and
Infant Welfare, 1870–1945, London: Routledge.
Fitzgerald O. 1946a, ‘The New Public Health Bill’, Journal of the Medical Association of Éire, 18, 107,
65– 6.
Fitzgerald O. 1946b, ‘The Lost Town’, Journal of the Medical Association of Éire, 19, 112, 145–56.
Hoggart L. 1998, ‘The Campaign for Birth Control in Britain in the 1920s’, in Digby A. and Stewart J.
(eds), Gender, Health and Welfare, London: Routledge, 143–66.
Horgan J. 2000, Noël Browne: Passionate Outsider, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Immergut E. 1992, Health Politics: Interests and Institutions in Western Europe, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Jackson A. 1999, Ireland, 1798–1998, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Jones G. 1992, ‘Eugenics in Ireland: The Belfast Eugenics Society, 1911–15’, Irish Historical Studies,
28, 80–95.
Kennedy P. 2002, Maternity in Ireland: A Woman-Centred Perspective, Dublin: Liffey Press.
276 Lindsey Earner-Byrne

Kovan S. and Michel S. 1990, ‘Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States
in France, Germany, Great Britian and the United States’, American History Review, 95, 1076–
1108.
Lewis J. 1981, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare in England, 1900–1939,
London: McGill Queens University Press.
Lewis J. 1991, ‘Models of Equality for Women: The case of state support for children in twentieth-
century Britain’, in Bock G. and Thane P. (eds), Maternity and Gender Policies and the Rise of Euro-
pean Welfare States 1880s-1950s, London: Routledge, 74 –89.
Lewis J. 1998, ‘Gender and Welfare in the late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in Digby A. and
Stewart J. (eds), Gender, Health and Welfare, London: Routledge, 208– 28.
Loudon I. 1992, Death in Childbirth: An International Study of Maternal Care and Maternal Mortality
1800–1950, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MacClancy J. B. 1944, ‘Presidential Speech,’ Journal of the Medical Association of Éire, 15, 85, 1– 4.
McKee E. 1986, ‘Church– State Relations and the Development of Irish Health Policy: The
mother-and-child scheme, 1944–53’, Irish Historical Studies, 25, 159– 94.
MacNamara T. F. 1946, ‘Correspondence’, Journal of the Medical Association of Éire, 19, 109, 109.
MacSweeney C. J. 1940, ‘A Public Health Programme for Eire’, Irish Journal of Medical Science, 170,
49– 58.
Ó Briain F. 1952, ‘State Medicine and Morality’, Journal of the Irish Medical Association, 31, 182,
224–8.
Offen K. 1991, ‘Body Politics: Women, work and the politics of motherhood in France, 1920–1950’,
in Bock G. and Thane P. (eds), Maternity and Gender Policies and the Rise of European Welfare
States 1880s-1950s, London: Routledge, 138–59.
Ó hÓgartaigh M. 2000, ‘Women, Politics, and Public Health: The babies’ clubs in Ireland and the Chil-
dren’s Bureau in the US’, in Proceedings of the 37th International Congress on the History of Medi-
cine, Texas: University of Texas, 99– 103.
Pedersen S. 1989, ‘The Failure of Feminism and the Making of the British Welfare State’, Radical
History Review, 43, 86– 118.
Pedersen S. 993, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France,
1914–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Porter D. 1999, Health, Civilization and the State, London: Routledge.
Prunty J. 1998, Dublin Slums 1800–1925: A Study of Urban Geography, Dublin: Irish Academic
Press.
Purcell M. 1991, Catholic Social Services Conference, Golden Jubilee 1941– 1991, Dublin.
Reddin K. 1932, ‘The Maternity and Child Welfare Clinic—Its origin, scope and trend’, Irish Journal of
Medical Science, 77, 217– 23.
Russell M. 1938, ‘The Health of Dublin’, Journal of Irish Free State Medical Union, 3, 29, 54 –6.
Ryle J. A. 1948, ‘The Modern Concept of Social Medicine’, Irish Journal of Medical Science, 271,
289–296.
Sheehy D. 2003a, ‘Archbishop McQuaid: The diocesan administrator’, Doctrine and Life, 54, 3,
166–9.
Sheehy D. 2003b, ‘Archbishop McQuaid’s Pastoral Programme’, Life and Doctrine, 53, 4, 215–20.
Shorter E. 1983, A History of Women’s Bodies, London: Basic Books.
Skocpol T. 1992, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United
States, London: Belknap Press.
Springrice M. 1981 [1939], Working-Class Wives, London: Virago.
St John’s Brigade Ambulance 1950, St John’s Ambulance Brigade: Official Handbook, 1950, Dublin.
Thane P. 1991, ‘Visions of Gender in the Making of the British Welfare State: The case of women in
the British Labour Party and social policy, 1906–45’, in Bock G. and Thane P. (eds), Maternity and
Gender Policies and the Rise of European Welfare States 1880s-1950s, London: Routledge, 208–
28.
Tweedy H. 1992, A Link in the Chain: The Story of the Irish Housewives Association 1942– 1992,
Dublin: Attic Press.
 Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930–1954 277

Walsh B. M. 1985, ‘Marriage in Ireland in the Twentieth Century’, in and Cosgrove A. (ed.), Marriage
in Ireland, Dublin: College Press.
Whyte J. H. 1980, Church and State in Modern Ireland 1923– 1979, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Women’s National Association of Ireland 1957, The Golden Jubilee 1907–57, Dublin.