A survivor of one of the Magdalene laundries a Canadian home for single mothers in the 1970s left a comment in a Facebook group for such survivors yesterday. It froze my blood, and I asked the author if I could post it on my blog, with or without her name. She said yes just now, with no name (so I’m not linking, either).
I suppose this is one of those times when I should include a trigger warning. This is a horrible story.
In the home that I was in, me and another unwed mother (both of us were 8 months gone) were forced to deliver a dead deformed baby of another of the mothers there. This was done to punish all of us. The hospital had sent this poor girl back to the home to deliver the dead baby. The staff locked themselves in the office and refused to help. This poor girl should have been in hospital but as the hospital knew her baby was dead inside of her (it appears that it was Anencephaly), they didn’t care. She was 7 months gone. I sometimes still have nightmares about that. The office staff didn’t even come out when the ambulance arrived (not sure who called them but glad someone did).
1 Corinthians 13, anyone? Caritas?
Unholy fuck, those nuns are a special kind of evil.
Jesus wept. Then vomited. Having been schooled by old school nuns, I can never say I’m surprised. Disgusted and appalled beyond measure, yes.
That poor girl :/ I mean all of them (except those evil fucking nuns), but especially the mother.
I wonder what happened to her.
By “gone”, they mean how far along they were in their pregnancies, yes?
Yes.
There seems to have been a mix-up about the place of the unwed mother’s home. This is my story but it happened in an unwed mother’s home in Canada in the 1970’s, not in Ireland in one of the Magdalene laundries.
I am in the group for the Magdalene Survivors as I feel I share a lot in common with the terrible things that they did to mothers and babies there. That is probably why the person who posted this thought I was a Magdalene survivor.
They did terrible things to mothers and babies in Canada too.
In one of the schools for indigenous Canadians, run by the Catholic church, they actually had an electric chair for children. Although it did not kill them, it was a terrible torture inflicted on children as young as 6 years old.
The Catholic church showed no mercy there either. Canada is not the nice place it pretends to be – they are just very good at covering up things and going into denial.
Ohhh – I’ll add a correction. Yes that’s why I thought you were talking about a Magdalene laundry, Cat – which was silly of me, since I too am in the group, not because I’m a survivor but because I want to know the history.