‘I couldn’t have published this memoir if my mother was alive - it was too painful for her’ - Irish man raised in mother and baby homeIn his 2015 memoir, Secret Child, Gordon shared the story of his phenomenal mother Cathleen and his first nine years living at Regina Coeli. Unlike the laundries, the Regina Coeli hostel, founded by Frank Duff in 1930, was somewhere homeless women, including women who found themselves pregnant and unmarried, could live, and keep their babies. By then Cathleen was 35 and, determined to keep her baby, she made her way to Regina Coeli to begin a double life. Some beds were for mothers with their children, some children had single beds themselves. I was known as Francis but I didn’t like my name and changed it to Gordon,” reveals Gordon.

Source: Irish Independent May 13, 2018 12:45 UTC