The 1955 advert for the Magdalene laundry in Dublin, Ireland reads like a tear-jerking charity appeal: “The Superioress and Sisters of The Magdalen Asylum … very earnestly beg the support of the liberal and kind-hearted to help them with the upkeep of the Institution for 130 Poor Penitents, who receive a home within its walls.”
But the reality for many of the “penitents” — or repentant sinners — living in these institutions was very different from the ad’s beneficent tone. The ten Magdalene laundries, which operated from before the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 until 1996, were for-profit businesses where women and girls were incarcerated against their will and forced to do unpaid physical labor. Over the past few years, a number of former Magdalenes have come forward with accounts of the physical and psychological abuse they suffered at the hands of the nuns who were supposed to be caring for them.
