Report to be released on The Magdalene Laundries

Originally published on The Daily Shift on the 05/02/2013.

women in the laundries

A new report revealing the degree of the State’s knowledge, involvement and collusion in the detention of women in the Magdalene Laundries will be published and presented to the women, their advocacy groups and the government, this afternoon, 05/02/13. It is expected to display the extent of the responsibility that lies on the shoulders of the successive government’s since the opening of the first laundry in 1922.

A committee chaired by Senator Martin McAleese, husband of former President Mary McAleese, spent 18 months identifying the official role and involvement Ireland and the government had in the “for-profit Church-run operation”. Survivors, known as Justice for Magdadalens (JMF), have been campaigning for the last ten years for an inquiry into the Laundries. The inquiry, however, was prompted by a report from the United Nations Committee Against Torture in June 2011. It called for prosecution, where necessary, and compensation to surviving women.

The laundries were in existence for over 74 years from 1922 until as recently as 1996! Thousands of women were put to work in detention, mostly in industrial for-profit laundries run by nuns in four religious congregations. Most of them were detained because they became pregnant outside of marriage. Each woman had her Christian name changed, her surname unused and most have since died. There was over 988 remains of women found buried in laundry plots in cemeteries throughout Ireland and therefore must have been detained for life.

Steven O Riordan of the Magdalene Survivors Together group said that last night he would be “flabbergasted” of the report found there was no State involvement with the laundries, the Irish Times reports this morning.

He also said he hoped the discoveries would lay the basis for an apology “without delay” by the Taoiseach on behalf of the State. The women and Mr. O Riordan were hoping they would be paid for the work done in the laundries and in turn receive a pension.

The Magdalene Laundries

The first Magdalene laundry opened on Dublin’s Leeson Street in 1767. Others were opened in Waterford, New Ross, two in Cork, Limerick, Galway and four in Dublin at Dún Laoghaire, Donnybrook, Drumcondra and Gloucester Street. Four female religious congregations came to dominate the running of the laundries. The Gloucester Street laundry has only closed as recently as 1996.