IRELAND
Catholic Herald (UK)
By FRANCIS PHILLIPS on Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Reading through Personal Update, the newsletter of the Irish ‘Family & Life’ movement for May 2013, which has just arrived in the post, I see it includes an article entitled, A very brief reflection on the Magdalen Laundries. I think this article is worth a mention because even though the subject has already passed through media spin and pseudo-scrutiny, old prejudices die hard and it could always emerge again. It is the kind of “scandal” that those outside the Church are always happy to hurl at us, so it is good to have a reasoned response at the ready.
The article speaks highly of the report by Senator Martin McAleese, which it describes as “conscientious and respectful of the facts and [which] should have been a corrective to untruths and exaggeration”, both of which were very evident in the media coverage of the subject. For instance, the number of women who worked in the laundries is approximately 10,000, not the 30,000 alleged to have done so. Nor were the laundries seen as a way of making money out of exploitation; most depended on donations and outside finance to survive.
When the modern Magdalen movement began it was a Protestant rather than a Catholic initiative. The first was opened in London in 1758 for the reform and rehabilitation of prostitutes. The idea then spread to Protestant Dublin, with Catholic initiatives soon to follow. Why choose prostitution as a cause among all the social ills of society? The author comments sensibly that “The marriage options for a woman who wanted to leave prostitution were nil in the 18th century. Whatever the reasons that drove a woman to sell her body… there was little chance of escape. She had a poor life expectancy, faced violence, disease and social ostracism, and many women resorted to cheap gin and opium to ease the pain.”
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