The forgotten women of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries

[cronus]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens ... dries.html

The forgotten women of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries

They have been described as 'Ireland’s disappeared'.
Thousands of women are thought to have passed through the gates of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, some of them never to emerge again and others to leave with deep emotional scars.
The women - some of whom had fallen pregnant outside marriage, or were the daughters of unmarried women - worked for years in church-run laundries, at times allegedly enduring both mental and physical abuse.
Campaigners have long been calling for justice for the Magdalene women and this week, it could finally come.

“The women have waited too long for the apology that they’re due, for their pension, compensation and unpaid wages,” says Maeve O’Rourke, a 26-year-old lawyer with the Justice for Magdalenes campaign.
“It’s time that everybody acknowledges that they were innocent victims of a system that included society, state and church.
“They were sacrificed for the sake of an ideal - and it was only an ideal - of a pure society.”
From the early 1920s, it is estimated that tens of thousands of women worked in the laundries, which were run as businesses while the women were said to go unpaid.
Women worked in the laundries sometimes for years. On arrival at the laundry, they were said to have been given a different name by which they would be known.
Those who have spoken about their experiences talk of constantly washing laundry in cold water, of using heavy irons for hours, of close friendships being forbidden, and of never feeling free to leave.
Named after the Bible’s redeemed prostitute, Mary Magdalene, the laundries were first used to reform so-called ‘fallen women’.
But, they then expanded. Justice for Magdalenes says the laundries took in girls who were considered ‘promiscuous’, those who were unmarried mothers or were considered a burden on their families.
Ireland’s last Magdalene Laundry closed in 1996. Three years earlier, the laundries were brought to light when a convent sold off part of its land and the remains of 155 inmates who had been buried in unmarked graves on the property were exhumed.

(continued)

[hadespussercats]

I think Dev's wife wrote about this?

I should check. If so, this could be a great merge. It's an interesting subject.

[hadespussercats]

I think Dev's wife wrote about this?

I should check. If so, this could be a great merge. It's an interesting subject.

Not quite. Related, I think:

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... e#p1294813

[DaveDodo007]

Can I just say that on a personal note, fuck religion, fuck it on its cuntin arses. seriously religion, do one.

[macdoc]

There is a very good docu on this and it's totally horrific,
http://www.decentfilms.com/articles/magdalenesisters
Fucking catholic pricks and the hags as nuns sadistic creeps.
I was QUITE pleased to see the major cathedral in down town Dublin converted to a cafe and tourist info centre.

No doubt the result of some settlement.

[Jason]

Seen the movie. They're hardly forgotten.

[tattuchu]

Oh so that's what Joni Mitchell was singing about

[cronus]

Oh so that's what Joni Mitchell was singing about

.....from a woman who gave her kid up for a lucrative musical career?

[hadespussercats]

Oh so that's what Joni Mitchell was singing about

.....from a woman who gave her kid up for a lucrative musical career?

?

I'd think the right to lead the life you choose, unashamed, is the point there.

Is all adoption abhorrent, in your book?

Whatever.

[Svartalf]

So, is the Magdalene Laundries (nice shameful name there) case mostly forgotten or not?

[tattuchu]

I knew nothing about this. This is what Wiki says:

In the autumn of 1964, Joni discovered that she was pregnant by her Calgary ex-boyfriend Brad MacMath. She later wrote, "[he] left me three months pregnant in an attic room with no money and winter coming on and only a fireplace for heat. The spindles of the banister were gap-toothed fuel for last winter's occupants."[20] At the time, the pill was legally unavailable in Canada, as was abortion, yet there was a strong social stigma against women giving birth out of wedlock. In Toronto, she could at least do so quietly, without alarming her relatives back home. In February 1965 she gave birth to a baby girl. Unable to provide for the baby, she gave her daughter, Kelly Dale Anderson, up for adoption. The experience remained private for most of her career, but she made allusions to it in several songs, most notably in "Little Green," which she performed in the 1960s but eventually recorded for the 1971 album Blue. At the time, the veiled lyrics were not widely understood – a review described them as impenetrable.

and...

The existence of Mitchell's adopted daughter was not publicly known until 1993, when a roommate from Mitchell's art school days in the 1960s sold the story about the adoption to a tabloid magazine.[24][25] By that time, Mitchell's daughter, renamed Kilauren Gibb, had already begun a search for her biological parents. Mitchell and her daughter met in 1997.[26] After the reunion, Mitchell said that she lost interest in songwriting, and she would later identify her daughter's birth and her inability to take care of her as the moment when her songwriting inspiration had really begun. When she could not express herself to the person she wanted to talk to, she became attuned to the whole world and she began to write personally.

[cronus]

She was loaded by the late seventies and it took another twenty years for her to trace her kid....

[Audley Strange]

Really they should have put her kid in a museum and charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see em.

Anyway who gives a flying fuck about Joni Mitchel?

Also the only people who've "forgotten" about the Magdalene laundries are the geriatric readership of the Telegraph, mostly because of Alzheimers.

[hadespussercats]

She was loaded by the late seventies and it took another twenty years for her to trace her kid....

I hope it doesn't take you that long to pull your head out of your ass.

[Narraback]

You've got to hand it to the Catholic Church. No matter how much shit is flung at this already discredited organisation, it still seems to function as if nothing has happened. Incredible.