In a strange way, I had a narrow escape with the Magdalenes...

My mother was born in a tenement in Dublin in the early 1920's. Her mother (who, as it happens, was Scottish) died four years later. Her father died when she was about eleven. The years in between were spent fighting efforts by nuns to put her "into care" (which might well have meant a Magdalene "refuge")... In the end, after her father died, she was raised by two maiden aunts - who made a great job of it!

Regards