Irish Apology on Workhouses

By Jeanne Whalen
Wall Street Journal
February 5, 2013

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324761004578286173068083416.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny apologized for the harsh conditions suffered by generations of women forced to work in so-called Magdalen Laundries, after a report found that the state helped finance the church-run workhouses and steered women into them.

Roughly 10,000 women spent time in the laundries between 1922 and the closing of the last one in 1996, working in "harsh and physically demanding" conditions for no pay, the report said. State institutions, including courts, hospitals and social services, were involved in referring about a quarter of these women to the laundries, the report found.

"To those residents who went ...