Bethany Home

Bethany Home (sometimes called Bethany House or Bethany Mother and Child Home) was a residential home in Dublin, Ireland, mainly for women of the Protestant faith, who were convicted of petty theft, prostitution, infanticide, as well as women who were pregnant out of wedlock, and the children of these women. The home was run by evangelical Protestants, mainly (up to the 1960s) members of the Church of Ireland. It catered to "fallen women" and operated in Blackhall Place, Dublin (1921–34), and in Orwell Road, Rathgar (1934–72), until its closure. The home sent some children to Northern Ireland, England, and to the United States.

Bethany House was founded in Blackhall Place in Dublin in 1921, and moved to Orwell Road, Rathgar in 1934, where it was based until it was closed in 1972. On opening the home in May 1922 the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, John Allen Fitzgerald Gregg, declared Bethany "a door of hope for fallen women". The Dean of Christ Church Cathedral presided over the first evening meeting setting up the Home, and Church of Ireland Prison Mission to Women with Convictions charity was incorporated into the Bethany Home

Following the passage of the Registration of Maternity Homes Act, 1934, Bethany House became subject to inspection by the Department of Local Government and Public Health.

Former residents have claimed that as children they were victims of physical abuse and neglect while resident in the home, and that this accounted for the high mortality rate amongst children in the institution.

It is claimed that while the home was not run by the Church of Ireland, it was affiliated through clerical and lay members sitting on the home's managing committee, church fundraising and reference of unwed pregnant women to the home by clergy. In a letter dated 9 April 1945 from the Church of Ireland's then Archbishop of Dublin, Arthur William Barton, to Gerald Boland, then Minister for Justice, he described the home as "a suitable place for Protestant girls on remand". Bethany Home was already a place recognised by the courts as a place of detention.

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