The Magdalene Laundries "scandal"

C_Mababejive

I notice this has had a bit of an airing in the press recently with it being declared some kind of scandal with a good spoonful of accusations of brutish behaviour and abuse.

This happens so often whereby we apply modern day standards and morality to historical events.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraception_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

I am quite certain that charitable organisations and the church felt that they were doing their best at the time to assist "fallen" women by relieving them of their burden and giving them work and some kind of education in the hope that they would not repeat the same mistakes.

As many will know, contraception in the Irish nation has always been a contentious issue and the church ruled with a rod of iron and had supreme influence.

There were thousands of babes born to unmarried mothers in earlier times in workhouses and latterly in major hospitals which were simply forcibly or by some vague agreement,passed over for adoption. So many people were adopted and never found out why or who their birth parent was.

What records were kept and where?

Apparently even today,thousands of Irish women travel to the UK for abortions as presumably there is still an element of scandal involved in being a single parent female.

NAR

C_Mababejive wrote: »

Apparently even today,thousands of Irish women travel to the UK for abortions as presumably there is still an element of scandal involved in being a single parent female.

No it is because abortions (with few exceptions) are illegal in both parts of Ireland.

donnac2558

Do you know they operated in Scotland as well.

Fallen women??????

Girls where handed in when their mother died as the father didn't want to look after them. Children. They were not free to leave, someone from their family had to come and sign them out. If they escaped the police brought them back. I call that a prison. Many lived there until old women as they had become institutionalized.

Women travel to England for abortions, not because they are worried about being a single mother. They don't want to have the baby. They do have benefits in the Republic same as in the UK.

qwert_yuiop

[
I am quite certain that charitable organisations and the church felt that they were doing their best at the time to assist "fallen" women by relieving them of their burden and giving them work and some kind of education in the hope that they would not repeat the same mistakes.

.[/QUOTE]

The work they gave them was unpaid, there was no education.

C_Mababejive

Well this post is a learning point for me also and I'm not saying it was all good but as i say, we must try not to judge history by modern standards. Thinking back to the 50s/60s..if a woman got pregnant and not married/maybe even an absent father...what options would she have save for adoption?

spacey2012

A classic example of evil perpetrated when religious zealots are allowed influence and power.

Pont

C_Mababejive wrote: »

This happens so often whereby we apply modern day standards and morality to historical events.
QUOTE]

What I find most shocking is that the last laundry closed down in about 1995 - 1996, so not entirely an 'historical event'.

mezza101

did the idea of the magdalene laundries come from not washing your dirty linen in public

highrisklowreturn

I don't understand why we do not open more, in order to enable fallen women to enter the afterlife by expiation of their sins in such houses by work and charity.

Or we could dress them in track suits, give them buckfast, benefits, and let them sit at home watching daytime tv, knocking out more sprogs to keep the cash 'a-rollin' and ensure the left wing political parties stay in government.

Own_My_Own

My Grandmother was bought up Catholic. She went to a convent school. On the day she left that school ( 1938) she left the religion.
She always said she never met a group of people that were as evil as the nuns that taught her. Every evil act was in the name of God, and she wanted nothing more to do with it.

jenheiffer

Values may have been different in bygone days but the upsetting thing was that really evil sadists seem to have had free rein in schools and institutions.

It wasn't just the church, there were teachers in state schools here who treated children really cruelly too, both mentally and physically. Just ask anyone who went to school in the 30's, 40's or even the 50's.