In numbers: the report into the State’s role in the Magdalene Laundries
By Gavan Reilly
Image: James Horan/Photocall Ireland
THE INTER-DEPARTMENTAL report into the State’s role in the operation of the Magdalene Laundries, and the human rights abuses that took place there, was formally published today.
Below are a selection of numerical statistics about its contents, and about the report itself.
601 – The number of days between the government’s decision to establish a an inter-departmental committee to report on the State’s role in the Laundries, and the date of publication of the final report.
39 – The total number of PDF files that make up the entirety of the report, which have a total aggregate file size of 100 megabytes. The total report, including appendices, stretches to well over 1,000 pages.
10 – The total number of Magdalene institutions included in the report’s terms of reference. The ten institutions were run by four religious orders. This does not include two other institutions – St Mary’s Stanhope Street and St Mary’s Summerhill – which were formally considered “training centres”, though they were Magdalene Laundries in all but name.
1,200 – The total overnight capacity of the ten facilities listed. High Park in Drumcondra had the highest capacity, at 250.
10,012 – The total number of women who were admitted to eight of the ten Laundries between 1922 and 1996, when the last Laundry closed. There were a total of 14,607 admissions to the eight laundries concerned, indicating that thousands of women were admitted to various laundries on multiple occasions.
6,582 – The total number of admissions, out of the 14,607, for which no route of entry or source of referral is known. This means that in 45 per cent of cases, there is no surviving documentation to indicate how they were referred to a laundry they ended up being admitted to.
2,124 – The total number of documented cases where someone was admitted to a Laundry as a result of a State referral. This included 82 admissions in 1943, the highest year on record.
23.8 years – The average age of a woman at the time she was admitted to a Magdalene Laundry. The median age was 20.
89 years – The age of the oldest woman recorded to have been admitted to a Laundry.
9 – The age of the youngest known woman to have been admitted.
2,188 - The total number of people who were admitted to a Magdalene Laundry who stayed there for less than three months in total. A total of 3,752 stayed in a Laundry for less than a year.
886 – The number of women who were resident in a Laundry for over five years. This includes 476 women who were resident in a Laundry for ten years or more. High Park had the longest average residency, at 256.8 weeks – just under five years.
69 – The total number of women admitted to a Laundry, whose entry documentation listed a husband as their next of kin. 9 listed a daughter as their next of kin.
879 – The number of women who are known to have died while in a Magdalene Laundry. This equates to about 8.78 per cent, or roughly two out of every 23 women who entered.
95 – The age of the oldest woman known to have died while resident in a Laundry, at the time of her death.
15 – The age of the youngest woman known to have died while living there.
213 - The number of residents who simply ran away from a Laundry.
815 - The minimum number of women who were admitted to a Laundry from 1970 onwards. The admissions include 8 in the 1990s, up until the time of the closure of the last Laundry in 1996.
351 – The number of women who were admitted to a laundry in 1941, the busiest year for admissions.
37 – The average number of women who were in custody in Irish prisons each day in 1984, compared to 1,557 men. The report finds evidence of a policy where admission to a Magdalene Laundry was seen as an alternative to imprisonment for female offenders. 647 women were admitted to Laundries through the Criminal Justice system.
€11,146.06 – The cost to the State of the work of the seven-member committee. This was through travel expenses and the cost of renting venues to meet with survivors; the seven members of the committee did not receive any payment or stipend for their work.
Comments (22 Comments)
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Fiona Mullen 05/02/13 Report this commentThe whole thing gives me chills.
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Rory Conway 05/02/13 Report this commentThis whole thing is dreadful. 1996? That is hard to tolerate.
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padraig 05/02/13 Report this commentThe last ones were I think incarcerating older women who were completely institutionalised. It doesn’t make the last ones any less wrong.
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padraig 05/02/13 Report this commentMostly, that is, eight admissions then was shocking.
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Liam 05/02/13 Report this commentThese laundries are wrong on so many levels, everyone involved in them should be ashamed of themselves.
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Mary Mc Carthy 05/02/13 Report this commentWhere are the missing records ? Where they destroyed deliberately ? I find it hard to believe all the facts and figures given to the missing records and the small amount of surviving women interviewed !
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Adelle Hearn 05/02/13 Report this commentI remember being in 3rd or 4th class and the nuns that taught us used to threaten to send us to the good shepard convent/laundry if we were bold, we were also told that’s where we would end up if we didn’t work hard. That was in 1992!
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Conor Gallagher 05/02/13 Report this commentAre there likely to be any prosecutions? Or any accountability? (Compensation obviously must follow). The scale of this is as shocking as the fact that so many politicians, civil servants, bishops, judges, lawyers, gardai etc not merely turned a blind eye to it but facilitated their continued existence right up to 1996.
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Colum McCaffery 09/02/13 Report this commenthttp://colummccaffery.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/the-mcaleese-report-is-disgraceful-no-profits-no-assaults-this-is-mockery-and-it-should-be-stopped-now/
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Patrick Lynch 05/02/13 Report this commentChristian Ireland that’s a laugh,again they should be ashamed of themselves.
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Conor Buggy 05/02/13 Report this comment9! The youngest age sent to slavery! That poor poor child :(
The utter shame of Catholicism. Abuse of children, slavery of children, death of children. I hope when the perpetrators stand in front of Christ he will give them what they deserve for doing all of that in his name.
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Karolyn Cassidy 05/02/13 Report this commentI think there was younger than age 9, there was an article here a few days ago of someone’s mother who was sent at 2, she was never thought how to deal with outside living i.e using money and was still institutionalised in 2003, Margaret I believe her name was, her twins carry her story.
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Karin Carthy 05/02/13 Report this commentI remember that story. She was in some sort of care home or orphanage from the age of four I think, and then sent to a laundry at 15 or 16, simply because she outgrew the home. After a year or two in the laundry she somehow ended up pregnant (that’s a whole other chapter of abuse) and her twins were taken from her. No one ever claimed her so she lived there her entire life, I think one of her adopted daughters tracked her down when the poor woman was in her sixties.
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Karin Carthy 05/02/13 Report this commentEight admissions as late as the nineties?? That’s horrifying.
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Jason Bourne 05/02/13 Report this comment????? – The number of Irish women who were worked to death and burried in unmarked graves by the laundries
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Marie Agnew 05/02/13 Report this commentOur slavery shame
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ptriley 05/02/13 Report this commentHell on earth for those poor girls and women.
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David Dolan 05/02/13 Report this commentSomebody was paid for the work done by these laundries. These are no different in my view to the slavemasters of the cotton picking plantations of the confederate states.
The courts and other state institutions provided the poor girls to these wretched places. How many times do we have to show the error of trusting organised religion with our youth.
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Harry Price 05/02/13 Report this commentState/Church with courts and gardai————–DICTATORS as a gang uplolding GENOCIDE
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Mary Kavanagh 05/02/13 Report this commentThe women who were in prison in 1984 were the lucky ones. They at least got a release date. Absolutely shameful from first to last.
And our Taoiseach and Justice minister have yet again covered themselves and their government in glory. Anyone see Alan Shatter on the Six One news? Waffle, waffle, fluff, fluff. It’s beyond embarrassing at this stage.
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Julie 05/02/13 Report this commentYa I seen him, he did what politicians have been doing for years and are now experts, they avoid question or just answer them with waffle! PEOPLE POWER , only solution !
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ADEBAYO FLYNN 06/02/13 Report this commentA foreign friend of mine said the other day to me that h noticed the people of Ireland are all so hardy and just get on with things but the government have always been an advert for sneaky, untrustworthy chancers.
My friend is on the ball,
ade wha? ade bayo!
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Joe Sixtwo 05/02/13 Report this commentReligion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful” is attributed to Seneca. ….The “special relationship” between successive Irish governments and the catholic church is a chilling example of what is meant by this.
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Andrew Brennan 05/02/13 Report this commentThe Magdalene women reduced to numbers – again!
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padraig 05/02/13 Report this commentThe training centre exclusion for St Mary’s Summerhill makes me a little wary. That was a laundry. Sure, like reformatories, there might have been some actual job training, but every bit as prison like as other laundries and reformatories. Still, this measure of accounting for Ireland’s prison camps, is good and welcome.
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Niall Murphy 05/02/13 Report this commentReally sad to Imagine their suffering at the hands of the crazy f#@!*@s within the state and church hierarchy.
We all know how corrupt & messed up our country is from the banking/political robbery which has taken place recently but the church and state abuse of children and adults alike over the last century and probably longer is really stomach churning & maddening!
Who exactly is still turning up at mass? How has this awful institution continued to exist?
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Maggie Elizabeth Walsh 05/02/13 Report this commentSickening
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padraig 05/02/13 Report this commentIs an old nun down voting the comments, or just the usual trolls? These laundries were a stain on this country.
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Kevin Maher 05/02/13 Report this commentAfter WW2 in Germany they had special trials. When found guilty, the outcome for the perpetrators was not good. We need something similar here. Proper trials. Teams of police/miltary go to the institutions in question and take all documentation. No asking just take it. Peruse it. Find the guilty ones. Then prison. That is the way it should be. Problem is these criminals have had a heads up and all the evidence will/has been destroyed. Similar to the heads up the criminal bankers were given by politicians , so that they could sign property and valuables to their spouses, and avoid punishment. These criminals have to be taken to task. The government has to compensate these women. The wrongs have to be made right as much as they can be.