Humanity is the washerwoman of society that wrings out its dirty laundry in tears. – Karl Kraus
Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries were the culmination of a centuries-long trend which started in the 13th century. Though the Church had always held prostitution to be a “necessary evil”, the crusading fervor of the mid-1200s turned “the Church (and most governments) [toward] tolerating the profession but attempting to redeem as many whores as possible by teaching them the ‘error of their ways’, sometimes…by confining them to…‘Magdalene homes’”:
Conditions in these homes ranged from the tolerable to the terrible depending on their endowment and management; a few cared for ex-whores indefinitely while attempting to find them husbands, but the majority were semi-prisons in which the women were “cleansed” by teaching them the “value of honest work” (i.e. unpaid drudgery) with a harsh regimen of long hours, short rations and strict rules while supervisors read from the Bible or various didactic tracts. Most of the Magdalene homes died out after the Black Death decimated 14th century Europe, but a few survived the centuries and the movement actually experienced a revival throughout the English-speaking world in the mid-18th century. Their numbers dramatically increased with the rise of the “purity movement” in the late 19th century, but by the early 20th their treatment of ex-whores had become so harsh that only the truly desperate were willing to go there and they largely vanished in all countries but Ireland, where they were called “Magdalene laundries” because the inmates were used as washerwomen.
This is by no means ancient history; the last of these laundries was closed only 16 years ago today (September 25th, 1996) after the public was made aware of the horrific abuse which was rampant in such facilities, and the Irish government’s investigation of the scandal has only just been closed (its report is due by the end of this year). This recent article from the Irish Examiner will give you some idea of what these early incarnations of “rehabilitation centers for prostituted women” were like; note that though (as their name clearly indicates) they were established solely for “repentant” prostitutes, incarceration in them first became mandatory and then (as always happens in such systems) was extended to other “bad” girls such as unwed mothers and teen runaways:
The 145 pages of Justice for Magdalene’s…[report] describes from testimony how the women suffered abuse of various kinds…and once the door to the outside world was shut on them, they were referred to by number not by name…JFM hold[s] religious orders and the State directly and indirectly responsible for systematically humiliating, imprisoning and enslaving thousands of young Irish girls…the State sent women and girls to the laundries and ensured “they remained there — in most cases, without any statutory basis for doing so”…the State used the laundries as a way of dealing with births outside marriage, poverty, homelessness, promiscuity, domestic and sexual abuse as well as youth crime and infanticide… “It repeatedly sought to funnel diverse populations of women and girls to the Magdalene Laundries and in return, the religious orders obtained an entirely unpaid and literally captive workforce for their commercial laundry enterprises”…the women washed, ironed and sewed from dawn to dusk, were regularly beaten, not allowed to talk to one another and punished if they laughed. There was no regard whatsoever for their health or medical needs. If they stepped out of line, they were “put down the hole”.
“This was a four by four room… There was nothing in it, only a bench — no windows. You were put in there; your hair was cut, more or less off completely….and you were there all day without anything to eat,” one woman recalled. Even for the “good” girls and women upstairs, food was scarce…[those] in the laundries were also denied contact with girls in other convent complexes…[and] the laundry was designed so the women could not see out or be seen inside…
The nuns would also routinely split up sisters or mothers and daughters, denying them contact even to the point of not telling one when the other had died. I’m sure you can guess who the laundries’ biggest customers were:
…the nuns got direct capitation grants from the State and also valuable state contracts for cleaning laundry and commercial laundry work from various Government departments and agencies…the State chose not to supervise the religious orders’ operation of the Magdalene Laundries…[it] failed to enforce its own health and safety legislation…[and] turned a blind eye to the fact these school-age girls weren’t receiving an education, weren’t being paid for working 12-hour days and had been cut off from family, friends and the outside world…
The two orders involved in this monstrous enterprise were the Good Shepherd Sisters and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity; one would think that given the public relations nightmare which has resulted from the Irish government’s involvement with these organizations, it would want nothing more to do with them, and would be especially hostile toward allowing them any input whatsoever on any public policy even remotely connected to whores.
One would be wrong. The “prostitution and trafficking” NGO named Ruhama, the largest and most vociferous anti-sex work organization in Ireland and the most aggressive proponent of imposing the Swedish model on the country, “was founded as a joint initiative of the Good Shepherd Sisters and Our Lady of Charity Sisters, both of which had a long history of involvement with marginalised women, including those involved in prostitution.” Nor is it relying on Church funds or public contributions to accomplish its goals; according to the Irish Times it “receives funding from the Department of Health and the Department of Justice.” In other words, the Irish government continues to fund two societies of sex-hating sadists, with a long history of vile and inhuman treatment of women, in their campaign to extend their anti-whore policies into the streets and to impose them on men as well.
And people wonder why I distrust governments.
You might be interested to know that there is a great track by Mary Coughlan on “Sentimental Killer” called “Magdalen Laundry”.
When I read through the Ruhama report last week I was struck by how spectacularly ineffective they seem to be. Ruhama claims to “help” 60 street workers per year with its street outreach service. Here in Halifax, the parallel statistic I always hear for Stepping Stone is 30 per night (though I’m sure it’s often repeat workers). Factoring in population differences, this means that the street outreach of Stepping Stone helps ~6% of sex workers here every night, while the street outreach of Ruhama “helps” ~0.66% of sex workers all year (based on NZ estimates).
I mean… what do they do all day?
That’s the difference between offering help they need (as Stepping Stone does) and “help” most of them want nothing to do with (as in Ruhama’s case). As for what do they do all day: lobby the government and work on new lies, of course.
What does Stepping Stone do differently from Ruhama? (I’m not familiar with either organization beyond what I’ve read here)
Stepping Stone is an outreach program in Nova Scotia with the philosophy that sex workers are people whose choices and dignity should be respected; Ruhama is a prohibitionist group in Ireland which preaches that all sex workers are degraded, damaged victims who need to be “rescued”.
JFM argue that the State used the laundries as a way of dealing with births outside marriage, poverty, homelessness, promiscuity, domestic and sexual abuse as well as youth crime and infanticide. It chose to enslave women with the nuns rather than develop a female borstal.
Maggie, I’m assuming, given the distinction made between the two classes of action in bold, that the victims of domestic and sexual abuse were also consigned to this hell? I’m sure that nothing is quite so therapeutic as, having been abused by your nearest and dearest, to then be farmed out to the devout members of a religious order to continue with the same treatment.
I find it telling that the Irish State equates being the victim of abuse as the criminal equivalent of being the perpertrator of infanticide. Looks like the prohibitionist mindset is consistent across time and nations.
Faith based initiatives. This is what happens when you use the power of the state to enforce religious mores. This is a cautionary tale whose import apparently escapes religious law-heads the world over.
Girls who are abused often run away from the “lawful authority” of their parents, hence becoming “criminals” and “delinquents”. And that attitude, though not the way of dealing with it, is no different in the U.S.
There was a good movie a few years ago called “The Magdalene Sisters”. The response the former victims had was that the movie was fine but the life was far more brutal than portrayed.
It’s amazing the kind of things people can do when they think they have God on their side.
Hi Hal 10K,
I was intrigued so I searched on the film title and came up with this review of the movie. Interesting how the excuse, “a few bad apples” always seems to crop up whenever there is a systematic abuse of power, isn’t it?
Government makes bad apples worse. Always has.
It is characteristic of all “helping” organizations that presume that they know what’s best for their “clients” that they abuse those “clients”. This is inescapable because attempting to coerce another to accept one’s values is inherently abusive. This is true even when the “helper’s” values are correct and the victim’s values are wrong.
Do an amazon search for “Magdalene Laundries” and see some of the stories there (though some are novels).
Psychologists have shown us that we can and will do the most awful things to people in “appropriate” circumstances. The motivation behind the sisters in the laundries seems no different from those of the the guards and officials in brutalistic regimes.
And it’s galling to think that it was only the widespread adoption of the domestic washing machine that (in part) made the homes redundant.
Life was no better for boys who were sent to Industrial Schools. As well as brutal treatment, they were often sexually abused.
Éamon de Valera bestrode Ireland for much of the 20th century, as Prime Minister and President. He had a vision of Ireland that never really existed; where the wife did the womanly duties in the home, bore the children and raised them. Where the husband toiled to sustain his family in comfort. The reality was very different; poverty, lack of basic facilities, and the overwhelming power and arrogance of the Catholic Church which kept knowledge from the people, for, of course, the people were stupid to use it sensibly. For several generations, Ireland stagnated in this myth. The lucky ones emigrated.
Just curious – but you maintain that the Catholic Church “kept knowledge” from the people? Can you specify exactly what knowledge they withheld?
There’s a chain here that people are missing …
Flowchart this …
The first link is a busy body organization – in this case, the Catholic Church.
The second link is a government willing to carry out the oppressive wishes of the first link.
The third link – is the oppression itself, enforced by the second link … NOT the first.
If you want to break the chain – you need to get rid of governments who will do the oppressive bidding of busy body organizations. The way you do that is by limiting their powers so that they can’t fund or support these kinds of things – because they have NOTHING to do with the business of government.
Instead though – people would rather go after the busy body organizations and give the government a pass, because, well after all – everyone has their own prohibitions they’d like enforced on others and they want the government to enforce them. You know – like gun control … drug laws … prostitution. EVERYONE has some kind of prohibition they support (except me :D).
Going after the organization is fruitless – you need to melt that sword down and that sword is government. Catholic Church has ZERO power over anyone in Ireland, or anywhere else in the world. It’s GOVERNMENTS that give them power.
Take away government support – the Catholic Church becomes a Seven-Eleven on your street corner and you’re free to shop there or not.
Krulac: the knowledge was largely about sex and contraception. Contraception was illegal in Ireland for many years; see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraception_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland
and as contraception went against the teachings of the Church, knowledge of contraception was very limited, specially in rural areas.
There aren’t many advantages to being old, but one is remembering what things were like 50 years or more ago. Then, you saw fresh young girls who were expected to give birth every year for a decade or more — families of 12 to 16 children were common, not at all unusual. And the women were exhausted, even as a youngster I could recognise this. And the stories about the youngest boy — “you must give him to the Church”. In those days, it was a mark of honour to have a son as a priest, almost as if you had failed in your duty as a Mother if none of your sons had taken holy orders. It’s a world away from today, so far removed as to be almost incomprehensible. Yet it was so; your life was ruled by the Church, and you knew no better, no different.
And there was the visit from the parish priest a year or so after you were married; you might think it was about your welfare and how you were adjusting to married life. But in reality, the question was: “are you pregnant” and if not why not? — with the assumption that you were using prohibited contraceptives if you were not pregnant. Sounds improbable? It happened until very recently. Nowadays, the priest knows better than to ask.
And not just sex; the wife of a government minister was asked her opinion about something about 20 years or so ago. She answered, saying, that she would ask her priest what her opinion ought to be on the particular subject. She was saying that, as a woman, she deferred to an authority figure to tell her what she should think.
After you’ve read the comments referred to by Brooke Magnanti above, read the story of Anne Lovett at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Lovett
This girl, with nowhere else to turn to for help and understanding, betook herself to a Grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary which was next door to a nunnery. And the Virgin Mary failed her.
You mean the Catholic Church kept people of ignorant of contraception? I don’t think so. Contraception falls in the scientific / medical realm – and this isn’t something the church is held responsible for teaching. No priest has any obligation to talk about it – just as he has no obligation to talk about politics.
If the people of Ireland were “ignorant” on contraception – it’s the people of Ireland’s collective fault – not the church. When you buy snake oil from a salesman – who should you be pissed off at when it doesn’t work? The snake oil salesman – or YOU?
I’m not a Catholic – but then again I’m not at war with the Catholic Church either – as you appear to be. Good luck with that war – you’re not in a war for human rights and liberty though – you’re in a war against human stupidity in which you will die long before winning.
Eliminate the Catholic Church tomorrow – go ahead, someone else will simply fill their place and start lobbying the government to do it’s oppressive bidding. Perhaps it will be even more successful than the Catholic Church was in doing so.
All you’ve done is trade one busy-body oppressive organization for another. You can fight this war ad infinitum and you’ll never get to the end of it.
Or you can simply accept the fact (which you haven’t) that government should be minimally empowered to do only a very few things. Of course – this means that government will have to get out of the business of education, healthcare, welfare, etc … and the government will have to get out of the business of policing what kind of firearms people own and stuff like that.
And you, like most, are unwilling to accept that.
So you go the route of eternal warfare against boogeymen idiots.
Good luck with that – there’s a simpler way though.
“The past is a foreign country….” Things were very different in Ireland just a few decades ago; and things have become very different in the past 20 years. The power of the Catholic church is gone — it’s now hard to realise that Ireland was almost a theocracy.
So I’m angry and sad that the inheritors of the Magdalene Laundries now claim to know better than others what’s best for them.
And as for big government; as a liberal, I’d like to see it limited, but as a social democrat I see that the government does have a role in caring for the disadvantaged in society.
Have a look at “The Spirit Level”, a book that correlates social problems and wealth inequality:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348661303&sr=8-1&keywords=the+spirit+level
Then you’re doomed to failure. As long as the “long arm” of government is responsible for doing the things you want it to – it will always have the power to oppress you … and others.
Let’s remember here – that the things the Irish government did on behalf of the church was done under the guise … “caring for the disadvantaged in society”. Go back in time and ask them – they’ll tell you … “We did it for the GOOD of those people!!”
LOL – you CAN NEVER TRUST GOVERNMENT even to do the things you LIKE. You cannot pick and choose. You cannot say … “I want abortion free for everyone but guns available to NO ONE!” You maintain even the slightest power of prohibition in the government – and it WILL be used against you eventually.
As far as the book – I might read it one day. Maybe there is some level of correlation between wealth and social problems. However, it’s a minor point since I don’t believe government should be responsible for fixing wealth equality. That’s kind of silly right? I build a better mouse trap and become a millionaire – and the government decides to tax the hell out of me for being successful in the name of fixing “wealth inequality”???
No Thank You.
Also … Liberal? Conservative? The only difference between them is the kinds of behaviors they each want to BAN.
Looking at the two sides – they’re children arguing over a toy, which in this case is the government, and they each want control of it so that they can oppress the other.
They’re proof that the church doesn’t have a monopoly on the market of stupidity.
I forgot to mention that schooling in Ireland is mostly in the hands of the Church, many teachers are nuns or monks. Clearly, they have an agenda.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree — unless you want to invite me out for a few beers sometime, when we can set the world to rights 🙂
religious authorities want to punish others for the leaders own proclivities.
Government wants to do whatever gets them power.
Mix in a religious population that uses faith to turn off critical thinking about religious leaders.
Now you have a mess.
Freedom requires actively fighting against both religion and government interference in people’s personal lives.
Give religion a pass, and by their nature they will eventually corrupt government as well.
You have a point there … of course if you limited the power of government some idiot church with a massive following could come along and lobby successfully for changes … you have a point there.
So I have no problem with combating the church when it’s being stupid as long as government is in the crosshairs also.
But let me clarify … I’m a “live and let live” guy. I have no problem with my neighbor going to church and believing in creationism or the Hale Bopp comet God or whatever …
That’s his right …
As long as it doesn’t impact me and, through a limited government – that’s truly limited – it can’t affect me.
The problem is religion by its very definition is about controlling private thoughts and actions. Take that away and there is nothing left except some funny hats.
The same cannot be said for government.
Largely as a species we have decided to ask government to impose our religious mores on others.
But this is actually a malfunction of government but a success of religion.
Until we can fully separate church and state, the state will forcefully impose on private lives.
BTW I have a broad definition of religion. Neofeminism, drug crusade, affirmative action, etc are religions. Only blind faith supports their core beliefs.
Also …
Unfortunately the “welfare state” requires constant breeding of new productive taxpayers to fund it’s pornographically expensive social efforts.
How do you expect to fund a government which has the exclusive responsibility for caring for it’s old without those taxpayers?
You’re leaving one link out of that chain: the population which give the government power in general, and power against certain groups in particular. They neither vote in a more reasonable set of leader nor do they depose them via armed revolution.
And the links feed into each other. The church and state limit and manipulate knowledge, the limited and mislead people demand that something be done about those people, the government cracks down, the people are glad to see that evil is being dealt with, the same people are returned to power (or somebody promising to be even tougher gets voted in). Of course, part of “getting tough” is controlling the flow of information…
And as for snake oil: you and the guy who sold it to you are both at fault. You can say all you want, “I was stupid to believe his lies,” but that doesn’t change the fact that he lied to you. It’s your fault for believing the lies, and his fault for telling them.
My personal favourite is reading the ‘Talk’ page of Magdalene Asylums on Wikipedia. It’s all interesting, but the real meat is from here onwards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Magdalene_asylum#To_all_of_you_who_think_this_can_not_be_true
I wonder how many people are able to parse the different groups enough to know that Tuhama and other groups of this kind are not actually working to help prostitutes at all.
“The Magdalene Laundries” by Joni Mitchell is a brilliant song.
Thank-you B.B.!
For side-stepping the intellectual to the heart.
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