Origins of Irish Industrial Schools, 1858-1922

For today’s post, I will analyse the origins of reformatory schools in Ireland during the nineteenth century.

According to Coolahan (Irish Education: Its History and Structure, p.191), until the mid-nineteenth century in Ireland, the only provision for orphaned and neglected children was in workhouses and some religious organisations cared for young offenders. In 1858, the Reformatory Schools Act 1858 was introduced. This Act allowed for the certification of “existing voluntary institutions as reformatory schools suitable for “youthful offenders” that were over the age of twelve and committed by the courts” (Ibid: 191). O’ Mahony (Criminal Justice in Ireland, p.200) states that the first Irish reformatory school was founded in Dublin in 1859, while the first industrial school was established in 1869. Industrial schools were designed to care for abandoned, neglected and orphaned children. By 1870, the number of reformatory schools declined and some were reclassified as industrial schools (Ibid). Moreover, industrial schools were financed by capitation grants from the government and managed by religious orders. They were often operated on the same premises as Magdalan asylums and other institutions ran by the same order.

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (section, 2.09) maintains that in 1882, about 70% of the children entered industrial schools were under the category of begging. Ferriter (The Transformation of Ireland, 1900-2000, p.49) states that between 1869 and 1913, 48,664 children were admitted to industrial schools. Under the Act, these types of institutions would be inspected on an annual basis and local authorities had the power to remove children from their homes. Under the 1908 Children Act, the institutions were required to provide practical training to enable children to enter the workforce upon their release. Domestic service was the most common type of training girls received in industrial schools while boys were taught how to farm and tailor clothing (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, section 2.06).

Arnold and Laskey (Children of the Poor Clares: The Collusion between Church and state that Betrayed Thousands of Children in Ireland’s industrial schools, p.xx) argues that poverty and economic depressions were the main reasons for the detention of children in industrial schools at the start of the twentieth century. Due to the stigma associated with unmarried motherhood, many illegitimate children were sent to industrial schools as their mothers were deemed ‘unfit’ to care for them. O’ Sullivan et al (2012: 214) maintain that children committed to industrial homes included “children who have lost one or both parents”, parents that are unable” to care for them because of poverty, children of broken up families by “desertion or imprisonment of one parent” and children who have “no fixed abode”. The 1908 Act also ensured that children considered vulnerable to ‘bad’ influences, for example, children living with a thief of prostitute, were committed to industrial schools.

Separate industrial schools were operated for Catholic and non-Catholic children. After 1922, industrial schools and reformatory schools were managed by the State and religious orders. Charitable organisations such as St Vicenti de Paul and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children investigated cases and distributed financial aid to poor families. Rafferty and O’Sullivan l (Suffer the Little Children: The inside Story of Ireland’s industrial schools, p.11) argue that the industrial school system was based on myths which justified its existence, for example, there was a belief that only religious run industrial schools would care for orphaned children as “no one else would”. However, they were funded and inspected by the State. The Irish Free State asserted further control over Irish children when the 1937 Constitution stated that if the parents fail to provide religious, intellectual and physical education to their children, the State could intervene (Madden, Medicine, Ethics and Law in Ireland, p.480).

The full authority of industrial, schools was gradually transferred to religious orders after 1922. There was a large degree of shame and stigma associated with them as they were not distinguished from reformatory schools by Irish society. From the 1990s, allegations of child abuse within these institutions began to emerge. Documentaries and books, such as Mary Rafferty’s States of Fear, were aired which marred the perception of these institutions as stigmatising and punitive. On the 11^th May 1999, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, apologised ‘on behalf of the State and its citizens… to the victims of childhood abuse for our collective failure to intervene to detect, pain, to come to their rescue’. It was not until the introduction of 1991, that the 1908 legislation was replaced by the Child Care Act. Breathnach (Crime and Punishment in Twentieth Century Ireland: A Description of the Criminal Justice System, 1950-1980, p.142) states that ‘clerical culpability was never required by the clerically-run state’

Bibliography

Arnold, Mavis and, Heather, Laskey, Children of the Poor Clares: The Collusion between Church and state that Betrayed Thousands of Children in Ireland’s industrial schools, Trafford, Indiana, 2012.

Breathnach, Seamus, Crime and Punishment in Twentieth Century Ireland: A Description of the Criminal Justice System, 1950-1980, Universal Publishers, USA, 1981.

Children Act (1908), Available at www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga//Edw7/8/67//contents/enacted

Commission to inquire into Child Abuse (2009), Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Volume 1-5. Available at www.childabusecommission.ie

Coolahan, John, Irish Education: Its History and Structure, Institute of Public Administration, Dublin, 1981.

Ferriter, Diarmaid, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000, Profile Books, London, 2005.

Madden, Deirdre, Medicine, Ethics and Law in Ireland, Bloomsbury Professional, Dublin, 2011.

O’ Mahony, Paul, Criminal Justice In Ireland, Institute of Public Administration, Dublin, 2002.

O’ Sullivan, Eoin and, O’ Donnell, Ian, Coercive Confinement in Ireland: Patients, Prisoners and Penitents, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2012.

Rafferty, Mary and, O’ Sullivan, Eoin, Suffer the Little Children: The inside Story of Ireland’s industrial schools, Continuum, London, 1999.

Mother and Baby Homes: How the Catholic Church, the State, and Irish Society Influenced their Establishment

For today’s post, I will examine the Catholic Church, the State and, Irish society’s role in the emergence of Ireland’s mother and baby homes, with particular reference to Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Blackrock, Co. Cork.

According to O’ Donnell and O’ Sullivan’s Coercive Confinement in post- Independence Ireland: Patients, Prisoners and Penitents (p. 4), the respective roles of the Church, State, and family “varied considerably by institution” and these penal institutions including mother and baby homes and Magdalan Asylums were organised for the protection rather than punishment of the unmarried expectant mother. Importantly during the nineteenth century, female religious orders were invited over from France to establish Magdalan asylums with an incentive rehabilitate ‘fallen’ women or prostitutes.

Ferriter (Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland, p.87) argues that the prevalence of sexual crimes and the determination to prosecute them remained constant in Ireland. This was due to the high rates of illegitimate births in the Irish Free State. The solution to the problem of illegitimate births was believed to be the establishment of antenatal homes in which the unmarried mother and child “might be maintained together for at least five years” (Ibid, p.127). The mother and baby homes were designed for those who transgressed social norms during the twentieth century and after the establishment of an independent Ireland in 1922, workhouses were reclassified as County Homes. They would be managed by female religious orders such as the Sisters of Mercy and Our Lady of Charity. Significantly, Milotte (Banished Babies, p.17) notes that the Church’s authority was “unquestioned” in Irish public life and due to the stigma attached to pregnancy outside of marriage, the family was involved in a process of denial and concealment.

Ferriter (p.128)states that the state classified two types of unmarried mothers and advised that the ”first-offenders” would remain in the newly funded institutions for a year, fulfil “domestic duties” and care for their child and the “sinful” women were sent to Magdalan Asylums. Separate homes for unmarried expectant mothers were set up by an English female religious congregation, the Sister of the Scared Heart of Jesus and Mary. Additionally, Milotte (Banished Babies, p.21) maintains that the nuns were sole arbiters of the Church’s moral values and “rejected unmarried mothers and banished their hapless offspring”. In 1927, The Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Destitute Poor Including the Insane Poor recognised further highlighted the stigma associated with illegitimacy. It was described as a danger to the child’s welfare and stated that the “illegitimate child was “proof of the mother’s shame”(Ibid, p.73). The State accepted these proposals and laid the foundations for the infrastructure of religious-controlled mother and baby homes.

O’ Sullivan and O’ Donnell (Coercive Confinement) maintains that there was no legal basis for confinement but the mother and baby’s freedom to leave the home was restricted as “many matrons rely” on these inmates to perform the “large” institution’s domestic duties. The Department of Health noted that an unmarried mother must remain in the mother and baby home for a two year period before her release without the baby which was reduced to six months (Ibid). Maguire (Precarious Childhood in Post-Independence Ireland, p.87) adds that most mother and baby homes operated privately, including Roscrea in County Tipperary and they received capitation grants under the Public Assistance Acts.

In 1922, Bessborough mother and baby home was established by The Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary in Cork for “young mothers who have fallen for the first time and who are likely to be influenced towards” a “respectable life” (O’ Sullivan and O’ Donnell, Coercive Confinement, p.19,). The matron of Bessborough, Sister Sarto Harney, posits that “these lapses from virtue” are “evident to all who trouble to observe life around them: no parental control, cheap romantic fiction” (Ibid). Dr James Deeny, Chief Medical Advisor in 1951, investigated the high mortality rate in Bessborough and the mother and baby home was closed for a short period of time. Importantly, infant mortality rates were very high in Ireland. By the late 1940s, the main causes of infant deaths included ‘congenital debility’ and other related diseases, diarrhoea and enteritis and pneumonia (Report of the Department Health 1949-1950, p.10).

Illegal adoptions also took place in the Mother and Baby Homes until the introduction of the 1950 Adoptions Act. O’ Sullivan and O’ Donnell (Coercive confinement, p.99) state that between the three Sacred Heart homes in Tipperary, Westmeath, and Cork and in the “largest of them”, there were 150 babies born in 1965 of which 115 were adopted. After the two years spent at a mother and baby home, the unmarried mother’s children would be boarded out by the local authorities and the women were sent to “find work elsewhere” (Ferriter, Occasions of Sin, p.252). Almost 100,000 children were born outside of marriage between the 1920s and the mid-1970s (Milotte, Banished Babies, p.18). O’ Sullivan and O’ Donnell (Coercive Confinement, p.264) note that Ireland’s “containment culture” emerged during the 1920s and the Church, the state and the family were concerned with sexual morality. Milotte (Banished Babies, p.22) states that the adopted children were sent to “good Catholic homes” but there was no “established criteria for the suitability of applicants”.

The Catholic Church and the state managed the mother and baby homes until their closures in the 1990s. By the 1970s, the Church and State’s coercive confinement was transformed as there was profound economic and social change. The Irish state was unable to establish welfare services to provide for the unmarried mother and child which left the Church to regulate mother and baby homes. Moreover, the government introduced a financial allowance for unmarried mothers in 1973. While the “expressed aim” was to reform the inmates, most of these institutions were “austere” and the experience was stigmatising (O’ Sullivan and O’ Donnell, Coercive Confinement).

Bibliography

Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor Including the Insane Poor appointed on the 19^th March 1925 (Stationary Office, 1927).

Ferriter, Diarmaid, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland, Profile Books, London, 2009.

Maguire, Moira, Precarious Childhood in Post-Independence Ireland, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2008.

Milotte, Mike, Banished Babies, New Island Books, Dublin, 1997.

O’ Sullivan, Eoin and, O’ Donnell, Ian, Coercive Confinement in post- Independence Ireland: Patients, Prisoners and Penitents, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2012.

Report of the Department of Health 1949-1950 (Stationary Office, 1950).

An Bord Altranais, the Catholic Church and Nurse Training, 1950-60

For today’s post, I will analyse developments in nurse training in Ireland between 1950-1960. I will examine the influence of the Catholic Church over nurse training.

From the 1890s, nursing training was confined to voluntary hospitals established by female religious institutions. Robins (Nursing and Midwifery in Ireland in the twentieth century: fifty years of an Bord Altranais (the Nursing Board) 1950-2000, p.20) states that nurses were required to pay a fee in order to train at one of these hospitals which led to the development of nursing as a middle class profession. However, the moral character of nurses was emphasised due to the influence of Florence Nightingale and the Sister of Mercy during the Crimean War. By 1900, nurses were ‘obedient, hardworking, gentle and vigilant’ and most importantly they were ‘moral’ figures (Preston, Charitable Words: Women, Philanthropy and the Language of Charity in Nineteenth Century Dublin, p.139). However, free medical services were distributed in poor parts of Western Ireland by Lady Dudley’s Nursing Scheme, founded in 1903, and nurses trained by Queen Victoria’s Institute of Jubilee Institute. These organisations were outwardly non-denominational as they trained both catholic and protestant nurses. However, they were trained in separate centres confined to Dublin (Pendergast, ‘Jubilee Nurses’ p.63).

In 1919, the General Nursing Council was established to supervise nurse training, examinations and to conduct inspections of training hospitals and centres. The Nurses Registration (Ireland) Act created a register for nurses and set up separate divisions of nursing such as psychiatric nursing and district nursing. Nurses had to be enrolled in a training hospital in order to join the register (Nurses Registration (Ireland), section 3.2 b). District nurses were also provided with refresher courses organised by the Irish Nurses Organisation. They usually ran for a week and were held in Dublin. Postgraduate included topics such as midwifery and child welfare (Moore, ‘Ireland and the Queen’s Institute’, p.508). As early as 1928, the Department of Local Government advocated for the establishment of a training scheme for public health nurses (See Report of the DLGPH 1925-28, p.66).

In 1950, An Bord Altranais was formed when the General Nursing Council and the Central Midwives Board were amalgamated and the Midwives Committee was set up. The redefinition of district nursing, public health nursing and domiciliary midwives duties coincided with an interest in the creation of a district nursing course. District nurses carried out a range of duties to communities including preventative health services and child welfare services and therefore, they needed a training course. Under the 1953, Health Act, An Bord Altranais had the authority to approve nurse training hospitals and to appoint lecturers. However, the Catholic Church were against State interference in areas traditionally operated by Catholic religious orders such as hospitals. Robins (Nursing and Midwifery, p.33) argues that ‘nurses were seen as being on the front line of the defence of traditional family values and sexual relationships’. The Catholic Church sought to control subjects studied by student nurses in order to ensure that Catholic values were present in the nursing profession. They had objected to the free choice of doctor in Noel Browne’s Mother and Child Scheme due to fears that Protestant doctors would attend Catholic mothers and educate them on matters related to sexuality such as contraception. Under the 1953 Health Act poor women given a free choice of doctor and although the Maternity hospitals were divided in different zones in Dublin, however, patients could also apply to another hospital outside of her zone (Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin, 1922-60 p.159). The same arguments were also emphasised when first Minister for Health, James Ryan proposed that sex education would be provided through the school medical service in the 1945 Health Bill.

From 1954, Archbishop McQuaid met with members of An Bord Altranais to address how ethics and psychology were taught in University College Dublin (Robins, Nursing and Midwifery, p.33). It was decided the syllabi would be reviewed by McQuaid (Ibid). The Catholic Church gained further control in nursing as they also ensured ‘that the lecturers chosen were to be appointed by each training hospital but only after the approval of the local bishop’ (Ibid, p.34). The Catholic Church also influenced the nursing syllabus. They proposed that there would be no official examinations for ethics and psychology for nursing students and these reforms also applied to Protestant students (Ibid).

In1956, the division pf public health nursing was founded and designated community health services such as undertaking vaccination schemes, operating maternity and child welfare centres and the school medical service. By 1959, the first short public health nursing course was established in UCD (Ibid, p.37). The nursing board were in charge of the refresher courses and existing public health nurses could qualify to practise and enter the register (Irish Nurses’ Magazine, Vol. 27, No. 8 (August 1960), p.9).

However, local authorities were reluctant to employ nurses who attended the new course. The Irish Nurses’ Magazine (Vol. 28, No. 9, p.10) argued that .Public health nurses who had undertaken the new public health nursing course found it difficult to acquire permanent jobs because ‘their additional training and experience [was] rated so low’. Subsequently, the creation of the public health nursing division contributed to the gradual decline of the voluntary nursing organisation (Robins, Nursing and Midwifery, p.39). Moreover, community nurses services were disorganised and inadequate in some areas outside of main cities and public health nurses duties required to work during off duty hours.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Health Act, 1953.

Nurses Registration (Ireland). A bill to provide for the registration of nurses in Ireland.

Irish Nurses’ Magazine (August 1960-September 1962).

Irish Nurses’ Magazine, Vol. 28, No. 9, p.10.

Secondary Sources

Earner-Byrne, Lindsey, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin, 1922-60, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2007.

Moore, John W., ‘Ireland and the Queen’s Institute of District Nursing’, British Medical Journal, Vol. 2 No. 3532 (September 1928), pp.508-509.

Elizabeth Pendergast, ‘Jubilee Nurses’, Old Dublin Society, Vol. 66, No.1/2 (Spring/Autumn 2013), p.63.

Preston, Margaret H., Charitable Words: Women, Philanthropy and the Language of Charity in Nineteenth Century Dublin, Prager, Westport, 2004.

Robins, Joe (ed.) Nursing and Midwifery in Ireland in the twentieth century: fifty years of an Bord Altranais (the Nursing Board) 1950-2000, An Bord Altranais, Dublin, 2000. fffff

The Evolution of Magdalan Asylums in Ireland and Common Routes of Entry, 1829-1960

For today’s post, I will examine the evolution of Magdalan asylums in Ireland and the most common routes of entry into Magdalan asylums including self-committals, committals by clergymen and through the judicial system.

According to Maria Luddy’s Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth Century Ireland (p.99), Irish cities had high rates of prostitution which created a need for Magdalan refuges. The Moral Rescue Movement in Britain aimed to prevent unmarried mothers from turning to prostitution (Maria Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800-1940, p.115). Protestant asylums were founded during the eighteenth century. In 1767, Lady Arabella Deeny established the first protestant refuge (Ibid, p.77). By the end of the eighteenth century, there was a significant number of lay refuges established. However, they were reluctant to accept women who had been involved in prostitution for a long period of time (Ibid, p.84).

Magdalan asylums were founded during the nineteenth century and they offered refuge and redemption for ‘fallen women’. In 1832, the first Magdalan refuge was founded by the Irish Sisters of Charity in Townsend Street, Dublin (James M. Smith, Ireland’s Magdalan Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment, p.28). The asylums were denominational. They were based on the religious icon of Mary Magdalene, a prostitute who repented for her sins and was forgiven by Jesus Christ. Magdalen asylums were often referred to as Magdalen laundries as they had a commercial business attached. They were not financially supported by the State and therefore, they were dependent on donations and bequests (Jacinta Prunty, Monasteries, Magdalan laundries and reformatory schools of Our Lady of Charity in Ireland, 1853-1973, p.147).

There were 10 Catholic Magdalen asylums manged by four religious congregations in Ireland including the Sisters of Mercy, the Religious Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity and the Sisters of the Good Shephard. Most of these asylums were established by laywomen and/or a member of the Catholic clergy in the early nineteenth century such as the refuge Drumcondra, Dublin in 1829 (Ibid, p.93). The laywomen or a bishop often invited a religious order from France to assume the responsibility of the refuge. Frances Finnegan’s Perish or Penance: a study of Magdalen laundries in Ireland (p.35) argues that some of the refuges were reluctant to allow the women to re-enter society however, they were not required to stay for the rest of their lives. They hoped to inculcate religious values.

Most women who entered the refuge were in their twenties during the nineteenth century. In the Good Shepherd’s asylum in Cork, 51 percent were in their twenties on entry between 1872 and 1890 (Ibid, p.235). However, the McAleese Report (p.173) states that most girls entered the refuges at 17 or 18 years of age in the twentieth century. In 1922, the Irish Free State was established and the Catholic Church exerted a powerful influence over the Nation State, especially on issues related to morality and thus stigmatised those in society that did not adhere to social norms and values, especially unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children. Diarmaid Ferriter (Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland, p.17) maintains that there was a sexual double standard in Ireland as ‘little attention focused on the men who impregnated the unmarried women: there were no ‘fallen men’ in Ireland’. The majority of women left after less than one year in the asylum in the twentieth century (Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen laundries, p.168). However, during the nineteenth century, 62.7 percent of known cases remained in the refuges for more than ten years while others never left (Ibid, p.195).

In the nineteenth century, self-committal accounted for 10 percent of committals (Smith, Ireland’s Magdalan laundries, p.30). Women entered for a number of reasons including ‘alcohol addiction, misfortune, expulsion from home, seduction, violent abuse by a partner of relative, illness, mental or physical disability and entrapment into prostitution’ (Prunty, Our Lady of Charity, p.304). Importantly, many women re-entered asylums during the nineteenth century which indicates that Magdalan asylums may not have been regarded as a punitive institution but rather a sanctuary from danger and immorality. According to Luddy’s Prostitution and Society (p.97), 29 percent of women re-entered the Good Shepherd’s asylum in Belfast between 1851 and 1899. However, self-committals only accounted for 16.4 percent of entries in the twentieth century (Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen laundries, p.888).

Many women were referred to Magdalan asylums through a priest during the nineteenth century as 37.49 per cent of entries into the Sisters of Charity’s asylum in Donnybrook was through the priest (Luddy, Philanthropy, p.128). It was the third most common route of entry during the twentieth century at 8.8 per cent (Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen laundries, p.854). Moreover, nuns also had the authority to transfer women from Magdalan asylums from another which accounted for a significantly higher percentage of admissions after 1922 at 14.8 percent (Ibid, p.162).

During the nineteenth century, prostitutes entered the Magdalan asylums from Lock Hospitals. During the 1860s, the Contagious Diseases Acts permitted police officers to arrest women suspected of being a prostitute at army and naval bases in Britain. However, many were committed to Magdalan asylums after they were medically treated, for example, 18 prostitutes entered the Good Shepherd’s asylum in Waterford between 1842 and 1900 (Finnegan, Perish or Penance, p.107). The Legion of Mary also committed prostitutes into the asylums after 1919 (Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen laundries, p.232).

After 1922, Mother and Baby Homes were established in Ireland for first time unmarried mothers as Magdalan asylums did not accept pregnant women. After 1922, 3.9 percent of entries were from mother and baby homes (Ibid, p.437). Illegitimate birth rates were extremely high during the 1920s in Ireland and the church strongly disapproved of unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children. Moreover, there were 107 from ‘psychiatric hospitals and institutions for the intellectually disabled’ after 1922. The NSPCC and County Councils also referred women to Magdalan asylums in Ireland (Ibid, p.163, 479).

Significantly, society was complicit in the incarceration of ‘fallen women’ as more than 10 percent of admissions were through a family member or relative during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Ibid, p.194, 858). These women were placed in a Magdalan asylum due to promiscuity, poor health or a disability (Ibid, p.860). Importantly, the McAleese Report (xiv) highlights that after 1922, an increased percentage of girls (7.8 percent of admissions) were committed to the Magdalan refuges from reformatory and industrial schools. Reformatory schools were established during the second half of the nineteenth century and detained children convicted of minor offences while industrial schools were set up to organise provision for abandoned and neglected children. Some girls were refused entry into industrial and reformatory schools and they were placed in a Magdalen asylum including victims of sexual abuse as the nuns feared that they would exert a bad influence over the other children (Smith, Ireland’s Magdalan laundries, p.20).

Another route of entry into the Magdalen asylum was upon release prison or the criminal court. Prunty (Our Lady of Charity, p.146) argues that 46 women were transferred from Grangegorman Jail to High Park between 1859 and 1895. Women continued to be committed through the courts into the asylums after 1922 as 24.8 percent of state admissions into Magdalen asylums were from the court system (Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen laundries, p.165). Some received a suspended sentence and in other cases it was used as an alternative to jail (women convicted of infanticide were sent to Magdalan asylums) (Ibid, p.229). During the twentieth century, women were committed to Magdalan asylums on probation by their probation officer for a period between 6 months and 3 years and these committals accounted for 31.4 percent of state admissions (Ibid, p.165, 228). Additionally, girls on remand were sent to Magdalan refuges as the State did not want to place them with hardened adult criminals in jail (Smith, Ireland’s Magdalan Laundries, p.67). Under the 1960 Criminal Justice Act, the Lower Sean McDermott Street asylum accommodated girls on remand (Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen laundries, p.221). However, some Magdalen refuges accepted girls on remand before the 1960s including the Good Shepherd’s in Limerick (Ibid, p.226). Prunty (Our Lady of Charity, p.491) maintains that girls awaiting sentencing in the Magdalen refuge were there ‘from an overnight stay to seven days’.

Magdalan asylums were originally established to rehabilitate ‘fallen women’ including the unmarried mother and prostitute. However, after the establishment of the Irish Free State, The Church used these institutions to punish women that did not obey the Catholic Church’s moral doctrine such as promiscuous women and women deemed vulnerable to seduction. The number of self-committals remained high from the nineteenth to the twentieth century and the incarcerations by clergymen, nuns from reformatory and industrial schools and mother and baby homes reflected low levels of social tolerance towards those that society considered deviant. Moreover, the State increasingly relied upon these asylums to place young women on remand and women convicted of infanticide.

Bibliography

Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen laundries. Available at http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/MagdalenRpt2013 (accessed 10May 2018).

Ferriter, Dairmaid, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland, Profile Books, London, 2009.

Finnegan, Frances, Do Penance or Perish: a study of Magdalen Asylums in Ireland, Cosgrave Press, Kilkenny, 2001.

Luddy, Maria, Women ad Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995.

Luddy, Maria, Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800-1940, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007.

Prunty, Jacinta, The monasteries, magdalen asylums and reformatory schools of Our Lady of Charity in Ireland, 1853-1973, The Columba Press, Dublin, 2017.

Smith, James M., Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 2007.