Rachel Andrews at The White Review:
The 10,000 women and girls (a conservative estimate) who were forcibly sent to reside in Ireland’s ten Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996, when the last institution closed, washed the community’s clothes and sheets ten hours a day, six days a week, without pay. The dirty laundry symbolised the stain on their souls; the ‘penitents’, as the women were termed, were to render themselves morally spotless by scrubbing clean any trace of deviant behaviour, which often – but not always – involved sexual activity outside of marriage. The penal quality of the environment was also essential. The women’s names were changed when they went inside the institution. Their hair was cut short. They were dressed in a shapeless smocked uniform. The nuns have always said the women were not imprisoned, yet they were not allowed to leave. Maybe the sisters wanted to shield the Magdalene women from society’s prejudices, as the religious have claimed. But the Laundries were also money-making entities, so perhaps the nuns were also interested in holding onto their slave workforce. They were not interested in the wellbeing of that workforce. The women were cold; they were poorly fed; they were under constant fear of harsh punishment. They were scorned, ignored, beaten and brutalised. They believed they would die inside the Laundries, and many did, although the exact number is hard to quantify. The Irish State suggests there were around 900 deaths; campaigners argue it could be almost double. The documentary evidence is sparse, like almost everything to do with the Laundries, What we do have are the testimonies. The women from the Magdalene Laundries have begun to speak, finally, of their memories.
more here.