Magdalene Laundry Devastated My Life

Evening Echo
February 5, 2013

http://www.eveningecho.ie/2013/02/05/magdalene-laundry-devastated-my-life/

“MY LIFE has been devastated — I was left without a mother, without love, without a home, without everything a human being should have.”

Mary Smyth, who spent time in a Magdalene Laundry in Cork, was speaking this morning  just hours before a report was released on whether there was State involvement in the incarceration of thousands of women and girls in laundries where they were forced to  do unpaid work.

Mary, who was in the Good Shepherd Magdalene   Laundry in Sundays Well, was one of several women who told their stories to the interdepartmental committee who have prepared the 1,000-page report.

The committee was chaired by Senator Martin McAleese.

This morning, Mary said her Newmarket-born mother was also in a Magdalene Laundry, because she became pregnant outside of marriage with Mary.

But the pair were separated after Mary was born and she never met her mother. She said: “Being in a laundry was worse than being in a prison and we had committed no crime.

“It has devastated my whole life — I have been left shellshocked for the rest of my life.”

The Good Shepherd laundry and one on Peacock Lane, St Mary’s Road, are among 10 nationwide which were part of an18-month investigation by the interdepartmental committee for today’s report. They both closed in the early 1990s.

Most of the women who were held in the Magdalene Laundries have died, with fewer than 1,000 still alive.