Remembering Galway's Magdalens – lest we should ever forget

Those gathered there ahead of the main event at Bohermore Cemetery included Peter Mulryan, who had spent four-and-a-half years in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home institution and whose mother, Delia, had been confined to the laundry in Galway for 34 years until her death in 1989 – both institutions were run by nuns.

The group was addressed by Dette McLoughlin of Flowers for Galway Magdalens, which has organised an annual commemoration for the past 14 years.

The group is currently campaigning to ensure any redesign of City Hall will include a public space devoted to all the victims of Ireland’s institutions.

They want the Magdalen statue, created by sculptor Mick Wilkins, moved to that space, instead of being “hidden at a busy junction, with parked cars, shops and rubbish all round”, Ms Mcloughlin stated.

‘Make Visible the Tree’, Patricia Burke Brogan’s poem about the women, which is engraved on a slab beside the statue, was read aloud.

Burke Brogan’s powerful play, Eclipsed, based on her experiences as a novice nun tasked with supervising women in Galway’s laundry in the early 1960s, broke the silence around these institutions when it premiered in the city in 1992.

The writer, who died in 2022, was a member of the group and Ms McLoughin paid tribute to her for exposing how these incarcerated women were treated; by the nuns and by broader society, in conditions that the playwright compared to Dante’s Inferno.

Ms McLoughlin also paid tribute to Saoirse Nic Gabhainn of the group who died earlier this year.

In the early 1990s, a bank and townhouses were built on the site of the laundry. A small garden to the rear contains graves of women who died in the institution between the 1870s and 1950s.

In a brief ceremony there, their names were read aloud and the sheet ritual was reprised, with Peter Mulryan among the participants. Flowers were placed at the headstones that bear their names.

Then, the group filed slowly to Bohermore Cemetery, where a large crowd welcomed guest speaker Uachtaráin na hÉireann, Catherine Connolly, and Mayor of Galway, Helen Ogbu.

President Connolly, who has attended this event every year since 2012, stated that “we stand here on the backs of the suffering of women who were labelled, ostracised and incarcerated, having done absolutely nothing wrong.

“When I count my blessings and look at my success, I know I did it on the suffering of other women, and, indeed, men and boys in institutions as well”, she continued.

Describing Galway as ‘a city and a county of institutions’, she listed the places in Tuam, Letterfrack, Loughrea, Galway City and Ballinasloe where people were deprived of freedom.

President Connolly said it was important to acknowledge that those institutions existed before the State was founded. They were retained by the Free State and by the Republic, when it came into being in 1949.

She referenced the 2013 McAleese Report, which “was set up for one reason. . . to establish once and for all whether the State was involved”.

Covering the years from 1922-1996, it found a quarter of referrals to these places had been from the State.

Until then, there had been complete denial about the State’s part in Ireland’s institutions, said President Connolly. She added that the report had largely left out the “most important thing”, which was the women’s testimony.

“Ten thousand women that we know about, not just women, but girls and children as young as nine, ended up in the Magdalen Laundries,” said President Connolly. “They suffered so that we could find our voices to say, ‘never again in our name will this happen’.”

Reminding people of the danger of “narratives and consensus”, she recalled “the narrative that led to 10,000 women being incarcerated in Magdalen laundries, the narrative that said they were bad or mad, or dangerous, the narrative that says war is inevitable, the narrative that says genocide is just something – no consequences for humanity at all – only consequences for the victims, but they don’t really matter; not the right colour, not the right country, not the right state of mind”.

People needed to “take courage in our hands together and say ‘war is not normal, locking up people is not normal’. Yes, society needs to be protected from people who commit crimes, but that’s not what happened here”.

Noting that this year’s event was the largest yet, she thanked Dette McLoughlin and the organisers for holding the ceremony every year, even during Covid.

In response, Ms McLoughlin thanked the president and political representatives who were present, and reminded people that, when the first ceremony took place in 2012, the State, Church or Sisters of Mercy hadn’t apologised to the women, or mentioned restorative justice.

Thanks to ongoing campaigning, change is happening, but “too late for many”.

In 2012, there was a mass plot in Bohermore, with one headstone for the Magdalen women, in a section known as ‘the paupers’ plot’. There were no names. Now there are names, thanks to the work of Flowers for Magdalens and other campaigners.

The names of those women were read aloud on Sunday.

However, Dette McLoughlin stated: “We don’t know how many women who worked in the laundry are buried here. The records of the laundry were burned in a fire.”

But she reminded people that “Every woman incarcerated there in had a name, had a life, had a story and they all deserved better”.

The commemoration event was about “affording dignity to the women known as the Magdalens. The Magdalen women can be proud that the President of Ireland joins us as we do right by these women”, she concluded.

Peter Mulryan’s mother, Delia, died in Forster Street in 1989. Years earlier, two of his sisters had died in Tuam’s now-infamous institution, where he’d also spent his early childhood.

In his powerful address, Mr Mulryan thanked all involved in commemorating the women who had “suffered isolation, hard labour and were denied their freedom”.

He urged people “to remember with respect, dignity compassion and love, the women who are buried in Bohermore and in Forster Street and all the women and children who spent time in the Magdalen laundries across Ireland.”

It was vital “to speak their names and tell their stories, because their lives and stories matter”.

Many participants were in tears as they visited the women’s graves before the powerful commemoration concluded with reminisces and, finally, songs from several of the organisers, including Sharon Murphy, Caroline Stanley and Sailhymn O’Connor.