News stories regarding the Magdalen Laundries first broke significantly in 1993, sparked by the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of 155 women on the grounds of a Dublin convent. 80 of these woman were buried unidentified and with missing or non-existent death certificates. Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, more than 40 laundries existed in Ireland. This included at least 19 in the Dublin area alone, 5 in Belfast, and various others distributed across major towns.

In total, historians estimate that upwards of 30,000 women passed through the Irish laundry system over its entire existence, enduring unpaid labor, severe confinement, and an institutional framework that frequently obscured their deaths from the public record. It is estimated that over 2,000 of these woman died at these institutions.

In Ireland, "Mother and Baby institutions" were a network of church-operated, state-funded facilities where unmarried mothers and their children were sent from the 1920s to the 1990s. These institutions are now recognized as the site of severe systemic abuse, high infant mortality, and forced adoptions. Between 1922 and 1998, an estimated 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children passed through these homes.

This is a song about three of these adoptees and an homage to the 57,000 that passed through this lurid system.

Many of the children of the Magdalen Laundries and the Mother and Baby institutions were buried in Killeens. Killeens refer to ancient, unconsecrated burial grounds scattered throughout Ireland. From the medieval period up until the late 20th century, the Catholic Church forbade the burial of unbaptized individuals in consecrated church graveyards. The most infamous of the Killeens is at Tuam, Galway where 796 children are buried in a mass grave on the site of the former Bon Secours Convent and Mother and Baby Home. The children range from 35 weeks gestation to about 3 years. Finally, in 2026 a Forensic Dig is underway to attempt to identify the remains using DNA.