History
Magdalene laundries: Ireland accepts state guilt in scandal
Ireland has officially recognised the state’s guilt in the “enslavement” of more than 30,000 women, most of whom were sent against their will into church-run institutions where they received no pay, no pension and no social protection.
Labelled the “Maggies”, the women were sent to the Magdalene laundries where they worked for nothing, serving in some cases “life sentences” simply for being unmarried mothers or regarded as morally wayward.
On Tuesday, a report headed by Irish senator Martin McAleese found that the state and the Irish police force bore a major responsibility for sending the women there and failing to protect their rights as workers. The laundries were not private and the vast majority of women and girls were sent there against their own wishes.
The McAleese report also concluded that the women were used as free labour and that Irish labour laws from the state’s foundation were continually broken inside the laundries.
Established in 1922, some of the Magdalene laundries were still in operation as late as 1996. Half of the women incarcerated in these institutions, which washed clothes and linen from major hotel groups and even the Irish armed forces, were under the age of 23.
Nuns from the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity ran laundries at Drumcondra and Sean MacDermott Street in Dublin, the Sisters of Mercy in Galway and Dun Laoghaire, the Religious Sisters of Charity in Donnybrook, Dublin and Cork, and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Limerick, Cork, Waterford and New Ross.