Ireland: Those who’ve been bad end up in the laundry

“If you’re not good, you’ll end up in the monastery laundry.” The Irish singer Shirley Grimes took this disciplinary measure as the prompt for her own composition about the Magdalene laundries:

Ten thousand were buried with shovels and picks / Their bodies were covered with mortar and bricks / A shrine to a dark part of our history / To the pain that was suffered in the Magdalene Laundries /
The sisters of mercy knew no mercy at all / They fed off the shame of the women who'd fallen  / Abandoned by God and by their families / The young girls imprisoned in the Magdalene Laundries 

They went swish, wash, swish, wash away the sins from your soul / Swish, wash, swish, wash away the sins from your soul / Their babies were murdered, the lucky were sold / While their mothers were worked to the skin and the bone / They washed and they ironed and they scrubbed to be free / The women who slaved in the Magdalene Laundries 

They went swish, wash, swish, wash away the sins from your soul / Swish, wash, swish, wash away the sins from your soul / In 1997 the last one was closed / It took almost two decades for their story to be told / Not a word from the church, not an apology / To the women and children from the Magdalene Laundries / They went swish, wash, swish, wash away the sins from your soul / Swish, wash, swish, wash away the sins from your soul

Between the 18th and the late 20th century, in Ireland unmarried mothers were deported to Catholic monasteries in order to spare their families the shame of an illegitimate child. The order of the Bon Secours Sisters, for example, was a nursing order; the nuns were trained as midwives and nurses. In total, there were around a dozen such institutions in Ireland.
The time in the monastery resembled a stint in prison. The ‘fallen girls’ had to perform unpaid drudgery, firstly as compensation for the free childbirth and postnatal care, but also as punishment for their moral error and for ‘correction’. Prostitutes were also committed there for forced labour. Between 1900 and 1996, approximately 35,000 women are said to have moved into such a home for unmarried mothers. They mainly had to work in the laundries, the Magdalene laundries, named after the biblical ‘sinner’ Mary Magdalene. Clients included, for example, banks, hotels, theatres, hospitals, ministries, and the military.

The children also had to atone

The babies were taken away from their mothers and handed over anonymously to couples eager to adopt, or foster parents. At a meeting of former inmates of one mother and baby home in Cork, a woman said: ‘All these mothers have had their hearts broken! Many of us, myself included, spend our entire lives looking for something to compensate for this loss, but it doesn’t work. Once your baby is gone, your life is gone too.’

The Irish population ignored the problems and encroachments of the church-run mother and baby homes for a long time. For example, a mass grave had been known about since 1975, but it was not until 1993 that official investigations began. When more than 150 nameless female corpses were discovered in the grounds in front of a monastery laundry, the media also picked up on the issue. The last monastery laundry was closed in 1996. A state apology followed in 2013, and, in 2022, compensation was paid out to 814 survivors. The monasteries did not participate in these reparations, since they had done the country a service.

The countless number of babies’ bodies are nowhere to be found. The death rate is estimated to be between 35 and 60 percent. Only very few received a decent funeral. In a parliamentary debate, it was determined that one in three illegitimate babies died in their first year of life – about five times as many as among children born in wedlock. In 2012, the historian Catherine Corless had ascertained that 796 children had died in a monastery in the 4000-inhabitant town of Tuam between 1925 and 1961; only for one child was there a funeral certificate. The bodies had been buried in a mass grave behind the former home. Some had been thrown into the sewage tank on the grounds. The children had died of measles, pneumonia, and tuberculosis, or simply starved to death.

Surviving children received a rudimentary school education, during which they were to learn to work – and pray. In the schools, they were treated badly, ostracised, and ridiculed – by the nuns and, following their example, also by their classmates: they were fair game, as it were. If they were very lucky, they went to a family where they did well. With respect to questions about their fate, neither the biological mothers were given any information nor were the children given access to the details of their origin.

In addition to the media reports, a large number of films, plays, and compositions address the subject of Magdalene laundries. The ‘classic’ was recorded by Mary Coughlan in 1992, https://genius.com/Mary-coughlan-magdalen-laundry-lyrics:

For seventeen years I’ve been scrubbing this washboard/ Ever since the fellas started in after me
My mother poor soul didn’t know what to do / The Canon said ‘Child there’s a place for you’
Now I’m serving my time at the Magdalen Laundry / I’m toeing the line at the Magdalen Laundry

There’s girls from the country, girls from the town / Their bony white elbows going up and down
The Reverend Mother as she glides through the place / A tight little smile on the side of her face
She’s running the show at the Magdalen Laundry / She’s got nowhere to go but the Magdalen Laundry

Ooh Lord won’t you let me / Don’t you let me / Won’t you let me wash away the stain / Ooh Lord won’t you let me wash away the stain

I’m washing altar linen and cassocks and stoles/ I’m scrubbing long Johns these for holy Joes
We know where they’ve been when they’re not saving souls / What the red wine spilt what the smooth hand poured / We’re squeezing it out at the Magdalen Laundry / We’re scrubbing it out at the Magdalen Laundry

Ooh Lord won’t you let me / Don’t you let me / Won’t you let me wash away the stain / Ooh Lord won’t you let me wash away the stain

Sunday afternoon while the Lord’s at rest / It’s off to the prom watch the waves roll by / We’re chewing on our toffees, hear the seagulls squawk/ There go the Maggies the children talk / Through our faces / they stare at the Magdalen Laundry / In our eyes see the glare of the Magdalen Laundry

Ooh Lord won’t you let me / Don’t you let me / Won’t you let me wash away the stain / Ooh Lord won’t you let me wash away the stain

The actual composition ‘Magdalen Laundries’ by the Irish singer Shirley Grimes proves how present the past still is. https://www.shirleygrimes.com/