Random Facts About Irish Laundries Tortured Women And Separated Families (12 items)

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  (#11) A Memorial Fund Was Set Up For Survivors – And The Church Refused To Donate

  In 2013, along with issuing a formal state apology, the Irish government settled on a retribution sum to pay to the victims of the laundries – to the tune of $75 million. This settlement meant that hundreds of survivors would each receive around $130,000, with the amounts slightly differing based on the amount of time each woman spent in the laundries. The women themselves were split on the issue; certainly, it represented a hefty sum, but it also couldn't make up for the "destruction" of their lives.

  For its part, the Catholic Church – which largely denies any wrongdoing – refused to contribute any money to repaying the women for their forced, free labor. 
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  (#8) Survivors Are Still Coming Forward

  While many Magdalene survivors have already gone on record and become activists, many more are still coming out of the woodwork. One such individual was Margaret Bullen, who had reportedly been forced by nuns to give her three daughters up for adoption; two of them finally tracked her down in 1995. At that time, Bullen was still institutionalized as she had been for most of her life. According to one daughter's account in The Telegraph:

  "Margaret [spent] her childhood and puberty in these institutions, without the chance to grow up. At age 16, she was transferred to the Gloucester Street Magdalene Laundry... there she toiled, unpaid for the rest of her life."

  Eventually, Margaret was entrusted to the care of the Irish state, who promptly sub-contracted that duty back to the Catholic Church.

  Margaret Bullen, who had blocked out many of her traumatic experiences, claimed to have no memory of having given birth at all, though she did manage to enjoy a relationship with her daughters for a couple of years. She died in her 40s of end-stage kidney and liver failure brought on by the chemicals she'd inhaled while working in the laundries.
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  (#4) Thousands Of Women Died Of "Negligent Homicide"

  Many of the deaths that occurred at Irish laundries (which mostly came about through medical negligence) were not reported, according to sources citing 2013's groundbreaking McAleese Report. Though the asylums officially recorded 879 deaths, a group called "Justice for Magdalenes" interviewed survivors and "collected testimonies about death and burials, gravestones, electoral registers, exhumation orders, and newspaper archives." Eventually, from all of this research, they determined the number of un-reported deaths to be closer to 1,663... though this figure remains both controversial and denied by the powers that be.
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  (#1) Women Were Beaten & Demoralized

  To be sure, the horror stories of Magdalene laundry survivors are legion. One former inmate, Marina Gambold, told the BBC that: 

  "One day I broke a cup, and the nun said, 'I'll teach you to be careful'. She got a thick string, and she tied it round my neck for three days and three nights, and I had to eat off the floor every morning. Then I had to get down on my knees, and I had to say, 'I beg almighty God's pardon, Our Lady's pardon, my companion's pardon for the bad example I have shown." 

  Another survivor, Kathleen Legg, now 80, remembers: 

  "Every morning you would wake to the sound of a bell. You operated like a robot, and you did not dare question a nun. We bathed once a week, and I remember the lice from our hair used to float around the top of the water, so if you were one of the last ones to get washed, it was horrific."

  Ex-Magdalene Lauren Sullivan told The Scotsman that: "I had my hair chopped off and my name changed, and when I was put into that Magdalene laundry all I remember was the door being locked. They beat, punched and tortured me."

  Of course, few things are that black and white, and there are a few stragglers who claim that they were treated wonderfully. That doesn't change the fact that the majority of the stories are bloodcurdling, however, and many more of them can be read in James Smith's award-winning Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment.
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  (#6) The Church Still Largely Denies What Happened

  In 2011, the United Nations Committee Against Torture launched a lengthy investigation into the laundries and found that their "management teams" had indeed likely been guilty of exploitation and abuse.

  Nevertheless, while some religious orders did offer up condolences for past evils, many of the culpable organizations have refused to acknowledge that said brutalities ever took place. Moreover, officials from the group JFM (Justice for Magdalenes) aren't convinced that even the apologetic sentiments were sincere, claiming that:

  "Rather than apologies, they used phrases such as 'it was regrettable that the Magdalene homes had to exist at all' and claimed the laundries were 'part of the system and culture of the time.'"

  Ah, "the culture of the time." Such a get-out-of-laundry-free card, whether the issue at hand is routine lobotomies, medieval torture devices, or just run-of-the-mill witch burning.
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  (#5) Over 2,000 Children Were Illegally Adopted From Laundries

  Because so many women and girls were destitute and pregnant by the time they arrived at the laundries, many babies ended up being born in convent hospitals, where they were quickly spirited away by nuns, lest they be contaminated by their "unclean" mothers. According to reports, "up to 2,000 children were illegally exported from Magdalene laundries in Ireland to adoptive parents in the U.S., mainly wealthy families."

  This scandal has since come full circle, as many of these adult children have begun demanding justice for their birth mothers and requesting official state apologies. They represent a generation displaced by the corruption of the Magdalene asylums, even though most of them went on to lead far better lives than the slings and arrows of church-sponsored child labor could have offered.

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