The county homes were founded in the early 1920s after the formation of the
Irish Free State. After the abolition of the existing system of workhouses, administration was centralised under the
county councils, with the following model:[6]
a central county home for the aged and infirm
a separate infirmary section to deal with chronic and long term cases,[7]
a county hospital for major surgery, medical cases and abnormal midwifery
district hospitals for medical cases, minor surgical cases and midwifery
These reforms were retrospectively legalised by the Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1923. The county homes were generally run by Catholic
religious orders and financed by the state.[8]
Girls and women pregnant outside of marriage were sometimes sent to
Magdalene asylums and
Mother and Baby Homes, where they were required to perform heavy labour and often received substandard care; they were often forced to place their children for
adoption. Women who kept their children were often not wanted by their families and struggled to find employment or housing, so a large number of unmarried mothers were forced to live in county homes.[9] Orphans and
illegitimate children were often placed in county homes for a long period of time; they were used as "dumping grounds" until children could be transferred to other institutions like
industrial schools. A report of 1947–48 notes that many children were abandoned in the county home by their mothers.[10]
A Poor Law Commission's report of 1927 stated that County Homes were unsuitable for unmarried mothers and babies.[11]
In 1943, about 8,000 people were living in county homes.[9]
From the 1950s onwards, county homes were reformed and standards of care improved. By the 1990s, they had been abolished, with the buildings now serving as normal
hospitals.[12]
As a symbol of the failure of the newly independent state to provide for the needs of its people, the county home has occasionally featured in fiction.
The expression "Goodnight
Ballivor, I'll Sleep in Trim", famous in
County Meath, is possibly a reference to the Trim county home.[23]
In
Colm Tóibín's 2009 novel Brooklyn, the main character notes that New York's "forgotten Irish" remind her of "men from the County Home;" she is a native of
Enniscorthy, where the Wexford county home was sited.[24]
Niamh Boyce wrote Kitty, a sequence of poems about her grandaunt, a seamstress in the Athy county home.[25]
John MacKenna mentions the "county home" in a poem in his 2012 collection Where Sadness Begins.[26]