Everything Comes Out in The Wash

The Turning of the Tide - John Duncan

 

The Magdalene laundries were used as reformatories where girls were sent without due process. But they were not brutal: anti-Catholics have lied about them.

What was aptly named Metaris A Estuarium – a bay with tidal marshes
and mudflats – back in Alexander the Greats day started to become known as The Wash much later on.

Most agreed that there was what was termed “psychological abuse”: most “described verbal abuse and being the victim of unkind or hurtful taunting and belittling comments. Even those who said that some Sisters were kind to them reported verbal cruelty as occurring during their time in the Magdalene Laundries”. The real question about these places is whether they should have existed in the first place in the way that they did, and whether the women sent there understood why. Why was their freedom taken from them? Often they were never told, and for that, the State is directly responsible (usually the sisters didn’t know either). But these were not, as is widely believed, brutal institutions.

Frankston Bathers
Victoria late 40s
 

 

Holy Cross Retreat [in Australia] was operated by the order of the Sisters of Mercy. It was established and co-located with the Magdalene Asylum for unmarried mothers. The retreat was based on the Magdalene asylums of Ireland, the object being to provide a home for the destitute and needy irrespective of creed or country, to aid and reform the erring, to shelter the weak minded, and to train the wayward, uncontrollable and erring, to habits of self restraint by necessary instruction and kind but firm discipline.