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.