Based on 30 years of research spent interviewing and recording the life stories of the working-class women of Dublin, this book covers the squalid tenement days of the early 1900s, the mid-century decades of ‘slumland' block flats, and the 1970s when deadly drugs infiltrated poor neighborhoods, terrifying mothers and stealing away their children. What emerges is an intimate and poignant celebration of the mammies and grannies that held the fabric of family life in an environment of hardship and, often, cruelty. Through vivid tales of how they coped with grinding poverty, huge families, pitiless landlords, the oppressive Church, dictatorial priests, feckless and often abusive husbands, and these remarkable women shine with astonishing dignity, wit, pride and a resilient spirit, despite their struggles.