IRELAND
Irish Times
MARK HENNESSY
INTERVIEW : Magdalene laundries became society’s dumping ground, says former Sister of Mercy Phyllis MacMahon
In her early 20s Phyllis MacMahon was Sr Adrian of the Sisters of Mercy in Galway where she stood in charge of dozens of girls and young women as they scrubbed clothes in the Magdalene laundry on Forster Street.
Decades later MacMahon, who became an actor after she quit the order, played the role of Sr Augusta in 2002 in Peter Mullan’s Magdalene Sisters, the film that did much to bring the existence of the laundries to national and international attention.
She has written a play, Divorcing God? based largely on her experiences in the Sisters of Mercy – a congregation she had wanted to join since she was a seven-year-old attending Mass with her mother in Dublin
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