Thirty years ago this Sunday, the doors closed on the last of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, institutions where an estimated 30,000 women were confined from the 1760s onwards after being judged mischievous or scandalous, often while still in their teens. The Irish State did not acknowledge them as places of abuse until 2001, and a formal apology and an $82 million redress scheme followed only in 2013, seventeen years after the last laundry on Sean MacDermott Street stopped work.
Also known as Magdalene asylums, Magdalene Laundries were cruel and medieval institutions in which women were imprisoned, stripped of their human rights and abused sexually and otherwise.
Women sent to the Laundries were deemed “mischievous” or “scandalous” at an incredibly young age and spent years and years of their lives doing penance for their sins, guarded by ruthless nuns.
The Laundries were disguised as rehabilitation centers for “fallen” women; in reality, the women rarely made it out alive from these places. A mass grave of 155 corpses was discovered in Dublin in 1993.
It wasn’t until 2001 that the Irish Government admitted they were institutions of abuse – a formal state apology was issued in 2013 with an $82 million compensation scheme.
The last Magdalene Laundry in Ireland was the Convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity on Sean MacDermott Street in Dublin. At the height of its productivity, 150 women worked there, and 40 women were in residence when it closed, the eldest being 79.
Mary Magdalene who was in earlier centuries characterized as a converted prostitute, existed from the early 1760s through the late 1990s in Ireland, the UK, Australia, and the US. An estimated 30,000 women were confined.
For more IrishCentral articles about the Magdalene Laundries, read: