Topic: Mother and Baby Institutions/ Magdalene Laundries

[PhilScraton]

My most recent research, with two co-researchers, was launched in Belfast on Tuesday: Truth, Acknowledgement and Accountability: Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in Northern Ireland. Details of our work with families/ survivors and the research report can be accessed at: https://truthrecoverystrategy.com/panel-launch-truth-recovery-report/ Thanks. Phil.

[the 92A]

I know little about this apart from a few programmes on the tv  and having read the preamble to your report but it sounds horrendous what these women were forced to do, good to see these women have yourself and colleagues making sure this isn't brushed under the carpet and an independent enquiry sounds like a positive step if it an be won

[TSC]

Watched some documentary about this a while back.  Horrendous what went on in Ireland (north and south).  Some similar happenings in GB back in the day (eg kids shipped off overseas etc) but not to same extent. Best of luck with it.

[WhereAngelsPlay]

Nuns (Catholic Church really) the world over have done some really evil shit & all under the watchful eyes of numerous Popes.

[So… Howard Philips]

The very name - Magdalen Laundries - says all you need to know about the intolerance involved.

A mother and home child home named after an, alleged, New Testament prostitute.

[Jake]

Heard you on 5live on Tues (I think) Phil. Had not heard of these units/laundries before and the first thing that struck me was how recent the problem was.

Yet another example of people using religion to destroy and control lives.

[Robinred]

All power to your efforts Phil. I vividly remember the Peter Mullan film ‘The Magdalene Sisters’ with Geraldine McEwan as the head of a Magdalene home ‘caring’ for three teenage girls. It was powerful stuff and helped my understanding about the Catholic Church’s institutionalisation of vulnerable women and children.

[thaddeus]

My most recent research, with two co-researchers, was launched in Belfast on Tuesday: Truth, Acknowledgement and Accountability: Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses in Northern Ireland. Details of our work with families/ survivors and the research report can be accessed at: https://truthrecoverystrategy.com/panel-launch-truth-recovery-report/ Thanks. Phil.

Thanks Phil.  Have bookmarked for later.

I briefly went through a phase of listening to Radio 4 when driving last year and they had an excellent (but shocking) 3 or 4 part documentary about this.  As somebody fast approaching 40 I had never heard about it at all before then - unsurprisingly not talked about in my Catholic circles.

[12C]

The very name - Magdalen Laundries - says all you need to know about the intolerance involved.

A mother and home child home named after an, alleged, New Testament prostitute.

Dig a little deeper and she was believed by some to be Jesus’ wife.
In any case the misogynists who came to dominate the early Christian sect made sure she was marginalised and any suspicion of Jesus being human and having a relationship with a woman was removed, in order to polish his legend as the son of god. (Think how he was not conceived normally but was “of a Virgin Birth” because he couldn’t possibly have been the result of sex)
The same men set up a system where men held all the power in the church and women were confined to a subservient role. Nuns were told they were doing gods work which was in effect dealing with the consequences of men who ran away from their responsibility.
The nuns were bad but the priests and those above were the real monsters in this.

[Nobby Reserve]

Dig a little deeper and she was believed by some to be Jesus’ wife.
In any case the misogynists who came to dominate the early Christian sect made sure she was marginalised and any suspicion of Jesus being human and having a relationship with a woman was removed, in order to polish his legend as the son of god. (Think how he was not conceived normally but was “of a Virgin Birth” because he couldn’t possibly have been the result of sex)
The same men set up a system where men held all the power in the church and women were confined to a subservient role. Nuns were told they were doing gods work which was in effect dealing with the consequences of men who ran away from their responsibility.
The nuns were bad but the priests and those above were the real monsters in this.

Agree with all this.

Utterly abhorrent.

But don't forget the role of parents in all this - they were often the ones sending their daughters (and grandchild) away to these horrific existences. Just to avoid 'the shame'. I would fight to my last breath to stop anything bad happening to my daughters, and everyone from neighbours to kiddy-fiddling priests could go fuck themselves. I cannot even begin to understand the mindset of these parents who would subject their daughters to that sort of suffering.

Irish society itself similarly can't be absolved, either. Thankfully there's been a belated societal renaissance and the insidious influence of 'der Church' has faded a fair bit. But it's only a couple of generations ago when the vast majority allowed themselves to be subjugated by the evil of organised religion, with all the oppression and denial of personal freedoms that comes with that.

[Lee1-6Liv]

There was a home like this near my dads house in Cork. Developers were trying to get planning to build flats on the land but were refused as there are nearly 900 unmarked graves of children. At one stage in the 40's the mortality rate was 75%

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57255760

[12C]

Agree with all this.

Utterly abhorrent.

But don't forget the role of parents in all this - they were often the ones sending their daughters (and grandchild) away to these horrific existences. Just to avoid 'the shame'. I would fight to my last breath to stop anything bad happening to my daughters, and everyone from neighbours to kiddy-fiddling priests could go fuck themselves. I cannot even begin to understand the mindset of these parents who would subject their daughters to that sort of suffering.

Irish society itself similarly can't be absolved, either. Thankfully there's been a belated societal renaissance and the insidious influence of 'der Church' has faded a fair bit. But it's only a couple of generations ago when the vast majority allowed themselves to be subjugated by the evil of organised religion, with all the oppression and denial of personal freedoms that comes with that.

To blame people for the sins of their leaders is a bit harsh. The church was part of the elite establishment of Ireland (De Valera had a part in this). The role of the church in Liverpool during my childhood was crazy. People panicking when the priest knocked on the door - usually on pay night in order to scrounge a few coppers off the poor. If you go to the cathedral there is a display about how the poor Catholics of Liverpool (usually of Irish descent) raised funds to build a cathedral. Buying a brick, raffles and collections, all from the poorest sectors of the city population whilst priests sat in luxury, waited on by a housekeeper and nuns.
Refusing to baptise children because the parents were divorced or mixed religions was another petty disgusting abuse of power, intended to beat down the people.
I’ve mentioned before on here how a mate in infants school was damned to hell for all eternity because he tried to blag that he had been to mass and got the colour of the vestments wrong. The Jesuit was full of rage at a 6 yr old.

That level of control was forged over years, playing on the lack of education of the people. The church ensured that only the establishment could read the Bible by copying it in Latin. Monks and Priests were in control of knowledge because they taught the lords how to read. The establishment used the clergy to keep the masses subservient. A mate of mine told me the only way his family in Ireland could get him and his brother a decent education was to send them to be priests. Neither went into the church, he recalled the Christian Brothers and their brutality as a major reason.
De Valera was faced with the fact that he had to deal with socialist and other assorted factions who had fought for Irish Independence and wanted to set up a secular state. The church was his natural ally in suppressing any challenge to his own ideal of a Republic.

[So… Howard Philips]

To blame people for the sins of their leaders is a bit harsh. The church was part of the elite establishment of Ireland (De Valera had a part in this). The role of the church in Liverpool during my childhood was crazy. People panicking when the priest knocked on the door - usually on pay night in order to scrounge a few coppers off the poor. If you go to the cathedral there is a display about how the poor Catholics of Liverpool (usually of Irish descent) raised funds to build a cathedral. Buying a brick, raffles and collections, all from the poorest sectors of the city population whilst priests sat in luxury, waited on by a housekeeper and nuns.
Refusing to baptise children because the parents were divorced or mixed religions was another petty disgusting abuse of power, intended to beat down the people.
I’ve mentioned before on here how a mate in infants school was damned to hell for all eternity because he tried to blag that he had been to mass and got the colour of the vestments wrong. The Jesuit was full of rage at a 6 yr old.

That level of control was forged over years, playing on the lack of education of the people. The church ensured that only the establishment could read the Bible by copying it in Latin. Monks and Priests were in control of knowledge because they taught the lords how to read. The establishment used the clergy to keep the masses subservient. A mate of mine told me the only way his family in Ireland could get him and his brother a decent education was to send them to be priests. Neither went into the church, he recalled the Christian Brothers and their brutality as a major reason.
De Valera was faced with the fact that he had to deal with socialist and other assorted factions who had fought for Irish Independence and wanted to set up a secular state. The church was his natural ally in suppressing any challenge to his own ideal of a Republic.

I read a quote about post Independence Ireland something along the lines - "When the British left the Church stepped into the vacuum to maintain repression".

And when my divorced wife in 1978, in Liverpool, was organising our child's christening the Irish parish priest told that he would happily conduct the Baptism but that she was going to hell. Charming.

[didi shamone]

To blame people for the sins of their leaders is a bit harsh. The church was part of the elite establishment of Ireland (De Valera had a part in this). The role of the church in Liverpool during my childhood was crazy. People panicking when the priest knocked on the door - usually on pay night in order to scrounge a few coppers off the poor. If you go to the cathedral there is a display about how the poor Catholics of Liverpool (usually of Irish descent) raised funds to build a cathedral. Buying a brick, raffles and collections, all from the poorest sectors of the city population whilst priests sat in luxury, waited on by a housekeeper and nuns.
Refusing to baptise children because the parents were divorced or mixed religions was another petty disgusting abuse of power, intended to beat down the people.
I’ve mentioned before on here how a mate in infants school was damned to hell for all eternity because he tried to blag that he had been to mass and got the colour of the vestments wrong. The Jesuit was full of rage at a 6 yr old.

That level of control was forged over years, playing on the lack of education of the people. The church ensured that only the establishment could read the Bible by copying it in Latin. Monks and Priests were in control of knowledge because they taught the lords how to read. The establishment used the clergy to keep the masses subservient. A mate of mine told me the only way his family in Ireland could get him and his brother a decent education was to send them to be priests. Neither went into the church, he recalled the Christian Brothers and their brutality as a major reason.
De Valera was faced with the fact that he had to deal with socialist and other assorted factions who had fought for Irish Independence and wanted to set up a secular state. The church was his natural ally in suppressing any challenge to his own ideal of a Republic.

My mother grew up in a rural Irish area. She remembers the priest on horseback riding around. People were so intimidated by him that they'd hide behind a ditch until he passed. That was the extraordinary hold they had on people.

When the weekly shakedown of small farmers didn't yield returns a few hens might be taken in lieu.

Incidentally my grandfather did maintenance in a "laundry". He referred to the nuns as "evil bitches", for their treatment of the girls.
I'm not sure why the word slavery is never used in the media. These places were slave labour camps and the Catholic church were slavers.

[12C]

I read a quote about post Independence Ireland something along the lines - "When the British left the Church stepped into the vacuum to maintain repression".

And when my divorced wife in 1978, in Liverpool, was organising our child's christening the Irish parish priest told that he would happily conduct the Baptism but that she was going to hell. Charming.

I remember once having to go to church in St Ally’s in Huyton with my cousins. The priest there was best known for emptying two large bags of pennies across the altar whist berating the congregation  with the lines
“Pennies? What an I supposed to do with pennies?”
He wanted silent collections -no rattling.
I also heard an old crank of a priest doing a holiday cover in the late 1990s, berate doctors and condemn them all to hell because they believed in contraception.

[Nobby Reserve]

To blame people for the sins of their leaders is a bit harsh.

The leaders only had power and control because of the complicity of the population. It was the local populations who would turn on the families of those unmarried girls/women who had become pregnant, bestowing shame on them (yet the lads were absolved of blame). But the parents should have been strong enough to tell the pious gobshites to go fuck themselves. Or move away. I would rather run a gauntlet of tutting and whispering, and be sent to coventry, than put my kids through one second of pain and suffering.

The bond of close family should trump any religious bullshit.

I concede a lack of education lies behind the sort of cultish devotion to religion (of all kinds) that Ireland suffered until relatively recently. But people have a responsibility to not be hoodwinked by fictional bollocks.

[FlashGordon]

The leaders only had power and control because of the complicity of the population. It was the local populations who would turn on the families of those unmarried girls/women who had become pregnant, bestowing shame on them (yet the lads were absolved of blame). But the parents should have been strong enough to tell the pious gobshites to go fuck themselves. Or move away. I would rather run a gauntlet of tutting and whispering, and be sent to coventry, than put my kids through one second of pain and suffering.

The bond of close family should trump any religious bullshit.

I concede a lack of education lies behind the sort of cultish devotion to religion (of all kinds) that Ireland suffered until relatively recently. But people have a responsibility to not be hoodwinked by fictional bollocks.

I think you are downplaying what 800 years of oppression at the hands of a foreign nation might do to the psyche of a population. Being a Catholic was an identity more than anything spiritual throughout those years so it is only natural people's opinions would be shaped and moulded by the teachings of the church. I'm not saying these people were right to allow the church dictate so much, but it's not as simple as saying they shouldn't have listened to them either. 100 years on from that oppression we have progressed a lot as a nation and are no longer beholden to the Catholic Church. Thankfully, horrific institutions like the Magdalene Laundries, are firmly in our rear view mirror and will never be the norm for our country again.

[Nobby Reserve]

I think you are downplaying what 800 years of oppression at the hands of a foreign nation might do to the psyche of a population. Being a Catholic was an identity more than anything spiritual throughout those years so it is only natural people's opinions would be shaped and moulded by the teachings of the church.

You make a fair point.

I guess Catholicism became viewed to be an act of rebellion in itself. I still can't get my head round the inflicting pain and suffering on your kids for the idea, though. I'd sacrifice every ideal I held dear if it prevented my girls having to to suffer (and despise the institution/attitudes that forced me to do that)

I see parallels with 'honour killings' and the like in Islam and some African cultures.

[FlashGordon]

You make a fair point.

I guess Catholicism became viewed to be an act of rebellion in itself. I still can't get my head round the inflicting pain and suffering on your kids for the idea, though. I'd sacrifice every ideal I held dear if it prevented my girls having to to suffer (and despise the institution/attitudes that forced me to do that)

Yes I would think it did, doesn't make it right but it shines a light on the mindset of the population at the time and how ingrained Catholicism was in every fabric of society. Of course you would, any right minded person in this day and age would do the same I'd hope, but you haven't been raised under the guise of the all mighty and knowing Catholic church though and have the ability to think for yourself thankfully.

What does families did was utterly contemptible, there can be no escaping that fact, I just think it's not as black and white as saying they shouldn't have done it.

[Corkboy]

There was a home like this near my dads house in Cork. Developers were trying to get planning to build flats on the land but were refused as there are nearly 900 unmarked graves of children. At one stage in the 40's the mortality rate was 75%

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57255760

I live near there. Went down there recently for a walk around and they have some marked childrens' graves right in among the nuns' graves. I walked slowly around them, pointing out each one and saying "kid, kid, murderer, murderer" as the case may be.