Magdalene laundry
[2] They were required to work without pay apart from meagre food provisions, while the institutions operated large commercial laundries, serving customers outside their bases.
[10] In 1797, the Edinburgh Royal Magdalene Asylum was founded in the Canongate in Old Town, a popular location for street prostitutes.
[citation needed] Writer Charles Dickens and philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts established an alternative in 1846, thinking the Magdalen Hospitals too harsh.
The question of whether they should become subject to labour regulations and inspections as commercial laundries were became particularly controversial around the turn of the century, with sides often drawn on Irish/English and Catholic/Protestant lines.
The normalisation of inspections and other regulations of institutions in England is considered to have softened their regime and improved conditions compared to Ireland.
[13] By the 1950s Magdalene asylums in Britain had mostly either closed or transformed into institutions with a narrower focus, like vocational training centres or approved schools.
[17] In Belfast, Northern Ireland, the Church of Ireland-run Ulster Magdalene Asylum and episcopal chapel, was founded in 1839.
[19][20] Ferriter described the laundries as "a mechanism that society, religious orders and the state came up with to try to get rid of people deemed not to conforming to the so-called... Irish identity.
"[21] The Irish government claimed that the State was not legally responsible for the abuse suffered by women and girls in the Magdalene laundries, as these were religious institutions.
[22] The discovery in 1993 of a mass grave on the grounds of High Park – a former convent in Dublin – led to media articles about the operations of the institutions.
[27] Senator Martin McAleese chaired an Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen laundries.
[28] In 2013 the BBC did a special investigation, Sue Lloyd-Roberts' "Demanding justice for women and children abused by Irish nuns.
In 2011, a monument was erected in Ennis, County Clare, dedicated to the Sisters of Mercy, who had an industrial school and a Magdalene Laundry in the town.
In 2015, Ennis municipal council decided to honour the same order by renaming a road in recognition of their "compassionate service to vulnerable women and children."
[6][31] Asylum records show that in the early history of the Magdalene movement, many women entered and left the institutions of their own accord, sometimes repeatedly.
Lu Ann De Cunzo wrote in her book, Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions; The Magdalene Society of Philadelphia, 1800–1850, that the women in Philadelphia's asylum "sought a refuge and a respite from disease, the prison or almshouse, unhappy family situations, abusive men, and dire economic circumstances.
As the Magdalen Society Asylum became more selective, relaxed its emphasis on personal guilt and salvation, and standardized the treatment of inmates, its rate of failure diminished.
[34] They received religious instruction, engaged in prayer and devotional activities, and were expected to demonstrate repentance for their past actions.
Women received basic literacy and numeracy education and vocational training in areas such as "sewing, laundry work, or domestic service".
[37] Critics argue that such organizations did little to address the underlying social and economic factors that often led women into prostitution, and instead focused on moral reform and control.
Many of the young women who were temporary residents at the Inwood institution had worked in the taverns, brothels, and alleyways of lower Manhattan before being "rescued" by the Society.
[39][better source needed] The Congregation of the Sisters of Misericorde was founded in Montreal in 1848 by Marie-Rosalie Cadron-Jetté, a widow skilled as a midwife.
The Misericordia Sisters endeavoured to carry out their ministry discreetly, for the public was neither supportive of their cause nor charitable to the young women they aided.
[40] According to Sulpician Father Éric Sylvestre, "When food was scarce, Rosalie would fast so that the moms could eat.
[44][page needed] The asylums provided the clients with factory work only if the first choice of being a domestic in a private religious home failed.
[44][page needed] This was in line with several other common private charitable establishments especially in Stockholm, which provided poor women in the cities with shelter and employment (normally as domestics), to prevent them from becoming prostitutes.
[46] According to James Franklin, the girls came from a variety of very disturbed and deprived backgrounds and were individually hard to deal with in many cases.
The nuns shared the conditions of the women inmates, such as bad food, hard work, confinement, and long periods of silence.
