Human Rights in Ireland

On this day in 1901, the House of Commons debated the Factory and Workshop Bill. Many of the Irish MPs argued that the Magdalene laundries should be excluded from its remit, and from the regime of inspection which was designed to improve working conditions throughout Britain and Ireland. At the time there were 912 inmates in 10 Catholic Magdalene Laundries in Ireland (see the 1901 census return for High Park in Drumcondra here). Earlier that summer, the Leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond (pictured left), had argued as follows for the exemption of Magdalene laundries  from the provisions of the Factory and Workshop Acts on June 11:

The claim we make is confined to those institutions, reformatory in their character, in which the labour employed is the labour of fallen women who have been taken by these charitable ladies, who have brought them into these institutions and provided them with work and with means of salvation from continuing in their evil courses [...] I am sure that it is quite unnecessary for me to emphasise the fact that the kind of charity which is exercised by the ladies in these institutions is probably the noblest charity which anybody could possibly engage in. I do not think it is necessary for me to go another step further and say that this particular charity is not only the noblest that the wit of man can conceive, but it is also the most difficult of all charities to conduct. The great object of these ladies is to keep these girls in those institutions. The organisations I refer to are great societies like the Society of the Good Shepherd, which exists in every country in the world, has been employed for years and generations, and perhaps centuries, in carrying on this work, and it has, therefore, the most experience in the carrying on of this work. The members of this Society of the Good Shepherd are unanimously of opinion that the introduction into their institutions of an outside authority in the shape of Government inspectors would completely destroy the discipline of their institutions, and make their already almost impossible task absolutely impossible. When that is remembered, I think the House ought to hesitate before it forces upon these institutions provisions which, however necessary they may be in ordinary factories, are not suitable for, and ought not to be forced upon institutions of this kind. It is not as if any case had ever been made out in support of the inspection of these institutions. No one urges that they are insanitary, or that an improper number of hours is imposed upon the inmates. We all know that in these institutions there is inspection, although not Government inspection. There is an inspection by the superiors of the religious orders to which they belong, which makes it impossible either for insanitary arrangements to exist or improper hours of labour to be enforced.

In a debate on the Bill on August 13 1901, the Home Rule agitator – later leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party – John Dillon said:

[What] can be done with these poor homeless, houseless creatures to whom these institutions offer a refuge when all others are closed against them? Are you prepared to turn these people away and let them become the hopeless victims of the evils of society? Are you going to deny them the right to work in these institutions and obtain there a refuge from the cruelty and the awful lives to which they are exposed? Surely no man in this House is prepared to stand up and say that he would shut the doors of hope and mercy on these poor outcasts. What remedy then remains in the way of competition? You must only trust to the good sense of those who conduct these institutions, whether Catholic nuns or Protestant sisters... I know something, and my friends around me know something, of the lives led by these convent ladies—women who have turned their backs on all that makes life dear to the ordinary human being, and who devote their whole lives, without hope of reward, to one of the most painful, most difficult, and distressing occupations anyone in this world could undertake, whose convents in Ireland are the objects of admiration and sympathy of everyone acquainted with their work and record, no matter what his religious belief may be, and I have known thousands with no religious beliefs at all who have admired them just as much. Against the ladies in charge of these institutions a breath of calumny was never uttered, and no charge was ever made against their fair name and fame for the last twenty years since I entered public life in this country… What is the work these ladies are engaged in? I say that in the whole annals of the Christian Church there is no greater or more difficult work of charity than that in which these ladies are engaged. The doors of their convents are thrown Open to the wreckage of human society, and to my knowledge the poor girls, the victims of the conditions of society, who enter these doors, are welcomed, not as hired servants, but as members of one and the same family… The doors are open to them to come or go. The nuns have no legal right to detain them if they do not choose to stay. They come in from the streets when all the world has shut them out and denied them both refuge and sympathy. When they tire of the convent they leave, sometimes to return to their evil courses, but when they again return are they denied forgiveness by the nuns? No; they come again and again, and every time they come they are welcomed. These are the ladies who [opponents of the exemption insinuate] are selfish and capable of sweating and ill-treating the poor creatures who seek their aid.

See also the extraordinary contribution of Edmund Leamy, MP and author of Irish Fairy Tales, to that debate.

Before coming to the reasons for excluding these laundries from the Bill, he desired to meet one or two statements which had been made against convents and nuns. One of these was that the nuns shirked inquiry because they had something to conceal. This was a subject on which the Irish Members were competent to speak. They knew all about the working of these institutions in Ireland, and the nuns, so far from being desirous to conceal, only welcomed visitors to the convent to see it and everything connected with it. There was not a day passed when ladies did not visit the convents and see the girls who were under the charge of the nuns. Not a Sunday or a holiday passed when ladies with their daughters did not visit the institutions and gave concerts to the inmates. There was hardly one of the Nationalist Members who had not a relative a nun, and they would be the most dishonest men in the world if they allowed their friends to remain in these institutions if there was anything wrong. The idea of secrecy, or that there was anything to conceal, was utterly absurd. The objection of the nuns to inspection was that they believed, rightly or wrongly, that the interference of an inspector between them and the girls under their charge would weaken the authority which it was necessary for them to exercise if they were to succeed with the great work they had in hand. It was said that the nuns might treat the girls badly. It was said that in some cases such girls had been treated badly. He would point out that it was the aim and object of the nuns to induce the girls to come into the convent. These girls came from a life in which they had been absolutely unrestrained. Their life was completely revolutionised, they were subjected to discipline, and they had prayer and work. The nuns had learned from sad experience that if the girls went out after being a short time in the convent they descended to the abyss from which they had been taken. The nuns believed that they were actually responsible to Christ for the care of the girls, and they did their utmost to prevent them straying again. If the girls were underfed or overworked they would be discontented, and they would go out of the convents. There was no limit to the solicitude, devotion, and affection of the nuns. It was esteemed a miracle if a fallen woman turned round and altered her life, but that work of reform was being carried out week after week in the Irish convents. He asked the House not to weaken the hands of those by whom this miracle was being wrought… What was the object of this legislation? Was it to ensure that these girls were contented? Had ever any complaints been made by these girls in the convents? The nuns had no control over them except the consciousness of the girls in the devotion and affection of the nuns and their desire to make them happy. He did not wish to push this too far, but one of the difficulties was that the nuns had no desire to be exposed to the public. They wished to work quietly, but not secretly. It should be remembered that the convents in Dublin were inspected yearly by Archbishop Walsh; then there were the hospital inspectors, and ladies were constantly going in to visit them. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary that if he were in Dublin to-morrow and went into one of these convents he would be welcomed, and the mother would have pleasure in showing him the institution, provided that he did not go as an inspector but as a private gentleman. They were not afraid of inspection; the nuns were not afraid of inspection so far as their work was concerned; but he did ask that the Legislature would not interfere with the work of the nuns who, day after day and night after night, bestowed constant care, anxiety, and affection on these miserable creatures. He knew that some of these poor girls were the victims of men’s passions, and some of their own folly; but could there be any more beautiful or touching sight than that of these women, who had been in the convent since they were only ten or eleven years of age, taking to their hearts women from the streets who came to them for help. He could not conceive of anyone not respecting a beautiful and holy charity like that. He appealed to the House not to make this a Catholic or Irish question. He was not pleading for the nuns, but for the poor girls under their charge.

What is striking now is the extent to which ideas of ‘fallen womanhood’, virtue and unobjectionable benign protection dominated the construction of Magdalene women in Irish legal consciousness. Even by 1960, when TD’s and senators debated the suitability of  the Magdalene laundry at Sean McDermott Street in Dublin (see recent Dail debates here and here) as an  institution for detention of young women convicted of crime (see James Dillon, son of John, arguing here that it was the Church’s duty to provide institutions for this purpose), discussion was dominated by notions of chastity. In the Seanad, 1916 veteran , Senator Nora Connolly-O’Brien said:

There is nothing in this Bill against which anyone can speak, with the exception of one section. The rest of the Bill wins the approval of all but there is one section in the Bill which aroused my indignation. I think it was thoughtlessness that caused it to be inserted, because I do not think any adult person in this country is unaware of the connotation of St. Mary Magdalen’s Asylum.

There is no corrective institution in Ireland for girl delinquents. When they go before a court and are found guilty of the offence with which they are charged, there is only one course open —they must be sent to prison. There is no provision for them such as there is for boys. This Bill is concerned in one section with removing the stigma of “Borstal boy” from male juvenile delinquents. That is right because after all “Borstal” is an internationally known term and carries with it a certain stigma. In Section 9 of this Bill, the Minister proposes that we permit unconvicted girl delinquents to be sent to St. Mary Magdalen’s Asylum until they come up for trial, and any girl delinquent before she is convicted will be legally committed to St. Mary Magdalen’s Asylum and suffer for the rest of her life the stigma of having at one time been an inmate of that asylum.

I do not think there is any member of this House who is ignorant of what the stigma would mean to a girl if she had mended her ways, if she had been corrected and was leading a normal and upright life, and had to spend the rest of her life in the fear and terror of being charged with having in her youth been an inmate of St. Mary Magdalen’s Asylum. I think to a girl when she becomes an adult the stigma of having been a “Magdalen” is even greater than would be the stigma of having been a “Borstal boy” for a boy delinquent when he becomes an adult. This Bill provides that a girl will have the choice, when she is being remanded, of going to prison or to St. Mary Magdalen’s Asylum but the girl juvenile delinquents who go before a court may choose to go to the asylum under the nuns rather than go to prison while they are on remand, not knowing, not realising how the term “Magdalen” can work against her in after life.

If I were asked to advise girl delinquents, no matter what offences they were charged with, whether to go to prison on remand, or to go to St. Mary Magdalen’s Asylum on remand, I would advise them wholeheartedly to choose prison, because I think having a record of having been in prison as a juvenile delinquent would not be so detrimental to the after life of the girl as to have it legally recorded that she was an inmate of St. Mary Magdalen’s Asylum. [Some women themselves preferred to make a similar choice]

I think it was through thoughtlessness only that, when the Minister was looking for some place to put these girls, instead of prison, he allowed himself to accept that asylum and did not consider all the implications of sending them there, while on remand. I hope that now I have brought the point home to him, he will find some other convent, or establish a St. Brigid’s, as a sister institution to St. Patrick’s for these girls while they are on remand.

In this, she shared the attitude of her father, James Connolly. You can read his comments on the detention of Mary Ellen Murphy at High Park here.

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