In 2018 the last Magdalene laundry to close in Ireland stands unchanged in Sean Mac Dermott Street just outside Dublin city centre (the Convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity)

40 women, the oldest of whom was 79, were working in the laundry when it closed in 1996. Some had mental disorders, others had ‘behavioural problems’; others had been incarcerated there when pregnant

The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity will not release the Convent’s records, which means that nobody knows who is buried on the site

When a similar laundry in Drumcondra was excavated in the 1990s, 155 women were found in a mass grave but there were death certificates for only 75 of them

At a Mother and Baby Home in Tuam that operated between the 1920s and 1960s, 796 deceased babies and children have no burial records; their remains are believed to have been thrown into the institution’s sewage system

… when the bones were first found, in 1975, prayers were recited and the septic tank resealed.

Excavations will only begin in Tuam in 2024: there are currently no plans (at 2023) to dig at the site in Sean Mac Dermott Street, Dublin

Oh IRELAND.

Dublin, 26th August 2018

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