magdalene laundries

[aldercar]

Why did it take so long to shut them down?

[saxy_jag]

I think that's the eternal question, isn't it. It's interesting the the truth never came out fully until they were closed, so may that's what the church was scared of - people knowing. I got to thinking last night that there must have been nuns who wanted to tell, to 'break away', but who must have been so controlled that they didn't feel able to.

I have read in several articles on the subject that what was the final nail in their coffin was the advent, in Ireland, of the affordable domestic washing machine, rather than any mass outrage or sense of morality.

[MaryDou]

I think that the "culture of fear" was partly to blame for this - most of those girls were there because they were naive - men were never to blame only women! Therefore the early knowledge of the life of slavery was supressed by the parents who themselves lived in fear of the church and the supposed shame if it came to light that their daughter had not gone to live with relatives in (say) England. The nuns were making plenty of money from this slavery and obviously would not give that up easily. No matter how much compensation may be made to victims of this culture it would never compensate them for such brutality and the loss of their youth.

[commonsense]

The answer is Catholocism. Last recorded death of somebody in a Catholic institution was 1994. This grave was easy for public to see, however it was removed to a private Catholic church recently. My great aunt was sent to one and my nan insists to this day shes still there

[aldercar]

Thank you to everyone who answered my question. How the people who ran such places, can live with what happened to these people on their conscience ,I will never know.

[andy-hughes]

Nuns and priests do not think like the rest of us. By the nature of their calling, they live a life of separation, and in the case of Ireland, they are elevated to a status that is really not healthy for them. Because they enter their calling, and their celibacy so early in life, they are for the most part emotionally imature, a situation which lends itself to the serious bullying explained by a boundless sense of self-rightiousness that surrounds the Catrholic clergy even today.

Sadly, because the curch is so rooted in making money, as long as unsuitable priests remain able to deliver high balances to the dioceses, they remain in their positions - with the hierarcy unwilling or unable to see that their actions may be unsuitable at best, and unethical and imoral, and even illgeal, at worst.

For the magdalene girls, they are people the church would rather shut its eyes to, than deal with the reasons for their situation with compassion and constructive help. The Catholic church was, and is run by men who have no experience of family, pregnancy, childbirth, or sexual relationships (in theory at least!) so they were, and are, quite happy to act as though this situation didn;t exist, and let it continue behind closed doors, safe in the knowledge that most people knew nothing, and those who did, would never day.

Remember - the cornerstone of the Catholic faith is guilt - everything is forbidden, unless it's compulsory.

Maybe the original doctrines were passed down with one significant error - what if instead of saying 'celebate', it actually said 'celebrate'?

Food for thought .....

[Octavius]

The existence of the asylums was little thought of until, in 1993, an order of nuns in Dublin sold part of their convent to a real estate developer. The remains of 155 inmates, who had been buried in unmarked graves on the property, were exhumed and, except for one body, cremated and reburied in a mass grave in Glasnevin Cemetery. This triggered a public scandal and became local and national news.

Given Ireland's conservative sexual values, Magdalen Asylums were a generally accepted social institution until well into the second half of the 20th century. They also existed in England.

They disappeared with the changes in sexual mores - or, as some say, as they ceased to be profitable. "Possibly the advent of the washing machine has been as instrumental in closing these laundries as have changing attitudes".

Although it is easy to point the finger at the horrific attitudes and actions of the nuns, it was a socially acceptable way of dealing with so called 'wayward' women (never the men of course) for many many years in the UK & Ireland.