As little dignity in death as in life

‘WE should make every effort to induce them to remain in the asylum... where they are assured of the grace of a happy death.”

Walking around the gated and barbed wire-filled grounds of the Magdalene laundry at Sunday’s Well in Cork, what is certain is that the Good Shepherd Order that ran it only fulfilled one part of that promise.

Testimony from women highlights just how brutal the regime was in order to ‘induce’ women to stay. In fact some women who passed through the laundry stated that at least in the women’s gaol, built right next door to the laundry, inmates knew when they were going to be released. In the laundry such guarantees were thin on the ground.