Excerpts from In the Shadow of Eden, 2 edits
by Rachael Romero . Australian Laundries
Read excerpts from two books by Merlene Fawdry
re Australian Laundries at:
Origins Inc. Queensland, AUSTRALIA
Brainwashing and Depersonalisation to comply with the "rules" within an Australian Magdalene Laundry
by Lily Arthur
Ireland
Sex in a Cold Climate, excerpt
Documentary in english (with italian subtitles) about the abuses of the Catholic Church in Ireland
The Magdalene Sisters is a 2002 film written and directed by Peter Mullan about teenage girls who were sent to Magdalene Asylums, otherwise known as the 'Magdalen Laundries': homes for women who were labeled as "fallen" by their families or society
(though the film itself questions this).--Wikepedia
An excerpt:
Bad girls do the best sheets (AUSTRALIA)
Before the welfare net existed, religious orders used to catch orphans and unmarried mothers abandoned by their families. Alan Gill writes how girls suffered under the nuns' vale of tears.
ONE of the most ancient and thriving products of Irish industry isn't mentioned in the tourist brochures, or the guidebooks, or the economic histories. I don't mean linen, tweed or Jameson's. What I have in mind is shame.
Mary Gordon
NYTimes
....Sanctified slavery......
CBS) Someone once said the only thing really new in the world is the history we don't know. The Irish people are learning that right now and it's a painful experience.
Alan Gill, Orphans of the Empire (Random House).1997, Australia
This deeply moving book is about the 70,000 young so-called orphans who were shipped to Australia from Britain, from 1940 to the 1970's and sent to various homes and orphanages such as those run by the Christian Brothers, Barnados, and other groups. These were children from poor families who were told later their parents were dead.
Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), by James Smith, whose study of the controversial workhouses where socially marginalized and so-called fallen women and girls were confined throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The “laundries”—named for the Magdalene movement, which originally provided refuge homes for former prostitutes—were asylums for women seen as dangerous to the moral fiber of Irish society.
External Links
Irish Parliament Receives Further Overwhelming Evidence of State Involvement in Magdalene Laundries Abuse
Posted on September 19, 2012
‘Let our histories be visible’
Human rights museology and the National Museum of Australia’s Inside: Life in Children’s Homes and Institutions by Adele Chynoweth
http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/volume_7_number_1/commentary/let_our_histories_be_visible
School of History Seminar Series 2012 - Women crucified for the sins of the fathers: Censorship and the crucifixion motif in the art of Rachael Romero
Adele Chynoweth, School Visitor, School of History, ANU
Magdalene group seeks action on redress
PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent
www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0921/1224324231665.html
THE JUSTICE for Magdalenes (JFM) group has demanded “Government action for Magdalene survivors immediately”.
This week every TD and Senator will receive a redacted copy of JFM’s recent principal submission to the Inter-Departmental Committee investigating State involvement with the Magdalene laundries. “We do so with survivors’ consent and identities have been protected,” it said yesterday.
The State Involvement with the Magdalene Laundries document “offers overwhelming and irrefutable evidence of State complicity in the abuses experienced by young girls and women in these institutions,” it said.
The group’s original submission was supported by 795 pages of newly gathered survivor testimony, which was consistent with the 3,707 pages of archival evidence and legislative documentation also provided to the committee by JFM.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/03/asylum-seekers-ireland-magdalene-laundries
Last week, a Sinn Féin private members motion in Dáil Éireann urged the government to issue a long-overdue apology to the survivors of the Magdalene laundries, an act that would allow them to draw pensions and access a reparations scheme. The government argued that it was obliged to wait until the end of the year for the final report of the inter-departmental committee investigating state involvement with the laundry system, and the motion was defeated.
Women who have Lost their Way by Rachael Romero
Lillie and Rachael with crown of thorns in the laundry by Rachael Romero