UNITED KINGDOM
Dunstable Today
Adam Parris-Long
adam.parrislong@jpress.co.uk
Though nearly five decades have gone by, the horrors of the Magdalene asylums are still fresh in the memory of Mary Currington.
After being raised by nuns in her native New Ross, County Wexford, she worked on a farm and then from the age of 18 she toiled in the sewing room of a complex in Cork.
On her first day in the Magdelene asylum in 1963 Mary had her possessions seized, her hair cut and her name changed.
She told the Luton News/Dunstable Gazette: “I was given their shoes, their clothes and their haircuts. I earned pots of money for them every day without seeing any of it.
“We never even thought to ask and they never paid a stamp for us, I worked my fingers to the bone.”
Prior to her arrival in Cork, Mary, now aged 70 and living in Houghton Regis, endured a difficult upbringing in a convent after she was taken from her unmarried mother.
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