‘They’d put me in a room with nothing to eat and no windows. Then they would cut my hair to the bone’

IRELAND
The Journal

MARY MERRITT FIRST entered the High Park Magdalene Laundry in 1947, at the age of 16.

Born in a Dublin workhouse, she was put into the care of the Sisters of Mercy in Ballinasloe, Co Galway when she was two.

Mary (85) never met her mother, and has never found out who she was.

“To this day I don’t know who my mother is,” she told TheJournal.ie last week.

I’m 85 now, I’ll be 86 next month.

After 14 years in the orphanage in Ballinasloe, Mary (who was known as Mary O’Conor at that time) said she went out one night with four other girls and stole some apples from a nearby orchard.

“They came into me the next morning – on the 7th of January 1947 – and they said O’Conor get your clothes together, you’re going to a situation in Dublin,” said Mary.

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