AUTHOR’S NOTE

The history of the Catholic Church has been fraught with war, religious intolerance, and scandal, yet in fairness, the institution has been tempered throughout the centuries by its charitable actions, the lives of its saints, and the devotion of its faithful. In recent years, the Church has been scrutinized for financial malfeasance, priestly overindulgence, and sexual abuse. The story of the Magdalen Laundries has only come into the cultural spotlight within the past two decades.

Perhaps this story has not been as exploited as something so overtly inflammatory as the sexual abuse scandal of priests because of the nature of the Magdalens’ “crimes.” The girls and women under servitude were mostly categorized as “fallen women.” Could our own cultural biases have served to favor their punishment? They deserved what they got, many might say. Girls and women were sent to the laundries for being mentally unfit or too pretty, too attractive, inducing sin by the very nature of their looks. Others ended up there because of promiscuity or their involvement in prostitution.

The Magdalen Girls is set in Dublin in 1962. It should be noted that the laundries were not confined to Ireland. In fact, the asylums, as they were also known, existed in England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. They were also not solely under the province of the Catholic Church. Secular interests, as well as other religious entities outside Catholicism, developed laundries to rehabilitate prostitutes.

The first reported laundry opened in 1758. The last closed in 1996. Once incarcerated, a woman’s reputation was often ruined. Many stayed in the institution for years, calling it home, because there was no other option for the “penitent.” Through its strict doctrine, the institution often managed to make the Magdalen unfit to adjust to a normal life outside the laundry. They were, in effect, prisoners both inside and outside its structure.

In 1993, a mass grave of children was found on the grounds of a Dublin laundry. This led to a formal state apology nearly two decades later. As far as I know, no compensation or formal apology has ever been given by the Church. The history of the laundries remains a contentious subject on both sides of the debate, one calling the actions criminal, and the other portraying them as beneficial and rehabilitative.

Despite the arguments, there is no doubt that the lives of many thousands of girls and women were changed by their time in servitude. Some lived, some died, but their stories continue to touch us all.