IRELAND
Irish Independent

David Kearns
PUBLISHED
06/03/2016

To mark Mother’s Day members of the public are being asked to place flowers on the graves of Magdalene women.

A number of events are taking place today to honour the thousands of women who died in Magdalene Laundries, and Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) is calling on the public to visit these graves and “lay a flower for those who lived and died behind convent walls”.

The Magdalene laundries, also known as Magdalene asylums, were institutions, generally run by the Catholic Church, that ostensibly housed “fallen women”.

Continuing to operate well into the late 20th century, an estimated 30,000 women are believed to have been confined in these institutions.

At least 1,663 former Magdalene women are buried in cemeteries across Ireland, many interred in unmarked graves.