Talk:Magdalen Asylum
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[edit] earlier unsigned chaos
Barbara, I had taken good care to merge only the parts which were actually accurate, non-redundant and verifiable. You now reinserted most of them. This is unacceptable. Here is a detailed response:
- The Magdalene Laundries or Magdalen Asylums were a network of laundries operated by the Catholic Church in Ireland
Redundant, removed.
- and run by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order.
Inaccurate. The primary order were the Good Shepherd Sisters, but the Asylums were run by different orders. Magdalen Asylum is really an umbrella term for a specific type of institution. There were even Asylums run by protestant individuals.
- The Magdalen Laundries, together with the Biltmore Industrial School, were the most publicized of the many institutions funded by the Irish government and run by orders of Catholic nuns at which children were housed and frequently mistreated until the late 1980s when they were closed down.
Redundant, furthermore, there is not a single Google hit for "Biltmore Industrial School". Please check your facts. Removed for now.
- The Irish government was democratic but Democracy can rarely oppress minorities in a tyrannical way and become The Tyranny of the Majority.
Pure ranting, removed.
- As a group the nature of these institutions were exposed in a RTE (state run Irish television) series by reporter Mary Raftery in 1999. See also Mary Raftery, Eoin O'Sullivan or Eain O'Sullivan, Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland's Industrial Schools, Continuum International Publishing Group, hardcover, 424 pages, ISBN 0826413374. Despite convening of a government Commission to inquire into Child Abuse attempts to obtain compensation for the 130,000 victims of the system have proved frustrating. [1] [2]
Redundant, also off-topic as Suffer the Little Children was about industrial schools. Moved to bottom + references, should really be in industrial schools.
- Feminists frequently complain that sexual misconduct by women or even suspected sexual misconduct by women is punished harder than sexual misconduct by men.
Since this seems important to you, I have reworded and tried to integrate it.
- Women became slaves for life, sometimes because of a single act or suspected act considered immoral.
Redundant, overly emotionalized language.
- By contrast male Roman Catholic Priests guilty of sexually abusing children were often routinely moved on to other parishes where they reoffended and parents did not know they had to protect their children from them. Nobody forced paedophile priests to enter monasteries and spend the rest of their lives washing clothes, cleaning pigsties or anything similar. Bishop Brendan Comiskey in Ireland resigned over this.
Highly charged, rephrased and integrated with feminism para. Bishop Brendan Comiskey resigned over what? Details, details. This is also getting off-topic.
- Many women lived and died in these institutions with little hope of escape. The only way they could be freed, was by being claimed by a relative, although officially they had to be signed out by two men.
100% redundant with previous and following sentence with the exception of the "signed out by two men" claim, which I find dubious. Source?
- Irish women “guilty” of having illegitimate children were sometimes forced to live as virtual Slaves in these institutions. Some ended up there simply because they were considered in moral danger.
Redundant.
- Mary Norris and Josephine McCarthy were examples. The nuns refuse to admit how many women victims there were but it is suspected there may have been tens of thousands.
Source for Norris and McCarthy story? Which Magdalen Asylum? All the following claims have to be verifiable:
HERE'S THE SOURCE. Its one of the references at the bottom of the page.Barbara Shack 16:14, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC) I can't source all the material. Some of it was put in by other people. Eloquence, please read through the CBS News link and reinsert the information there back into the article. You have improved the article a great deal, thanks.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/08/sunday/main567365.shtml
CBS NEWS.
• Section Front
The Magdalene Laundry
Aug. 3, 2003
(Photo: MIRAMAX)
"The next thing I knew, I was with this woman on a train to Cork. And I was just brought up here. I was just told my name was Phyllis, and I'd work in the laundry."Ms. McCarthy, former Magdalene
(Photo: MIRAMAX)
"(CBS) Someone once said the only thing really new in the world is the history we don't know. The Irish people are learning that right now and it's a painful experience.
It began five years ago when an order of nuns in Dublin sold off part of its convent to real estate developers. On that property were the remains of 133 women buried in unmarked graves, and buried with them was a scandal.
As it turns out, the women had been virtual prisoners, confined by the Catholic Church behind convent walls for perceived sins of the flesh, and sentenced to a life of servitude in something called the Magdalene laundries.
It sounds medieval, something that happened hundreds of years ago, but, in fact, the last Magdalene laundry closed just over two years ago. And as the story was firstly reported in 1999, revelations have shocked the Irish people, embarrassed the Catholic Church and tarnished the country's image.
From the front, the former Good Shepherd Convent in Cork looks like an exclusive private school, with a hidden history too heavy to tell. At the back of the convent, you can still see the skeleton of the washhouse, one of dozens of Magdalene institutions scattered across the countryside.
It was there that Mary Norris and Josephine McCarthy each spent three years of hard labor, enforced silence and prayer, after it was decided that they were in moral danger and unfit to live in Irish society.
Both had come from troubled homes, spent time in Catholic orphanages, and were sent out as servant girls, where they ran into trouble with their employers for staying out late. They were turned over to the nuns because it was suspected they either were, or were about to become, sexually active. Josephine says she was accused of having sex in the backseat of a car.
“And then the next thing I knew, I was with this woman on a train to Cork. And I was just brought up here. I was just told my name was Phyllis, and I'd work in the laundry,” said McCarthy, walking down the laundry during her revisit to the convent.
They were given new names by the nuns to help them break from their pasts. No one knows how many women were sent off to the laundries. The religious orders refuse to make those records available, but estimates range into the tens of thousands.
The church was the only authority under which they were held, as Norris explained. “I would have rather been down in the women’s jail. At least I would have got a sentence and I would know when I was leaving,” she said.
“It's made me feel a horrible, dirty person all my life,” McCarthy added, when the two of them walked past the convent.
They were both teenagers when they came here, Norris in the 1950s and McCarthy in the 1960s. Their only crime was appearing to violate the moral code dictated by the church. At that time, it was the church and not the state that was the most powerful force in Ireland. There was no due process and no appeal.
According to McCarthy, the women got up about 5 in the morning, went to Mass, had breakfast, started work and then went to bed about 7 at night.
“That was it. That was our life. And we dare not ask questions,” she said. “And (the work is) very hard. You’d have to hand-wash – scrub. You’d have no knuckles left. Ironing – you would be burnt. It was just hard work.” "
- In the 1960's when they were sent there the Roman Catholic Church was more powerful than the state in Ireland. Mary Norris and Josephine McCarthy had violated the rules of the Church but had committed no crime. The working day would start at 5 in the morning and consisted of hand-washing, drying, and ironing clothes from children's orphanages, churches, and prisons. Bedtime was at 7 in the evening. They were given food and accommodation but received no remuneration for their work.
And this is far too POV:
- The scrubbing was intended to wash away the women's sins. However much the women washed they were considered dirty and sinful throughout their lives.
Redundant again:
- By the 20th century, unwed mothers, rape victims and generally "wayward" women were considered eligible inmates.
I have edited the page accordingly.--Eloquence* 22:15, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)
- Well done! You have successfully incorporated most of Barbara's useful information (crossreference to other forms of institutional abuse in Ireland) and restored the coherence of the article. BrendanH 09:06, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
I feel I am asked to carry the can for a great many things which other people wrote. If Eloquence had checked the history of the previous Magdalene laundry article he would have seen that. I don't think any Wikipedian has intentionally put unsourced, made up matheial into the article. At least I know no evidence thlat it was intentional. The Roman Catholic Church has, as usual been secretive. In such an environment rumours and suspicions circulate and it can be difficult to separate lies and suspicions from truth. Any Irish family which has lost touch with a female relative can reasonably wonder if she was shut up in a Magdalen Asylum, can reasonably wonder if perhaps she's still languishing there under an assumed name. I fear that is probably so in some cases, here's the source.
http://www.netreach.net/~steed/magdalen.html
“In addition to graves gone unmarked, so too, living women go "unmarked," languishing still inside the convent walls—unclaimed by their respective families as many were given false names upon admittance, making their true identification enormously difficult. Even in death these women suffered callous, inhumane treatment and were robbed of their dignity.”
Then eventually suspicions get to newspaper reporters and get printed as facts. Further I for one don't live in Ireland. I do not know which Irish newspapers are reliable and which are sensational. Input from Irish people could be useful here. I have done my best to expose honestly a serious human rights abuse. I don't feel I deserved the level of criticism Eloquence and the others subjected me to.
Mary Norris and Josephine McCarthy were discussed here.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/08/sunday/main567365.shtml
The source was given at the bottom of the original Magdalene laundry article. Eloquence should at the very least have checked that before he criticized me. Eloquence, you are in a position of authority. Please exercise your authority humainly and justly.Barbara Shack 13:48, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The "Abuse may still be continuing" claim should be removed. It is wild illogical speculation with no evidence behind it. Illogical because the convents have been closed down and therefore cannot still hold unaccounted women. The source given is interesting but does not provide any evidence whatsoever. Claims like this damage the article -- this is a very serious issue, which persisted into the remarkably recent past, but to claim it is still on-going is ridiculous. BrendanH 09:07, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
Please give evidence that the convents have been closed. Have they all been closed or only some? I'm not being ridiculous. I live in the United Kingdam and don't know exactly what's going on. I want to make sure women are not still suffering in this terrible way.Barbara Shack 13:22, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Barbara, the article itself reports that the last one closed in 1996. But if you don't know exactly what's going on, to use your words, don't add unfounded claims to an encyclopaedia article. Please be more cautious in what you add. Like I said above, the various strands of Church-related institutional abuse in Ireland and elsewhere are a very important story, but adding implausible claims makes the article look at best as if it doesn't understand what it is talking about, and at worst like a conspiracy theory.
- BrendanH 13:39, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
I hope you are right, Brendan.H. The trouble is, the Roman Catholic Church is very good at hiding things. Can we be sure they've admitted to every establishment and closed it? Can we be sure they didn't quietly transfer some women to a different closed convent before closing a Magdalen Asylum? Am I just practicing my debating skills or are there women suffering unrecognized and unhelped somewhere? I know I am outside Ireland. Sometimes it helps if someone from outside who isn't at all brainwashed by the Roman Catholics has a look at a question. Barbara Shack 18:10, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- "Can we be sure they didn't quietly transfer some women to a different closed convent before closing a Magdalen Asylum?" Yes, in so far as there are no more Magdalen Asylums/Laundries and damn few convents of any size (practically no new vocations for several decades). The idea that the Church is running secret prisons for wayward women in 2004 is about as plausible as the idea that Tony Blair is running a secret Gulag for socialist members of the Labour Party.
- There is, however, a serious issue of accounting for all the women who went through these institutions: partly those who died nameless and perhaps without a death cert, but also the possibility that some of these women completed their lives in long-stay mental hospitals, having become completely institutionalised. However, we wikipedians do not have this information, and the wikipedia is not the place for speculation and conspiracy theory.
- I'm going to delete the "continuing abuse" section later today if it is still there. It damages the article.
- BrendanH 08:30, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
-
- I took a little longer than I said, but I have removed the claim. It was wild speculation and had no place on the wikipedia. I would have kept the link to [3] but it seems to have disappeared, which is a pity. That was interesting, throwing light from the wider perspective of adoptive children seeking their birth mothers, and would be worth linking to again (under "External Links") if it comes back. BrendanH 12:35, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)
I'm still not completely clear as to whether the last Magdalen Asylum truly closed in 1996. This is the date given by a number of sources, but the article "Last Days of a Laundry" only refers to it as "Dublin's last Magdalen laundry". Even so, the article notes that all the women "will remain living there after the laundry closes on October 25th", and "a woman in her twenties with a mild mental handicap was admitted as recently as last year." This indicates that at least after 1996, some women were still held in that particular church home, but it is not clear whether they have been given a clear choice to leave. I've tried to contact Dr. Finnegan by e-mail, but I've been told before that she does not use her e-mail account so I'm not very hopeful to get an answer.--Eloquence* 16:59, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)
I was appalled by this article, which is incredibly anti-catholic POV. Barbara Shack seems to be violently anti-catholic, having included links to Jack Chick and Ian Paisley sites in other articles. Have amended a lot of opinion and irrelevant or unsubstantiated assertions. The whole thing seems based on a sensationalist book and film. If "thousands of women" were held virtual prisoner in these asylums until very recently, its very strange that only TWO have complained about it or come forward. A little bit of reputable information on this subject which seems to contradict the "prison" assertions, is available here http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Victorians/bartley.html
Nor is institutionalization particularly to do with catholicism. Until the 1990s thousands of people were still in places where they had been forcibly institutionalised for life in the 30s 40s and 50s, all across Britain, often in mental asylums, for being socially outside the norm. Xandar
- Your attempts to turn this article into a Christian apologist's rant are as deplorable as Barbara's tabloid assertions. You removed scholarly quotes without comment and inserted POV claims of "polemic" where it suits your belief system. Frances Finnegan happens to be the world's foremost authority on Magdalen Asylums (and in fact a leading expert on prostitution in Ireland in the 19th century), whose book, Do Penance or Perish, is written in large part on the basis of the Church's own internal guidelines, documents and records.
- It is correct that the Asylums were initially "rescue" institutions for prostitutes, but they quickly ceased to be just that even in the 19th century. To quote the order's internal literature again:
-
- "At the majority of Homes the Managers content themselves with receiving any fallen woman under 30 years of age, [provided she is not pregnant, or with an infant]. The cause of this is not far to seek. The Homes have sprung up without method or design, beyond the desire of the founders to do something to save the perishing. They are mostly unendowed, and are therefore dependent for their maintenance upon two sources of income - voluntary subscriptions, and the profits on the Laundry; and the deficiencies in the former have to be made up by the latter. This can only be done by keeping the number of inmates to a certain point; and so, when there are vacancies, the Institution cannot afford to wait an indefinite time for one particular class of girl, but must accept the most eligible of the applicants seeking admission. All this renders the task of classifying the girls and selecting the best Homes for them very difficult."
- Mission statements included women "either fallen or in danger of falling" by 1848. Many homes only accepted "women" under the age of 25. Finnegan cites three example cases from around 1900; two were 15- and 14-year-olds respectively, both admitted (forcibly of course, as they were not adults) for prostitution, and one girl who was admitted for having "suffered from her father's misconduct in her own home. The man is now undergoing 20 months hard labour on account of his continued misconduct with her and her sisters." In other word, a young girl being sexually abused by her father was considered to be morally tainted and was now under the guidance of nuns who would force her to engage in hard labour, and who would discipline her if she did not comply.
- In the 20th century as the Asylums struggled to meet their demand for workers they accepted more and more women who were sent to the homes by their relatives, such as girls who were too flirtatious, or those who had a child out of wedlock. As many survivors have testified, it was only possible for them to get out if someone on the outside would "vouch" for them, otherwise they would be returned by the police as being in moral danger. Aside from that, it must be remarked that the moral climate in which prostitutes were regarded as a social cancer, as sinful creatures who could only be "rescued" by the good Church (by brainwashing them and turning them into slave laborers), was of course one which was created and promoted by Church institutions.
- All these crimes are well-documented and proven, and your denial of them is shameful. To combat it, you quickly copy and paste two sentences ("Where asylum registers are available in Ireland, it is clear that many women entered these refuges regularly and used the institutions to tide them over poor work availability. Entrance is often seasonal and for the women who remain in the institutions it could be argued that they were making a choice to 'retire' from their occupation" [4]) from a rambling book review without sources and try to discredit, in the fashion of a corporate PR spinmeister, the sources whose information you find inconvenient. In your quest to apologize the Church, you do not shy away from plagiarizing any material that Google turns up that sounds like it can be used in its defense, or from condemning books and documentaries you show not the least familiarity with, or from the most deplorable of all moral apologetics, the "but they were at least as bad as we were" type argument (which falls flat, as the Church dominated the entire culture, and so-called secular institutions were of course based on the same moral mindset).
- You have the nerve to accuse others of partiality with the shameful behavior you have displayed on this article? You have the nerve of implying that women and scholars are fabricating bad, bad stories about the Church out of an "anti-Catholic agenda" without even reading the books and accounts you pass judgment on? Dear Xandar, this is the first time I meet you, but I can assure you, I will keep a good eye on you. Further attempts to insert revisionist history into this article will not be tolerated.--Eloquence* 03:24, May 7, 2004 (UTC)
- Eloquence, the article as it stood was a disgrace. Full of emotive language, wild accusations, and very short on verifiable fact. In your post above you say: "All these crimes are well-documented and proven, and your denial of them is shameful." What "crimes" are you talking about? A CRIME is something that is illegal and immoral, and for which punishment is mandated by law. What laws have been broken, and what action is being taken to enforce these laws? Or is the argument that the British and Irish justice systems too are in on this "conspiracy"? Grave charges were being laid here, of imprisonment, enslavement and abuse - and grave charges need to be well and conclusively proven. What we have with the Magdalen Asylums is a situation where women who were ex-prostitutes, or "at risk of" prostitution, were admitted (some possibly under some state coercion and having few other options open) to strictly-run institutions, and allegedly often treated with what would NOW (but not necessarily at the time) be regarded as undue harshness.
Conditions where vulnerable people were subject to strict discipline and rigid institutional routines were the NORM in SECULAR institutions in the US, UK, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere until very recently. In fact those unlucky enough to find themselves in secular mental institutions (and that was a considerable number) were also subject to the maiming torture of drug "treatment", and Electro-convulsive-therapy. And some of that still goes on today - with no catholic nuns involved! So attempts to present this as some "evil catholic scandal" as the article has done, are utterly misplaced.
Talk of people being kept in "prison", and being used as "slaves", is emotive nonsense, bordering on hysteria, and certainly not the stuff of any sort of encyclopaedia. There are many, many institutions in the UK, US and Ireland, where the inmates work, or have worked, both as part of their integration into normal society, and to contribute towards their own upkeep. To call such systems "prisons" and "slavery" is crass nonsense. Not ten miles from where I live there is a community where mentally handicapped people live and work in hostels, under supervision, farming and producing craft goods.
I call the article anti-catholic, because that is how it has been presented. The impression given was of catholic nuns imprisoning and brutalizing people. Links were placed from "Roman Catholic Church", with the clear intention of presenting this supposed imprisonment and enslavement as an outworking of catholicism. And if you think anti-catholicism doesn't exist, just trawl the net a little. It is based on one sensationalist book - and yes, there ARE sensationalist books - and books written to an agenda. That is why I quoted a contrary opinion based on reputable research. Maria Luddy of Warwick University, who wrote the review you pooh poohed, is one of the foremost experts on the subject in Ireland. A paper of hers here: http://www.triangle.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=whr&vol=6&issue=4&year=1997&article=Luddy&id=80.225.3.92 states:
The majority of women who entered these refuges did so voluntarily. Approximately 7110, or just over 66%, and a number of women re-entered, some as often as ten times. From the available evidence it seems that entering a refuge was, for the majority of women, a matter of choice. While it is true that many destitute women ad only the workhouse or the magdalene assylum to turn to in times of utter distress, it would appear that the second was the favoured option of many. The length of stay in the asylums varied from one day for some women, to an entire lifetime of thirty or forty years. It was generally women who entered in their teens or were in their thirties or older, who remained in the homes. The decision to stay was made by the women themselves, and although the nuns certainly did not encourage women to leave, they had little choice in the matter if the woman was determined to go. It would seem from the number of re-entries that some women may have used the asylums as a temporary shelter, and once they were able to return to the outside world they did so. For others, the stability of life within a refuge, the order and discipline involved may have bought a sense of security, and made it an attractive option to remain.
No mention of "crimes", let alone "slavery" and "imprisonment".
The article still contains blatant pieces of unsupported OPINION, such as: "Because of their background as prostitutes, inmates were regarded as vile creatures of sin:"
Another extremely dodgy paragraph that has been put back in is: "
They disappeared as they ceased to be profitable. "Possibly the advent of the washing machine has been as instrumental in closing these laundries as have changing attitudes," according to Frances Finnegan.
This is just opinion "supported" by opinion. An examination of the facts shows that nearly all such large-scale residential institutions for the non-violent, (secular and religious), disapppeared at the same time, between the 70s and the 90s, as attitudes changed and community-based solutions dominated. The idea that they were closed because the washing machine was invented is risible. And actually, the washing machine appeared around 1920, the automatic following in 1950.
More risible still is the notion that the Catholic church had a wish to run chains of laundries based on slave labour. Xandar 04:58, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
- Xandar has a point (a number of them, indeed), and I would endorse much of what he/she has to say. Certainly he (?) does not deserve to be called a Christian apologist for objecting to links to crackpot sites like Chick's. We need to recognise that, while the Magdalen laundries were indeed a scandal and this must be acknowledged and publicised, there was a context. The harsh institutionalisation common to the period was part of it, but an extremely repressive sexual climate in Ireland (arguably since the aftermath of the Famine) played a major role. The very inward-looking nature of Irish society after independence up to the late 1950s is another key part of the context: problems were hidden, and exported, outside influences were discouraged, leading to a socially repressive atmosphere. BrendanH 12:36, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, Xandar makes valid points and I apologize for being rude earlier; however, he did try to remove valid quotes and inserted content copied verbatim from a website, which is unacceptable. Certainly many women did enter the homes voluntarily, especially early in their history, but many others, especially young girls, did not -- they were sent there by relatives for questionable reasons and often could not get out. I'll try to track down concrete evidence for some of the things which have been reported, such as women and girls being sent back to the homes by police after they tried to escape.
- It is fair to provide context about other similar institutions; however, it must not be forgotten that all these institutions existed in the same moral climate - secular or not -, and the Church was of course one of the dominating factors in that climate. As for a profit motive, I think Finnegan has done some research on that. I'll check. I have also established contact with Finnegan who wanted to send me some answers, but so far hasn't.--Eloquence*
[edit] Hebrew Version.
I am glad to inform you, that the article is now fully translated to Hebrew.
[edit] To all of you who think this can not be true
I live in Sweden. My sister was locked up against her will in a similar institution here in Sweden (but run by the municipality) when she got her first child without being married. And the bureaucrats tried to take her child. In that institution there were a number of women locked up that just had given birth. Their only "crime" being that they got a child without being married, the father of the child "being absent" and not protecting the woman and the woman not having a family that could protect her.
When my family finally found out where my sister was we managed to liberate her. (The bureaucrats clearly had not realised that my sister had a big family that could protect her.) After that the bureaucrats attacked us by all legal (and illegal) means at their disposal. We had to keep my sister hidden from the authorities for several months while we informed the politicians and gathered evidence to defend ourselves against the bureaucrats. Finally with the help of some politicians the bureaucrats were made to stop their efforts to take my sisters child and locking her up again. Afterwards our lawyer said that as far as she knew we were the first family ever in Sweden to manage to keep a child in spite the bureaucrats being on full attack. And this happened as recently as 1999-2000.
Why the bureaucrats do these things I don't know. Perhaps there is black money to get in the adoption business or they simply do it so they "have something to do" so their department won't get downsized. The scary thing is that this is an ongoing thing, defenceless women (but good mothers) are still being locked up and get their babies taken like that in Sweden.
--A disillusioned Swede 06:06, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
