Tag Archives: Magdalene Laundry

Class-conscious nuns.

They literally knew their place.

Sheila M writes:

I’ve just spent the afternoon with my parents walking around their old haunts in Dublin. My mum, who trained as a nurse in St Vincent’s in the Sixties showed me where two old ballrooms used to be – The National (above) on Parnell Square and Barry’s Hotel (top) on Denmark Street Great/Gardiner Row.

She said the nuns wouldn’t let the student nurses go there cause it was where “the maids” went .

She also told me the student nurses used to have to wear special stockings (a certain shade, etc.), which they had to buy from the Magdalene Laundry in Stanhope Street. The same stockings were cheaper in Dunnes But they had to buy them from the Magdalenes. The nuns would know by the seams. Good times.

 

Earlier: A Question Of Sex, Gender And Class

Let’s Run That Ad Again

For the day that’s in it.

Once more with feeling.

An ad placed in the back pages of the Irish Times in 1975 by the Good Shepherd nuns

Now, that’s official Ireland.

Update, and it wasn’t just your fancy five star :

Irish Times, 1967.

Good, clean times.

UPDATE: “Gentlemen’s Collars A Speciality’

Limerick Leader, 1933.

Hair mattresses.

Thanks Sibling of Daedalus

 

(Above: Magdalene survivor Maureen Sullivan)

Taoiseach Enda Kenny is expected to deliver an apology on behalf of the State to survivors of laundries run by religious orders following a meeting with a representative organisation yesterday.

The Cabinet will discuss the matter this morning and agree a Government counter-motion ahead of Fianna Fáil’s call for redress as well as an apology during Private Members’ business in the Dáil tonight.

Members of the Magdalene Survivors Together group spent three hours with Mr Kenny and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore yesterday afternoon. They believe the apology will be delivered next Tuesday when a debate on former senator Martin McAleese’s report on the Magdalene laundries’ workers begins in the Dáil.

It’s not over ’til the reluctant eejit apologises.

Previously: A Sorry Promise

Hopes rise of apology for Magdalenes (Mary Minihan, Irish Times)

(Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland)

Some useful ‘problem women’ coverage today you may have missed.

Taoiseach Facing A Backbench Revolt Over Failure To Apologise (Michael Brennan, Fionnan Sheahan and Fiach Kelly, Irish Independent)

Magdalene Laundries Product of Male-dominated Rule (Irish Independent Letters)

Labour Criticises Magdalene Response (Harry Magee, Irish Times)

President ‘Moved By Their Story’ (Paddy Agnew, Irish Times) 

Apologies To Women After Magdalene Report (Irish Times Letters)

Taoiseach’s Place To Make Magdalene Apology (Irish Examiner)

Our Stolen Generation Deserves More (Irish Examiner Letters) 

Previously The Magdalene Report: A Conclusion (Broadsheet)

Gloucester Street Magdalenes via Limerick Museum

 

Statement from the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, February 5, 2013

The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy welcomes the publication of the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries. For the women who spent time in Magdalen Homes  For the women who spent time in Magdalen Homes, we hope this Report brings clarity, greater understanding and healing. 

…Our sisters worked in the laundries with the women and, while times and conditions were harsh and difficult, some very supportive, lifelong friendships emerged and were sustained for several decades.

We would like to extend an invitation to anyone who may have spent some time in either Dun Laoghaire or Galway to come and meet with us, if they so wish.

Finally, we wish to thank Senator McAleese, Nuala Ní Mhuircheartaigh and the members of the Committee for their detailed and thorough work in this sensitive area.

You have to hand it to them, to be fair.

Full Statement here