Magdalen Kirwan (c. 1830 - February 1906) was an Irish nun and member of the Sisters of Mercy and manager of Goldenbridge penal refuge.
Charlotte entered the Mercy Convent on Dublin's Baggot Street on 24 August 1851, and was professed there in September 1854.
Her organisation skills were recognised, and within some eighteen months Kirwan was put in charge of a refuge for women who had served prison sentences and who needed rehabilitation before joining society.
Sr. Teresa Delaney writes that: It was described as being very unprisonlike in appearance and ... was a halfway house where women serving penal servitude spent the final part of their sentences.
The success of the institution can be attributed to her, for her manner was described as gentle and winning, yet with a decisive and energetic will to "exercise a powerful influence on those whom she had to control".
On 6 May 1882 in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke (newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Burke was the Permanent Undersecretary, respectively) were stabbed to death by members of the Irish National Invincibles.