Donnybrook Unfair

Getting a coffee recently in Donnybrook, I searched for somewhere to sit and enjoy it, somewhere I might also get a bit of sunshine. I found a very nice spot, opposite what used to be Kiely’s pub. This seated open garden is beside an outdoor shop who use the green space to advertise their terracotta pigs and other animals, making it a very whimsical spot to take your ease. I sat facing the sun, with my back to the road, further down the lane in front of me I could see a large red bricked chimney. I was compelled to explore, those of you who will know what I found will be shocked that I didn’t know it was there.

There is no sign, nothing to tell what this old hexagonal chimney was used for, it wasn’t until I got home and looked it up that I learnt it was part of the Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry. I felt sick, especially when I read that it only closed its operation in 1996!

It is hidden away up a crescent lane, almost as though it was designed to be kept from public view.

I went to secondary school in Donnybrook during the 80s and unknowingly went by this building every day from the upper deck of the 64A bus. As someone who hated school, I felt I was heading into prison, another day of dull classes and impending exams. I railed at the loss of freedom, no walking on the grass, knee socks up to the knee, you could only go to the shops at lunchtime from 5^th year. Meanwhile a few 100 yards down the road there were girls the same age as me, enduring a warped regime that made mine look like Disneyland. They didn’t have families to go home to, or school work to worry about, they didn’t have a life beyond those gates.

Girls ended up here for all sorts of reasons, perhaps because they had got pregnant and were seen as bringing shame on their families. The boys who were equally, or in the case of rape, completely culpable, went on with their lives unscathed. Some girls came in because of poverty, another mouth that couldn’t afford to be fed at home. Others were rounded up by the Legion of Mary, and brought here for their own good. Society blindly glossed over anything it couldn’t handle, and was complicit in allowing girls to disappear for the sake of appearances and supposed decency.

Interviews with survivors of the Magdalene Laundries paint a grim picture of slavery. They worked 7 days a week from dawn, endlessly washing sheets and table cloths, starching shirts, mending clothes, pressing altar cloths. Customers had no idea that the neat hampers of fresh laundry came by dint of a cruel institution not dissimilar to concentration camps.

I spoke recently with a friend who worked with Donnybrook just a few years ago. A few dozen women were still living there, women whose whole adult lives had been spent in institutions and who the convent wanted to reintegrate into the community following a directive from the HSE to de-institutionalise. In a series of conversations with these women, it became clear that many of them had little or no life skills. In their youth, they received no education here, instead they were broken, used as free labour, many would never be able for life on the outside. Similarly, in industrial schools, many who were released at 18 were so used to being institutionalised they quickly ended up in prison which was a home from home.

One former worker here spoke of a dog who had wandered into the laundry and was kept as a pet by one of the girls. A nun discovered it and made all the girls stand around as she killed the dog in front of them to teach them all a lesson.

Many who left and went on to build meaningful lives of their own, stayed silent about their formative years. A silence that they grew up in as they were not allowed to speak to one another when they were working or in their dormitories at night. Often, they were given new names on entering the laundries, their past erased, making it very hard for them to trace family.

The cruel regime in these laundries was overseen by women who themselves were a cog in a very dysfunctional wheel. Perhaps they bore a bitterness about their own experience. Some had been sent away to the convent, sentenced to live a life without love, or choice. Many of their own human rights had been taken away and this possibly infused their view of the girls with a jealousy that led to cruelty.

The Religious Sisters of Charity have sold this site and the new owners have permission to build apartments on it. This would be a real shame. It needs to be preserved as a memorial to all those whose lives were robbed in servitude to this cruel industry. Its history is dark, and like other sombre sites it is an invaluable reminder to future generations.

This site is completely intact, with all the fittings and machines still there. Hampers and baskets remain, there are ledgers and records, and on the walls, crucifixes, religious statues and pictures still hang. It would be ideal to preserve as a museum.

Also, given the lack of respect shown here for human life it is not beyond possibility that there are further unmarked graves on this site. Just as Catherine Corless discovered in Tuam.

Today the Taoiseach will give a state apology to survivors of mother and baby homes. I have no doubt it is well intentioned. However, if I presented at A&E with an open wound, no amount of platitudes would heal it. Instead, it would need to be examined, corrected and protected. The religious institutions need to listen to these women’s stories, to understand and genuinely acknowledge the pain they caused. Not just to the girls but to the next generation denied their mother’s love. Only with full openness and recognition can we ever move on from this shambles.

Video footage of inside the Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry is available to watch via this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YETH7W0yCBg