Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries

Claire McGettrick is an Irish Research Council postgraduate scholar at the School of Sociology at University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research interests focus on adoption, so-called historical abuses, and related injustices in twentieth-century Ireland. She is cofounder of Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) and Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA). She jointly coordinates the multi-award-winning CLANN project with Dr Maeve O’Rourke, as well as the Magdalene Names Project (MNP), which has recorded the details of over 1,900 women who lived and died in Ireland’s Magdalen laundries. Katherine O'Donnell is Associate Professor, History of Ideas, UCD School of Philosophy, Ireland, and has published widely on the history of sexuality and gender and the intellectual history of eighteenth-century Ireland. She has been principal investigator on a number of funded research projects, including gathering an archival and oral history of the Magdalen institutions funded by the Irish Research Council. Her teaching awards include the UCD President’s Gold Medal for Teaching Excellence and the British Universities’ Learning On-Screen Award. She has gained academic honours, including a Fulbright Fellowship and the University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor’s Prize for Prose. As a member of Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR), she has shared in activist honours, including the Irish Labour Party’s Thirst for Justice Award.Maeve O'Rourke is lecturer in human-rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway, and a graduate of University College Dublin, Harvard Law School, and Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham. She is also a barrister (England and Wales) and attorney-at-law (New York). Since 2009 she has provided pro bono legal assistance to Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) and is currently co-director of the CLANN project, an evidence-gathering and advocacy collaboration between JFMR, Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA), and Hogan Lovells International, LLP. She was named UK Family Law Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year in 2013.James M Smith is an associate professor in the English department at Boston College. He has published articles in Signs, The Journal of the History of Sexuality, Éire-Ireland, and ELH. His book, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (Notre Dame UP), was published in 2007 and was awarded the Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book by the American Conference for Irish Studies. With Maria Luddy, he coedited a double special issue of Éire-Ireland (Spring/Summer 2009) and the collection Children, Childhood, and Irish Society: 1500 to the Present (Four Courts Press, 2014). He recently coedited a double special issue of Éire-Ireland (Spring/Summer 2020) and the essay collection REDRESS: Ireland and Justice in Transition (forthcoming) on Transitional Justice and institutional abuse in Ireland. He is a member of the advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR).Mari Steed was one of more than 2,000 children exported from Ireland to the United States, and was born in the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork, where she also endured being part of the vaccine trials. Mari’s mother spent time in a Magdalen laundry. She serves as U.S. coordinator with the Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA). In 2003 Mari cofounded Justice for Magdalens/Research (JFMR), an advocacy organisation that successfully campaigned for a state apology and restorative justice for survivors of Ireland’s Magdalen laundries. She currently serves on the group’s executive committee. She also serves as vice-president on the executive committee of U.S. adoptee-rights organisation Bastard Nation.

• List of PlatesAcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsForeword by Mari SteedIntroductionChapter 1: Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and the Lives Lived ThereChapter 2: Survivors Begin to Be HeardChapter 3: Anatomy of a Campaign: The StrategiesChapter 4: Anatomy of a Campaign: Developing a Human Rights and Justice AgendaChapter 5: Publication of the IDC Report: The Campaign Within the CampaignChapter 6: Never Tell, Never Acknowledge (…everyone knew, but no one said)Chapter 7: Ex Gratia ‘Redress’ Chapter 8: Bringing up the Dead: Burials and Land Deals at High ParkConclusion: Who Do We Want to Be?NotesBibliographyIndex

In many ways, the book is a toolkit for any campaigner engaging with the political system. It exposes a political culture which can too often be frustrating, intransigent, and even cynical when faced with uncomfortable truths.