Magdelene Laundries - Eugenics by another name?

Stheno · 14-06-2011 10:12pm #1

Hey everyone,

I was just reading the womb transplant thread, which mentioned eugenics, and also reading not fit to breed on the bbc news website and it struck me that essentially Ireland used the Magdelene Laundries system as a means to prevent women whom society deemed "unsuitable" from having children/relationships?

What do you think? I've posted it here from the perspective that the M.L. affected women only so it was a gender specific form of "eugenic policy".

From the BBC link :

While eugenics is now recognised as a pseudoscience - and after the Nazis, one with murderous consequences - it was once a respectable branch of the social sciences.

The term 'eugenics', meaning "good birth", was coined in 1883 by Sir Francis Galton, an English scientist who pushed the University College London to found a department to study the field.

Sir Winston Churchill once called for forced sterilisation of "the feeble-minded and insane classes".

While eugenic sterilisation never became official policy in the UK - in part due to opposition from the Catholic church - Finland, Norway, and Sweden adopted the sterilisation laws in the 1930s.

Between 1933 and 1945, more than 400,000 Germans were sterilised under Nazi "racial hygiene" laws, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

metrovelvet · 14-06-2011 10:23pm

I was watching a documentary on BBC tonight about the history of Ireland and it talked about how this breed of underclass [illegitimate and working class children] in relation to industrial schools was a threat to the vision of the middle class Ireland that De Valera fantasized about.

The Magadelene Laundries and the Industrial schools, from what I can see are about more than eugenics, but about the unleashing of the sadistic imagination and the saturation of Irish culture with violence.

Really, why this country has not been convicted for torture on both counts, why it doesnt have a human rights record is beyond me. Because it sure as hell deserves one.

expectationlost · 14-06-2011 10:29pm

this guy james smith wrote the book on it http://www.amazon.com/Irelands-Magdalen-Laundries-Architecture-Containment/dp/026804127X Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment

there was very interesting discussion on pat kenny that i can't find the archive of where he explained that the concept was set out in the bishops carrigan report in late 1800's where if something or someone didn't fit a godly image that were to be shunned ignored as if they didn't exist, this influenced the authorities in Ireland for the next hundred years, where women in particular who weren't pure were sent to workhouse and the laundries in order to cleanse our godly society

Stheno · 14-06-2011 10:37pm

metrovelvet wrote: »

I was watching a documentary on BBC tonight about the history of Ireland and it talked about how this breed of underclass [illegitimate and working class children] in relation to industrial schools was a threat to the vision of the middle class Ireland that De Valera fantasized about.

The Magadelene Laundries and the Industrial schools, from what I can see are about more than eugenics, but about the unleashing of the sadistic imagination and the saturation of Irish culture with violence.

Really, why this country has not been convicted for torture on both counts, why it doesnt have a human rights record is beyond me. Because it sure as hell deserves one.

Metro, I posted topic specifically about Magdelene laundries, and how their adoption/acceptance by the State/Society and the religious orders impacted on the ability of women to have children, in the context of this being a form of practicing eugenics, not on industrial schools which were gender neutral, hence my posting the topic in the Ladies Lounge?

If I wanted a debate on industrial schools I'd use humanities.

Magdelene Laundries started in Ireland well back in the 17/1800's long before DeValeras time.

metrovelvet · 14-06-2011 10:43pm

Stheno wrote: »

Metro, I posted topic specifically about Magdelene laundries, and how their adoption/acceptance by the State/Society and the religious orders impacted on the ability of women to have children, in the context of this being a form of practicing eugenics, not on industrial schools which were gender neutral, hence my posting the topic in the Ladies Lounge?

If I wanted a debate on industrial schools I'd use humanities.

Magdelene Laundries started in Ireland well back in the 17/1800's long before DeValeras time.

It wasnt until the early 20th century that they became punitive. Before that they were rehabilitative asylums for prostitutes. It was in the early 20th century that they became incacerations for mothers who had children out of wedlock, so I beg to differ that it does not coincide with this re-invention of Ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum

Stheno · 14-06-2011 10:50pm

metrovelvet wrote: »

It wasnt until the early 20th century that they became punitive. Before that they were rehabilitative asylums for prostitutes. It was in the early 20th century that they became incacerations for mothers who had children out of wedlock, so I beg to differ that it does not coincide with this re-invention of Ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum

Given that the link you quoted also talks about their existence in Scotland as punitive institutions, I'd disagree.

Back on topic??? Do you believe they played any type of role in influencing what women could or could not children, and therefore influenced society eugenically?

metrovelvet · 14-06-2011 10:56pm

Stheno wrote: »

Given that the link you quoted also talks about their existence in Scotland as punitive institutions, I'd disagree.

Back on topic??? Do you believe they played any type of role in influencing what women could or could not children, and therefore influenced society eugenically?

Yes but only in terms of class/moral eugenics, not biological eugenics. Its not sterilisation and its not pre natal genetic determination either [that is where a number of embyos are created and the parents can pick whether they want the boy or the girl, or the one with blond hair or discard of the one that has one kidney etc] , so I dont think its eugenics in the strictist sense, but they did seek to banish and punish those who contaminate De Valera's vision of a pure island.

Stheno · 14-06-2011 11:00pm

metrovelvet wrote: »

Yes but only in terms of class/moral eugenics, not biological eugenics. Its not sterilisation and its not pre natal genetic determination either [that is where a number of embyos are created and the parents can pick whether they want the boy or the girl, or the one with blond hair or discard of the one that has one kidney etc] , so I dont think its eugenics in the strictist sense,

I never claimed it was pure eugenics,more a type of eugenic policy based on gender, and how certain people of the gender were not socially acceptable.

they did seek to banish and punish those who contaminate De Valera's vision of a pure island.

Again back to the link upon which you are basing that premise? How does that relate to Scotland, which is specifically called out along with Ireland in terms of having a punitive/penal approach from the early twentieth century onwards?

metrovelvet · 14-06-2011 11:02pm

Are you asking why the men who fathered these children werent put into homes and tortured?

The article mentions Scotland one as having punitive measures, but the rest of the article is all about the crimes in the Irish laundries.

Stheno · 14-06-2011 11:06pm

metrovelvet wrote: »

Are you asking why the men who fathered these children werent put into homes and tortured?

No I'm not metro,and you know full well I'm not and you are being obtuse imo. I'm asking why you used a link which refers to Magdelene Laundries as becoming increasing punitive and penal in the early twentieth century, which could be anywhere from 1900 - 1930, to justify your claim that it's all to do with DeValera, given that that same link specifically calls out the issue being in both Ireland and Scotland, Scotland being another country into which DeValera would not have had much imput in terms of state policies.

The article doesn't reference DeValera having any real input into those punitive measures.

metrovelvet · 14-06-2011 11:13pm

Stheno wrote: »

No I'm not metro,and you know full well I'm not and you are being obtuse imo. I'm asking why you used a link which refers to Magdelene Laundries as becoming increasing punitive and penal in the early twentieth century, which could be anywhere from 1900 - 1930, to justify your claim that it's all to do with DeValera, given that that same link specifically calls out the issue being in both Ireland and Scotland, Scotland being another country into which DeValera would not have had much imput in terms of state policies.

What exactly are you asking?

Are you suggesting that this was a way of preventing them from having anymore babies because Ireland didnt have the technology to sterilise?

Yes the link MENTIONS Scotland once. Scotland has nowhere near the record tha Ireland has. And even if Scotland did it too, does not mean that my theory is incorrect.

And I dont like you accusing me of being deliberately obtuse, getting a bit personal for my liking.

Im trying to figure out what you are asking because your question doesnt make any obvious sense because incarceration and slavery is not the same thing as sterilisation.

Im done here.

Stheno · 14-06-2011 11:20pm

I apologise if you thought my calling you obtuse was personal, it was moreso that the post and the point it was making was obtuse.

Personally I think that state approved action, which your link references, which allows the establishment of institutions such as the laundries, which effectively prevent women whom society deem to be unacceptable for in many cases, mundane reasons, from having the right to be reproduce a form of eugenic policy.

As you brought up Scotland first in your link to support an argument relating to the state of politics in Ireland at a time when the punitive/penal behaviour was introduced (but still not definitely proved as being a factor) I raised it.

Perhaps Scotland has not had the opportunity/pressure/publicity Ireland has had in being forced to address the issue, Ireland addressing the issue being another point in your link.

Thanks for your input, be good to get see other posters views as to whether or not this was essentially a state condoned form of eugenic policy. It may not have gone as far as e.g. the US States in the BBC link I posted by enforcing sterilisation, but denying the right to reproduce based on a societal judgement of suitability imo is at least similiar.

Morag · 14-06-2011 11:21pm

Yes it was a way of removing from society women who were seen as lax immoral and a danger. I don't know if I agree with it in terms of genetic purity but it was certainly about
removing 'troublesome' women from tainting others.

Bottle_of_Smoke · 15-06-2011 10:47am

I wouldn't call it eugenics because their babies weren't killed. ergo their genes continued to be a part of society.

Social (as opposed to ethnic)cleansing perhaps?

metrovelvet · 15-06-2011 11:14am

The other thing too is that it was not just exclusively done at the hands of the state, this was voluntary by the parents of these girls, who dropped their own kids there, knowing full well what went on in there.

The eugenics mentioned in the article are state enforced sterilisation.

Morag · 15-06-2011 11:17am

The socail stigma and shunning which went on was all the impetus needed, they didn't need 'The State' take direct action.

metrovelvet · 15-06-2011 11:52am

If you want to look at this from a gender perspective, it was women doing it to other women. IT was nuns torturing other women, it was parents [mothers and fathers] dropping their daughters to these places and shunning their own flesh and blood into a lifetime of slavery and torture.

wild_cat · 15-06-2011 12:41pm

They removed babies from the women that gave birth while being held didn't they?

And I presume said children were placed in good catholic middle class homes. So I can really see your point. It was probably thought that the children would turn out "better" if raised away from their biological Mother and keeping her from "breeding" any more by incarceration.

It would be interesting to see what financial background some of the women came from and where their children ended up.

Morag · 15-06-2011 12:44pm

A proportion of the babies were sent/sold to the USA to be adopted by wealthy catholic couples.

Dolbert · 15-06-2011 12:46pm

I agree that it seems to be more an example of the state/ church sweeping these women under the carpet, as though their very existence would contaminate the rest of Holy Catholic Ireland.

I have a personal interest in this, as my Great-Grandmother spent most of her life in one of these laundries. She was a maid for one of the well to do families in the area, and became pregnant after being raped by one of her employers. Her son, my Grandfather, was raised by her parents, and grew up hating his mother as all he had heard from infancy was that she was nothing but a whore. It was only in later life that he questioned this.

Her brother eventually got her out of the laundry, despite much resistance and protestations from other family members. She got another housekeeping job, and knowing that she came from the laundry, the owner’s son assumed she was easy pickings. After being raped and impregnated for the second time with my Great-Aunt, she was sent back to the laundry, this time nobody came for her and she never came out. Naturally there was no question of wrongdoing on her rapists part, she was, after all, a scarlet woman.

We had one picture of her in our house, and from her appearance I assumed she was in her sixties. I later found out that she died at 47. Her story just breaks my heart.

wild_cat · 15-06-2011 12:55pm

Sharrow wrote: »

A proportion of the babies were sent/sold to the USA to be adopted by wealthy catholic couples.

I presume they couldn't be sterilised as that would go against the teachings of the catholic church and the only way to control future generations from turning out like their birth mother was to have them nurtured in a Catholic middle class environment and thus becoming the "correct" type of citizen.

metrovelvet · 15-06-2011 1:01pm

wild_cat wrote: »

I presume they couldn't be sterilised as that would go against the teachings of the catholic church and the only way to control future generations from turning out like their birth mother was to have them nurtured in a Catholic middle class environment and thus becoming the "correct" type of citizen.

Right. They cant sterilise you but they can beat the **** out of you.

Most likely a moral deterrant was the only means they felt they could justify this.

Corsendonk · 15-06-2011 1:15pm

I don't think you can really call what happened in the laundries as Eugenics because they didn't sterilise the kids to remove the genes from the Irish gene pool or control the breeding of the off spring. The science of Eugenics is about removing unsatisfactory genes from the gene pool usually by sterilisation and encouraging other groups to breed that carry desirable traits. I believe the Blonde girl from ABBA was a product of the Nazi Eugenics program.

To simplify it, its kind of like the selective breeeding programs that animal husbandry or plantsmen do but for humans Eugenics do has done some good in such countries like Cyprus to reduce diseases caused by two carriers of a particular gene from marrying and having kids.

The latest trend for "designer" babies is Eugenics but under a more marketable name.

Teddy_Picker · 15-06-2011 9:13pm

Like Corsendonk, I don't necessarily agree that what went on in the Laundries could be called eugenics, but what I've gathered from reading up on them and watching documentaries on them, what those women suffered was borne out of the absolute abhorrence of social transgression, especially in areas of sexual mores.

Not all of the women who were sent had actually fallen pregnant, as far as I understand, as some survivors were rape victims who were packed away rather than be the subject of scandal and controversy, while a lot of others seemed to be ex-industrial school kids who the nuns had marked out as "troublesome".
I remember seeing one particularly harrowing documentary where a contributor described how when she hit her teenage years and started developing breasts, she was forced to bind her chest with material. :eek:

It was a cruel and inhumane time in Irish history, it seemed that the institutions had no basic sense of humanity at all. I could ramble on, but I feel a rant brewing and don't want to wander way off topic, so I think I'll leave it at that.

Morag · 15-06-2011 10:19pm

I know a couple who fell in love and wanted to marry and her father refused to hear of it.
They kept on in secret but her mother and his parents knew and as soon as possible there were quiet arrangements being made for an elopement. But she found out she was pregnant and it got about and someone told her father before the elopement could happen.

Her father beat her into the car and drove to the other side of the country to put her into a laundry and refused to tell anyone where she was. It took her husband and father in law to be 6 weeks to find her and when she was brought back to the town there ended up being brawl as her father demanded her back.

She was 20.

They married moved away and went on to have 4 kids and their 40th wedding anniversary recently.

Scarinae · 15-06-2011 10:29pm

Corsendonk wrote: »

I believe the Blonde girl from ABBA was a product of the Nazi Eugenics program.

It was the other one, Anni-Frid. It's quite sad really, because a lot of them were shunned after the war, even though it wasn't their fault... The girl from Abba fared better because her mother moved from Norway to Sweden.

Many thousands of their mothers - labelled 'German whores' - were sent to Norwegian 'concentration camps', where they were virtually slave labourers.

...

But in many ways the most shocking aspect of the whole story is what happened to the children in the homes. In a separate case, Spydevold is attempting to bring the Norwegian government to task over documented evidence of drugs trials carried out on both children and mothers.

Witnesses and documents say experiments with LSD, mescaline and other substances were initiated by the Norwegian military, Oslo University and the CIA.

That's a bit off-topic, but it shows that horrible things like that haven't only happened in Ireland.

As for Magdalene laundries being eugenics... I'd agree with the posters who have said it isn't eugenics as it doesn't involve removing the children from the gene pool, but it was certainly a systematic attempt to remove the 'sinners' and their bad influence from society. It is a disgusting episode in Irish history. (Didn't the last one only close in the 90s?)

Dolorous, the story about your great-grandmother breaks my heart too

Stheno · 15-06-2011 10:35pm

Fishie wrote: »

As for Magdalene laundries being eugenics... I'd agree with the posters who have said it isn't eugenics as it doesn't involve removing the children from the gene pool, but it was certainly a systematic attempt to remove the 'sinners' and their bad influence from society. It is a disgusting episode in Irish history. (Didn't the last one only close in the 90s?)

Dolorous, the story about your great-grandmother breaks my heart too

Ah, I never considered that the children would influence that at all.

Last one closed in 96 I think.

Nhead · 15-06-2011 10:46pm

metrovelvet wrote: »

It wasnt until the early 20th century that they became punitive. Before that they were rehabilitative asylums for prostitutes. It was in the early 20th century that they became incacerations for mothers who had children out of wedlock, so I beg to differ that it does not coincide with this re-invention of Ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum

Metro, just on the idea of the original Magdalene asylums being rehabilitive asylums for prostitutes the Victorians of the UK of GB&I saw prostitution as belonging to the lower classes and that the women that practiced it were 'feeble' minded. A massive controversy during the 1800s was the introduction of The Contagious Diseases Act (passed in parliament) which allowed police to arrest women if they suspected them of prostitution and jail them in Lock Hospitals and Laundries. It was up to the state to decide who was fallen and this was before the early twentieth century. Whilst we should never forget the horrors that occured in this state and by the RCC church we likewise should not forget those that suffered in laundries est . by the CoI. Women of all denominations/class/creed deserve justice and to be remembered (both from the nineteenth and twentieth century).And Fishie I agree with you when you say it was an attempt to contain 'sinners' rather then eugenics but also a fear of female sexuality and the female body (a common Victorian conceit).

metrovelvet · 15-06-2011 11:10pm

Nhead wrote: »

Metro, just on the idea of the original Magdalene asylums being rehabilitive asylums for prostitutes the Victorians of the UK of GB&I saw prostitution as belonging to the lower classes and that the women that practiced it were 'feeble' minded. A massive controversy during the 1800s was the introduction of The Contagious Diseases Act (passed in parliament) which allowed police to arrest women if they suspected them of prostitution and jail them in Lock Hospitals and Laundries. It was up to the state to decide who was fallen and this was before the early twentieth century. Whilst we should never forget the horrors that occured in this state and by the RCC church we likewise should not forget those that suffered in laundries est . by the CoI. Women of all denominations/class/creed deserve justice and to be remembered (both from the nineteenth and twentieth century).And Fishie I agree with you when you say it was an attempt to contain 'sinners' rather then eugenics but also a fear of female sexuality and the female body (a common Victorian conceit).

I 100% agree these women deserve to be rememberd and deserve justice. But what does justice mean in this case? How would it be served?

Nhead · 15-06-2011 11:22pm

metrovelvet wrote: »

I 100% agree these women deserve to be rememberd and deserve justice. But what does justice mean in this case? How would it be served?

I know what you mean on justice as in: how can those that are gone gain justice? It is a difficult one to answer. I think remembering is important and acknowledgement too. The place of women in history really needs to become more mainstream imho. That is why a thread like this is important esp. the post by Dolorous. I agree with you to an extent about Dev's Ireland but also that ideas on sexual morality came from the Victorian Era. A man that shaped Ireland's spiritual outlook was Archbishop Cullen he was ultramontane and really changed what it meant to a RC in Ireland.

CDfm · 16-06-2011 5:33am

Nhead wrote: »

A massive controversy during the 1800s was the introduction of The Contagious Diseases Act (passed in parliament) which allowed police to arrest women if they suspected them of prostitution and jail them in Lock Hospitals and Laundries. .

And it wasn't strictly a moral issue but a military one.

European armies were terribly unhealthy places where circa 30 to 40% of soldiers being unfit for service due to illness or disease at any one time.

Join the army and get sick and die and routine illnesses today were often untreatable or fatal then.And contagious diseases included typhoid etc.

So for a nation like Britain with an Empire "on which the sun never set" containment or reducing infection rates was a policy which affected its military strenght .

I suspect Victorian morality was a secondary or tertiary consideration over military considerations.

Thats my impression.

Magdelene Laundries - Eugenics by another name?

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