Dark History - 125: Dark History: Thousands of Women Died in These Secret Asylums

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Hi friends, happy almost St. Patty’s Day! I’ll be honest with you… it’s hard to shock me anymore. So when I tell you that this story that I found *SHOOK ME* to my core… you know it’s for real. While I was looking into lesser-known Irish history, I kept reading about these things called the Magdalene Laundries. And while something like “laundry” seems innocent enough, this story is anything but that. These Catholic Church corruption-founded facilities destroyed the lives of countless women, and justice has yet to be served–even to this day. I appreciate you for coming by, and tune in next week for more Dark History.  Want some cool Bailey Merch?  Shop Dark History Merch: https://www.baileysarian.com _______ Go to https://www.Quince.com/darkhistory for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.  Go to https://www.magicspoon.com/DARKHISTORY to grab a variety pack and try it today! And be sure to use our promo code DARKHISTORY at checkout to save five dollars off your order!  _______ You can find the Dark History podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts, and every Thursday here on my YouTube for the visual side of things.  Apple Podcast- https://www.apple.co/darkhistory Dark History Merch-  https://www.baileysarian.com _______ FOLLOW ME AROUND   Tik Tok: https://bit.ly/3e3jL9v Instagram: http://bit.ly/2nbO4PR Facebook: http://bit.ly/2mdZtK6 Twitter: http://bit.ly/2yT4BLV Pinterest: http://bit.ly/2mVpXnY Youtube: http://bit.ly/1HGw3Og Snapchat: https://bit.ly/3cC0V9d  Discord: https://discord.gg/BaileySarian RECOMMEND A STORY HERE: [e-mail]  Business Related Emails: [e-mail] Business Related Mail:  Bailey Sarian  4400 W. Riverside Dr., Ste 110-300  Burbank, CA 91505 Dark History is an Audioboom Original.

Changing a light bulb should be simple. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Uh-oh, that's not supposed to happen. Quickly submitting and tracking a claim on the Bell Air Direct app actually is simple. Bell Air Direct, insurance simplified. Sometimes I like to look into the future, you know, to see like what holidays are coming up. Because I think it's fun to do a story that ties into like what's going on in the real world. In this case, I saw that St. Patrick's Day was like right around the corner. So I decided to look into some Irish history.

And I realized the only thing so many of us know about Ireland is the potato famine. And that's kind of like... Ehh, sorry. Sorry, Ireland. I'm sorry. Now, I'll be honest with you, it's hard to shock me anymore. So when I tell you that this story I found shook me to my core, you know it's for real. Am I right? Pound it.

Well, I was looking into unknown Irish history, unknown especially to Americans. I kept reading about this thing called the Magdalen Laundries. They sounded so innocent and pure. All about cleanliness. Like nothing to see here, just laundry. But that is exactly what the Catholic Church wanted people to think. Because these laundries turned out to be a network of facilities that destroyed the lives of countless women.

They were part prison, part work camp, part reform school, and were open for business for about 231 years, until a mass grave site was discovered and blew this whole scandal wide open. This episode is about the horrific truth behind Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. Ah! ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Hi friends, I hope you are having a wonderful day today.

My name is Bailey Sarian and I'd like to welcome you to my podcast, Dark History. Okay, sorry Joan. Our podcast, Dark History. She's holding a gun to me, help me. Here we believe that history does not have to be boring. It might be tragic, usually it is right. It might be happy, but either way it's our dark history. So all you need to do is sit back, relax, and let's talk about that hot juicy history. Goss! And today is dark, okay? Before we begin, I just wanted

to like give everyone a heads up. At this episode, there will be some stories that involve sexual abuse. So just a disclaimer ahead of time. And I'll make sure to do this more often moving forward for you as well. Okay, so our story begins in the mid-1700s. To set the stage, you need to know that in Ireland, religion was, and still really is, everything. The church told the Irish who they could be friends with, where they could live, what school they went to, and also Irish who they could be friends with, where they could live, what school they went to, and also like who they could marry. If the church said jump, the Irish said how high, Jesus. Back then people in Ireland were either Protestant or Catholic.

And as time went on and the country became independent, more people or Catholic and the Catholic Church got stronger. But no matter what religion you identify with, everyone agreed on one big thing. Society was going to hell in a handbasket. There was a crisis and that crisis came in the form of corrupt woman. Or as the Irish called them, the quote, fallen woman.

End quote. The phrase fallen woman was used to describe ladies who had lost their innocence and had fallen from the grace of God, just like the most famous fallen woman of all time, Eve. You know, she ignored God's message and got us kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Like never mind the men's part in this. Men were simply encouraged not to sin, but women were the sin. And the worst kind of fallen woman to them was the sex worker. And there was this paranoia at the time

that sex work was on the rise. It was believed that any woman who had premarital sex or got pregnant out of wedlock would be on the fast track to sell in her body and her soul. This is when a rich white lady shows up and decides that she's going to save these poor souls. She's going like full Michelle Pfeiffer in dangerous minds. Lady Arabella Denney was born in 1707 with a silver spoon in her mouth.

Her mom came from a wealthy family and her dad was the first Earl of County Kerry. So Lady Arabella was essentially like local royalty. Her life is essentially eat, pray, love, you know, like she goes to spas, has dinner parties and hangs out with her wealthy friends. And it's great, you know? But I guess she was feeling like, you know, her life didn't really have much purpose. That is, until one day she reads an article

about a place called the Foundling Hospital. Foundlings was the word used for babies who were abandoned, sometimes even killed because they were born out of wedlock, which was a major sin. So the Foundling Hospital was trying to address this very dark, I'm using quotations here, dark problem. But the real problem was conditions at this hospital were horrific. They just didn't have enough resources. When Lady Aurebella reads this, she realizes, hmm, this is my philanthropist moment. She can actually create some meaningful change here.

So she decided to go full extreme home makeover and set out to revamp the Foundling Hospital in a very big way. She was like, that guy, Ty, move that bus! New hospital. Great. Not only did she completely renovate this hospital building,

but she treated the staff like people. What a concept, huh? She made sure the nurses were paid properly and that the working conditions were actually good, not just enough to get by. All this proved that Lady Aurebella was great at business and could get a job done, and her next project kind of like fell right into her lap. While she was running the hospital, historians say that it's likely that she read letters from the mothers of those illegitimate children, aka the fallen woman we talked about earlier.

And that's when Arabella had like this light bulb moment that changed everything. I'm sorry to put you on blast Joan, but I had to take her debit card away because she has an online shopping problem. No, you cannot dip into the budget for the show. I mean, look, if you're gonna splurge, you might as well do what I do. Do it right. You gotta check out Quince. Quince is here to revolutionize the way you shop because they are committed to making remarkably high quality essentials at a price that is

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Lady Aurebella figures if she can get right to the source of the issue and rehab these fallen women, maybe there won't be so many foundlings and orphans that need hospitals. On June 11th, 1767, Lady Arabella and some other rich investors rented a house in the center of Dublin. They called it, quote, the Magdalene Asylum for Penitent Females, end quote.

First of all, that name, Magdalene, if you don't know, it comes from the Bible. It's one of Jesus's BFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF Ask any Christian or Catholic walking down the street who Mary Magdalene is and they will say the sex worker who washed Jesus's feet, but I'm about to ruin it for you. I'm sorry Here's a little fun fact you can tell them like there is literally Nothing in the Bible that says Mary Magdalene was ever a sex worker Sorry, I mean go look maybe I'm wrong. I don't think so. But go look. I'm telling you. But it's a story people have told for centuries. The original idea behind this place was to be like a reformatory, a place where these fallen women could go and like restart their lives. These weren't just about sex workers, but quote, seduced and abandoned women

who had been discarded by society for no longer being pure. But this was Ireland in the 1700s. So seduced and discarded was just as dirty as the word prostitute. So they lumped them all together. The idea was that these women would stay at the asylum for a couple of years while they learned a quote, respectable profession. They could take up skills like knitting, embroidering, sewing, you know, and while they weren't

learning, they would be put to work, mostly doing laundry. Yeah, this is the laundry comes into place. It makes sense now. This laundry came from all sorts of places like local businesses, public schools, government departments, and even like the military. These places would pay the asylum for the laundry, which kept the lights on and like the food on the table for these women.

Because of this, Lady Arabella's facility became known as the Magdalene Laundry. Makes sense. It's like when you hear the movie title in the movie. You know? After its success, more Magdalene Laundries opened up in places like the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and Ireland. And it was clear the laundries were really onto something. And to be fair, at the beginning, they truly tried to help these fallen women. Originally, women even checked themselves into the MacDillan Laundry. It was their choice.

It seemed like a good opportunity for a new start. If a woman was a sex worker and she wanted out, there was finally a path forward. So it's great, you know? But then, tragedy strikes, and the laundries take a sharp left into Funky Town. From 1845 to 1852, Ireland experienced the Great Famine, aka the Potato Famine, where about 1 million people died of starvation and another million left the country. And it reshaped Ireland forever. And during this time, the people were in desperate need of some kind of like leadership, some guidance, someone in charge. And who do people turn to when it feels like the end of the world? This was a hard time for everyone, and philanthropists couldn't raise enough money to keep running these Magdalen laundries, so the Catholic Church steps in and decides to take over.

And instead of running them as a charity, they would now be a for-profit business moving forward. At a certain point, they realized they had a cash cow on their hands. Somebody's like, hey, if there are more women in these laundries, we could wash more laundry and make more money, plus save more souls. It would be a win-win-win for the church, the government, and society, except for the church, the government, and society.

Except for the women, of course. But who gives a shit about them? By the late 1800s, there were about 41 Magdalene laundries in Ireland alone, run by different nuns and different Catholic groups. And women weren't going there voluntarily anymore. Mm-mm, nay nay. By the 1920s and 30s, the Irish government and families were now sending women and young girls

to the Magdalen laundries, usually against their will. This included women from psychiatric institutions and jails, and even women with special needs. And something, phew, I found so screwed up, is that women were also sent there because they, the women, were sexually assaulted. Yeah, it was their problem that they were sexually assaulted. One survivor, a woman named Martha Cooney,

was raped by a family member when she was only 14. She was obviously traumatized and shared that this happened to her with her cousin, who she thought she could trust. That cousin ratted her out to the whole family and the next day Martha was sent to the laundries. This is the kind of story that actually inspired a famous movie called The Magdalene Sisters. 10 out of 10, recommend. The laundry became a place for parents

to send their problem children. They would send their unmarried daughters who had gotten pregnant before marriage. Basically, this was a way for them to like hide them. Can't let the neighbors know about Eileen's little secret, you know? These parents relied on the word of the church who made them believe they had no choice. The state did not provide any support for those poor girls.

And then a major thing happened that sealed the fate of the Magdalen laundries forever. In 1922, after a three-year war, Ireland won its independence from England. This meant England had no more control over the Irish government, and the power that once belonged to England shifted over to, you guessed it, the Catholic Church. Yeah, the Catholic Church became even more powerful. They were seen as the highest moral authority in the land, and something like 94% of the population was now Catholic. I mean, you definitely don't see that anymore. Literally, everyone you knew was Catholic,

and it was just how society was. This is when newly-free Ireland became obsessed with presenting themselves as a quote, pure, moral nation. And there's this intense church-fueled panic about sexual purity. So the Magdalene Laundries became a catch-all for any woman who weren't considered pure. Instead of a vision for a place where outcast women could start again, the Magdalalen Laundries had morphed into this carceral institution

that anyone could be sent to without warning. One woman who spent time in a Magdalen Laundrie stated, quote, in Ireland, especially in those days, the church ruled the roost. The church was always right. You never criticized the priest. You never criticized the holy nuns. You did what they said without questioning the reason why." So it's safe to say that

the church was essentially the government. And they must have had some good PR because no one knew what the hell was going on in these laundries. To the outside world, these nuns were angels sent from above to save the whores. Why wouldn't they be trusted? Plus, hey, I mean, they're doing a service and helping restore the good name of Irish families. The most important thing in this Catholic society was to not bring shame upon your family.

And trust me, anything could bring shame. If you kissed a boy in the street, shame. Wearing a dress that shows your ankles, shame. A priest molests you, that's on you, shame. And the worst thing you could do in this time period as a woman was lose your virginity out of wedlock or God forbid, get pregnant. That would be the ultimate shame. Now the qualifications for

getting into the laundry were expanded. I mean women were getting sent there for all kinds of random ass reasons. Like if you were considered a flirt, pack your bags off to the laundries. Oh and my favorite reason you could get sent away, if you were considered too hot. Mm-hmm, seriously. Too hot, you look good, too hot, out. There were actually two categories of women, the fallen ones and the falling ones, AKA they were in danger of falling. One of these girls was a teenager named Phyllis Morkin who lived in an orphanage that was connected to the MacDillan Laundries.

When she was a teenager, the nuns gave her the up down, you know, looking at her like, mm, mm-hmm. And they told her literally like, you're hot. If you leave this orphanage, you're gonna get knocked up. So we're gonna send you to the laundries. You're falling. Honestly, it kind of reminded me of our witches episode. Like if you sneeze wrong,

your ass was in a carriage on the way to the nuns. If you sneeze and you looked cute doing it. Bad shame. Bye. People instinctively trusted the church and therefore they trusted the laundries. Sending women there wasn't seen as like a big deal. Publicly they were seen as a place of correction and also worship where women could become pure again. But the thing was no one really knew what was happening on the inside. And until you got there and then you realized

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with a delicious bowl of high protein cereal at magicspoon.com slash dark history and use the code dark history to save $5 off. A big thank you to Magic Spoon for sponsoring today's episode. Now let's get back to today's story. Obviously these places are called the Magdalen Laundries, so the girls knew they were going to be put to work doing laundry. It was in the name. They show up and they're like, just show me where the goddamn laundry room is like I get it. But listen, the

whole laundry thing was kind of like a fake out because washing dirty clothes for the entire city is, you know, it's very exhausting and kind of gross, but the work wasn't the worst part about the Magdalen laundries. I mean, not by a long shot. Now here's what was actually going on inside. As soon as you get to the laundry, you get examined. Sometimes this meant being stripped naked. Sometimes there was even hazing. Like a nun would strip the new girls, have them stand all together, and they would point, laugh, and like compare their bodies. It was like, what the fuck? I mean, I know, I was like, I thought these were women of God. What happened to thou shall not judge, ladies?

Then after that, you were handed a uniform, but like not for school. It was actually a work uniform. And then, get this, they renamed the girls. So they stripped them of their real legal names and rename them after a saint. Some former Magdalene Laundry inmates even described getting the GI Jane treatment the second they got a work uniform. Like right off the bat the nuns would chop off all of their hair. I'm talking about like the worst kind of buzz cut you you ever see. It was bad. They weren't like cutting the hair off with scissors, not even like kitchen scissors.

They were essentially sawing it off with a knife as short as they could get it, like up by your scalp. So sometimes the ladies would get like a bloody scalp and if that happened, that was that was on you. That's fault maybe shouldn't have moved. There were no mirrors in the entire building no one ever celebrated birthdays or even knew how old they were. The nuns were absolutely hell-bent on making you forget that you were a human being. You were just a mindless worker and in addition you were a sinner and you would be treated as such. The living conditions were horrific like you were a sinner and you would be treated as such. The living conditions were horrific,

like you were literally in prison. According to the Justice from Magdalen's research page, quote, once inside girls and women were imprisoned behind locked doors, barred or unreachable windows and high walls. They were usually given no information as to when or whether they would be released." End quote.

You could try to escape, but there were usually pieces of broken glass cemented on the other side of the wall. Kind of like a booby trap. So the chances on you getting over the wall through the window and not landing on this jagged glass was like very slim. Good luck. Have you guys ever seen these jagged glass fences?

A lot of people kind of break glass and put it like on a window sill or around like a planter to prevent people from coming in or whatever. It's like a, you know, it's their own form of security, but it's scary looking, it's aggressive. And if you did manage to like get out somehow, you couldn't celebrate just yet

because you had to make it past the local authorities. And those snitches were constantly on the lookout for runaways. So if you got caught, you were returned back to the laundries and the nuns would then punish you by sending you to a different Magdalen laundry, which may not seem that bad, but it meant your sentence was essentially now starting over. Day one, baby. So a lot of women just shut the hell up and waited to get through the system until they were released. They didn't want to cause any problems, right? But there was no guarantee of when you

would get out or if you would get out at all. I mean, it was kind of, it's kind of like worse than a prison because at least in prison, you know how long your sentence is. Either you're getting out or you're spending life in prison, right? And it's like, well, at least you know. Woman could be there for a few weeks, for a decade, and many, they never got out. You could either escape or hope that a relative would come and get you. Otherwise, you were pretty much stuck there.

Your best hope was to follow the rules and prove to the nuns that you were really being transformed by the laundries. Like, oh my god, I never want to open my legs again. I'm saved. The first and most important rule of the MacDillan laundries was to zip your lips. The laundries were said to be very quiet. No talking, no relationships, rules at all times. You were not allowed to have friends, or make small talk, or even like gossip at all. So except for church or work,

it was dead silent all of the time. But if you didn't manage to sneak a letter out, there would be nuns who would make it their job to intercept and destroy the letters before they reached anyone. They were silencing them and keeping them further and further away from their families. The nuns would also play psychological mind games with these women. They would constantly tell them that they were nothing, that they came from nothing,

that they would never be anything, and they took advantage of how vulnerable and lonely they were. They wanted them to forget about the outside world and forced them to focus on working. And the work they had to do was hard. Most of these girls were underage and they were doing the work of full grown men. Every morning trucks full of dirty clothes and linen were dumped at the laundry's doorstep. Women were woken up by the sound of a bell at 6 a.m. They rushed to work. When my mind hears laundry, it thinks like laundry machine, right?

But girl, this is a long time ago, okay? All the laundry was done by hand. Women would be washing, you know, not pretty nasty laundry by hand in ice in ice cold buckets, it was said until like their hands turned blue. When the clothes were finally washed and hung to dry, they then had to be ironed with these industrial like super dangerous irons for hours. And these irons would cause serious burns on the women.

In my mind, I was picturing like the scene in Willy Wonka where Charlie's mom is stirring that giant pot of clothes and it kind of looks like soup. I always thought it was, no it wasn't soup, it was clothes. Kind of like that. But no one was singing and obviously there was no chocolate bar. The money that the laundry made went right back into keeping the laundry open.

The woman didn't see a dime of that money, why would they? Not for you, silly rabbit. They were forced to work in this prison pretty much for free. I mean, you could call it essentially slave labor. That's what it was. They were also in charge of keeping the prisons absolutely spotless, top to bottom. They would be on their hands and knees on the cold stone floors, scrubbing and scrubbing until the nuns came and told them to stop. Many women reportedly had walking issues

from cleaning on their knees all day. After all this manual labor, these women couldn't even look forward to like taking a break for a meal because the food situation was barely there. The nuns believed there shouldn't be any comfort at these laundries and this included food. This meant if you were living in a laundry you were constantly on the verge of starvation. Bread and water was really all you could count on. I mean at least you get some frozen vegetables

in prison you you know? It's kind of sad that the comparison, we're making a comparison to prison, cause you know, well, whatever, but it was worse than prison. It really was. And if you happen to like act up or give the nuns attitude,

no food this week for you. One survivor named Marina Gambold remembers a nun punishing her by withholding food, saying quote, I lost my temper once. She got her string and she tied it around my neck for three days and three nights. And I had to get down on my knees and eat off the floor for three days. Hmm. Yeah. Apparently while Marina was eating food off the ground, with a string around her neck choking her, she had to look up at this nun who was like sitting on her throne in front of her and beg for God's forgiveness.

Because of punishment like this, most women just kept their heads down and would pray and pray to be released. Along with the isolation, physical abuse, and forced labor, there were reports that the women and girls had experienced sexual abuse inside the MacDillon Laundries as well, from the priests that they were expected to trust. And of course, the nuns weren't going to say anything about it. I mean, who knows? Maybe the nuns were doing it too.

One of the people who had endured sexual abuse at the Laundries was a woman named Bridget Young. Bridget didn't technically live within the Magdalen Laundries, but she lived in the orphanage that was connected to one. And Bridget dealt with the nuns from the laundries like daily. She was constantly told by the nuns that the women in the laundries were, quote, women of the devil, end quote. One of those women was actually Bridget's mother, but she was forbidden to have like

any contact with her. The nuns didn't want the women within the Magdalen walls to have any contact with others, even if it was the orphanage next door. The girls were allowed to talk to the priests, you know, and some of the Magdalen laundry priests would have these private Bible lessons with some of the more troubled girls. Bridgette was one of them. She had private lessons with the priest, but they weren't talking about scripture or anything like that. Instead, he would masturbate in front of her and then ejaculate all over her. It was just disgusting. It was disgusting. Bridget for the longest time didn't know what was

going on because in the orphanage, I mean there was no sex education. So she knew something was like, off and wrong, but she also just didn't have the verbiage for it. And on top of that, she knew that the priest was the highest authority and you just, you didn't question anything he did. Apparently the psycho would do this to Bridget over and over again and always before his mass on Sunday mornings. Yeah, and if he was doing it to her, it's like how many other

girls was he doing this to? Now if by some miracle you survived and he were released, you were usually kicked out without warning, without money. And with like the only thing you had was the clothes on your back. And because you had zero communication with the outside world, you were likely starting your life over from scratch. Many survivors straight up left Ireland because they didn't want to carry the stigma of having been in a laundry. I guess it was kind of like a scarlet letter. I mean it's easy to think that these are the worst of the stories, but these are only a few

stories from a few survivors. Most women didn't get a chance to talk about their experience, and a lot of the women just didn't want to relive the trauma. You know, you don't blame them at all. They just wanted to forget about this and forget it even happened and move on with their lives. But still, by this point in the mid-1900s, hundreds of women were still going in and out of these institutions. By the 1970s, it finally started to die down. But there were only 660 women who were admitted to the laundries in that 10 year period. Which is, it's improvement, right? I'd love to say that this was because society was getting more progressive, but no.

Industrial laundry machines were replacing manual laundry. So like, there wasn't such a big need for cheap, AKA free laundry labor. By the 80s, only 147 women were sent to the laundries. And by the 90s, there were only eight new women admitted, which good, good. But it's wild to think that at the same time on like the other side of the world, women in America were burning their bras Set like woodstock and having orgies in the park, you know Meanwhile in Ireland, they're throwing girls in prison for showing an ankle

Wild huh? Like those two realities don't feel like they should be able to overlap, but they do and they did For way too long. I mean 231 years to be exact. That's so many generations of trauma and lives just being completely ruined. And I know I've said it before, but so many people outside of Ireland, they've never even heard about this. You know, I mean, I know I didn't. Did you?

No, exactly. The laundries might still be running today if it wasn't for a huge discovery in 1993. Up until this point in the early 90s, the laundries were basically like an open secret in Ireland, which I don't know if you know, but it's a pretty small country. And because of the chokehold the Catholic Church had on Ireland, people were kind of, you know, brainwashed into thinking that anything that was run by the church was good. I mean, yeah, sure, there were rumors about abuse going on, but if it's the word of, you know, a girl versus the word of a priest, a man of God, who do

you think people are gonna believe? Hmm? In 1993, a man of God, who do you think people are going to believe? In 1993, the sisters of our Lady of Charity sold part of their convent to a property developer. And this is when a discovery happens, okay? You know what they come across? A mass grave. Over 155 bodies were found, all former laundry inmates. And this was just one property. Obviously, this gets out to the press, and these journalists discover that for those 155 bodies, there were only 75 death certificates. The math ain't math then, hmm? So there are only death certificates for half of the bodies, which I'm sure we can all agree. Pretty shady. But before anyone could like step in and do anything, the nuns, they go and they rebury

the remains in another gravesite and announce that there's been some kind of administrative error. Silly us. But silver lining, I guess? With the limelight finally on the laundries, people feel safe enough to like, calm and like, speak out about their experience. Survivors of the Magdalen laundry system begin to come forward and share their own horrific experiences. Like a survivor named Kathleen Legh. She was one of the women who willingly sent herself to the laundries. When Kathleen was 14,

she and her single mother were living a very tough life. They were essentially scraping by, so they talked about how she could, you know, make something of her life just to get out of the They talked about how she could, you know, make something of her life just to get out of the crappy situation she was in. They decided the best thing to do would be to continue her education with the nuns. The nuns were trusted by everyone, you know? At this place, she could learn new life skills.

And most importantly, her mom thought that the nuns would watch over her and like give her a safe place to live. Nobody knew, you know? Kathleen described her experience as quote, You operated like a robot and you did not dare question a nun. We bathed once a week and I remember the lice from our hair used to float around the top of the water. So if you were one of the last to get washed, it was horrific. Ugh, could you imagine?

Ugh. I mean, think about it, I bet after like a week of all that manual labor, you'd be like dying for a bath, you stink. But imagine being the last one to bathe. Mmm, girl. Mmm, I don't care. I would be like, nah, I'm good. I'll smell like ass for another week, you know?

Not taking a dip with the lice. According to the Irish Central staff, quote, the discovery turned the Magdalen laundries from an open secret to front page news. Suddenly women begin to testify about their experiences at the institutions and to pressure the Irish government to hold the Catholic Church accountable. I know, so this got me thinking. Like, how is the government going to investigate this properly if they were involved too? But this was bigger than the Church. Now that the cat was out of the bag, it was becoming more clear that this laundromat that was operating in plain sight was a massive human rights violation. So the United Nations steps in

and goes to the big daddy of the Catholic church, the Vatican, and they're like, look, listen, bitch, this is fucked up, you gotta stop. I imagine they sent to the priests. Technically what they actually said was that, quote, girls, not the laundries, were deprived of their identity, of education, and often of food and essential medicines,

and were imposed with an obligation of silence and prohibitant from having any contact with the outside world. And thank God that the UN stepped in, because once they put the church on blast, it was only a matter of time before the last Magdalen laundry was shut down for good. And the evidence just kept piling up.

More and more women were speaking out, more bodies were found, and more priests and nuns are shitting their pants. It's discovered that over 300,000 women passed through the Magdalen Laundries, and we don't even know how many of those women had died. Do you think they were keeping track? Of course not. Come on. And finally, on October 25th, 1996, the last laundry in existence closed its doors permanently. It was called Our Lady of Charity in Dublin, and it's heyday, it had about 150 women who had been working there.

And by 1996, there were only 40. And as of October 25th of that year, they were finally free to go. In 1998, a documentary comes out that sheds even more light on the truth about these long trees. It was called Sex in a Cold Climate. I just feel like, look, I'm not trying to be judgmental,

but like, if anything, they could have picked a better name. Right? Sex in a Cold Climate? And if everything, that's the, whatever. It told the true stories of four survivors. Something I thought was interesting in that documentary. They called the laundries the Magdalene Asylums. So it was like a little rebrand because yeah, laundry was always the cover up. I mean, they were technically asylums. Now, thanks to this movie and the other one I

mentioned, the Magdalene Sisters, which came out in 2002, there was now even more pressure on the Irish government and the Catholic Church. Now people wanted a public apology to all of the women that they had wronged. And at this point, a bunch of organizations came together and demand formal investigations led by the United Nations Committee against Torture. Finally in 2001, the state does acknowledge that the women of the Magdalen Laundries were indeed victims. Wow, progress. But before they can officially assign any blame, they say they need to investigate themselves. The government was basically like, yeah, that sucks, but don't look at us. It was a church.

In 2013, a report comes out. The Irish state admitted they were involved with the Magdalene Laundry abuse. The report was led by Martin McElly's. And Martin was a devout Catholic and he was married to a former president of Ireland. So, and I think it's safe to say not the most neutral person

to be leading this investigation, but okay. And surprise, surprise, the report came back saying, quote, women employed in the laundries endured difficult working conditions and verbal abuse. But there was, quote, no proof of sexual or physical abuse at the laundry facilities. Like, what a slap in the face to all of the survivors who finally got the courage to like speak out, you know?

Of course, you're not gonna find evidence. How do you find evidence of like sexual abuse? Unless in the moment or like after the fact, you go and you like report or something, but a lot of people don't do that blah blah blah You know like it's just disgusting But thankfully others handled it better the prime minister of Ireland publicly apologized for the treatment of the Magdalene women on February 19th 2013 so yeah like 20 years after the discovery of the graves

Thanks years after the discovery of the graves. Thanks! He said, quote, On behalf of the state, the government, and our citizens, I deeply regret and apologize unreservedly to all those women for the hurt that was done to them. For any stigma they suffered as the result of the time they spent in the Magdalen Laundry. We now know that the state itself was directly involved in over a quarter of all admissions to the Magdalen laundries." Oh shit. It kind of sounds like they're trying to get out of taking all of the blame. He also agreed to pay their survivors 58 million euros, which is about $75 million.

Survivors could get between 15,000 and 130,000 depending on how long they were at the laundries. These women were told that they would also receive state-funded retirement and free medical care. And some did, but according to our expert, it was a very fishy situation. And the government made it really difficult It was a very mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm who was like buried, you know? I don't know. During this whole investigation, the state starts doing the math. And it's reported that in a 74 year period,

from 1922 to 1996, 14,000 documented women were sent to the laundries. And that's only the women who had a paper trail. These are women who would likely still be alive if they had made it out. Plus that's only 74 years out of the 231 that the laundries were open for business. So okay, the real number is probably more than we can even imagine. And then another really horrible stat comes out. Between 1954 and 64, over half the women trapped in these laundries died there.

What, over half? Yeah, the fuck? What's wild is that even after all of this comes out, the church was still refusing to apologize. Why do they hate apologizing? Is it just, isn't it in the Bible that you should apologize, church? They were pissed that the Irish government

was calling them out and publicly criticizing them, okay? How many nuns and priests still believe that they had done nothing wrong and that the laundries were ultimately more good than bad. Claire McCormack, a journalist, interviewed two nuns who asked to remain anonymous. Bitches. One of them said, quote,

"'Apologize for what?' Apologize for providing a service? We provided a free service for the country. There was a terrible need for a lot of those women because they were on the street with no social welfare and starving. We provided shelters for them. Woe nuns, a little dooloo, okay?

A little dooloo, but whatever. Like a little aggressive too, like just chill, just say sorry, whatever. It wasn't until 2018 that the church acknowledged that what they had done was wrong. That year, the Pope visited Ireland, which was like a huge deal because a Pope hadn't been to Ireland since the 70s.

He came like with bell bottoms and stuff back then and smoking a cigar, but not this time. And when he got there, it was said that Pope Francis spent most of his two-day trip in Ireland on an apology tour. I mean, yeah, he better. He gave a whole speech asking for forgiveness for multiple things. And when it became clear he was referencing the laundries, everyone who was there applauded. Again, it's like, okay, 22 years too late, but okay, okay. In 2022, the Irish government announced that the last standing Magdalene Laundry building

would be turned into a memorial for all of the quote, thousands of unmarried mothers and other unwanted women who were forced to work without pay in abject conditions, often until they died, end quote. There seems to be this trend on dark history of things starting out with great intentions, right? And then they just take a fucking sharp left, right? Which gets wildly out of control.

They get crazy. Especially when money gets involved. It doesn't matter if you're a CEO or a devout nun, money and power can corrupt anyone. And we still don't know everything about the laundries. Did they search all the properties for more victims, more bodies, anything like that? And shouldn't they? I mean, there's still more coming out.

And some of these survivors are still waiting on their payouts from the Irish government. Hello, Irish government. Can you please get a move on? Thank you. And the story of the Magdalene laundries isn't even over. There are still new details being discovered by groups like the non-profit research group,

Justice for Magdalene's. They're doing incredible work to shed light on everything that happened to the fallen women. Definitely check them out if you can at jfmresearch.com. I'll link them in the description box as well, but what they're doing is incredible. And there's also a movie that's supposed to come out this year about the laundry starring Killian Murphy.

It's called Small Things Like These, but I guess it's based on a book, so I'm definitely going to check that out for sure. There seems to be serious interest in this story, which is great since it has been buried for so long. Next week I get into something that affects the entire world. It's a tradition that's older than Jesus. And one unofficial event involved throwing women off a cliff. It used to be something celebrated by the average Joe, and now it's a billion-dollar industry. I'm talking the Olympics. Every four years we're supposed to get all excited and be like America, yeah. But my question was like, for what?

Why? Why do we do this? Does anyone know? Well, next week, we're gonna be talking about the dark history of the Olympics. And I hope to see you there. Well, friends, thank you so much for hanging out with me today.

Sorry to drop this awful story on you, but now you know. Join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs and while you're there you can also catch my murder mystery and makeup. I'd love to hear your guys' reactions to today's story, so make sure to use the hashtag dark history over on social media so I can follow along and see what you're saying. Now your favorite pirate chown, let's read a couple of your guys' see what you're saying. Now, your favorite part, Joan, let's read a couple of your nicest comments that you left me.

Ooh, Scribb babbles left us a comment on our Valentine's Day episodes saying, quote, in response to the vinegar Valentine, there used to be, maybe it still exists, a rejection phone line where you could find a phone number in your area code and give it as your phone number to people and it would let them know when they call it that you're not interested.

True story. I was given this, it's sad. I was given this phone number in middle school because I had a crush on this guy and he wasn't interested. So he gave me this phone number and I was really excited. I called it and was it rejection number Yeah, but look at me now. Ha ha ha ha ha Where's he I don't know fuck him Amani 38964 had a question for me

Asking are you involved in some form of witchcraft? I don't know, I get that vibe from you. No. But thank you, I guess, I don't know. What kind of witch though? Not the one with like the war or the mole or something, right? Like a cute witch? As long as I'm cute. Thanks for your question. But no. LexisMD commented on our Founding Fathers episode saying, Love this series on Founding Fathers. Have you considered looking into the history of birthdays? Thank you for all you do, beautiful soul. Thank you so much. At first I was like,

is there something to learn about birthdays? Isn't it just the day that you're born? But look, I'll look it up, I'll look in twin, see if there's something there. Thank you guys so much for leaving comments. I appreciate it and I love reading them every week. So keep them coming because you might be featured. Hey, if you don't know, Dark History is an audio boom original.

This podcast is executive produced by Bailey Sarian, Junya McNeely from Three Arts, Kevin Grush, and Matt Enlow from Maiden Network. Writers Joey Scavuzzo, Katie Burris, and Allison Fallobos. Production lead, Brian Jaggers. Research provided by Colleen Fives-Smith. A special thank you to our expert, Natalie Sabam. Senior lecturer at the Sorbonne in Paris,

specialized in Irish history. And I'm your host, Bailey Sarian. at the Sorbonne in Paris, specialized in Irish history. And I'm your host, Bailey Sarian. I hope you guys have a good rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be talking to you next week. Goodbye.