Experience, Identity & Epistemic Injustice within Ireland's Magdalene Laundries

Chloe K. Gott

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350254442
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Sexuality & Gender in Religion

How are the identities of women shaped by religious disciplinary processes in Magdalene laundries and how do women re-engage with their sense of self after leaving the institutions? Chloë K. Gott situates these questions within the current cultural climate in which the institutions now sit, considering how they fit into Ireland's present as well as its past. This book represents the first significant secondary analysis to be conducted of 81 oral history interviews recorded as part of the Government of Ireland Collaborative Research project, 'Magdalene Institutions: Recording an Archival and Oral History', funded by the Irish Research Council. These were taken with women formerly incarcerated in these institutions, as well as others associated with this history. Grounded in qualitative analysis of this archive, the book is structured around the voices and words of survivors themselves. With a strong focus on how the experience of being incarcerated in a Magdalene laundry impacted on the gendered religious selves of the women, this book tracks the process of entering, working in and leaving a laundry, explored through the lens of epistemic injustice.

1

Introduction: Survivor narratives and unfinished histories

In August 2018, Pope Francis visited Ireland as part of the World Meeting of Families. This was the first visit by a reigning pontiff to the country since 1979; during this trip, he met with eight victims of clerical abuse, to whom he spoke about his ignorance of religious institutional abuse in the country. He was apparently ‘taken aback’ and ‘shocked’ as to what went on at Mother and Baby homes and professed to have ‘no idea’ (Brennan 2018) what a Magdalene¹ laundry was. While it seems unfathomable that none of the Pope’s advisers gave him even a cursory briefing of this issue before his official visit, Francis’ alleged ignorance of the Magdalene institutions in Ireland is far from the primary concern of this book. However, this lack of knowledge speaks to a wider epistemology of ignorance which surrounds the Magdalene institutions, in which knowledge about and acknowledgement of survivor voices is not prioritized. While public interest and academic research on the laundries has increased significantly over the past twenty years, there exists an enduring failure to recognize survivors as producers of knowledge. This silence has thrived in political, social and religious systems of meaning which work together to create contexts in which survivors are prevented from communicating their experiences. This book aims to question this silence, asking how it has been produced and maintained, and disrupting it through an analysis of survivor voices. O’Mahoney (2018) suggests we consider the silence of Magdalene survivors as a form of what Connerton (2008) terms ‘humiliated silence’, that is, ‘broad-scale silence around an event associated with humiliation [which] is covert and unacknowledged, resulting in collusive silence (as a desire to forget the events) and a collective shame’ (O’Mahoney 2018: 462). In order to better understand the nature of these silences, on both the individual and collective level, I wish to give a brief history of these institutions in Ireland, before turning to the events by which the Magdalene institutions were made visible in the public consciousness.

Magdalene institutions within the Irish historical context

The last Magdalene laundry in Ireland closed its doors in 1996, but institutions of this nature have existed in some form since the late eighteenth century. Developing out of the eighteenth-century rescue movement designed to control the perceived threat of increased prostitution, by the twentieth century they formed part of a broader institutional response to ‘problem women’ – women who in some way transgressed social boundaries of post-Independence Ireland and often were guilty of ‘being in the way’ (Smith 2007: xiii). However, they were not unique to Ireland. Institutional homes for ‘fallen women’, often known as Magdalene asylums, have existed in societies across the world. By 1900 there were over 300 institutions of this nature in England; and Good Shepherd institutions in particular could be found in Scotland, France, America, Australia and beyond (Thor 2019, Smith 2007, Finnegan 2001). Most of the written history of the laundries in Ireland is focused on the nineteenth century, in part because the religious orders who ran the institutions have, to date, kept their archival records from the twentieth century closed to researchers and survivors. They were made available to the Irish State in 2013, but since then have remained inaccessible to those seeking to learn more about the lives of the women who were incarcerated there.

In the nineteenth century, the laundries primarily operated as a way of controlling prostitution and venereal disease, which were regarded as rapidly growing social problems (O’Mahoney 2018: 456). Although we know less about how the laundries functioned in the twentieth century, most writers on the subject (O’Mahoney 2018; Smith 2007; Luddy 1995) agree that there was a significant shift in the nature of these institutions in post-Independence Ireland, towards a more carceral and punitive model. They also came under the exclusive control of the Catholic Church, while previously there had been both Catholic and Protestant institutions. The institutions became a place to send women who transgressed socially constructed gender norms, those who threatened the ‘moral fabric’ of the newly formed Irish State (Fischer 2017). This included women who had children outside of marriage, women who committed petty crime and women who had grown up in the industrial school system and were deemed ‘at risk’ of falling into sin. Typically, women could be sent to a laundry by their family, by a priest or via social services. They spent anything from a few months to their whole lives in these institutions. Conditions were frequently very harsh – washing and sorting laundry without receiving wages, almost always with no information about how long they were to spend there. However, in much of the literature on twentieth-century Irish history, the Magdalene laundries are conspicuous by their absence. For example, they are not mentioned in Terence Brown’s text Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922-2002 (2004), or in Roy Foster’s Modern Ireland, 1600-1972 (1989). They are referenced briefly in The Irish Women’s History Reader (Hayes and Urquhart 2001: 87, 90–2, 93, 128, 143), primarily in Maria Luddy’s chapter on prostitution in nineteenth-century Ireland.

By 1922, there were four congregations running ten Magdalene laundries in Ireland.² The last institution, on Sean McDermott Street in Dublin, closed its doors in 1996. Throughout this book, I refer to these ten institutions as Magdalene institutions and Mag dalene laundries interchangeably. However, it is important to note that they were not part of a formal network of linked institutions and have come to be known as ‘Magdalene laundries’ only fairly recently. While it is valuable from a research perspective to use this collective term, it is important not to flatten out the differences between the various institutions, run by different religious orders.

The High Park Graves: A history of disturbance

In 1993, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge sold a portion of their land at High Park, Drumcondra, to housing developers.³ Part of this land included the graveyard for women who had worked in the Magdalene laundry, which had once operated at High Park, closing only two years previously. In order to sell the land, the bodies of the women buried there had to be exhumed and reinterred in Glasnevin cemetery, and the Sisters were therefore required to obtain an exhumation licence. The Department of the Environment granted this licence for 133 bodies, despite the fact that on the exhumation licence, 23 of the women are listed under the heading ‘quasi-religious name’, and when asked, the nuns admitted that they did not know their real names. They called them ‘Magdalen of St Cecilia, Magdalen of Lourdes, Magdalen of St Teresa’ and so on. One woman was listed only with a first name. The nuns told the Department that since they had no names, they could not produce death certificates for these twenty-four women. The Department raised no objection to this, apparently unconcerned by the fact that some of the women had died as recently as the late 1960s. The nuns also reported that there were no death certificates for a further thirty-four women. While the names of these women are listed, the cause and date of death for most of them are listed as ‘not known’. Failure to register a death occurring on your property constitutes a criminal offence in Ireland. In the case of these women, it would have been the legal duty of the nuns to do this. It seems that for at least fifty-eight women, they neglected to do so (Raftery 2003).

The undertakers engaged in the exhumation process then discovered another twenty-two bodies, which were not covered by the original exhumation licence. Rather than halting the exhumation process and considering the implications of this discovery, the Department of the Environment put through an additional licence allowing the nuns to remove all bodies from the graveyard for the purpose of cremation, which made later identification impossible. The ashes from the High Park graves were then interred in a plot in Glasnevin. A headstone with a list of names now marks the grave. However, if one compares the names and dates on that headstone and the list supplied by the nuns to the Department of the Environment, only twenty-seven match up.⁴ This is not the only inconsistency with regard to names on gravestones – for example, at the site in Sundays Well in Cork, names are duplicated between gravesites, making it unclear which grave some women are buried in. In one case the same (relatively unusual) name is on the grave with two different dates.⁵

Action to activism: From the Magdalen Memorial Committee to Justice for Magdalenes Research

The media reports regarding the 133 graves at High Park in 1993 sparked a wave of action regarding the Magdalene institutions, with a particular focus on working to bring about commemoration and redress for survivors. Specifically, it prompted a group of women to form the Magdalen Memorial Committee (MMC). Originally founded by Patricia McDonald, Bláthnaid Ní Chinnéide and Margo Kelly, their goal was to establish a memorial to the 133 women. They succeeded, and in 1996 a park bench was installed in St Stephen’s Green. Later, when the remains exhumed from High Park Convent were reinterred at Glasnevin cemetery, memorial gravestones were installed. Once the MMC’s goals were met, the group disbanded. However, it was later restarted in the form of Justice for Magdalenes (JFM), a volunteer-run survivor advocacy group. Established in 2003 by Mari Steed, Angela Murphy and Claire McGettrick, three adoption rights activists, the group had two main objectives – firstly, to bring about an official apology from the Irish State; and secondly, to establish a compensation scheme for all Magdalene survivors.

In June 2010, JFM submitted an inquiry application to the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC), focusing on the State’s obligation to protect the women’s constitutional and human rights. The IHRC’s response, an ‘Assessment of the Human Rights Issues Arising in relation to the “Magdalen Laundries”’ was published on 9 November 2010, which concluded that there was significant evidence that the State failed to protect women and young girls from ‘arbitrary detention’, ‘forced and compulsory labour’, and ‘servitude’ (Irish Human Rights Commission 2010). The Assessment made a formal recommendation ‘that a statutory mechanism be established to investigate the matters advanced by Justice for Magdalenes and in appropriate cases to grant redress where warranted’ (Irish Human Rights Commission 2010: 29). The IHRC’s Assessment highlighted numerous human rights obligations, which it believed mandated a statutory investigation into the issues and evidence presented by JFM.

In April 2011, JFM made a submission to the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT), and in June, Maeve O’Rourke made a statement before UNCAT in Geneva, representing the group. On 5 June 2011, the Committee published its concluding observations, expressing ‘grave concern at the failure by the State party to institute prompt, independent and thorough investigation into the allegations of ill-treatment perpetrated on girls and women in the Magdalene Laundries’ (UNCAT 2011: 6). The Panel recommended:

The State party should institute prompt, independent, and thorough investigations into all allegations of torture, and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment that were allegedly committed in the Magdalene Laundries, and, in appropriate cases, prosecute and punish the perpetrators with penalties commensurate with the gravity of the offences committed, and ensure that all victims obtain redress and have an enforceable right to compensation including the means for as full rehabilitation as possible. (UNCAT 2011:6)

As a result of this, in June 2011 the Irish government announced the creation of ‘The Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries’. JFM submitted its principal submission to the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) in August 2012, consisting of a 145-page document collating evidence of State complicity, supported by 796 pages of survivor testimony. After an eighteen-month inquiry, the IDC published a report in February 2013, commonly known as the McAleese report, concluding that there had been significant state involvement in the Magdalene institutions. As a result of this, on 19 February 2013, Taoiseach Enda Kenny issued an official State apology to the Magdalene women. On the night of the apology, Kenny announced that he had asked Mr Justice John Quirke to make recommendations to the government on a redress scheme for survivors.

Following this, JFM ended their political campaign, having achieved their goal, and Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) was established.⁶ The main aim of JFMR is to provide for the advancement of education of the general public by researching the Magdalene laundries and similar institutions, as well as providing information and support to the women who spent time in the institutions and their families. Several members of JFMR were previously involved in the project, ‘Magdalene Institutions: Recording an Archival and Oral History’. This was a Government of Ireland Collaborative Research Project funded by the Irish Research Council, led by Dr Katherine O’Donnell at University College Dublin, which aimed to interview Magdalene survivors and their family members, as well as visitors to those institutions and other key informants. It represents the first large-scale collection of survivor narratives from women who spent time in Magdalene institutions, and forms the basis of this book.

Survivor voices in the public consciousness

In giving this brief history of the Magdalene institutions in Ireland, particularly the events from 1993 onwards, I wish to highlight the current position of Magdalene survivors in the Irish public consciousness, and the ways in which their experiences are presented in contemporary Irish society, by the religious orders and the Irish State. The treatment of women who died in Magdalene institutions – the lack of care taken around registering their deaths and procuring certificates, the absence of accurate records and the refusal to answer questions regarding this – demonstrates how Magdalene survivors were not constructed as valuable subjects, by either the State or the religious orders. As Katherine O’Donnell writes:

The disregard with which the four religious orders have treated the remains of Magdalene women speaks volumes to the Irish public, who understand that the careless way the nuns have treated the burial of Magdalene women highlights the treatment the women endured while alive. (2018a: 85)

These women, in a very real sense, have had their identities erased. They were denied their names in both life and death, denied dignity in commemoration. Smith posits the 1993 exhumation and cremation, along with the unveiling of the St Stephen’s green monument and the closure of the last laundry in 1996 as three events which

Speak to the challenges posed by Ireland’s architecture of containment as it is remembered, retold, and memorialised in the present. A culturally progressive, economically vibrant, and increasingly Eurocentric Ireland was confronted on these separate occasions within a short three-year span with what Fintan O’Toole has called ‘a haunting image of a history that remains largely unwritten, a history that in being disturbed still has the power to disturb (1993)’. (2007: 167)

This disturbing history has recently been made more visible in the public consciousness, through the work of groups such as the MMC and JFM, as well as writers, journalists and documentary filmmakers who focused their attention increasingly on institutional abuse.

Before moving on to further discussion of the existing literature on the Magdalene institutions, and the central focus of this book, I turn to the vario...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Survivor narratives and unfinished histories
• 2 Epistemic injustice and credible subjects
• 3 Silence, voice and the ethics of communication
• 4 Inside the institution: Discipline and penance
• 5 Fractured endings and new meanings: Religion and respectability
• 6 Public silence and official voice: Inquiry, apology and redress
• 7 Conclusion: Challenging a lingering silence
• Appendix A: List of Magdalene institutions
• Appendix B: List of interviews
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright