IRELAND
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)
Later today the Irish prime Minister, Enda Kenny, is expected to offer a full apology for the suffering endured by thousands of women locked up in the Magdalene Laundries. Here, Samantha Long, the daughter of Margaret Bullen, who died in one of the laundries, shares her birth mother’s tragic story.
By Samantha Long
7:00AM GMT 19 Feb 2013
In 1993, at the age of twenty one my twin sister Etta felt a need and a curiosity to trace our beginnings. We had been adopted together at the age of nine months and always knew that – our loving upbringing was secure and carefree.
After a two year search, our social worker telephoned to say that she had located our biological mother and she was ready to meet. We expected to find a married woman with other children, who had moved on with her life and her past.
Nothing prepared us for what we found.
Margaret Bullen had been committed to Ireland’s Industrial School system at the age of two years because her mother was unwell and her father was unable to take care of their seven children. That was the end of Margaret and the outside world. By the age of five she was preparing breakfast for 70 children including herself. This work started at 4am after kneeling in the cold to say the rosary first. A fellow female child slave from this institution has told me that Margaret was a fretful bed-wetter, and to this day that woman can still imagine the smell of urine as the girls knelt to pray before dawn.
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