Apology for workhouse women

The Irish government today apologised to the thousands of women who were locked up in Magdalene laundries - church workhouses for unmarried mothers.

Over 10,000 women were forced to work for nothing in the laundries that ran from 1922 to 1996.

Martha Fairlie reports:

Click here for the full story on Magdalene laundries.

The Justice for Magdalene group's Dr Katherine O'Donnell said laundry victims "lived in shame and secrecy and silence" and called for a state apology and reparation scheme.

The inquiry found the following about everyday life in a laundry:

• It reported, a harsh and physically demanding environment with a cold atmosphere and a rigid uncompromising work and prayer regime.
• Both verbal and psychological abuse was common.
• It was rare for a woman to have her head shaved as punishment but they had their hair cut back short in a bob.

More than 100 women were spoken to by the inquiry committee, more than half of whom are in nursing homes.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter said he regretted that the laundries were not investigated until 2011.

The majority of women forced into Magdalene laundries were there for minor offences such as theft and not paying for a train ticket.

A small number of women were there for prostitution - despite the stigma attached to those who were sent to the laundries and became known as Maggies, a slang term for prostitute.

The report also confirmed that a garda could arrest a girl or a woman without warrant if she was being recalled to the laundry or if she had run away.

The inquiry into Magdalene laundries found the following statistics:

• Around 50% of the girls and women put to work were under the age of 23.
• 40% - more than 4,000 - spent more than a year incarcerated.
• Some 15% spent more than five years while the average stay has been calculated at seven months.

• The youngest death on record was 15 and the oldest 95.
• Some of the women were sent to laundries more than once - records show a total of 14,607 admissions, and a total of 8,025 known reasons for being sent to a laundry.

The statistics outlined in the report are based on records of only eight of the 10 laundries with the Sisters of Mercy operated Dun Laoghaire and Galway missing from the records.

Survivors of Magdalene laundries have rejected Taoiseach Enda Kenny's apology and demanded a fuller admission from the government and the religious orders involved.

Another survivor Mary Smyth said she endured inhumane conditions in a laundry, which she said was worse than being in prison

The Justice for Magdalenes group said it was aware of at least 988 women who are buried in laundry plots in cemeteries across Ireland and therefore must have stayed for life, however, the inquiry could only certify 879.

The last laundry, Sean MacDermott Street in Dublin's north inner city, closed in 1996.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said action should have been taken before to clear the names and reputations of the women put to work in Magdalene laundries.

He said: "That the stigma, that the branding together of the residents, all 10,000 needs to be removed and should have been removed long before this and I'm really sorry that that never happened, and I regret that never happened.

"I'm sorry that this release of pressure and understanding of so many of those women was not done before this, because they were branded as being the fallen women, as they were referred to in this state."