Magdalene laundry

Magdalene laundry, an institution in which women and girls were made to perform unpaid laundry work, sewing, cleaning, and cooking as penitence for violating moral codes. Such institutions existed in Europe, North America, and Australia between the 18th and 20th centuries and were often overseen by religious groups. The Magdalene laundries in Ireland, where they were largely run by Roman Catholic orders in conjunction with the Irish government, gained widespread notoriety that continued long after their closure.

History

Institutions with the name “Magdalene” or “Magdalen” were founded with the idea of reforming so-called “fallen women.” These were typically women who worked as prostitutes or who were vulnerable to turning to prostitution due to poverty. The institutions were named after St. Mary Magdalene, who appears in the Bible as one of Jesus Christ’s disciples. In the 6th century, she was misidentified as a prostitute by Pope Gregory I, and she was thereafter used as an example of a “fallen woman” who had been reformed by Christian faith.

The first institution that could be classified as a Magdalene laundry was the Magdalen Hospital for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London, founded in 1758 by a wealthy merchant, Robert Dingley. It took in women under age 30, although its first admitted group were girls aged 9 to 14. They were given moral instruction by a staff chaplain and were taught skills such as needlepoint. The laundry moved several times in ensuing decades.

In Ireland the first Magdalene laundry was founded in Dublin in 1765 by Lady Arabella Denny, a philanthropist. It was solely for young Protestant women who had worked as prostitutes or were destitute. They received two years of shelter and training, after which they were discharged to find employment as servants. By the end of the 19th century, there were more than 300 Magdalene laundries in Britain and more than 40 in Ireland, with at least 19 in the Dublin area and 5 in Belfast. Similar institutions were founded in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United States.

Their patrons varied widely, ranging from Protestant clergy to Roman Catholic religious orders to charities such as the Salvation Army. Magdalene societies were also formed in U.S. cities with the mission of reforming “fallen women” or “wayward girls.” The first of these societies came together in Philadelphia in 1800 under William White, an Episcopalian bishop. In 1808 the society opened a Magdalene asylum in the city.

Reformers often recruited the women and girls from impoverished neighborhoods or brothels, but many were brought to an institution by police or family, or were referred by a child welfare agency or by a court as an alternative to prison. Depending on the institution, their stay could range from a few days or weeks to many years. Some laundries had barred windows and high surrounding walls that kept the women fully separated from society. The women were commonly called “Magdalenes” or “Maggies” (both of which are considered pejorative).

Philadelphia’s Magdalene asylum initially operated according to a strict discipline of prayer and labor. However, in time its focus shifted to preventing juvenile delinquency through education, and the asylum began admitting younger girls instead of adult women. It eventually evolved into an organization that provided financial support to public high school students in need. By the 1960s and ’70s, Magdalene laundries in most countries were closed down, sold off to commercial laundries, or reformed under a different mission.

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Ireland’s Magdalene laundries

An exception to this timing in closure of Magdalene laundries was Ireland, where some laundries remained open until the 1990s. In the 20th century Ireland’s Magdalene laundries became especially notorious for their harsh conditions. After gaining independence from Britain in 1922, the new Irish Free State forged strong ties with the Roman Catholic Church, partly in an effort to create a nation that was not only defiantly postcolonial but triumphantly moral and Catholic. In 1937 the church was given a “special position” in the country’s constitution, which also included an article that affirmed a woman’s ideal role and place was as a mother in a domestic setting.

Socially this had the effect of casting a wider net for the types of women who could be considered “fallen.” Irish Magdalene laundries often admitted girls who were orphaned or abandoned by their families or whose families were financially unable to take care of them. Unwed women who had become pregnant might also be sent to a laundry as “penance” after giving birth, as could women accused of engaging in premarital or extramarital sex. Laundries also admitted girls and women who were considered too flirtatious, who had been physically or sexually abused, who had a physical or developmental disability, and who had committed petty crimes as well as serious offenses such as infanticide. Between 1922 and 1996, more than 10,000 women and girls were admitted to the laundries.

Four Catholic religious orders operated the laundries in Ireland after 1922: the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge, the Good Shepherd Sisters, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Sisters of Charity. Despite their status as charities, they ran the laundries as for-profit businesses that took in the washing of hotels, hospitals, schools, and government entities.

The laundries were run in collaboration with the Irish government, although their day-to-day oversight was under the religious orders. Laundry women lived on the convent property with the overseeing religious order but in separate quarters from the religious sisters. They were required to attend religious services but were isolated in a separate section of the chapel during services. They performed their labor in silence, and punishments for infractions were severe. Women in the laundries reported being physically and verbally abused, denied food and water, assigned new names, and refused contact with family members. Those who attempted to escape were returned to the laundry by police or religious sisters. Some women spent the rest of their lives in a laundry after being admitted.

Magdalene laundries were part of a vast network of church-and-state institutions in 20th-century Ireland that included mother-and-baby homes and industrial schools. The former were institutions where unwed pregnant women lived and worked until their babies were born. Their children were then boarded out to local farms and families, sent to live in industrial schools (a type of reformatory), or adopted, often to families outside Ireland. By the 1950s 1 out of 100 Irish citizens was confined in an institution.

Changing mores eventually led to declines in the number of women admitted to the laundries. By the 1980s the religious orders began closing or selling off their laundries. In 1993 a scandal erupted when a mass grave of 155 women was exhumed on the property of a convent in Dublin that had run a laundry. The ensuing outrage brought attention to the conditions and history of the laundries and spawned a battle for restorative justice for the surviving women of the laundries. The last Magdalene laundry in Ireland, located on Seán McDermott Street in Dublin, closed down in October 1996.

In 2011 the advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes submitted a report to the United Nations Committee Against Torture in an effort to pressure the Irish government to initiate an inquiry into human rights abuses committed in the laundries and to gain redress for the institutions’ survivors. Later that year the Irish government launched an investigation. In February 2013 the government released a report, which was criticized for taking only partial responsibility and downplaying the extent of abuse in the laundries. However, later that month Taoiseach Enda Kenny issued a formal state apology to the laundries’ survivors.

The Irish government ultimately paid compensation to more than 800 women. The religious orders were criticized for declining to contribute to the fund; they also attracted anger for not allowing access to congregation archives for a full inquiry. In 2022 a plan was approved to turn the Seán McDermott Street laundry in Dublin into a national site of remembrance and research dedicated to survivors of institutional abuse.