Magdalen Laundry stories.

wishwashwoo

I have just watched the move them nuns were the devils workers pure scum. The poor poor women what they went true we can't begin to imagen and what does our government do they piss and moan about what to do over it and then have a 5 year tribunal just to say it happened never really saying sorry to all the women that were forced into these work houses. Ireland I am ashamed to call you my home when is the people of Ireland going to realise that we need to stand up for our future take it don't wait for it let people who know how to run countries like businesses not barns. Give all the people that were affected by state abuse compo for there trouble . Give the Garda the much needed man power they need on the streets and new cars as well after all a safe people are a happy people.also give people the health care they need as well. And you must work for your dole everyone man women child will help Ireland back to her feet she is our home we love her she is special she is ours

wishwashwoo

I take my hat off to these people I hope your friend is safe and well and baby as well her family will pay the price in the end they will have noting but bad luck in life for what they done cloud atlas ????

Fuh Q

My mother was 17 when she had me in 1969, I was adopted and I have been told that my mother went to England after I was given up for adoption.
It sickens me that it is possible she may have been one of the women in the laundries. Many women fled to England when they left the laundries because of the fear they might have to return to one..
Its just coincidence without the facts but I cant help but think its a good possibility..

the_syco

iguana wrote: »

If you didn't live near one, didn't work in one or didn't have a relative/friend in one why would you ever think about them?

Local people tended to be horrified when they found that that there was a concentration camp nearby, when the American GI's went to the village to force (by gun-point, I think) the villagers to help the PoWs).

clairefontaine wrote: »

How many single mothers have you housed, fed and clothed with their babies?

I'm sorry, but that's a cop out. You may as well say that without testing on live human beings in WW2, Germany wouldn't have made such great advancements in the field of medicine.

clairefontaine wrote: »

Oh? What were they?

Rape victims.

Posy wrote: »

I know that the treatment from many of the nuns was inhumane and a lot of those locked up in these hellholes were already in state care but I will genuinely never fathom how individual families just turned their backs on their daughters and didn't give a damn that they were leaving them to be locked away in squalor for the rest of their lives.

If you can train the masses to believe in someone up in the clouds, I'd say you could tell them that the rape victim is the person in the wrong easy enough.

clairefontaine wrote: »

Was slavery legal at the time?

If not then they all have a huge case both for compensation and prosecution.

Pretty sure slavery was banned in 1833.

gubbie

I think it's very interesting that while most people will blame the institution, the nuns and the government, not many have called out their own relatives for putting these girls there in the first place. Surely these were the most heartless of all when they were their own flesh and blood.

gubbie

gubbie wrote: »

I think it's very interesting that while most people will blame the institution, the nuns and the government, not many have called out their own relatives for putting these girls there in the first place. Surely these were the most heartless of all when they were their own flesh and blood.

I'd agree with that, except it would take an exceptional family to go against the tide of attitude in those days. If an unmarried daughter fell pregnant, I'm sure it would have been like a heaven-sent solution to have her taken from the area under the guise of finding work in a city, the child disposed of through adoption as though it never existed, and none of the community being any the wiser.

The families were often acting under pressure from the church and its institutions, and the church is largely responsible for the shame and stigma of unmarried pregnancy or sex, which could ruin the standing of a family at that time. So they created the problem, then offered the 'solution' to the family to their own benefit.

Same tactics employed by dictatorships throughout history.

lazygal

gubbie wrote: »

I think it's very interesting that while most people will blame the institution, the nuns and the government, not many have called out their own relatives for putting these girls there in the first place. Surely these were the most heartless of all when they were their own flesh and blood.

I read one piece that said ironically you were better off being a poor pregnant single girl in a working class Dublin family than in a rural area. Reason being, it was common to have the grandchild raised as the youngest 'child', mum became a sister to her baby and the family just never said anything. Not an ideal solution either, but given the times possibly more compassionate than getting rid of the woman by sending her into unpaid work. I thought it was an interesting point.

Morag

In case anyone is interested

http://www.nwci.ie/news/newsflash/2013/02/18/stand-in-solidarity-with-magdalene-survivors-candle-lit-vigil/

Stand in Solidarity with Magdalene Survivors - Candle Lit Vigil

Please join us and stand in Solidarity with Magdalene Survivors and their Families.

What: Candle Lit Vigil with singer Mary Coughlan preceding the Dáil Debate on the McAleese Report

Where: Outside the Dáil

When: Tuesday, 19th February, 5 pm

The vigil is organised by Justice for Magdalenes and The National Women's Council of Ireland

As this is a vigil we would welcome people to bring along candles but not organisational banners.

Scarinae

gubbie wrote: »

I think it's very interesting that while most people will blame the institution, the nuns and the government, not many have called out their own relatives for putting these girls there in the first place. Surely these were the most heartless of all when they were their own flesh and blood.

The only explanation I can think of for why families did that is that they thought the whole family would be shamed by association - what would the neighbours think etc. I still don't understand it though.

lazygal wrote: »

I read one piece that said ironically you were better off being a poor pregnant single girl in a working class Dublin family than in a rural area. Reason being, it was common to have the grandchild raised as the youngest 'child', mum became a sister to her baby and the family just never said anything. Not an ideal solution either, but given the times possibly more compassionate than getting rid of the woman by sending her into unpaid work. I thought it was an interesting point.

A girl that was in school with my Mum did this, her family moved to Northern Ireland and her daughter was raised as her sister. I thought it was a bit bizarre when I first heard it, but it didn't occur to me that the other option might have been a laundry

sunbeam

Candie wrote: »

I'd agree with that, except it would take an exceptional family to go against the tide of attitude in those days. If an unmarried daughter fell pregnant, I'm sure it would have been like a heaven-sent solution to have her taken from the area under the guise of finding work in a city, the child disposed of through adoption as though it never existed, and none of the community being any the wiser.

The families were often acting under pressure from the church and its institutions, and the church is largely responsible for the shame and stigma of unmarried pregnancy or sex, which could ruin the standing of a family at that time. So they created the problem, then offered the 'solution' to the family to their own benefit.

Same tactics employed by dictatorships throughout history.

My late parents (who would have been in their early 80s now) were always adamant that the vast majority children born out of wedlock in the rural area where I live were kept within their extended families. I know some of these people, who are now in their 60s and 70s. It was considered shameful to send a pregnant daughter away. Perhaps most people were so poor that they had no 'standing' to lose-I don't know.

I never heard of the magadalen laundries until I went to college in 1990. One of my secondary school teachers had vaguely mentioned the idea of mother and baby homes to us, but they seemed like an anachronism to me, even back then. I was genuinely shocked to read on the adoption board that there are women younger than me who were sent to them.

kylith

Scarinae wrote: »

A girl that was in school with my Mum did this, her family moved to Northern Ireland and her daughter was raised as her sister. I thought it was a bit bizarre when I first heard it, but it didn't occur to me that the other option might have been a laundry

I'm quite surprised at how common this seems to have been I first heard about the phenomenon from my mother when I was in my late teens, but I kind of assumed that it was quite rare.

I suppose a lot of things were a lot more common than people would like to believe. All my grandmother's brothers "had to get married", as she put it, and even today some people will tell you that access to information and contraception will encourage people to have sex, and keeping them ignorant will somehow stop them from doing it.

sunbeam

I have cousins who 'had to get married' in the 70s and mid 80s. One of their wives was barely 17 when her parents forced her to tie the knot. Ireland really was a different place back then.

Boombastic

A relative of mine was sent to the laundry when she was 12 (c1930). Her mother was killed in an accident and the local monseigneur persuaded her father to send her to the laundry in Dublin, as an all male household was no place for a female. She died in the 90' and is buried in the plot in Glasnevin. The family received compensation from the mothers accident, but nobody knows where her share went, although it is suspected that the nuns cashed in on it. Her relatives used to visit her , but she was completely institutionalised. At her funeral the nuns feigned shock that she had relatives, even though they used to take her out for dinner etc and send her presents at christmas/birthdays etc. Nobody really knew what went on in the laundries until it all came out in recent years.

P_1

gubbie wrote: »

I think it's very interesting that while most people will blame the institution, the nuns and the government, not many have called out their own relatives for putting these girls there in the first place. Surely these were the most heartless of all when they were their own flesh and blood.

From talking to my Dad on the subject, the main point he made was the sheer power that the CC had over the population of Ireland back then. Some of the stories he told me frankly shocked me. I know that shouldn't excuse the family members but it is something to consider when taking it all in.

(My Dad grew up in a fairly large town in the West during the 60's and 70's).

CK73

clairefontaine wrote: »

Ah got ya. So it was more about being soiled.

Still though... I can't see too many people today offering housing, clothing, etc for these girls and women.

I think it was more a matter of getting free labour. They make GAP look like saints!

CK73

gubbie wrote: »

I think it's very interesting that while most people will blame the institution, the nuns and the government, not many have called out their own relatives for putting these girls there in the first place. Surely these were the most heartless of all when they were their own flesh and blood.

Did you not see the lovely pictures that they took of happy, well clothed girls in the gardens? They were not seeing the reality, they even thought they were getting paid and had a measure of freedom.

The girls were beaten if they threatened to tell their families the truth and likely their letters home were vetted. One lady on the telly said that she had been beaten for saying she would tell her family, but somehow she managed to get word back and they asked why she wasn't getting paid. The next thing she new her bags were packed and she was left on the street.

They new what they were doing was wrong and hid it well. They were actively recruiting children and young ladies, by telling their families they would have a better life at the laundries.

Ambersky

I was thinking about the difficulty people seem to have in trying to understand, or relate to, how society could have allowed such enforced institutionalized exploitation of women in the laundries. I have heard some people say it was a different time when the laundries were going, we accepted authority with less questions back then and besides the world is a much different place now with mass communications, mobile phones, the internet, such exploitation couldn’t happen nowadays.
In the past people who did not act believed they had reasons why they didn’t or couldn’t do anything about the laundries. Some reasons people gave were, they didn’t know what was happening, they trusted those in charge, it wasn’t happening in their town and they didn’t know the whole story and anyway what could they do as they were finding it difficult enough to just manage and get by themselves.
I heard a woman on Vincent Brown the other night saying the laundries were a class issue, middle class women didn’t end up in laundries and if people still needed laundry to be done the women would still be in there.
Don’t know if she is right but it got me thinking about women cleaning sheets, nameless women cleaning sheets.
If people today knew the sheets they sleep in had been cleaned by women who were being exploited, abused or held in circumstances against their will and not earning enough to get away, would they make different choices than the people of the previous generation.
I think it is an important question whether people now are any different than those who went before and personally I don’t think we are that different. I think we just live in different circumstances but are still faced with moral dilemmas we can choose to ignore,support, or do something about.
It is a different time now as has already been stated and with all this mass communication we sometimes refer to the world as a global village.
So when we travel in this ever more connected global village how do we, make our moral decisions, do we bring our values with us. Do we consider the exploitation of women doing our sheets abroad to be none of our business, a cultural issue and could we, or should we care or do anything about it. Are the moral choices around domestic workers, laundry workers, different when one travels abroad contributing perhaps to the economy of the country we visit, or is there a limit to those we can care about?

Modern Slaves: Domestic Migrant Workers in Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia
The newspaper stories are shocking: Man stapled maid several times and left her disfigured…Heated nails hammered into Sri Lankan maid…Housemaid plunges to her death from Sharjah tower…Ethiopian domestic worker beaten on camera commits suicide…
http://middleeastvoices.voanews.com/2012/05/modern-slaves-domestic-migrant-workers-in-kuwait-uae-saudi-arabia-23585/

In bringing this up Im not trying to decide who is better of worse off, or whats different about, the women who were forced to work in laundries and the women who under other circumstances are forced to work as domestic migrant workers.
Im focusing rather on our reactions to severe exploitation and comparing todays service users to the service users of the past. I think similar feelings of helplessness anger and indifference, come up in both groups. There are some people today who would have difficulty sleeping in those sheets and there are those who wouldn't.

Ambersky

Ambersky wrote: »

There are some people today who would have difficulty sleeping in those sheets and there are those who wouldn't.

A very pertinent parallel. Its very easy to insist that people knew and didn't do anything because they didn't care, but how many of the people making those assertions are wearing t-shirts made in Filipino sweatshops or trainers made with rubber harvested by slaves, or eat chocolate manufactured with the labour of child slaves in Cote Ivoire?

People can make choices to minimise the adverse impact of their consumer choices, but how many choose to?

I think the answer is that people care more about the Laundries here because in a different time, it could have been us, or our friends, our families. Maybe we care less about who make our t-shirts because they're far away out of sight and out of mind.

I think in the days before the emergence of information technology and 24/7 news channels, the laundries were for all intents and purposes, out of sight, out of mind and figuratively at least, very far away.

gammygils

I recently saw a map of Galway printed in 1918.

The Magdalene Site is worded ''Magdalene Asylum''

gammygils

gammygils wrote: »

I recently saw a map of Galway printed in 1918.

The Magdalene Site is worded ''Magdalene Asylum''

The definition of asylum differs from its meaning in popular culture.

Asylum:
Noun:
Shelter or protection from danger.

Synonyms:
refuge - shelter - sanctuary - haven - retreat - home

What bitter irony.:(

Blisterman

I'm curious. Was anyone ever brought to justice for the atrocities that happened in these asylums? In the same manner that a number of child abusing priests were?

Sparklygirl

vitani wrote: »

Would you mind PMing me links to some reports?

I have read about institutions in Ireland in the Independant and watched two irish documentaries regarding this.

kneeler

Ambersky wrote: »

I was thinking about the difficulty people seem to have in trying to understand, or relate to, how society could have allowed such enforced institutionalized exploitation of women in the laundries. I have heard some people say it was a different time when the laundries were going, we accepted authority with less questions back then and besides the world is a much different place now with mass communications, mobile phones, the internet, such exploitation couldn’t happen nowadays.

Don't forget that everyone was afraid of authority years ago. Most children were spanks and caned severely up until the were 20 in some cases. If you had the experience, as I did, of having your bare bottom beaten severely with a leather strap or being severely caned on your bare bottom, you wouldn't challenge authority. We were all battered at home and in school years ago and we all learned that the only waay to survive was to keep your mouth shut.
My parents caned on gthe bare bottom for comin home late at night. They were terrified we would get pregnant and they were determined we would not get abn opportunity to get pregnant. We were always told that the girls in Magdalen homes were sinners and that they were just getting their just desserts.

Ambersky

First off Kneeler I want to say I am really sorry you were abused so badly as a child and by the sounds of it as a young adult on the cusp of learning about your own sexual self.
You are correct in what you say about the commonness of child physical/sexual abuse. Up until very recently it seemed that watching the horrified faces of tourists as we competed with one another, for the worst story of child physical/sexual abuse by a christian brother, nun or parent was practically a national sport.
I can remember conversations in pubs starting with lines like -
"You think that was bad, I remember one child vomiting on his desk with terror when..........." We told these stories often.

Some earlier posters were wondering what other atrocities are waiting to be uncovered from our past or even from today.

There is said to be a three part golden rule that exists in many families that are dysfunctional because of addictions, psychological problems, dogmatic rigidity or physical/sexual abuse.
The rule in families like this is

• Dont Talk
• Dont Feel
• Dont Trust

Religious institutions often had a rule of Silence (dont talk)
and taught its adherents both religious and so called lay people, not to trust their feelings. We as a society seem to be looking a bit at the legacy of damage done to children and vulnerable adults because of their belief systems, I think we need also to look at the belief systems of families as well.
Many of us have been affected by this legacy because we grew up in dysfunctional families and with the prevalence of addiction alone in this country that must count for a lot of us.
So even though it is uncomfortable for many of us we have to

• Learn to Talk
• Learn to Feel
• Learn to Trust

If the nuns in the laundries were connected with their feelings, if they were not so cut off and damaged themselves I believe they would have been unable to treat other human beings as they did.
If the nuns and others did not believe they were bound in one way or another to silence and secrecy the incarceration of women in the laundries would have been forced into public consciousness. Not saying it would have been easy, because people still may not have cared, but maybe something would have changed sooner with a light on the issue and the secrecy uncovered.
Learning to Trust is a bit harder. I think it starts with trusting yourself first. Maybe trusting that your instinct that something is wrong here, is a start. Trusting that something is wrong and you need to do all you can to get out of here and that there is no way you deserve this and that you will not believe the put downs and attempts to demoralize you and make you believe in your own worthlessness.
Others maybe needed to trust their feelings that something was wrong here, that people should not be treated like this and if they trusted in themselves enough they maybe could have spoken out against it or done some little thing to make life a little easier for even one other person or if they could and were in a position to do so do something to bring the whole lot down.
After learning to trust yourself more you usually then need to learn to allow yourself to trust someone else. After all the let downs, the broken promises the broken trust a person may have to learn to trust that not all people are going to treat you as you were in the past.
Healing after such damage is a life's work. Maybe its a countries work too.

I know there are many who are affected by the damage done to them in the past even if they are not from laundries.
If any of this sounds familiar some of these links may be of interest on the road to recovery
http://http://realisticrecovery.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/types-of-dysfunctional-families/
http://http://www.counselingcenter.illinois.edu/?page_id=144

clairefontaine

You cannot build trust in yourself or others when you are relentless met with denial, which is what happenned to alot of these victims. And not just laundry survivors, but anyone who met the rod of the nuns or priests in schools. Even if parents did confront them the clergy would lie and say it didn't happen.

It is of utmost importance that all documents get subpeonad NOW before the church has the chance to destroy them, so to reduce the amount of inevitable denial.

Ambersky

When you are a child with no one to support you and believe you it is very difficult to trust yourself or build a healthy self esteem. Often all you can do is survive in whatever way you can. That can mean going along with it, or acting the clown, or whatever you need to do.
If you have even one adult who will listen to you and believe you, even if they cant stop it all or get justice at the time, that counts for so much for a child and is not to be underestimated.
Children who have been abused who are believed by even one adult, usually recover easier than those who were believed by no one or trusted no one to tell.
However the human spirit is amazing. Even with no support some children and vulnerable adults, somewhere find the strength to believe to trust in themselves. I have listened recently to a survivor of one of the laundries tell of how she was always trying to escape of how she was so angry and didnt believe what was said about her. We dont all have the same survival strategies, what we manage to do what we find in ourselves varies and what worked for one may not work in another situation with another person. There is no right or wrong way to survive as a child or vulnerable adult in an overwhelming circumstance.

The trick is as an adult to recover and realize that some of the things you used to do, to survive are not necessary anymore.
You kind of have to find out about and learn healthy behavior, beliefs and reactions.
Many of us carry over habits from our childhoods that no longer fit and that can be damaging to us and our relationships as adults. We kind of have to unlearn our old habits and realize that time is over we are now free, or as free as we can allow ourselves to be.
In order not to let them win, in a way, we have to become the people we were born to be not the people they tried to turn us into.

smirker

Ambersky wrote: »

First off Kneeler I want to say I am really sorry you were abused so badly as a child and by the sounds of it as a young adult on the cusp of learning about your own sexual self.
terror when..........." We told these stories often.

It wasn't seen as abuse at that time. It was just punishment. In many ways we were glad we were punished severely since it saved us from a worse fate. that of being disgraced and sent to the Magdalen home.
I was simply explaining why no one spoke out. A few did but most were too scared.

clairefontaine

smirker wrote: »

It wasn't seen as abuse at that time. It was just punishment. In many ways we were glad we were punished severely since it saved us from a worse fate. that of being disgraced and sent to the Magdalen home.
I was simply explaining why no one spoke out. A few did but most were too scared.

Interesting.

It makes me wonder how many punitive acts today will up the road be seen as abuse.

Freiheit

Yeah and society is complicit in it,good people doing nothing,in the past and now, complicit in 'abuse' by their silence. Yeah I think a lot of future apologies are possible,to travellers, to lgbtq people,to those in any way disabled, the general populace supported apartheid by their silence. It wasn't considered a sin,these people were in contradiction of our moral code and deserved it,so the average person thought, they did nothing about it. A sibling was born in the Bethany and while she was lucky,the mother was badly treated,not just in the home but worse by the society when she left, shame and stigma,never let go of the stigma. What a cruel country we are emerging from, a Catholic Iran.

I'm really sorry to hear your story Kneeler.