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99. The Magdalene Laundries · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to an Airwave media podcast. Hello delicious friends,
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  Speaker 1: and welcome to Who Did What Now? The history podcast
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  Speaker 1: That's not your history class with me your host Katie Charlwood,
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  Speaker 1: history harlot and reader of books. This is a very
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  Speaker 1: special episode if you were listening on day release. This
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  Speaker 1: is for International Women's Day twenty twenty four and it's
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  Speaker 1: episode ninety nine. If I could have made this episode
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  Speaker 1: one hundred, I would have. But I was so determined
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  Speaker 1: to do this, and I've been hommin and homin overdoing
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  Speaker 1: it for like six months, like a good solid six months.
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  Speaker 1: I have been like studying and putting it aside and
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  Speaker 1: then crying to myself and trying to find the best
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  Speaker 1: moment to do this, and seeing as it's Women's History
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  Speaker 1: Month and Irish Heritage Month, and when I asked followers
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  Speaker 1: and listeners what they wanted to hear, what they wanted
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  Speaker 1: to know about like Irish history, Women's history, you know,
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  Speaker 1: it was a pretty unanimous decision of do both like
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  Speaker 1: Irish women, the history of Irish women, Irish women's history,
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  Speaker 1: And that's where we're at, because I think it would
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  Speaker 1: be a massive, massive disservice to discuss history of women
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  Speaker 1: in Ireland and not talk about this and not discuss it.
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  Speaker 1: And I know my voice isn't really back, it's not
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  Speaker 1: really here. You're going to have to bear with me
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: for this episode. I'm going to ask you for that,
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  Speaker 1: and consider this your content warning, your trigger warning for
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  Speaker 1: this episode, because I'm going to be discussing abuse and
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  Speaker 1: assault and infanticide and femicide and trauma and abject fucking horror.
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  Speaker 1: And it's not about sensationalism or drama or making mountains
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  Speaker 1: at molehills. This is about giving these women and girls
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  Speaker 1: their voice back, giving them their stories. A lot of
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  Speaker 1: them died not being able to tell the truth, having
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  Speaker 1: everything swept under the rug. And I might just be
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  Speaker 1: one voice shouting it from the fucking rooftops, but their
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  Speaker 1: story needs to be told and we need to keep
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  Speaker 1: telling it, and we need to put pressure on everyone,
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  Speaker 1: from the institutions that forced this to the government that
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  Speaker 1: allowed it, for everybody who turned a blind eye. There
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  Speaker 1: were so many mechanisms working together to keep this situation going,
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  Speaker 1: to keep this afloat, and not only do they absolutely
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  Speaker 1: deserve to feel pure on adulterated shame, but the women
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  Speaker 1: and girls who suffered at the hands of these institutions.
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  Speaker 1: They deserve to be heard. History isn't just dates on
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  Speaker 1: a timeline. History is it about people, about their lives,
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  Speaker 1: about humanity. And there were women still alive today who
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  Speaker 1: suffered through these who may never tell their stories, who
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  Speaker 1: may never feel that it's acceptable to do so. And
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  Speaker 1: we have to be able to stand up and say
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  Speaker 1: that we're listening and to make sure that no one
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  Speaker 1: suffers like they did. I'm going to have a message
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  Speaker 1: at the end of this episode, and I really hope
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  Speaker 1: you'll stay to listen to it. But I know what
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  Speaker 1: you're thinking right now, you're thinking what your gibber jabber
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  Speaker 1: in fact me, In fact you, I will. But first
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  Speaker 1: we've got to get our source on. Our sources are
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  Speaker 1: shaped by silence, stories from inmates of the Good Shepherd
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  Speaker 1: laundries and reformatories. By We Crawl, Do Penance or Perish?
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  Speaker 1: A study of Magdalen asylums in Ireland by Francis Finnegan.
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  Speaker 1: Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's architecture of containment by
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  Speaker 1: James M. Smith. Republic of Shame. Stories from Ireland's institutions
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  Speaker 1: for fallen women by Caylin Hogan. The documentary Sex in
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  Speaker 1: a Cold Climate for Channel four. Institutional Abuse in Ireland
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  Speaker 1: Lessons from Survivors and Legal Professionals by O'Donnell, mahoney and O'Rourke.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing About Us Without Us Giving Voice to diversity and
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  Speaker 1: Criminological research by Ahmed and Wendell. The Justice for Magdalen
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  Speaker 1: Research Archive, Report of the International Committee to Establish the
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  Speaker 1: Facts of State Involvement with the Magdalene Laundries, Origins of
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  Speaker 1: the Magdalen Laundries and Analytical History by Rebecca Lee McCarthy.
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  Speaker 1: And we have articles from the Irish Times, The Guardian
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  Speaker 1: and the New York Times. Now, if you're not from
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  Speaker 1: the island of Ireland, you may be unaware of anything
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  Speaker 1: to do with the Magdalen Laundries. And for some it
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  Speaker 1: may be a term that you've heard like every now
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  Speaker 1: and again without really knowing what it's about, let alone
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  Speaker 1: the horrors that exis reisted within their walls. Make a
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  Speaker 1: pun about it, but the fact that it's about the
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  Speaker 1: Magdalene Laundries, the term itself sort of washes away sort
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  Speaker 1: of the sharpness and the barbarity of what they really were.
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  Speaker 1: It really doesn't give an inkling to just how bad
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  Speaker 1: it was. But yeah, they were laundries, and Ronzield Diamond
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  Speaker 1: Coop does exactly what it says in the tin. It
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  Speaker 1: was a laundry. Shit was washed there. Women and girls
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  Speaker 1: did laundry in absolutely horrific conditions while being stripped of
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  Speaker 1: their human rights and their bloody dignity. They're imprisoned performing
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  Speaker 1: slave labor for the very people who are supposed to
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  Speaker 1: be helping them, the nuns who were supposed to be
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  Speaker 1: providing education, skills, spiritual guidance, but instead they used and
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  Speaker 1: abused these women and girls. The laundries an inferno in
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  Speaker 1: which to contain, hide, or demonize any woman or girl
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  Speaker 1: who fell out with the Catholic standard, the patriarchal standard,
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  Speaker 1: and it worked for decades. Like the last laundry didn't
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  Speaker 1: shut down until the late nineteen hundreds nineteen ninety six,
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  Speaker 1: and even then, as we edged closer towards the twenty
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  Speaker 1: first century, what really happened in those laundries was still kept,
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  Speaker 1: you know, hush hush, and like you only really knew
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  Speaker 1: what was going on in the laundries if you had
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  Speaker 1: been like involved in it, or if someone you knew
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  Speaker 1: was involved or had been a part of it, and
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  Speaker 1: they had actually spoken up about it to you. And
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  Speaker 1: that's a stretch. So listen, somebody wants to ask me
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  Speaker 1: if I was proud to be Catholic. It's called Catholic
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  Speaker 1: guilt for fucking reason. Like institutions like this rely on
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  Speaker 1: shame and guilt, and it is so deeply rooted, like
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  Speaker 1: through Irish society, like this is generational, and Catholicism is
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  Speaker 1: really hard to escape from, Like it is very difficult
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  Speaker 1: to be excommunicated, clearly because none of these nuns were
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  Speaker 1: no nuns none, Like for the majority of Irish history,
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  Speaker 1: there was no separation of church in state. It's not secular.
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  Speaker 1: It is ingrained in there. And for years, even when
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  Speaker 1: you know, people started actually talking about the laundries in
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  Speaker 1: the early two thousands, the Irish government was not too
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  Speaker 1: keen on starting any inquiries that would sort of bush
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  Speaker 1: them aside. It wasn't really looking to be involved in
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  Speaker 1: that because that would, you know, bring some skeletons out
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  Speaker 1: of the cupbold, you know what I mean. So the official,
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  Speaker 1: the logged registered amount of women and girls went through
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  Speaker 1: the laundries is about ten thousand. The state has argued
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  Speaker 1: that it wasn't that many, whereas advocacy groups and other
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  Speaker 1: researchers think that the number is much higher, like closer
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  Speaker 1: to thirty thousand dollars all. And that's between like nineteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty two and nineteen ninety six when the last one closed.
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  Speaker 1: So the laundries in Ireland they were sort of all
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  Speaker 1: over but mainly in sort of bigger, more urban areas,
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  Speaker 1: and they were run by four separate Catholic religious orders.
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  Speaker 1: And so we have the Order of Our Lady of
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  Speaker 1: Charity of Refuge and they had institutions in High Park,
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  Speaker 1: Drum Condra and Sean McDermott Street. That's all in Dublin.
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  Speaker 1: These Sisters of the Good Shepherd they had Sunday as
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  Speaker 1: well in Cork City and they had Waterford, Limerick and
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  Speaker 1: then in New Ross in Wexford. The Congregation of the
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  Speaker 1: Sisters of Mercy they had laundries in so the Irish
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  Speaker 1: laundries they were sort of they were all over, but
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  Speaker 1: they were mainly in urban areas. So they were in
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  Speaker 1: Dublin sort of High Park, Drum Condra, Sean McDermott Street
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  Speaker 1: and Donnie Brooke. They were in Cork and sort of
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  Speaker 1: Peacock Lane and Sunday as well. They were in Waterford,
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  Speaker 1: they were in Limerick, go away down Lyric like they
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  Speaker 1: were all over the shop, you know. And they were
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  Speaker 1: run by four sort of religious orders for Catholic well
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  Speaker 1: religious orders nuns all nuns, so the Order of Our
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  Speaker 1: Lady of Charity of Refuge, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd,
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  Speaker 1: the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters
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  Speaker 1: of Charity. So the largest of these institutions was the
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  Speaker 1: High Park Convent in Dublin, which was run by the OLCA,
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  Speaker 1: the Order of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge. And
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three it wasn't doing too well financially.
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  Speaker 1: Basically they were having some money worries forcing them to
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  Speaker 1: sell some land that the convent owned. Now, the reason
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  Speaker 1: they had to sell this land, they said, was because
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  Speaker 1: you know, they'd spent all this money building this refuge
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  Speaker 1: for women in need, when really it was much dodgia,
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  Speaker 1: like they had lost money on the stock market. They
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  Speaker 1: had like dodgy dodgy investments that put them in so
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  Speaker 1: much debt that they had to sell eleven point five
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  Speaker 1: acres of land developers for a cool one point five
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  Speaker 1: million pounds or punts as they were then. So this
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  Speaker 1: land that the nuns had sold the developers to the
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  Speaker 1: land developers just so happened to have, you know, a
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  Speaker 1: mass grave in it. And this wasn't a surprise, like
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  Speaker 1: the nuns knew about this grave. It wasn't like, oh, dear,
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  Speaker 1: we've suddenly uncovered this huge chunk of bodies. No, no, no,
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  Speaker 1: they were well aware of it. And it wasn't like, oh,
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  Speaker 1: this is a mass grave from when the famine happened, No, no,
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  Speaker 1: there was. It was a burial ground of girls and
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  Speaker 1: women who, of their own volition chose to spend the
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  Speaker 1: entirety of their lives in the High Park laundry and
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  Speaker 1: of course definitely absolutely passed away from natural causes and
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  Speaker 1: nothing untoward whatsoever. And the nun said that in this
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  Speaker 1: fucking body pit, that one hundred and thirty three women
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  Speaker 1: had been buried there between eighteen eighty six in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: eighty six, a solid in what some might say strangely
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  Speaker 1: convenient period of time. So, yeah, this land had been
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  Speaker 1: sold to these developers and obviously their own purpose, the
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  Speaker 1: reason they purchased the land is to develop it. And
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  Speaker 1: in order for that to happen, the bodies need to
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  Speaker 1: be exhumed from the mass grave and then reburied like
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  Speaker 1: that's just legally has to happen. And in order for
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  Speaker 1: that to happen, there's a fuck ton of paperwork and licenses,
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  Speaker 1: and there has to be a paper trail, and there
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  Speaker 1: has to be appropriate documentation. That's just how the law works.
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  Speaker 1: And this may shock you, but they did not, in
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  Speaker 1: fact have all of the appropriate documentation. You could say,
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  Speaker 1: their files pretty thin, you know. Out of the one
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  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty three women they said were buried there,
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  Speaker 1: the sisters were only able to provide seventy five death certificates.
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  Speaker 1: And I don't know how good your math is, but
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  Speaker 1: seventy five much smaller than one hundred and thirty three.
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  Speaker 1: That is fifty eight fifty eight people who do do
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  Speaker 1: not have a death certificate or any known or logged
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  Speaker 1: cause of death. So for about thirty of those they
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  Speaker 1: were able to provide names. For about twenty ish they
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  Speaker 1: were only able to provide like their religious names, like
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  Speaker 1: Augusta for Delma, Mary fucking Clarence. And there is even
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  Speaker 1: one woman in this grave who was only identified by
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  Speaker 1: her first name which is absolutely shocking, and like fifty
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  Speaker 1: eight fifty eight women who don't have a death certificate,
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  Speaker 1: which you know, not only unethical, but it's illegal. Failure
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  Speaker 1: to register a death that happens on your premises is
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  Speaker 1: a criminal offense in Ireland. Like legally you have to
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  Speaker 1: declare those deaths. It's a pretty standard law in Fairmless.
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  Speaker 1: Somebody dies on your property, you've got to declare it.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, they gather up what paperwork they have and
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  Speaker 1: the sisters and the developers get started on exumin the bodies,
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  Speaker 1: and they actually split the cost of this, like because
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  Speaker 1: it costs money to bury someone, you know, to dig
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  Speaker 1: them up and rebury them. So on the twenty third
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  Speaker 1: of August nineteen ninety three, the excavation starts. So they
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  Speaker 1: start digging and it becomes very apparent, very sharpish, that
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  Speaker 1: there's more than one hundred and thirty three bodies in
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  Speaker 1: this grave. They find another twenty two for him. They
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  Speaker 1: have absolutely zero explanation. That's an extra twenty two people
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  Speaker 1: in this grave, and they are all exhumed by the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of September, so like seven eight days. They just
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  Speaker 1: dig them all up, and they don't have a reason
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  Speaker 1: or an explanation or death certificates, and there's no investigation, nothing,
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  Speaker 1: They're just allowed to dig them up. And out of
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  Speaker 1: these one hundred and fifty five women and girls, only
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  Speaker 1: one is claimed and she is reburied in her family
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  Speaker 1: plot by her relatives. The rest are cremated and buried
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  Speaker 1: in glass Nevin Cemetery. Now cremated, I hear you ask. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: convenient that. So if there was anybody snooping around or
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: investigating or planning to look at these bodies and maybe
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: try and figure out a cause of death, not a
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  Speaker 1: fucking hope, because they've destroyed the evidence. And it's only
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  Speaker 1: at this point where information starts to trickle out, and slowly,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: very very slowly, information about the laundries starts to enter
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  Speaker 1: the public consciousness, and it would be twenty years before
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  Speaker 1: anybody got any sign, any inkling of justice. But before
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: we get into that, I'm going to take you back
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  Speaker 1: to the very beginning, and our journey actually starts in
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  Speaker 1: London in seventeen fifty eight. So the first Magdalene asylums
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  Speaker 1: as they were known, they were established in England, initially
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  Speaker 1: in London and Well by a philanthropist, by a do
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  Speaker 1: gooder Man, and it was called the London Magdalene Hospital,
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  Speaker 1: or its full title the Magdalene Hospital for the Reception
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  Speaker 1: of Penitent Prostitutes. Yes, that was its name, and so
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  Speaker 1: it was run by well actually Protestants, it wasn't run
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  Speaker 1: by religious orders. And it was an institution whose entire
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: purpose was to reform the character of fallen women, specifically prostitutes.
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  Speaker 1: Now I'm not going to say sex workers in the scenario,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: because sex worker implies agency and implies choice, not necessity.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Like if you're selling your body in Victorian sorry Georgian London,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: it's probably because you don't have any other bloody choice,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: you know. So the whole point was to bring the men,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: give them religious instructions, so good Church of England stuff,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: you know, have them learn a skill, give them the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: means in which to support themselves, and then they would
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: go on and live a good life. Like that was
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  Speaker 1: the purpose. Now, the thing about asylums like this one
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: and bedlam, like people could buy tickets to go in
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and look at the people who were suffering, Like you
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: could go and look at somebody who had a mental illness.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: You can go and look at a penitent prostitute and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: they would sing in a church choir for you, like
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: it was a sideshow, which is absolutely demoralizing at the
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: best of times. But like, what the actual fuck, Like,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not surprised a human behavior, but sometimes I'm still
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: also surprised a human behavior. So back to the name,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I should probably just clarify this, yes, named after Mary Magdalene,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: because there is an assumption nowadays that Mary Magdalene was
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a prostitute, which only really came a because of one
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: of the Gregory's, Pope Gregory. Most of the Gregory's are shit, right,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: they're just dodgy pope's at the best of times. But
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: this Pope Gregory in like the sixth century, he is
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the one who's like clearly a whore, Like that's that
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: was his whole stick, when there was nothing in the
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Bible to even suggest that. Like she just happened to
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: be a woman with money who was around Jesus, right,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: she had her own means, and she chose to hang
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: around this villa. And like he is the person who
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: sees him first, like when he rises from the dead,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: she's like, hey, why hurt? Maybe there's a reason, Like
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: even by Bible standards, I don't think the first thing
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Jesus did when he rose from the dead was like,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: gotta get me some of that. I don't think so. No, anyway,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: not the point being named after an assumption about women,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And I don't know this massive morality thing comes about
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: where like the worst thing a woman can do is sex,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: even though there has to be another person involved in that,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: the two to tangle scenario, like hmmm, why is it
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: damaging to one and not the other? Like if virginity
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: is not a social construct, then there would also be
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: a test for men. You know, people would do the
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: whole hymen thing, which isn't real because it's stretching. The
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: hymen's real. But the testing to see if somebody is
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: a virgin by their hymen is not a real thing.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: It's scientifically void, right, But it's a test that exists
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: in society. And if virginity, because virginity is a social
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: con struck. Otherwise, as I just said, we would have
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: a virginity test for men, just in and that's heteronomative
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: at the best of times. AnyWho, that's why the laundries exist.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: It was for fallen women and the ages of the
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: women that entered these laundries, because yeah, it started off
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: as laundries, because like you'll get a skill, you'll get
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: a job and you can go earn your money. You know,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: these laundries and houses. They would pop up all over
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the UK, and they were in like nearly every major
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: city in Victorian England and would later evolve into workhouses.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: And these are on a row throughout the eighteen hundreds.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So when it's the turn of the twentieth century, nineteen,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: you know one in the factory actors passed, you know,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the workhouses. They can't make people work all day, and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: they start getting phased out a wee bit because it
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: limits the working hours to twelve hours a day, which
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: is a completely reasonable period of work, she said sarcastically.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: But it didn't take long for this idea to spread
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: across the Irish Sea, and it was like less than
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: less than a decade before the first one was in England.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: That one popped up in the Pale in Dublin. So
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: at this point Dublin in Ireland was actually part of
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. It was under British rule. So the
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Magdalen Asylum for penitent females. I hate that. I hate females.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: It just reminds me of the Ferengi from Star Trek,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: that sort of creepy like sleezy little Originally the Magdalene
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Asylum only except Protestant women, like if you were Catholic,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: you weren't allowed in the doors. And it was all
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: about you know, repent, de penance, make yourself better. That
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: was the purpose of it. Helping women, rehabilitating ladies of
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: the night, not in any way using them for cheap labor,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: not at all. But yet these laundries, they pop up
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: all over the fucking shop. So they are in like
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Sweden and Australia, in Canada and the US, and the
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: conditions everywhere shitty, shitty as fuck. They're all over the world.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: They're all over the world, but we mainly now associate
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: them with Ireland specifically, because that's where they really had
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: a chokehold. Like I said before, like the separation of
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: church and state wasn't a thing. Catholicism was so ingrained
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: in Ireland, and when the sisters, when these orders, the nuns,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: started running these establishments, these essay establishments, these institutions. When
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: you have the great hunger, you know, the famines which
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: we are agena side. When they occurred, it really made
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: these institutions more prominent. It created an area of cheap labor,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: especially when so much of the population left, like the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: population of Ireland today as I speak, still has not
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: reached the level it was pre famine. Like to say,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: it decimated a lot of the population between death and
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: mass immigration. Like these laundries became established. These they were workhouses.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: It was cheap labor or free labor for a lot
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: of them. In thanks to how deeply rooted Catholicism was
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: in society. It meant that these religious orders were able
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: to just do what they wanted. A blind eye was turned.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: It didn't matter if they weren't following regulations or they
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: were just being downright illegal, and these religious orders were
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: able to continue doing what they did. Were the government
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: really paying attention or you know, looking too much in
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: that direction. I mean, this is a society in which
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: wayward women or you know, women who fell out with
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the bounds of what was deemed respectable in Catholic society.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Anyone who didn't fit the eye Irish Catholic idea of
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: what a woman should be was a wayward woman, a
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: fallen woman. By the end of the eighteen hundreds, and
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: therefore they were sent to work in the laundries. The
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: wayward women, the fallen women. It becomes this blanket term
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: for anyone who doesn't fit these ideals. So it was
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: no longer you know, a prostitute, a sex worker, someone
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: who had nowhere else to go. If you were and
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: anyway sex positive, if you were pretty, if you had
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: performed a petty crime of some form like stealing a
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: loaf of bread, if you were not a virgin, regardless
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: of whether the loss of virginity was consensual or not.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: If you had learning difficulties or a mental illness, if
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: you where an orphan, if you questioned the Catholic faith.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: That's right, anyone who didn't fit the ideal Catholic women
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: could very well be on the chopping block. Like it
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: got to the point that it actually became sort of
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: a legal means of punishment. So if a woman it
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: was sentenced, if she had committed a crime, the judicial
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: sense them could sentence a woman to the laundries instead
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of a reformatory school or prison, right, they would send
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: them there. This was a valid means of punishment, and
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the majority of the time any woman or girl that
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: was sent to the laundries would never see their family
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: members again. Visiting the laundries and visiting your family or
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: any woman in the laundry, it was discouraged, to say
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the least. Now I'm going to touch on the mother
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and baby homes for a quick second, So it's a
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: separate entity to this, to the laundries, but they collaborated.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: The mother and baby homes were also run by nuns,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: sometimes of the same congregation, sometimes of the same order,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: sometimes not. So if you were pregnant out of wedlock,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: you were sent most of the time to the mother
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and baby homes. Now experiences differ, but you would be
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: pregnant and you would be sent away to mother and
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Baby home once you started showing, you know, you would
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: give birth there and if you were lucky, you would
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: have some period of time with your child. You could
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: be there up to ten months, or you could have
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: your baby ripped from your arms just several hours after
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: giving birth and the baby would be taken to an
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: orphanage if you're fucking lucky. There were some mother and
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: baby homes that were physically connected to a laundry, so
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: the mother and baby would be separated and the mother
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: would be put in the laundry and on the other
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: side of the wall, knowing fine well her child was
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: there and she had no access to them. And so
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: many of these children, those that survived, were sold to
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Catholic families across the world. In the UK, in America,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: it was socially acceptable human trafficking, and some of the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: women and girls who went to the mother and baby homes,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: their families would collect them and take them home. Others
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: would end up in the laundries. Remember, sex for women
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: were seen as like the worst shame, like if you
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: weren't a virgin, if you weren't pure, like you were soiled,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: you were damaged, or worst, you were vile. Which is
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: weird though, because you know, it takes more than one
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: person to create a fresh human, you know, and yet
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: no men are being punished for this. Just the women,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: just the girls, And it didn't matter if the pregnancy
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: was the result of a consensual act or not. The
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: women was always to blame. Like the refusal to acknowledge
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: that men played a massive, if not equal part in
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: this scenario is ridiculous at best, because like if this
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: woman magically became pregnant on her own, then really you
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: should be praising her because that's clearly the next Jesus.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: But no women were to blame, and unworried mothers are
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: the absolute she devil. Like they were despised and hated
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: to a point of visceral. Like the cruelty that they
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: suffered was worse than others. Like the nuns really enjoyed
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: punishing those who had any post birth symptoms. If you
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: had bleeding, if you were lactating, if you suffered any
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: post birth pain, like you were going to suffer. They
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: were going to make you suffer. But here's the thing.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Girls weren't sent to the Magdalen laundries just as punishment.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: They also gave out the impression that you know, they
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: were going to be educating and reforming and doing all
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: that jazz. So families would send their daughters there to
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: get an education, to learn a skill, you know, embroidery, laundry,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and that would give them like a better step up
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: in life. But even if you consider the age range
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: of people that entered the laundries, like the youngest recorded
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: age is eight, like on average they would they would
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: go in at like twelve. But yeah, the youngest would
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: be eight, and like the oldest like entry is eighty nine.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Like who sends an eighty nine year old to go
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: work on a laundry? Like where where is the logic
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: in that? Like what could they have done? Like seriously?
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: But yeah, they're they're percent to the laundries with the
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: idea of of these young girls getting opportunities, you know,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: But the laundries, we're business and they need and so
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: they would have to find as many new people to
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: come in. They need to boaster their workforce, and they
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: would do that. However, they could, even if it meant
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: lie into people in order to use their children as
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: slave labor. Now. I don't know if you've noticed, but
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: this is quite a massive jump from you know, reforming prostitutes,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Like we're no longer trying to help, you know, wayward
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: women turn their lives around. Like you've got family sending
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: their kids there because they genuinely think that their daughters
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: are going to have a better chance at life. But
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: they're not. I mean, they were supposed to educate these girls,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: but they don't, and that's by design, by keeping them uneducated,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: by ensuring that they don't have any extra skills like
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: it forces them to be ignorant, and it forces them
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: to rely on the system in which they are imprisoned.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Like after nineteen twenty two, after the Irish Free State
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: is established, a quarter of the women quarter twenty five
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: percent who were sent into the laundries. They were sent
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: there by the judicial system. That's right, the law. They
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: were sentenced to the laundries instead of prison, instead of jail,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and it uses them or it's supposed to use them
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: as a halfway home, but most ended up staying there
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: much longer because they really didn't have a choice. Like
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: over two thousand women were sent to workhouses by government authorities.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: This state did this, This state was actively involved in them.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: And like, it's not as if these women were committing
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: murder or arson. They were being sent there for like
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: nicking some fruit or forgetting to pray for a train ticket.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: So the government knew what was going on. It knew
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: that these laundries were used as a form of imprisonment.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: It knew. It concluded, I'll give you three guesses as
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: to who the biggest clients of the laundries were. Anyone,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: anyone who do the laundries have massive contracts with oh
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked, because I'll tell you the Irish
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: government and the Army and of course all of the
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: major businesses. Like we've got the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: the Department of Defense, arisonouteron itself, we've got Guinness and
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Clari's and the Gaiety Theater Ireland, the Portmanto Golf Club
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: and the c ie Corus Imper like that's the transport
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: system of Ireland. Like what big businesses involved in slave labor? What? No? No, no, yes,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: actually yes. The government was the biggest client of the laundry.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: It was twenty percent, twenty percent of the laundry services.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: So being a cleaning service, the laundries epso facto were
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: a workplace and as such were subject to the Factory Acts,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: which means the state by law had to inspect it
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: like fairly regularly, just like any other workplace on the island,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: like it was supposed to. So either either they were
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: inspecting the area and not giving a shit, or they
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: just chose not to inspect it like which one was?
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: It hymns to say this collaboration and collusion between church
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: and state really allowed these religious orders. It allowed the
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Catholic church to just do whatever it wanted, like because
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: apparently slave labor is a okay if the church does it.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Because so many women and girls worked through the laundries
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: and earned nothing. They earned absolutely nothing. There was a
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: girl who was sent to the laundries by her family
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: after being visited by her parents. Her mom was like,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: you need to be getting more money for this, because
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: you know you're doing a job. And so this kid's
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: like twelve thirteen, and so she says, do you know
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: to mother superior, you know she should be earning more money,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: And the nun just drops her off at a bus
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: stop with like a bit of cash to get the
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: bus into the nearest town. Like that's that's it, just abandoned,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: like out you go, buy done. And that's the thing.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Like most girls and women who like dead leave the laundries.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: They had little to no education, Like so many were illiterate,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Like they deliberately didn't teach them to read, even though
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: you think they'd want them to be like reading the
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Bible and praying and whatnot. Turns out now turns out
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: weren't really into that, just scrubbing sheets. So yeah, they
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: knew very little of the outside world. They knew very
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: little of what was going on, and that, again, as
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I said before, was by design, because if they know
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: nothing other than the Magdalene system, the reliant on it,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and it stops them, you know, rebelling, and it stops
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: them thinking from themselves or even trying to escape. Luckily, now,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I say luckily for a lot of girls. You know,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the average day in the laundries was like three years.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: For most it was much longer. But for a good
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: chunk it was like you've served your time and off
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: you go. But it wasn't like, oh, you can leave
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: whenever you want, like you'll find that they say that, oh,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: they could have left when they wanted to. We didn't
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: lock them in. Like. There were two official ways to
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: leave the laundries. One was a family member. A male
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: family member had to request to take you back, like
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: you needed their permission. The other was that the nuns
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: would just remove you. Like those were your official options.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: I suppose there's magic door number three, which is death.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: That's the other way. I thought. You don't really leave,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: You just end up any fun mass grave at the back. Apparently.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: But yeah, those were the official ways, and there is
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: this whole thing of well, you couldn't leave when you
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: wanted to. What in the name of gaslighting, tom fuckery?
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Is this? That is something that an abuser states and
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: an abusive relationship. You know, oh, you could go and
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: you want no. You created a system of terror and
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: torture and conditioned these women and girls into believing that
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: they had no other choice. You forced them to be there,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: even if you're not physical, Even though you were physical,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: could you fucking beat them? Like? That's how abuse works.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: They created the cage and then have the audacity to
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: act like they didn't lock you in it in the
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: first place. Now, of course, the non official way to
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: leave is to bloody escape, which is easier than it sounds,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: because you know you're living in an absolute quagmire of despair.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: If you escape, you might not have anywhere to go.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: You might be in an area you don't know, like
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: anything could happen to you out there, and you don't
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: know much about the outside world, Like how are you
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: gonna get about? How are you going to eat? How
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: are you going to survive? Is this the lesser of
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: two evils? And even if you get over that, the Guardie,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: the Irish police Force would literally seart you out, round
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: you up and bring you back to the laundry like
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: without cause, no warrant, no nothing. They would just send
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: you back to your abusers, abusers who condition you to
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: remove every distinguishing feature about yourself. Like they would take
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: you there and you would get a name, like a
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: religious name. Sometimes you wouldn't even get a fucking name.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you'd just be a number, and they would tear
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: from you anything personal, any personal items, any sort of belongings. Letters,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: If your family or loved ones or friends dared to
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: send you a letter, they were intercepted by the sisters.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: They were destroyed. They removed your connection, They made you alone,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: they made you suffer, and they made you work until
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: you were a bother, an issue, or even just no
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: use anymore. And then you were just dumped on the streets,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: no education, no money, and no understanding of the outside world.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: And that's one thing that comes up a lot actually
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: with people who did manage to leave or escape the laundries,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: and that the lack of education like could really affect them,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: and it really held them back and it made it
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: much tougher to like now vigate the world. Now, not
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: every laundry was a capitalist torture chamber, Like there was
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: one or two that was like designed for reforming. I mean,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: it was still strict to shit because they're nuns, but
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like incredibly awful. And there are some people
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: who look back at their times in the laundries as
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: you know, fairly decent, fairly okay. But for the majority
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: of people as absolutely not the case. Most were worked
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: to the bone and punished anyway. Like there are reports
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: and corroborations of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, solitary confinement,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: starvation abuse, derogatory statements, sort of demoralization, humiligation, so on
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: and so forth, And you could be punished for anything,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: for your nipples leaking, for speaking to your bunkman, for
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: dropping a cup. Marina Gamboled was eight when she became
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: an orphan, and luckily she was able to go into
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: the care of her grandmother for a while, but she
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: too passed. So when she's sixteen and she has nowhere
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: else to go, and so the local priest brings her
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: to one of the laundries and as soon as she
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: enters the laundry, she is told two things. One that
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: she has a new name. It's now Fidelma and two
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: to keep her mouth shut. She was expected to be
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: silent and suffer silently Throughout this well, she worked ten
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: our days, doing grueling, manual labor and shaking with hunger.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Like they would get bread with beef dripping for breakfast,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: sometimes bread and water if the nuns were feeling like
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: they would be given the least amount of food possible
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: to survive, while the nuns would sit oppoits them devouring
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: fill meals. And there was me thinking gluttony and greed
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: were some of the seven deadly sins. And when Marina
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: accidentally broke a cup, the nuns decided that the teenager
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: required training. They tied a thick string around her neck
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: like a leash and made her eat off the floor
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: for three days. One winter, Marina and two other girls
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: were locked out on a balcony for two nights, convinced
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: they were going to be left there to phrase to death.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: When she was nineteen and finally able to leave, she said,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: fuck this for a game of soldiers and fled to England.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Like this happened a lot, and that's why. One of
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: the reasons that information about the laundries was so hard
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: to obtain from survivors was because so many of them
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: fled the country because that was the only option. They
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: couldn't risk staying here anymore after what they suffered through.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Another survivor, Maureen Sullivan, was sent to the laundry when
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: she was twelve. Her mom had remarried and her stepfather
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: was abusing her, and so the nuns told her mum
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: that she was going to a lovely school, and she
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: never saw a school book after the day the nun
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: took her. Mauren would work from six in the morning
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: to nine night. She would scrub floors and knit jumpers
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: and make rosary beads, and of course wash laundry. She
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: only saw her mother four times in the five years
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: she spent in the laundry before she was just dumped
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: at Houston Station in Dublin until to go back to
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: the home in which she was being abused. Mary Mary
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: grew up in an industrial school and when she was sixteen,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: her and some friends snuck out one night to go
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: into a neighbor's orchard to steal some apples. She was
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: caught and the nuns sent her to a laundry. She
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: was given a new name, a religious name, a tractor
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: on the number sixty three. Her hair was cut short
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: and she was put in a white uniform. She was
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: often put in solitary confinement with just a bucket to
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: relieve herself. One night, she tried to escape by smashing
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: a window, only to discover that the windows were all barred.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: She was put on day work at this farm. She
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: saw her opportunity and she took it. She legged it
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: and when she managed to reach Griffith Avenue, she had
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: no idea where she was. She seeks out help, ends
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: up at the archbishop's place, where she is sex assaulted
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: and becomes pregnant as a result, and the priest who
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: raped her he called the guardee, who then took her
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: back to the laundry. A few months later, when she
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: starts suffering from mourning sickness, she gets taken to a
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: doctor and he has to explain to her that she's pregnant.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Because this is a woman who had no sex education.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: She grew up in a convent, in an industrial school,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: and then the laundry. She had no fucking clue what
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: was happening to her. She was a victim, and then
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: she was sent on to a mother and baby home
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: before her son was taken away from her and she
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: was forced to return to the laundry. Fourteen years after
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: entering the laundry, she was finally released, like suddenly, a
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: bunch of the younger inmates. I'm going to call them inmates,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: because that's what they were. They were just suddenly released.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: They were let out, nowhere to go. And she was
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: lucky because you know, a stranger helped her, But so
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: many were not so lucky. And there were so many
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: stories we will never hear. And this is only some
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: of the horror stories. There were so so many more,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: from making women strip down and judging them, ridiculing their
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: bodies because they could, public beatings, making them chant, but
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: how they were nothing, over and over again, de moralizing them,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: removing every semblance of being of their own personality, breaking
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: them down till there is nothing burning, scalding, caning, just
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: on and on and on. Across the country. The laundry
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: is recorded officially eight hundred and seventy nine deaths, all
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: from a Smrgan's Board of Natural causes, but between you know,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: investigations and the lack of death certificates conveniently consistently. Yeah,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: the theory as it's closer to about sixteen hundred, like
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: double the amount of what they say it is. Enter
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: the Justice from Magdalen's Group. So this is set up
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: by someone we believe to be a Magdalene baby, a
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: woman who, as far as we know, was torn from
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: her mother, a Magdalene woman torn from her and then
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: trafficked by nuns to the US and a private adoption.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: The Justice for Magdalene group has been a major major
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: force in getting justice for so many women, for survivors
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: and for victims. The last laundry didn't close until nineteen
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: ninety six. Nineteen ninety six. Now it really was the
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: last one standing because the majority of the laundries closed
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: down in like the early seventies. And not because you know,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: it was unethical, not because you know it was a
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: labor camp on Irish soil, and not because the secret
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: was out. No, no, no, no, It just wasn't making
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: good business anymore. So it was no longer. Practical technology
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: is becoming more affordable, laundrettes were appearing in towns and
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: families and homes were having washing machines, so they didn't
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: need the laundries anymore. Like these institutions only stopped because
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: of supply and demand. I never thought I'd do an
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: episode where capitalism is the good guy for a little bit.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it's the bad guy for a lot
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: of this because they were able to have slave labor
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: so they could earn more money where that money was
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: fucking going. Who's to say the goings on in the
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: laundries wasn't really public knowledge. It wasn't out there until
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, when the mass grave is unearthed and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: people start paying attention and start asking questions. And when
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: the public starts learning about it, pressure starts being put
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: in the government, but they're refusing to acknowledge it. By
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: eight years later, the government did recognize that the women
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: in the laundries were in fact abuse victims. They just
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: happened to mention that they weren't involved. They didn't abuse them,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: They knew nothing of the sort, nothing to do with them.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: It was the Catholic Church doing it. Was these sisters.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: They had no knowledge, you know, they were privately run. Again,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: we didn't say it, it didn't happen, which is a
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: weird thing to state when you know there's a fucking
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: mountain of evidence against you showing that you did in
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: fact have contracts with the laundries, that you were supposed
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: to inspect the laundries, and that your judicial system literally
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: sent women and girls to those laundries. But still no
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: official apology came forward. Like the Minister of Education back then,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: bartl Keefe, he said that they were privately run, so
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't our fault, and he was like,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: there is no need for an apology or a redress
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: scheme and that if anything, it's our fault that children
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: got sent there from like the reform schools or the
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: industrial schools, but like not the adult women, Like that
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: wasn't us. We didn't know about it, which again is
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: a weird stance to take when there are court records
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: stating that the Irish courts habitually sent women and girls
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: to the laundries as punishment for crimes. Eventually, after mounting
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: public pressure, a full investigation has started. Two years later
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, and two years after that the mclice
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Report is released. After the twenty thirteen publication of inquiry report,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: there was a lot that the government couldn't do. It,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: couldn't hide behind it anymore. So it is presented to
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: the United Nations Committee Against Torture, who literally stated that
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: the Magdalen Laundry the orders that run it performed torture
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: like the United Nations. So and there was state collusion. Yeah,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: so you know, the government couldn't really hide it anymore.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: And so finally, in twenty thirteen, a formal apology is
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: made by the then Tisha Enda Kenny, stating on behalf
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: of the state, the government and our citizens deeply regret
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: and apologize unreservedly to all those women for the heart
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: that was done to them and for any stigma they
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: suffered as a result of the time they spent in
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: a Magdalen laundry. Here's the thing. A public apology is good,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: but it is effectively the bare minimum of what needed
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: to be there. It like put like the tenious amount
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: of blame on the government, but like they didn't fully
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: accept how engrossed their roles, like how much they were
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: involved in this, and how they perpetuated it because they could.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: And like survivors, many survivors say it wasn't good enough,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: it's not enough, And we have to listen to what
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: they say because they're the ones who lived through this drama.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: And there were so many others who didn't in the
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: maca Leese report, it's only the tip of the iceberg.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: It doesn't go into as much of the horror, and
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: it's already like pointed out torture like it means, there's
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: so much worse that we will probably never know, that
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: will be buried from history from the acknowledgment of what happened.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: But that being said, it did lift the stigma, or
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: at least some of it. The good thing is islandistsly
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: becoming more secular without that Catholic guilt weighing down on everyone,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: forcing everyone to be a certain way and to cover
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: up shit like this, and like as much as we
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: want to blame the Catholic Church and the government alone
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: because they were major factors and obviously, but like people
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: sent their families there onward, mothers, somebody who wasn't doing great,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: anyone who had a mental deficiency of any kind, women
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: who were seen as less worthy. I mean, these are
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: victims who were seen as less worthy for so long, right,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: it's like the concept of less dead, like average jaws. Families,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: people were involved. Someone knows something. The pressures of Catholicism
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: ran so deep that it made silence. It created the vacuum,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: and people don't want to face the fact that they,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: in their own way allowed this to happen. They ignored
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: someone's stories, they turned a blind eye. Institutions like the
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: laundries thrived on secrecy. It helped churn it through, but
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: secrets they don't stay down for long. So in twenty thirteen,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: the Irish Law Reform Commission spoke to around about three
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: hundred and forty survivors about their needs and what they required,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: and one of the things they discovered was that last
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: laundry is shut down in nineteen ninety six, it still
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: had seventeen women like under the care of that Order
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: of the Nuns. Now, a lot of these women had
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: lifelong trauma, They had physical ailments like arthritis and other
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: such issues, or they had additional needs, or they were
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: just elderly and for these women that's the only life
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: they knew, and so they didn't want to leave the
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: nuns like it's scary, and so they stayed in the nuns' care.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: So later on in that year, the Minister for Justice
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: announced that reparations were going to be paid. Survivors were
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: to receive somewhere between like eleven thousand euros and fifty
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: thousand euros in lump some along with like weekly installment payments.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: On top of that, they would receive benefits like counseling, therapy,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: medical cards, so on and so forth. Now this is
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: all fine and well for the survivors that were still
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: in Ireland, but so many had just buggered off. They'd
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: fled to the UK, the US, Canada, just getting the
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: heck at ADTCH because they needed to escape. So this
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: makes tracking down survivors a pretty you know, difficult process.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: But this is also what helped keep the lund going
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: for so long, because people can't tell their stories everywhere,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: not around one way or the other. But you know,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the reparations and the compensation and you know, memorials and acknowledgments.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: It's a start, and it's too easy to go, oh,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: well we said sorry, and then to hide it under
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the rug. No, not even other little bit, especially when
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: you consider the Catholic Church still maintains it did nothing wrong.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: So the church has absolutely refused, like not even a
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: little bit, is refusing to contribute any compensation, any reparations.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: You know, none of the ones that were responsible, Sisters
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: of Mercy Good shepherds as that to charity sisters of
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: our Lady of Charity, like, no, they're not doing anything,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: and they are refusing not only to the Irish government,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: but also from the UN Committee against Torture and the
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. So like
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: like right after this apology happens, this official apology by
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: the Tasha like once that goes in, like two nuns
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: who have the audacity to go on record anonymously, you know,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: they go on RT and they're on the radio and
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: they basically are asked, you know, apologize, and they don't
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: believe they should, and you're thinking that's bad. Well as
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: bad as it is, it gets worse. So after this report,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: after this you know apology, the nuns say that this
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: is a one sided anti Catholic forum and they have
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: no remorse whatsoever for the acts committed by any of
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: these religious orders in the past. And when they're asked
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: if you know, they should apologize, the response is and
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: I quote apologize for what, apologize for providing a service.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: We provided a free service for the country, and all
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: of the shame of the era is being dumped on
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: their religious orders. The sins of society are being placed
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: on us. Now, this may shock you, but that's not
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: how you deal with blame. Like, it's not accountability. You
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: need to have accountability if you do something wrong. You
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: need to be able to turn around and go, I
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: did something wrong. It's not hard, especially if you're super
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: into Jesus. He's all forgiving. Have you considered asking him
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: for repentance? Maybe not? Three hell Marriores and their father
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: perhaps m So Bill Donahue of the US Catholic League,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: What an absolute bastard. He says that no one was imprisoned,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: no one was forced against their will to stay, No one,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: you know, was forced to perform slave labor. Cool, show
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: me their payslips, bitch, show me their payslips. Show me, like,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: imagine imagine having the gall to go, hey, you know
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: these children that we imprisoned and wouldn't allow to leave
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: without you know, a man taking them are the ones
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: we dumped on the streets. Remember the Oh no, no,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: we didn't force them to do anything. We didn't make
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: them chant about how they were nothing like. We didn't
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: tear every strip of confidence from them or make them,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: you know, do so much horrific labor that their entire
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: body started to seize up. What an absolute prick, what
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: an absolute cock wombo. But yeah, yeah, the survivors, surprisingly
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: or unsurprisingly weren't too keen on that, like they can't
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: grasp like this opinion by these religious women, and obviously
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: tick kid McGee over there, and yet again, the Catholic Church,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: these religious orders were able to just brush this aside,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: sweep it under the rug, and not even take accountability,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: even apologize. Like it's twenty twenty four and a decade ago.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: Ten years ago, there were six hundred living survivors of
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: the laundries after COVID and everything else that's happened. It's
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: unsurprising that that number is probably a lot smaller now,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: and those people still still don't have an apology. The
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: church still hasn't taken accountability for what they did. And
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: I know some people are afraid to criticize, you know,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: large organizations like this. I'm not. I will drag you
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: and I will call you out for all your shit,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: because these women deserved better. We know at least ten
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: thousand women went through those doors at least, and we
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: currently or at least did have six hundred people left.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Six hundred women which I'm not a math person. Maths
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: is not great, but even I know that's a tiny
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: fucking amount. So after digging through all this research and
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: reading you know, survivor testimonies and victim accounts and considering
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: the social climate of the time, like, were these nuns,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: like were they truly believing that what they were doing
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: was good? That they were representatives of Jesus of God,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: That these women deserve to be punished, that they were
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: doing God's work by a living suffering, like Mother Teresa said,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: suffering brings people closer to Jesus? You know, was this
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: what they were doing? Were they victims of a patriarchy
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: which conditioned them into a situation where anyone who filled
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: with outside the bounds of you know, the Catholic ideal
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: of what a woman should be, you know, deserved to
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: go through this level of treatment like or where they
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: you know, abusing the rules of society in order to
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: be you know, sadistic? Were they deliberately hurting people because
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: they could, because it was an option, because they had
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: hate and venom inside them to the point that the
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: suffering of others brought them joy. Where are they in
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: a pack mentality? Like Milgrim's experiment. Were they just following
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: orders or where they just fucking cunts. At the end
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: of the day, this is not just a ripple effect.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: This is a tidal wave of generational trauma and survivors
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: and their descendants and anyone connected. They are going to
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: struggle to overcome. And it's our job, all of us listening,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: all of us talking, to keep talking about it, to
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: keep bringing it up. And this is the part I
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: was going to talk to you about my message. At
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: the end, I could say this is the end of
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: the story. It's not not if we don't let it.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: If you can share this episode, not just because I
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: want the shares or whatever, you know, download it. If
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: you download it actually goes up in the charts, and
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: it means more people see it. It means more people
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: hear the story. It means more access to finding out
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: about these women, these girls who suffered, and it means
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: making sure this does not happen again. Even if you
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: don't want to share the episode, grand no worries, but
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: the content. Talk about it, talk about the laundries, talk
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: about the collusion, talk about the survivors. We have to
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: keep the story present. We can't let it be swept
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: under the rug. We have to keep talking about it.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: By keeping it there, it stops it going away. We
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: cannot let it happen again. It is International Women's Day.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: Let's fight for women's rights, Okay, And with this, I
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: am going to bid you good night. Adios or Revoir
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: of What is IM, my friends, Bye bye,