Would Life For An Inmate Of A Workhouse Have Been Much Different From That Of A Resident In A Magdalene Laundry?

[sandyRoe]

I think there wouldn't have been much difference.

[emmie]

well you had more chance of dying in the workhouse but not that much different.

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question1214166.html

[netibiza]

Yes not much difference, but poor mothers in the workhouses never got to see their children again and there was that "workhouse howl!" Dreadful ignorant times.

[AliceTickband]

I am very glad that I have never been an inmate of either place.

[DJHawkes]

there were seriousy disturbed young women in those homes who should have been given medication and help as well as those that their local parish priest felt were likely to commit sin, then there were the girls that needed somewhere to go to have their baby, but they never got out and never saw their babies either. Ignorance on the part of the parents and families is partly to blame but also the unwavering belief those parents and families had in their priest and church also caused them to allow their daughters to be removed and kept from home.

[craft1948]

2 of my grandad's uncles died in the workhouse, one in his teens and one in his 20's, and that was considered to be one of the better ones.

[sandyRoe]

It's almost unbelievable that the last Magdalene Asylum in Ireland didn't close to 1996. I'd have guessed that workhouses closed sometime in the late 1930s.

[emmie]

dj, are you referring to the Magdalen laundry, as i can't see where it says that many of the girls were mentally ill, nor indeed that they weren't anything other than unpaid workhorses.

[netibiza]

Some of the girls killed themselves and if you weren't mentally strong in the first place it would certainly drive you to madness.

[emmie]

interesting, they closed later than you would have expected

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse

[emmie]

this is the article i posted earlier, it gives lots of info and how long they have been around, not just a RC problem.

http://synonblog.dailymail.co.uk/2013/02/magdalen-laundries-or-how-british-bred-eugenics-put-a-little-magdalen-all-around-the-world.html

[netibiza]

I was born in Brighton General Hospital in 1944 and that had once been a workhouse but wasn't then (or it may have been and Mum never told me)

[netibiza]

Brighton Municipal Hospital
On 1 November 1935 the Brighton Municipal Hospital was established and took over most of the buildings, and it took over the whole site in 1939-40 with the remaining dependents evacuated once again to various establishments in the county. In 1948 the buildings became Brighton General Hospital upon the establishment of the National Health Service.

Wow relief, it was a hospital!

[emmie]

mental asylums were one thing, i used to visit a relative in one gothic pile, you couldn't have got a more startling example how not to treat people,
and as i know from experience they were daunting and very hostile places to visit and be in.

A female relative was put in one, this was many years ago, for having the audacity to have a baby of out wedlock, ghastly.

[DJHawkes]

there were girls with learning difficulties sent to these places simply because they were insolent, disruptive, promiscuous, uncommunicative, 'difficult', withdrawn, girls were taken away 'for their own good'. You can call the homes whatever name you like but there were similar places in England not just Ireland.

[netibiza]

I remember when I was younger that to have an illegitimate baby was a dreadful shame on the whole family, and it was a sin. There was a unmarried mother and baby home near us and the poor girls, you could see them occasionally sobbing. look how far we have come today.

[DJHawkes]

that's what happened here right into the 1960s. I've handled several family research projects for people who have been trying to find family that were lost in those institutions

[askyourgran]

Part of St James's hospital in Leeds used to be the Workhouse (now a museum) it wasn't far from where we lived. To a lot of the elderly people it was still a workhouse and they must have had a real dread of ending up there. I had to take one of my elderly aunts to that hospital, she was terrified I'd leave her there.

[emmie]

there does seem to be differences in the nature of the various establishments, and going on the testimonies from the now adult women who were being interviewed on the news, those who are now seeking an apology from the Catholic church, and perhaps some monetary compensation for the truly awful treatment they received. I can't see where it says they were mentally ill, disruptive, or promiscuous, seeing as how we are talking about Ireland, where this would have been a heinous crime in the families eyes.

[emmie]

BBC article today

Marina Gambold was taken to a laundry aged 16 by a priest. She remembers being forced to eat off the floor.

Maureen Sullivan, now 60, was sent to a Magdalene laundry in New Ross, County Wexford, at the age of 12.

About 10,000 women passed through the laundries in the Irish Republic between 1922 and 1996, a report has revealed.

Marina Gambold was orphaned when she was eight years old after both her parents died. She lived with her grandmother for a couple of years but when she was 16 she found she had nowhere to go.
'I was starving'

The priest then took her to the Magdalene laundry.

"I walked up the steps that day and the nun came out and said your name is changed, you are Fidelma, I went in and I was told I had to keep my silence," she said.

[carrust]

Single mothers who were once put into the laundrys are now usully sent away from Ireland either for an abortion or adoption. Guess where they end-up...England
Ireland does have a history of sending their social problems elsewhere!