Madam, – Regarding the article “No redress for residents of Magdalen laundries” (Home News, September 18th).
Those ladies worked their lives away for years in Magdalen laundries, for hotels, homes and businesses from Cork and Dublin and elsewhere, since 1870. They ran sewing rooms that turned out vestments for priests throughout the world. Beautifully smocked dresses for children’s outfitters which sold from Grafton Street, Dublin and even to London outfitters. For such skilled work the Magdalens received zilch. Did the religious orders pay taxes?
As a six-year-old in Cork’s Good Shepherd Convent I, with other children, decorated walls, worked in the bakery, sustained painful burns, had my legs broken by a bad-tempered first mistress and received no medical attention apart from tight binding for six weeks carried out by a helpful nun who “pitied me”. Our lives were in constant danger during our daily routine of enforced labour.
My only crime was the death of my young mother from tuberculosis on October 28th, 1939.
If we are to receive any payment, it should be made now, in full, with good grace. I would be painfully offended if, in future, I am told I would have to report to a “drop-in centre” in order to collect any funds due to me. I would die of embarrassment rather than spend the rest of my life (I am now aged 77 years) being constantly reminded of my tragic childhood days, in the company of people who I would rather not know.
The grounds and the school cost our religious order nothing in 1870. At that time, the mayor of Cork, Mr Hegarty collected £5,000 for five acres of land and a school building. In the late 1990s my school in Cork was sold for millions.
This whole tragic situation has to be brought to a close. – Yours, etc,
