Small Things Like These The Real-Life Magdalene Laundries

In the novella, Sarah (the girl that Furlong finds locked in the shed) does not get reunited with her baby. Keegan dedicates the book to the real-life women who were separated from their children. Historically, some of the babies that were forcibly taken from their mothers in Ireland's Magdalene laundries and mother-and-baby homes died of preventable causes, although many did reach adulthood. An independent researcher and historian named Catherine Corless scoured old records in her hometown of Tuam (a historic town in County Galway) to discover the truth about a mass grave of children's skeletons found in an old septic tank of a mother-and-baby home. Corless found that between 1925 and 1961, 796 children died at St Mary's Mother and Baby Home, which was run by nuns from the Bon Secours order. It is not one hundred percent certain that the septic tank was used as a tomb for these children, but it is a likely possibility because Corless found death certificates without burial records. The initial silence that Corless faced upon trying to share her research with a wider Irish and global audience spoke to the secrecy and shame surrounding this scandal. It took time before people could acknowledge the way that the Irish state and religious institutions colluded in the abuse of unmarried mothers and their children. This silence around abuse is represented in Small Things Like These when Eileen and Mrs. Kehoe separately discourage Furlong from getting involved in the convent's affairs, and also when different community members avoid Furlong while he walks home with Sarah.