Donnybrook Magdalene Asylum was the first in Ireland to change from being ‘an institution under lay management to one located within, and controlled by, a convent’. So, as Coen, O'Donnell and O'Rourke note, it is the ‘template for what would become the archetypal Irish Magdalene laundry’, both owned by and supervised by nuns (p. 6). Therefore, A Dublin Magdalene laundry is both a vital study of one laundry in Dublin and an investigation into much larger and pervasive culture of ‘social and gender inequalities’ across the Ireland and the world.
The book is in three sections. Section one, entitled ‘Political, cultural and social contexts of Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry’, builds a picture of the laundry and the society in which it was created and operated. Mark Cohen contributes two chapters, constructing the history of the order who would go on to own and operate Donnybrook, charting the Religious Sisters of Charity from their foundation in 1815, their major works and their governance, as well as the accusations of child abuse, institutional abuse and controversy around the adoption processes utilised in the asylum. His second chapter is a useful history of Donnybrook itself, which he calls ‘emblematic of the long nineteenth century of Irish Catholicism’ (p. 92).
Chapter two, written by Lindsey Earner-Byrne, is an excellent ‘history of respectability’, a ‘key element in defining and deciding moral and social worth’ (p. 42) which in turn normalised the institutionalisation of women. Earner-Byrne also identifies a ‘hierarchy of women’, in which the ‘deserving’ poor were separated from unmarried mothers and sex-workers (considered, by some, to be unworthy or incapable of saving). Chapter four, by Katherine O'Donnell, has the vital job of introducing the oral history and the survivor narratives that inform the history of Donnybrook. O'Donnell strove to ‘generate a rich collection of narratives that would inform future generations, inspire artists, and provide enough material for the work of historians and social scientists in their analyses of the interviews’ (p. 111). Given the government's disregard for oral testimony, as documented in the introduction, O'Donnell demonstrates a crucial understanding of the nuance and unique perspectives of oral testimony, and ensures it stands strong amongst the other methodologies used in the book.
The second section, ‘Social, commercial and legal significance of Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry’, looks at the functionality of Donnybrook as an asylum and a laundry. Chapter five is an exploration of the architecture of Donnybrook, which examines further the ‘architecture of containment’, asking how much architects knew ‘of the abuses perpetuated by with and enabled by their designs’ (p. 145) and whether they could or should have known the repercussions of their labour. These questions are refreshing and uncomfortable and epitomise the book's holistic approach to understanding these institutions. In one particularly haunting conclusion, Chris Hamill writes:
it is clear from the architect's drawings and the very purposeful way in which the circulation of various occupant groups was directed by the site's architecture, that the person at the drafting table knew, at a minimum, there was a subordinated class of women within this complex, and that this group were required to work in the laundry (p. 144).
In chapter six, Mairead Enright considers the importance of charitable bequests in running Donnybrook, ascertaining that ‘within the “divine economy” … gift-giving produced symbolic capital for the benefactor; capital rooted in concepts of faith, gratitude and women's sinfulness and redemption’ (p. 154). This reciprocity served to legitimise the presence of institutions and the money allowed them to function. Enright also draws a parallel with the new National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, which attracted protests because of its ties to the Religious Sisters of Charity who had not contributed to a redress fund. This chapter emphasises that charity of this nature ‘served to perpetuate social and gender inequalities’ (p. 12) and underlines how the Magdalene laundries cannot be relegated to the past until we establish how these inequalities manifest in the present.
Chapter seven is co-written by Brid Murphy and Martin Quinn, and focuses on the commercial laundry at Donnybrook, concluding that perhaps, some factors notwithstanding, the business produced a surplus due to the unpaid labour of the Magdalenes. Chapter eight examines entry pathways to the Donnybrook Laundry through criminal proceedings for crimes such as infanticide. Lynsey Black emphasises that Magdalene laundries existed separately from prisons, offering themselves instead as places of rehabilitation and redress. Women could spend decades or lifetimes behind the walls on the basis of a two-year sentence, because, as Black so rightly asserts, this lack of oversight allowed women to ‘disappear into a shadow penal system which … render[ed] their fate unknowable’ (p. 197).
The final section of the book, ‘Heritage and memory’, examines the physical resources that can be used to understand the asylum and how it can be memorialised for remembrance and education. In chapter nine, Laura McAtackney looks at the relationship between archaeology and survivor perspectives, and the importance of material relics and sites of industrial abuse in investigating, understanding and memorialisation. Chapter ten, by Brenda Malone and Barry Houlihan, considers the marginalised histories missing from display throughout the twentieth century, and asks how to walk the line between evidencing and educating the public, and the risk of retraumatising survivors, whilst also recognising that memorials can be read as closure that has not yet been achieved. It also examines the ‘archival legacy’ of Donnybrook, concluding that the laundry was well organised, profitable and ‘connected to the highest echelons of the Irish state’ (p. 233). The chapter generates a set of crucial further questions, about how to work with survivors to construct museums that amplify their voices, represent the experience of the institution, and recognise past and ongoing human rights ‘failures’ in Ireland.
In the final chapter, Claire McGettrick discusses the Magdalene Names Project (M.N.P.) with the title ‘Guerilla Archive.’ McGettrick details the M.N.P.'s principles as the right to know ‘the fate of the disappeared’ (p. 237), the right to reparations, and the state obligation to investigate human rights violations, and prevent them from happening again. The M.N.P. allows survivors of institutions and their families a chance to ‘execute acts of resistance against church and State authorities’ (p. 248) by accessing information they have been refused in the past. This is a fitting end to the book, reminding the reader of the importance of information, the difficulties in navigating the official systems put in place to find information and, finally, the resilience and effort of survivors and activists in correcting these omissions and reconstructing the shameful history of the Magdelene laundries.
A Dublin Magdalene laundry offers an interdisciplinary look at these institutions and prioritises locating the voices of survivors in these methods where possible. This results in fascinating chapters on the intersection of oral testimony and archaeology, law, sociology, political history and architecture. The book introduces some concepts that are crucial in any study of these institutions: ‘archives of resistance’ and ‘active memorialisation’. Both concepts speak to the desire to work carefully to uncover and honour the experiences of survivors with care and respect, as well the chronology of the journey towards redress for the Magdalenes, which is stilted and complicated further by a lack of access to records and the disregard for survivors’ oral testimonies. A phenomenally well-researched and articulated book, its key strength is the collaboration between disciplines, which creates a full, devastating picture of the Donnybrook Magdalene asylum and, by extension, the ‘architecture of containment’ endured by so many women across Ireland.
