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Desmond McDaid and Adoption

Biography

McDaid was the son of a single mother in Ireland, who had to leave him in an orphanage when he was two. He stayed in Irish orphanages until he was nine, when he was shipped, without his mother's knowledge or consent, to Australia as one of the Child Migrants. He spent the rest of his childhood in institutions, often physically and emotionally abused.

He was apprenticed to a tool-maker and eventually owned his own tool-sharpening company.

With the help of the Child Migrants' Trust he was reunited with his mother in about 1992.

References

Humphreys, Margaret. Empty Cradles. New edition. (London: Corgi Books, 1995)