Mother and Baby Homes and The Magdalen Laundries: Dark Stains on Ireland's Past That Still Haunt Its Present
When I was in my final year of my undergrad degree in English and history, I had to write one dissertation for each subject (the two together were about the same length as a single-subject thesis). My history paper had to be written within the context of public health. I chose to research the Magdalen Laundries and mother and baby homes that many young Irish women were sent to in the twentieth century. Though I, like every person raised on this island, had a general awareness that these were places of punishment rather than sanctity, my research led me to realise just how horrific they were. The homes and laundries were places where women and children suffered abuse and exploitation at the hands of the Catholic Church. They were places that isolated these women and children from the rest of Irish society. They were places of human trafficking and experimentation. They were places the newly independent State largely ignored as they navigated a post-colonial economy. They were places of high child mortality rates that gave way to mass graves, which we as a public still know very little about.
On 22 October 2020, seven years after a State apology was issued to survivors by then-Taoiseach Enda Kenny, the Irish Government passed a Bill to seal the records of a State investigation into mother and baby homes for 30 years. Survivors and their families won't have access to these records until then, and because many of the mothers who spent time in the homes as young women are now elderly, there's no guarantee they'll see the findings at all. The three governing parties (Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party) voted the Bill through without survivor input and refused to accept any amendments from the Opposition. This has sparked outrage amongst survivors, the public and the Opposition alike, and has given way to a social media movement to #UnsealTheArchive.
The Government's decision has prompted me to upload my research paper on the homes and laundries. The essay, written after examining multiple primary and secondary sources from survivors and historians, contains details of abuse that some may find triggering. It wasn't an easy write, and it isn't an easy read. But it looks at the societal context that allowed these places to exist for so long, which is important, because the women and children who suffered in them weren't just failed by the Church. They were failed by Irish society as a whole and they were failed by the State. That same State has just voted to fail them again.
The survivors of mother and baby homes and laundries have been through more than any of us could ever imagine – more than this essay could possibly cover. They and their families deserve better than this Bill. Those who were separated from their children or mothers and died before they could reunite deserved better. The survivors who emigrated and never told a soul about their sufferings deserved better. The near 800 babies and children whose bodies were found in a septic tank at the mother and baby home in Tuam, Co. Galway, deserved better. The secrecy surrounding the homes and laundries has gone on far too long; there's no reason for it to last 30 years more.
You can sign the petition to #UnsealTheArchive here.
Care-giving or corrective? The service provided by homes for "fallen" women in Ireland, 1940-1970
The twentieth century was a time of mass institutionalisation in Ireland. Healthcare reforms and the race for scientific advancement resulted in the founding of establishments, both state-funded and private, that were concerned with housing particular groups of people. Marginalised members of the community, such as those deemed to be of unsound mind, those infected with venereal disease, "illegitimate" or orphaned children and unmarried mothers, found themselves admitted to such institutions - either voluntarily or forcefully. The laundries and homes for unmarried mothers were supposed to provide a hospitable "service" in their keeping of women who either admitted themselves for lack of other options or were committed by ashamed family members. They were supposed to act as establishments of refuge, substituting for a welfare system that destitute women did not have to rely on. This "service" was more one of institutionalisation than sanctuary, with nuns acting closer to prison officers than care-givers. The treatment female patients received in lock hospitals was seemingly correctional, with more emphasis placed on the rehabilitation of "fallen" women's morality than their welfare. A similar argument could be made for homes and laundries, though perhaps the regime in these institutions was more severe again; the atmosphere was punishing rather than correctional. This essay will be primarily concerned with the operation of Magdalen Laundries and homes for unmarried mothers during the 1940s-1970s. It aims to examine how the "service" provided by these institutions - and the services their inmates were forced to provide - reflect a greater societal policing of women's behaviour. It was this policing that gave the homes a run of almost two and a half centuries, during which experimentation, abuse, forced labour, and human trafficking of "illegitimate" children went relatively unquestioned.
Public understanding of mother-and-baby homes and Magdalen Laundries appears to have been ambiguous until the beginning of the twenty-first century, perhaps due to the last institution closing its doors in 1996 and the gradual decline of the Church's influence at the turn of the millennium. The very name of the laundries, which derived from biblical tales of reformed prostitute Mary Magdalen, would suggest these institutions operated with a corrective intent. Yet during the period in which these establishments were fully-operational, it was generally understood that they were places of sanctuary for marginalised women with nowhere to go.1 Communities saw the sisterly orders who ran these homes as looking after "homeless, desperate women" out of Christian charity.2 A similar view has been maintained in some instances of church/state reflections on the institutions in recent years. Some nuns formerly involved in the running of these homes (including Sister Sarto of Bessborough, Co. Cork) have expressed disdain at modern backlash, often denying allegations of abuse and insisting they merely provided a charitable service, while the McAleese Report sympathises with their position:
...many of the Sisters of the four Religious Congregations which operated these institutions – whether they worked in them or not – have experienced a profound hurt in recent years as the debate on the Magdalen Laundries gained increasing public prominence. Their position is that they responded in practical ways as best they could...to the fraught situations of the sometimes marginalised girls and women sent to them, by providing them with shelter, board and work.3
These claims attempt to divert the responsibility of "fallen" women's suffering from the Catholic Church, and seemingly attribute them to the wider society of the time. While they do make a valid point about Irish society's ostracisation of these women, they fail to acknowledge that this stigmatisation was rooted in the notion of the "fallen" woman as a sinful, sexual being, an idea both constructed and perpetrated by the Church. It was the Church, in its domination of post-independence education, who taught that intercourse should be reserved for procreation, that contraceptives were therefore unnecessary, that virginity should be maintained until marriage, that a girl's development to womanhood made her inherently sexual, and that engaging with one's sexual identity is a sin for which one must atone. These moral codes were adopted by a predominantly Catholic Ireland, resulting in the chastising of those who were seen to have broken them. The ramifications would prove disastrous for the women who disobeyed these codes, or had the potential to disobey these codes, and for the many children born out of wedlock whose very existence was a testament to such disobedience.
A Culture of Shame
Central to understanding the long-lived existence of these institutions which are now so strongly condemned is the societal context of the times in which they operated. The Magdalen Asylums, which were first established in England in the 1750s and operated worldwide in a global effort to rehabilitate "fallen" women, were appropriated by the religious orders of Catholic Ireland. The newly-independent state, in its struggling economy, was comfortable with allowing religious orders to deal with welfare affairs.4 To lessen financial pressure on the state, homes, laundries, industrial schools and even hospitals were entrusted to the care of nuns or priests. For unmarried mothers, who had little or no welfare system to support them, entering a home or laundry was the only option.5 Thus, these institutions saw vulnerable members of society, very often without supportive family members interested in pursuing information about their whereabouts or wellbeing, entering their doors. This left them susceptible to becoming places of correction rather than refuge. The society that allowed these homes to operate with such rigid authoritarianism were too influenced by the Church's teachings to see these women as deserving of compassion.
Catholic Ireland was hostile to any expression of female sexuality. Chastity was promoted as the purest state of being while one's virtue was supposed to remain intact until marriage. The immaculate conception was glorified, and the Virgin Mary was a figure young women and girls were expected to emulate. Biblical teachings of the Garden of Eden provided a contrast to the virtuous Mary. The consequences of Eve's biting into the apple enforced the idea that terrible things happen when women give into temptation. Thus, female sexuality was expected to be repressed. The patriarchal order that commodified women also ensured that being a good wife was of the utmost importance, and that securing a husband was the ultimate goal (which itself was difficult to achieve if the status of one's virtue was questionable). A woman's relationship with sex - as well as her own body - was supposed to correlate to her husband's; women who seemed to possess a sexual identity outside of marriage were seen to pose a threat to society for a number of reasons. In engaging with the "sinfulness of the flesh," women were perceived as abandoning marriage - or at least, its sanctity.6 Those who participated in illicit sex were suspected of promiscuity, which in turn was associated with venereal disease. June Goulding, a former midwife of Bessborough who worked in the hospital during the 1950s, recalls a particular delivery in her memoir. It shows the association of "fallen" women with disease:
Sister noticed she had a red rash on both her groins (quite a common complication of pregnancy) and said in an audible voice: "Nurse! Be careful! Wash your hands - she comes from Waterford. The quays, you know?"7
The new mother clearly understood what the nun was implying, for upon the nun's exit she confessed, "Nurse, dear...I was never with a sailor in my life."8 The nun obviously mistook the rash for a symptom of syphilis, which was seen as a sailor's disease. Yet despite the acknowledgment that sailors and soldiers were frequent carriers, promiscuous women were held responsible for the spreading of the disease. Some chapters later, Goulding recalls a day in which a doctor arrived "to do blood tests," which she assumed to mean haemoglobin tests for monitoring the health of pregnant women.9 The next day, she enquired about when the results of the haemoglobin tests were due back to be told, "Doctor took blood for the Wassermann's test."10 This was a test to identify syphilis; rather than carrying out blood tests as a means of healthcare provision, tests were carried out to further humiliate the girls and link their bodies to sex. Thus, one could conclude that non-marital sex was and the women who engaged in it were seen as posing a health risk to society and should be locked up to shield their communities from infection.
Venereal was not the only kind of infection "fallen" women were charged with spreading. The culture of shame related to sex and the patriarchal demonisation of women meant that "fallen" women were perceived as having the potential to morally contaminate the rest of their communities.11 For this reason, it was acceptable, if not necessary, that any woman who challenged traditional notions of female morality should be shut away from the rest of society. Young girls in psychiatric hospitals, orphanages or industrial schools who were seen as too attractive or spirited were often admitted to laundries on a prophetic basis, with the belief that they were susceptible to giving in to temptation.12 They were institutionalised before they had the chance to fall victim to sexual awakening. Unmarried women or girls who reported rape were also admitted to laundries, for their virginity had been compromised. As Kelly wrote in his account of eighteenth-century Ireland's rape culture, "a woman whose virtue was impugned, whether through her own or someone else's fault, was tarnished in the eye of society."13 The same sentiment stood for twentieth-century laundries, in which it mattered little whether a woman's loss of virginity was consensual or not. Religious orders were assigned the supervision of the corrupted, or those with the potential to become corrupted, for who better to impose penance than those closest to God?
Paying the Price
This penance came in various forms. Beginning with the laundries, which were sometimes attached to or linked with specific mother and baby homes, a strong sense of institutionalisation was created. The places were restrictive in terms of where inmates could go; most did not allow leave of premises and were bordered by high walls and iron gates to prevent escapes. Numerous survivors have attested to the sense of infinite imprisonment, and of repeatedly asking the nuns of their release to no avail.14 Similarly, there have been several accounts of hair-cutting or shaving either as a punishment for attempted escape15 or as a preventative measure to detract from the girls' beauty.16 Hair-cutting may have also been a part of the identity-stripping process, in which girls were stripped of their clothes, given a uniform and often assigned a new name by which they would be referred to. Elizabeth Coppin, transferred to a laundry at fourteen from an industrial school, explains how the identity overhaul was a ploy to dehumanise upon meeting Roberts:
"...Your identity is taken because my name is changed, my hair is cut and I'm not wearing my own clothes...I have to answer to the name Enda, which is a man's name in Ireland. How do you cope with that at that age?" I ask Elizabeth why she thought they did it. "Just to dehumanise me...to make me feel like nothing in society."17
The women in these institutions were indeed seen as "nothing" both in and out of laundry walls, which therefore allowed them to be treated like "nothing."
The same sense of institutionalisation was created in homes for unmarried mothers, where women were expected to spend a specific amount of time depending on each place. Goulding recounts that in Bessborough, pregnant women would stay in the hospital and shortly after their baby was born they would be sent to work in the laundry for three years; after this time they were obliged to part with their babies.18 Moreover, the language of criminality was used in relation to the act of giving birth outside of wedlock, both by the nuns in charge of the homes and wider Catholic society. Goulding recalls the moment she realised "this place was more like a penitentiary than a nursing home" was the day a superior nun told her, "all the girls in here are first offenders and they are very lucky to have such a place to come."19 Historian Lindsay Earner-Byrne supports this:
Society considered their behaviour a crime. They referred to women as 'first-time offenders' when they had one baby and 'repeat offenders' after they had had two...the phrases are still being used as late as the 1970s.20
Derogatory phrases were not just reserved for unmarried mothers. Their babies were evidence of their crime, meaning their very existence was criminal. "Bastards" was a common term for "illegitimate" children, which reinforced their inferiority to wedlock-born children; the phrase "whores' droppings" is evidence of how greatly unmarried mothers and their children were dehumanised.21 It is pertinent to consider the degree to which dehumanisation occurred because it aids one's understanding of how the violation of human rights carried out in these institutions was allowed to happen.
Human Experimentation
One such violation that exemplifies how little "illegitimate" children and their mothers' agency were thought of is the medical research that took place in the homes for unmarried mothers. The 1940s to the 1970s was a period of rapid medical advancement, in which finding a cure for numerous diseases through vaccine became the prime objective of public health policy.22 The Wellcome Foundation wanted to produce cheaper vaccines with fewer side effects. New vaccines would require trials, and trials would require subjects. Like the psychiatric patients who were subjected to undergoing treatment of ECT and ICT in their experimental phases in the 1940s-1950s, "illegitimate" babies were the perfect candidates for vaccine trials. They came in large numbers, for homes held pools of newborns and toddlers at any given time. Like psychiatric patients, these babies were powerless and could not offer resistance. The only objection that could have been made on the babies' behalf was that of their mothers, which were seemingly not given the opportunity - there is no record of parental consent being sought or obtained for the trials to take place.23 The general consensus seems to suggest that mothers did not even know about the trials being conducted on their children, with many of the subjects only discovering their own involvement as adults.24 The homes provided a "captive population" whose human rights mattered little, meaning medical researchers could effectively conduct whatever research they wanted on their "material."25 The trials, most notably commissioned by the Wellcome Foundation, were usually carried out in combinations. Diseases would be put together in two-in-one, three-in-one and four-in-one combinations between the 1960s and 1970s.
Mari Steed, who was born and raised for three years in Bessborough Home, Co. Cork, before she was sent for adoption in America, was confirmed a subject of such trials by GlaxosmithKline (successor company of Wellcome). Her medical records show she was subject to three four-in-one combinations of polio, whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus.26 The second injection produced side effects of vomiting and illness.
Philip Delaney, also born in Bessborough, was too subjected to three injections given by a Dr. Hillary. Like Steed, his combination included diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus and polio. His injections, however, included the measles as a fifth disease.27 Delaney was part of a 1965 five-in-one trial that GlaxoSmithKline has denied Wellcome's involvement in, meaning the sources of this trial are unknown. Both Steed and Delaney's trials were conducted without their mothers' consent and show a dangerous lack of consideration of potential health risks. It appears that the children in the homes were seen more as subjects than humans, especially when one considers that consent was sought from the parents of local, "legitimate" children who participated in the later trials.28 This is further confirmed by the sending of dead babies to medical colleges for dissection.29 "Illegitimate" children were not afforded the same respect or rights as those born in wedlock and that allowed medical researchers to ignore the Nuremberg Code and carry out unethical experimentations throughout the 1940s-1970s.
Pain and Profit
Disregarding bodily welfare was not exclusive to "illegitimate" babies. As penance for their crime of engaging in illicit sex, unmarried mothers were denied quality healthcare throughout their pregnancy and the labour process. The idea seemed to centre on making these women suffer through as much physical pain and discomfort as possible. This is particularly obvious in Goulding's The Light in the Window, where the former midwife of Bessborough recalls numerous times she was dumbfounded by the nuns' refusal to offer pain relief to inmates. Upon starting her position as midwife, she was offered a tour of the home in which she was introduced to the newly-delivered mother's ward. Here, she witnessed a girl breastfeed her baby in agony due to a "suppurating abscess" on her breast.30 The nurse, who had previously only experienced the maternity wards of married women, was evidently confused by the nun's response:
"Don't let the pus into the baby's mouth," commanded Sister curtly...I was dumbfounded. It was quite obvious that each time the hungry baby gulped its mother's milk the pain in her infected breast became excruciating. I had previously nursed unfortunate women in the training hospital with blocked milk ducts whose temperatures shot up to 103 degrees. We tried to ease their acute discomfort with hot face cloths and four hourly dosages of aspirin. When this did not arrest the problem they were put on penicillin...
"Sister...is she on antibiotics?" The reply came as a withering look as the nun continued to glance at the other mothers and order them to give the babies ten minutes at each breast...Could it be possible that this girl had to suffer without medical intervention?31
Goulding also recalls the underwear both pregnant and newly-delivered women were forced to wear. The "coarse material of (their) knickers" was made of a "denim-like fabric," which she notes as uncomfortable.32 When she asks a girl if the reason she was not wearing a bra was due to soreness, the girl replied, "we're not allowed, Nurse...the girls who are feeding their babies say it feels much worse on their chests than without support."33 The levels of discomfort experienced acted as a means of punishment.
Similarly, the girls were expected to undergo pain by experiencing every feeling of labour. No analgesic was provided to the girls as "they just have to suffer."34 Throughout her time in Bessborough, Goulding only once experienced the administration of anaesthetic to a girl in labour, and this was because her mother had paid for it.35 This shows how money did indeed play a significant role in the homes - if one wanted compassion, one would have to pay for it. Moaning or screaming during delivery prompted a lecture. Goulding was also refused access to sutures to provide newly-delivered, torn mothers with stitches, and when she asked a night attendant why, she was told "girls must suffer their pain and put up with the discomfort of being torn - she says that they should atone for their sin."36 The home was more of a penitentiary than a place of refuge. However, the degree to which this was even corrective is debatable - it could be perceived that the harsh routine of denying pain relief was to teach a lesson and prevent the girls from "offending" again. Yet if this was the case, why was relief given to those who could pay for it? And why did nuns begin praying for new admissions once the average admission rate dropped?37
The answer to these questions lie in the fact that it was profitable for nuns to keep women in laundries and homes. These institutions made the nuns more than they cost them through self-sustaining and free labour. Goulding attests that "rates were paid to the Home for each mother and baby" as a State contribution to their upkeep.38 Breastfeeding was the sole nourishment for babies as old as twelve months, which obviously did not cost the home money.39 The estates of these institutions also often contained farms that girls would be sent to work on.40 Goods produced on the farms, be it milk from the cows, crops from the land or fruit and flowers from the greenhouses, were sold in shops owned by the nuns.41
The laundries themselves were also highly profitable. Ledgers show a client list of private individuals, businessmen, members of the clergy, hospitals and colleges.42 Though the act of washing was symbolic as it represented the cleansing of sin these girls underwent, it was something the nuns could make money from. Other girls were put to work sewing, making banners, ecclesiastical garments, dresses for communions or confirmations, or the renowned Limerick lace (at the Good Shepherd Laundry, Co. Limerick). The lace attracted orders from tourists, claims Gabrielle North, though there is no written evidence of nuns profiting from the production of lace goods.43 Still, North insists that they "would sell lace collars, handkerchiefs and the like. The nuns were definitely making money. They would say that it wasn't commercial, but it was. They were very secretive about it."44 Human exploitation has been linked with capitalism since times of slavery. The laundries represent what happens when capitalism comes into contact with marginalised members of the community whose wellbeing is not cared for by society.
The homes and laundries have sparked public interest in the early years of the twenty-first century. Modern reflections greatly contrast the attitudes of the society in which the institutions operated, with both Church and state condemned for failing survivors. Ultimately, the picture that emerges of the institutions discussed in this essay is one of punishment and penance. These were places in which the crime of illicit sex should be paid for in human suffering, in which the divide between attitudes towards male and female sexuality became clear, in which destitute women's vulnerability was turned into a capitalist entity. The institutions were supposed to provide a care-taking service for those who had nowhere else to go, yet it seems as though women were recruited on the basis of non-crimes to participate in the free labour process that occurred in these estates. If any service was provided in these institutions it was by their inmates in the name of penance and profit. "Illegitimate" children were punished for being born; some adopted by married Irish families while many were trafficked to America with little or no choice given to their birth mothers. The abuses that took place in the homes and laundries, be it a violation of body, spirit or personal agency, were the result of the failure of the new Irish State to separate its governing body from the Catholic Church. The Church's influence over education, both in terms of schooling and teachings at mass, ensured society condemned "fallen" women, while its influence over welfare provision allowed it to capitalise off of the vulnerability of these women. Thus, the "service" provided by these places was neither care-giving nor corrective - it was not a service at all.
References
1 - Roberts, Sue Lloyd. The War on Women. Simon and Schuster [E-book version] (London, 2016), p. 148.
2 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 148.
3 - McAleese, Martin (chair). Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries, 2013, p. IV.
4 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 118.
5 - Smith, James M. Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment. University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, 2007), p. 21.
6 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 126.
7 - Goulding, June. The Light in the Window. Poolbeg Press Ltd (Dublin, 2004), p. 58.
8 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 58.
9 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 67.
10 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 68.
11 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 126.
12 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 128.
13 - Kelly, James. ''A Most Inhuman and Barbarous Piece of Villainy': An Exploration of the Crime of Rape in Eighteenth-Century Ireland', Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 10 (1995), p. 80.
14 - This was a common thread amongst survivor accounts across numerous sources. See Roberts, Humphries and O' Reilly.
15 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 131-134.
16 - Sex in a Cold Climate. (1998). [documentary film] Directed by S. Humphries. Dublin: Testimony Films, Channel 4.
17 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 134.
18 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 25.
19 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, pp. 24-25.
20 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 141.
21 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 119.
22 - Prime Time: Anatomy of a Scandal. (2014). [documentary film] Directed by T. Sillem. Dublin: RTÉ.
23 - Prime Time: Anatomy of a Scandal. (2014).
24 - Prime Time: Anatomy of a Scandal. (2014).
25 - Prime Time: Anatomy of a Scandal. (2014).
26 - Medical records of Mari Steed.
27 - Medical records of Philip Delaney.
28 - Prime Time: Anatomy of a Scandal. (2014).
29 - Prime Time: Anatomy of a Scandal. (2014).
30 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 17.
31 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 17.
32 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 26.
33 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 26.
34 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 28.
35 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 66.
36 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 31.
37 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 70.
38 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 70.
39 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 70.
40 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 119.
41 - Goulding, The Light in the Window, p. 70.
42 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 156.
43 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 155.
44 - Roberts, The War on Women, p. 155.
Other Sources
- Finnegan, Frances. Do penance or perish: Magdalen Laundries in Ireland. Oxford University Press (New York, 2004).
- Luddy, Maria. Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800-1940. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2007).
- McKee, Eamonn. 'Church-State Relations and the Development of Irish Health Policy: The Mother-and-Child Scheme, 1944-53'. Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 98 (Nov., 1986), pp. 159-194.
- Prime Time: Bessborough's Babies. (2017). [documentary film] Directed by R. O' Reilly. Dublin: RTÉ.