The Women of the Magdalene Laundries

It’s a sad and horrifying fact of Irish history that thousands of women were detained and forced to work long, hard hours scrubbing away their sins in places that were called Magdalene Laundries. If you’ve never heard of them before, read this.

And before you think this is a historical story, the last of them was closed in 1996. They were institutions for unwed women who in the mind of the church and state needed reform because of supposed promiscuity. Many of the women, however, had been raped. They performed forced labor that benefitted the church.

While Ireland contained most of these laundries, they also existed in Australia, England, and Canada.

It is not my intention to bash the church or the Irish government. There is good among the bad, as everywhere. But these voices must be heard. I’ve written about it in Book Two of The Ellis Island Series.

Did you see the movie Philomena? It was based on a true story starring Judi Dench. Some of these young women who had their babies in these institutions never got to see them. Or like, Philomena, saw them taken away as toddlers, adopted without their permission. Sadly, hundreds of these babies died and are buried in unmarked graves that have been discovered in recent years.

You cannot scrub away your sins with hard work and discipline or dissolve them with your shame. You cannot be spiritually freed by continually being told how bad you are. God made you in His image, and He can scrub away all that’s bad in you so that the good you, your true self, is whiter than snow. ~“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. Isaiah 1:18 NIV

In 2017 the government acknowledged what the Taoiseach called a National Shame. It’s been a few years since this has been in the news, but so many families are still dealing with the aftereffects and need to be remembered.