The fallen women

I am currently working on a feminist walking tour of Dublin to celebrate the International Women's Day on March 8th. I am in charge of taking pictures of some monuments remembering Irish women's history. One of the saddest part of this history is the Magdalene laundries.
Maybe you know about it because you have seen Peter Mullan's film, The Magdalene sisters (if you haven't, try to have a look).

During 150 years (the last one closed in Ireland in 1996), around 30,000 "fallen women" were admitted in those homes. Those girls and women usually spent their whole life in the institution, paying for their "crimes". The laundries were given this name because of Mary Magdalene, a woman of "bad reputation" who confessed her sins and became a devout.

Those women were imprisoned for behaviours severely condemned by the extremely powerful Church: getting pregnant outside of marriage, leaving their abusive husband, being raped etc. You could even find yourself there if you were with a mental disability. Those women were then condemned to do all kinds of work like cleaning the clergy's laundry, cooking, cleaning and looking after ageing nuns. This work was not paid, and the conditions were appalling, the women often abused and badly treated. The women were sometimes losing their name too, the nuns giving them simili biblical repentant names (such as "Magdalene St Teresa"). They were usually admitted to the asylum (another name for those prisons) on one parent's request. A lot of them remained in those houses all their life and were buried in the convent's garden.

In 1993 (I do say again that the last laudry had not been closed at this time yet), remains of 133 bodies had to be removed from one of the laundries' garden because the nuns were selling the property. The permission to take the bodies was given by the Department of Environment. The undertakers discovered 22 additional bodies that had never been declared. The authorities, instead of opening an enquiry on the matter, gave permission to the nuns for the 22 additional bodies. Those 155 bodies were later cremated and reburied in a mass grave in Glasnevin Cemetery, on the North Side of Dublin. This triggered a public scandal and revelations about the conditions of work and detention began to appear. Relatives to women who had been in a laundry began asking for the truth, and a lot of documentaries and testimonies were produced. We still don't know though who the women buried now in Glasnevin were. Their cremation prevented any hope for identification.

The victims of those asylums are numerous and a lot of them are unknown. Their illegitimate children were stolen from them and given for adoption or sent to "indutrial schools" or orphanages, ruled as well by brothers and nuns, and there as well the children were badly treated (the sexual and physical abuses were common).
The buildings, the graves, the stories of those women are still standing. The only monument in Dublin commerating those women's memory is this plaque is the centre of St Stephen's Green. They would deserve so much more.





If you want to know more:
http://www.adoptionireland.com/magdalene/background.html
This is the detailed story around the graves discovered in Drumcondra, Dublin
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/08/sunday/main567365.shtml Another article by the American press
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/so-much-for-church-remorse-over-the-sex-abuse-scandal-1280595.html This is on the various sexual abuses scandals. The former arbishop of Dublin refuses to give away documents relating to those.