Small Things Like These never go away

THE novella, Small Things Like These written by Claire Keegan was published in 2021. I read it soon after. Then a couple of months ago, myself and three Holyrood pals went to see the newly released film of the same title at the Quay. The cinema was bloody freezing. We wondered was it a deliberate part of the full 3D experience because it was set in the brutal cold month of December. The goosebumps never left us—a bit like our anger—and for the first time in a long time, the four of us sat speechless at the end. This never happens. It did that day.

Despite reading the book and being fully aware of the story, what we saw on screen was an all too punitive reality for us, for we realised in all its blunt stony reality that the story we’d just watched was of ‘our time.’ Yes, it was the 1980s, and these girls—who were a similar age to us at that time—were being forced to go into a Magdalene Laundry in County Wexford because they were pregnant. In one scene, the coal man, Bill, played by Cillian Murphy, surveys a hysterical teenage girl pleading with her mother: “Please don’t put me in the there. Mammy please, don’t make me go in that place. Pleeease!” The nuns assisted her mother, forcing her inside. What Bill witnessed was just the beginning of this story, one of quiet heroism and human compassion and a severe rebuke of the sins committed in the name of religion.

I want you all to think about this, because this wasn’t Ireland in the 1940s or 50s remember. This was 1985, the year Bob Geldof and his fellow rock/pop star pals released Do they know it’s Christmas? When Phil Collins and Phil Bailey sang Easy Lover and Jennifer Rush had a best-selling single with The Power of Love. This was when us Holyrood gals were scooting about Rosco’s in Shawlands and the Strathclyde Student Union, dancing and winching, having the craic and generally living our best teenage lives. I was playing Calamity Jane in the school play and couldn’t have been further removed from what was happening to those girls who’d got themselves in ‘trouble’ in Ireland. This term still goads me to this day. A rather hateful woman said to me once: “If there were no bad women in the world, there’d be no bad men.” This was in reference to girls getting pregnant. Like it was a woman’s fault. She bore the original sin and shame the way Eve did.

The Magdalene Laundries were also known as asylums. The Dublin Magdalene Asylum —sometimes called the Magdalene Asylum for Penitent Females on Lower Leeson Street—was the first such institution in Ireland run by the Church of Ireland, initially taking in only Protestant women. It was founded in 1765 by Lady Arabella Denny. In 1959 it moved to Eglinton Road, Donnybrook and in 1980 changed its name to Denny House. It didn’t close until 1994 and was one of Ireland’s longest serving Mother and Baby Homes.

However, Ireland’s Magdalene institutions were also run by Catholic orders that operated from the 18th to the late 20th century and were run ostensibly to house what society viewed as ‘fallen women.’ It has been estimated that whilst in full operation some 30,000 girls were confined to these institutions. Ireland’s Catholic-run Magdalene asylums survived the longest—through to 1996—and were supported by the state and run by various religious communities for more than two hundred years. The women (inmates) were required to work, primarily in the laundries since the facilities were self-supporting. It has been well documented that the cost of violence, oppression, and brutalisation of those women was enormous, and in their struggle to survive they suffered not only physically, but spiritually and emotionally. If you’ve ever read the book, Philomena or seen the movie starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, then you’ll know exactly the kind of suffering and anguish I’m talking about.

In the 18th century, the purpose of these places was the reformation of penitent prostitutes and other ‘fallen’ women. During the 1840s and 50s, however, nuns like the Good Shepherd Sisters from France took over the institutions and Irish ‘Rescue Work’ underwent a change. Short-term refuges became long-term Magdalene Asylums. Those incarcerated were discouraged from leaving and frequently detained for the remainder of their lives. Thousands of women were kept to work in the laundries, subjected to harsh penance, severe discipline and long periods of silence and prayer. They were totally cut off from the outside world and given new names. As prostitute numbers diminished, other ‘fallen’ women were targeted, including unmarried mothers, wayward girls and victims of incest or rape. Some girls were put into the laundries because they were orphans, abused or deserted by their families, or they simply did not conform to social norms of the time.

According to Frances Finnegan, author of Do Penance or Perish: A Study of Magdalen Asylums in Ireland: “Missionaries were required to approach prostitutes and distribute religious tracts, designed to be read in ‘sober’ moments and divert women from their vicious lives.” Furthermore, ‘the consignment even of genuine prostitutes’ to these laundries ‘seldom reduced their numbers on the streets, any more than did an individual prostitute’s death,’ because, according to Finnegan: “So long as poverty continued, and the demand for public women remained, such losses were easily replaced.”

So, the institutions were failing to achieve their objective and had little impact on prostitution, yet they were continuing to multiply and expand due to their profitable free labour. These girls were ‘used’ as a ready source of free labour. Additionally, the state of Ireland and its government were heavily intertwined with religion. Finnegan wrote that based on historical records, these Magdalene Laundries were no longer focused simply on curbing prostitution; there became a need to maintain social and moral order and a desire to continue profiting from a free workforce. The Magdalene Laundries became a structure of suppression.

With the increase in institutions and the rise in the number of beds available within them, this resulted in a new definition of ‘fallen’ women—one that was expanding to include any women who appeared to challenge traditional concepts of Irish morality. So, unmarried mothers who were forced to give up their babies as well as their lives. And as this concept of ‘fallen women’ expanded, so did the facilities, in both size and their role within Irish society. Sadly, just having a child out of marriage meant being branded a criminal, because the options available at the time were so limited. There was no social welfare system which meant many resorted to prostitution or entered these homes.

So much more is known about these laundries nowadays due to detailed interviews with women who spent time there. In later years, the laundries lost their association with unmarried mothers. All of Ireland’s 20th-century laundries, except one, did not admit pregnant women. Instead, women entered via the criminal justice system, reform schools, health and social services sector and self-admittance.

In 1993 the unmarked graves of 155 women were uncovered in the convent grounds of The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The findings led to revelations about the real operations of these institutions. A formal state apology was issued in 2014, and a compensation scheme for survivors was set up by the Irish Government. To date €32.8 million has been paid out to survivors. The religious orders which operated the laundries have rejected appeals, including from victims and Ireland’s Justice Minister, to contribute financially to this programme.

The character, Bill Furlong in Keegan’s story was a boy born out of wedlock, and throughout the film we’re continually shown flashbacks to his childhood. His mother was taken in by an older woman and given work meaning she didn’t have to go into a laundry. So Bill considers himself blessed, but continually reflects on how different things could’ve been. When he finds a girl locked inside the convent coal bunker, not once but twice, he feels duty bound to save her from the harshness of the laundry environment and the abuse she’s suffering. He is a good man who wants to the right thing, but is living in a town willing to turn a blind eye. I’m going to quote Seamus Heaney here again, as I often do; “There’s no such thing as an innocent bystander.”

The girls and I talked... eventually. Horrified and numb at what went on in Ireland. We all knew girls living in Glasgow who’d had a parallel experience. Girls whose parents didn’t disown them or put them into such a place. Girls who were shown compassion and support; the way it should be.

For me, sadly this is yet another story that is part of our history. One we wish never happened.

L J Sexton, mum of four, returned to university to pursue her passion for the written word. She achieved her Honours Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing and hasn't stopped writing since. Lyn is born of Irish parents and lived in Donegal for eight years. She is also the press officer for Irish Minstrels CCÉ music group based in St Roch’s Secondary School