BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,Mudcatter who wants to remain anonymous
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 07:13 AM

Yes, it's a terrible chapter.

I was reunited, in my 50s, with a sister I never knew I had. My mother had to give her up for adoption with no indication of her fate or otherwise face the prospect of life in one of these appalling institutions, a truly heartbreaking and terrible choice for a young Irish Catholic woman.

The collaboration of church and state concerning these institutions was shameful.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Jim Martin
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 07:37 AM

Someone on Irish radio yesterday referred to "this disgusting little country"!

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 07:38 AM

You can sort of understand why the Unionists are not keen on being run by Dublin.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Mr Red
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 07:46 AM

Saw the documentary years ago - I was horrified, to put it mildly. So much so that despite hiring the Movie about the same thing, I couldn't see it through.

Grace notes sang a song about it.

I was not just Ireland - they had them in Scotland and England too.
There were even CofE ones it is said. I do remember the demonstration about them in Glasgow but didn't understand what it was about. (too young)

The mores of the time were different. Unmarried mothers had a hard time anyway, but that doesn't ameliorate the distaste we view the situation today. Remember Dr Barnados ? OZ & UK governments had a lot to answer for - it was too convenient for them.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 08:13 AM

Confined against their will in Scotland and England?

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: MartinRyan
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 09:06 AM

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

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 09:33 AM

The involvement of the Catholic church seems to have been systemic, not merely the work of a few bad apples, and while it is too late to compensate most of the victims, it makes a powerful case for ensuring that all works of the Catholic church are supervised by truly independent agencies.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 09:36 AM

Where has your news been? It's been quite a while since this broke -- I have a couple of books on that and on the Industrial Schools as well. And no, it was in no way limited too Ireland -- even the US had the equivalent, AND those were run by state governments and Protestant churches.

Disgusting, but a reflection of the thinking of the day. "Upstairs" girls went abroad and the baby was put up for adoption, "downstairs" were turn out to survive as best they could. The fathers, of course, were not at all responsible unless forced by the family or the courts to take some responsibility.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 09:47 AM

The news is the Irish government's official report.

http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/MagdalenRpt2013

http://www.thejournal.ie/magdalene-laundries-report-finds-direct-state-involvement-783428-Feb2013/

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Amos
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 12:02 PM

One of the earlier articvles. A heart-breaker.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 12:14 PM

The saddest "joke" doing the rounds at the time of the buggering priests news was that the Catholic Church thought Father Ted was a fly on the wall documentary.

The lady who died recently for want of an abortion made the Irish government realise there was still work to be done.   Exposing these disgusting places is a good start.

Religious corruption of vulnerable people is sickening. Those who still think services are safe in the hands of superstitious control freaks need to re examine their conscience.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 12:38 PM

"In many countries, supposedly fallen women were abused in Magdalene institutions. The worst-known cases were run by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, where conditions amounted to slavery. Magdalene institutions also existed in England, Scotland, North America and Australia. The Magdalene laundries in Ireland created a purgatory for the women and girls trapped in them (see below).
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Magdalene_laundry"

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Ebbie
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 01:35 PM

You know, if religion should be expected to produce anything it would be moral sensitivities. Why has it not?

The impetus that strikes me is the idea - prevalent until fairly recently - that parents/authorities/adults 'own' the young.

I have been anti-capital punishment most of my life- but one could make the case that wherever such atrocities are ferreted out, all the abusers should be taken out and executed forthwith.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 03:40 PM

For the Scottish story, see Linda Mahood's book "The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century", Routledge 1990.

She says the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum went bankrupt in 1950; the Glasgow one was closed down in 1958 after two mass escapes and subsequent revelations of how brutal it was.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 06 Feb 13 - 04:04 PM

I have no time for the catholic church at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: michaelr
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 12:36 AM

Ebbie asked "You know, if religion should be expected to produce anything it would be moral sensitivities. Why has it not?"

Because it is based on fear, guilt and shame. It was designed as an instrument of control, and once the controllers saw that it worked, they began taking liberties to serve their own depravities.

The current pope was in charge of coordinating the church's response once the testimony of sexual abuse started pouring in during the 2000s. He's been stalling and obfuscating in the face of overwhelming evidence ever since. The Catholic Church is a thoroughly corrupt institution that needs to be subjected to a serious criminal prosecution by a number of governments.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 12:50 AM

How odd to see some of those with whom I agree.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 02:13 AM

As noted above, it is not only the Catholic church among the morally corrupt.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Allan Conn
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 02:49 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHWsLYtxzz0


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I thought this was quite a moving song and performance about the said institutions

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Megan L
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 03:29 AM

It is always easy to blame church and state but the people themselves must take a share of the blame. Parents allowed daughters to be taken away to these places and the local comunities knew what was going on yet they continued to support such systems.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 03:42 AM

"I have no time for the catholic church at all."
While everybody should have the right to believe and to worship in the way they choose, it needs to be remembered that religion and politics is a toxic mix - this includes all religions.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: mg
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 03:45 AM

It is all very complicated. It is an unholy mess and we need to shine huge spotlights on every bit of it. And there has not been a day this week that some other aspect has not emerged. We are of course brainwashed. The church selects for ability to have either secret perverted sex or none whatsoever, and it also selects for a sort of either apathy toward child abuse or an ability to tolerate it somehow or else the awful problems caused by lack of family planning would not be tolerated. There is the problem of the church in the marital bed, with mother and father being sometimes estranged and overinvolvement of son and mother..the sainted mother syndrome. Many people are highly needy for religious approval. Many mentally ill people are drawn to sadistic aspects of religion...their sickness is sanctified. They can impose their sickness on others. There is enough good in religion that some people only see the rosy parts. There is enough fear that we think that perhaps.it is all true. Works for me.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 05:06 AM

Ebbie wrote :

I have been anti-capital punishment most of my life- but one could make the case that wherever such atrocities are ferreted out, all the abusers should be taken out and executed forthwith.


It's maybe ironic that it's likely the nuns running the Magdalene laundries thought they were reforming those who digressed from their believed moral code, sometimes with heavy hand. Ditto for the industrial schools etc. Just as you're prepared to fall in the same trap with the forthwith executions.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 09:26 AM

The report found that the religious orders (hugely wealthy in Ireland, enormous land holdings) made no profit from the enslavement of these girls, but broke even. Considering that they were taking fees from adoptive parents (including many in the United States), and that the workers were badly fed, and the laundries took in payment for every sheet and shirt washed, this seems absolutely implausible.

This report will undoubtedly be followed by a tribunal that will find out some at least of the truth.

Big Al, by the way, the unionists would never be run by Dublin. Believe me, in any possible united Ireland, the Northerners, who have become so politically savvy and acute over the last 100 years, would be at the very least in equal charge. Whether this would mean less political corruption, of course, is a different question.

By the way, there's another scandal in the making in Ireland, and I'm sure also in other jurisdictions across Europe: the brutal and scandalous neglect of asylum seekers, especially the many children who arrive without parents and find themselves in the tender care of the State. Many of these children have disappeared in Ireland in recent years, and the number of children who have died in State care is a disgrace and a ruination.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 07 Feb 13 - 01:39 PM

part of this twistedness is the same girls who were enslaved were washing the garments of the priests...so slavery to uphold peacock displays is one thing...but some of those priests were perverts (and bishops) and that is a whole other dimension..plus they had to wash their underwear etc. It is all disgusting.

But I also ask myself, what would I have done....a terribly poor country, unable to support its population..could not be bringing many children out of marriage into the world...what do you do? Not this certainly, but what exactly?

In the meantime now is the time to jackhammer away at the bad stuff in this church and any church. The time is ripe. Keep the good stuff, like St. Michael the Archangel supposedly said, and get rid of the bad..oops..farewell pope.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 04:38 AM

Raggytash didn't you make that same yesterday - or am I imagining things?

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 04:39 AM

And what happened to Wee Jocks, long and well composed posts!

---

It wasn't Raggytash, it wasn't Wee Jock, it was someone using other people's names. --Mod

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 04:43 AM

Disgusted that after all these years, these poor women's hidden abusive childhoods have finally been allowed to come to light, and there are STILL people out there who want to keep discussion about these institutional abuses quiet.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 04:45 AM

SHAME!

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Mr Happy
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 08:15 AM

Some intelligent & compelling discussion here on child abuse by RC clergy over the years in many places, listen from around 10min 28secs


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovvXZk96DjI&list=UUprs0DXUS-refN1i8FkQkdg

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,a mod
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 09:54 AM

The troll has started threads using other mudcatter's names. Don't get all hot and bothered at any "Catholic moderator," save your indignation for the man who pushes your buttons. He isn't BNP, and he isn't Irish. He just wants to find a topic you'll argue about and to turn up the heat. He might as well use "Bluesman" (someone else's name he appropriated a long time ago) and be done with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 12:48 PM

Musket, don't hold your breath. Any move to legalise abortion will be absolutely minimal. Notwithstanding that public opinion in Ireland is in favour of legalisation, the politicians continue to run scared of a few senior catholic clerics (dinosaurs). They think it better that those needing terminations should go elsewhere, mostly Britain, to commit their sins.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 12:53 PM

Then they stop them going and kill them.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 03:25 PM

I believe that only a few decades ago, young women who became pregnant or led 'immoral' lives were incarcerated in Mental Institutions (eg Hanwell Hospital in W London) here in England (don't know about other parts of Britain) for years. They weren't in the least 'mentally ill' yet spent the best part of their lives locked up with no hope of release. It was only comparatively recently that help arrived and they were shoved out into 'Care in the Community', bewildered and institutionalised. So it wasn't just Ireland, it wasn't just The Church, it happened in secular hospitals too. I can't see how the nuns felt they were doing the poor women 'good'. Much of their treatment was sadistic, cruel and amounted to abuse, slave-labour and torture. They must have had totally twisted minds to see any of this as 'remedial'. I feel that massive financial compensation should be paid to all survivors. Not that this will wipe away the agony of their wasted lives, but some recompense must be offered surely?

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 05:12 PM

Magdalene Survivors Together

Article on Steve O'Riordan's documentary - 'The Forgotten Maggies' - Few snippets of this to be found on Youtube


The Forgotten Maggies - Facebook page

Justice For Magdalenes - Youtube

'From A Distance' - charity single to help The Magdalenes

Christy Moore - 'The Magdalene Laundries' - Youtube



Time To Dismantle The Catholic Church?

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,guestlexic
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 05:39 PM

Time To Dismantle The Catholic Church? " Truly horrendous Can't see any way back myself..Independent bodies to be installed to monitor at the very least as mentioned above.Our high school priest just been nicked for sex with minors,the town next to us had their parish priest done for the same a few years ago.So there is a generation of kids/parents seeing this at one school going to senior school getting hit with it again,prob sat in confession with them too probably.How could any right minded parent trust it again.Must be depressing dark days for the majority decent church goers.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 06:26 PM

Big Al, the grip of the Catholic church on Ireland was certainly a factor in unionist resistance to governance from Dublin. (Doesn't in any way justify that they made Northern Ireland even more inhospitable for Catholics.)

As far as abortion is concerned, it should be kept in mind that the Abortion Act 1967 that legalised it in England and Wales does not apply to Northern Ireland, where abortion is still severely restricted.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 06:56 PM

Time to certainly reform the Catholic Church..have historians..impartial ones...go through every little bit of it and see what is politics, what is from other religions, what is self-serving and really and truly came from Himself. Or Herself perhaps. I can not believe that God wants fully grown men to dress in lace pantaloons and wear funny hats while women leaders are expected to be drab as drab can be. Perhaps a return to Celtic Christianity? I don't know. I'm a lifer but a very critical, probably heretical one. I am not disappointed like so many because I was raised in the uglier side of it..through a convert mother so I can't blame the church itself.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 07:35 PM

Maybe the Catholic Church isn't quite so central to these institutions as people here make out. Linda Mahood's book describes the early history of these places in England and Scotland. They were all set up (the London Lock Hospital first, 1746) at the main instigation of the secular medical establishment, with Protestant moral reformers in a secondary role, and from the middle of the 19th century, in Glasgow at least, the leaders of commerce and banking were directing them. Catholicism didn't feature at all.

In the Irish context, the Magdalene system would also have been motivated by the male bourgeoisie's determination to regulate women and the working class. Catholic nunneries could provide a handy supply of screws, so it was natural to involve them, and they could turn the asylums to their advantage and perpetuate them long past the time when anybody could claim they were doing anything useful. But it wasn't their initiative, and the fundamental reasons these places came into existence had nothing to do with religion at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: ripov
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 09:19 PM

As Eliza has said, in England (and Ireland) unmarried women who became pregnant were frequently comitted to asylums for "moral insanity" and often spent the rest of their lives there. In these asylums the "trusty" inmates often had to work in the laundry, washing certainly the bedlinen and clothing from the hospital/asylum, possibly much more. The abuse was not necessarily confined to the church; and certainly it reflected on the victorian/post victorian moral climate - " it's the rich what gets the pleasure, and the poor what gets the blame".

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Penny S.
Date: 09 Feb 13 - 03:50 AM

When I saw one of the films about the subject - I'm not sure if it was the laundry one, or one about a father wanting to reclaim his children, it did occur to me to wonder if those nuns had ever had a real vocation, or were pushed into it as a way of getting rid of inconvenient daughters who couldn't find husbands, and if they weren't taking out natural resentments in their terrible and inexcusable behaviour.

When you read what Joe Offer writes about his nuns, they are obviously a totally different order of being from the laundry sadists. (Deliberate use of word "order").

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 09 Feb 13 - 04:29 AM

As a side-issue with some relevance, I have a Catholic friend who went to a boarding school run by the Sisters of Mercy in the mid 20th Century. She says it was hell for the girls. The nuns were weird and cruel, with very strange ideas about perfectly normal aspirations of teenagers. She had to avoid polishing her shoes as 'boys might see her knickers reflected in them'. Short gloves should be worn when going out in case her hand touched a boy's inadvertently and inflamed him to make a sexual advance. The nuns interrogated the students ceaselessly about their thoughts, and imposed strange and nasty punishments with apparent pleasure. She felt they were psychologically repressed to a dangerous degree, obsessional about purity, and bitter about their own situation. It sounds a bit like Guantanamo Bay to me. My friend spent years there weeping quietly in her bed at night. She says they were entirely Merciless. Yet I have known loads of super nuns of Catholic and Protestant orders, women I admired enormously. This seems to be all about women controlled, repressed and abused as a result of men's dominance and becoming monstrous in their turn.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 09 Feb 13 - 04:38 AM

'When you read what Joe Offer writes about his nuns, they are obviously a totally different order of being from the laundry sadists.'

Eliza described nuns from the same order above. FWIW.

I always have to smile when Joe talks about his nuns, especially when I contrast his opinion with that, also with Mercy sisters, of my son whose '[i]they're evil[/i]' is one of his milder versions.

It's all a matter of different times, different places and different individuals.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Feb 13 - 06:19 AM

The Irish government report had nothing in it about "sex predators" in the Magdalene laundries and it hasn't come up anywhere else as a significant issue. The repression they conducted was vicious enough as it was.

Subject: RE: BS: Magdalene Laundries. Ireland's shame
From: mg
Date: 09 Feb 13 - 03:24 PM

never heard of the gloves. shoe stories abounded but i don't know if i heard it directly..reason not to wear patent leather shoes. we were told to bring telephone books with us on dates in case we had to sit on a boy's lap. I can only imagine how bad it was for boys and their high school education, and it at least partially explains the twisted situations that occurred with priests etc. Forever 14. Some escaped, some became healthy priests and nuns, some became unhealthy priests and nuns and some became healthy or unhealthy parents who helped perpetuate the process. It was and is sick and we need to shine lights just everywhere. I do mean in the Vatican.