Two women who were sent to the Magdalene laundries as children relive their harrowing experiences when they accompany Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent, to a preview of The Magdalene Sisters
Halfway through a press screening of Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters in Dublin this week it does not seem such a good idea to have brought Mary Norris and Sarah Williams along. Mary in particular just weeps and weeps. "The reality was even worse," she whispers. "I see now how they dehumanised us." But she does not want to leave.
Leaving was not an option for young women such as Mary and Sarah back then. Options? There were none. Just pray and slave.
Mary Norris was born Mary Cronin in Sneem, Co Kerry in 1933. The eldest of eight children, all was normal with her young life until her father died. He left behind a young wife with two boys and six girls, aged between six months and 12 years.
Life was difficult, but the family coped. A man began visiting their house, occasionally staying overnight. The children noticed their mother was "a little bit happy" again.
One morning, a car drove up to their farmhouse, with a garda and a "Mr Armstrong" from the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children inside. "The Cruelty Man" is how Mary refers to him without a trace of irony.
He announced they were taking the children, as they considered Mrs Cronin an unfit mother. Everyone was screaming. They were even going to take the baby, but realised she was being breastfed, so left her. (She too was taken, when she was weaned.) The other seven children were brought to Sneem courthouse and committed to "a place of safety" by a judge.
Mary was taken to the orphanage in Killarney where, as she cried hysterically, she was given the routine disinfectant bath on arrival and ushered to a dormitory under the supervision of Sister Laurence.
"I don't know what you are crying for. Your mother's a tramp, an evil woman, and I hope you don't turn out like her," said the nun. To her undying shame, Mary responded: "Yes, sister."
She began to wet the bed and was made carry the mattress on her head to the drying room every day. At bathtime every Friday Sister Laurence would beat her around the lower back (where the weals would not be visible) with a belt, as the wettings continued. There was no education, except for Christian Doctrine, and they were kept apart from the town children at the school there.
At 16, Mary got a job as a servant to a retired schoolteacher in Tralee, a sister of one of the Killarney nuns. There she did all the cleaning for her employer and her employer's two nephews, and blind sister, for 2s 6d a week. She was allowed out once a week.
The film My Wild Irish Rose arrived in town midweek and she wanted to see it. She was told No, but sneaked out to see it. The next day "the very same Cruelty Man" came to take her away. She was told she had been "a very bold girl" and was brought back to Killarney.
"I knew you were a tramp. I knew you'd turn out like this," said Sister Laurence, and dispatched Mary to see a local doctor. He examined her intimately, painfully, and told the woman sent along to supervise the visit: "I don't know what's wrong with the nuns. This young woman is intact." No one explained to Mary what he meant.
The nuns despatched her to "the Good Shepherd" Magdalene laundry in Cork. In the orphanage in Killarney, "the Good Shepherd" had always been the ultimate threat. Mother of Our Lady O'Mahony greeted her there. "We can't call you that here", she responded when Mary gave her name. Instead she was called "Myra".
An older resident stripped Mary. Her bra was replaced with a piece of buttoned-down calico which flattened her breasts. Her long dark hair was cut short. She was given a grey dress, boots and a white cap, and brought to the sewing room where she sat "among these old women, crying and making scapulars".
At supper she saw "all these young pretty girls" coming from the laundry, and heard them refer to her as "the new sheep". No talking was allowed, and even during recreation time discussion to do with life outside was forbidden. Just the rosary over and over again; sometimes hymns, and prayers were read to them by a nun at mealtimes.
They got up at 6 a.m., went to Mass, had breakfast, began working in the laundry at 8 a.m., broke for lunch at 12.30 p.m., resumed at 1 p.m., and finished at 6 p.m. They had an hour's recreation until 7 p.m. when, in theory, they could talk, but there was not much to talk about. Not least as "particular friendships" were forbidden. Few of the approximately 130 women there were unmarried mothers. Most were from orphanages.
Mary was told she couldn't write to her mother. Only to Sister Laurence. She did so, begging to be taken out of the laundry. There was no reply. After one petty misdemeanour, Mary was punished after prayers in the dormitory one night, when she was made lie on the ground between the two lines of praying girls and made repeat "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault" again and again until the nun conducting the prayers finally announced, "You are forgiven" and she was allowed resume her place among her praying colleagues. She faked a toothache once in a half-baked plan to run away. The dentist removed the perfectly good tooth. She was so desperate she considered suicide.
She discovered later an aunt of hers in the US had been inquiring in letters - money enclosed - of Sister Laurence why Mary was not getting in contact. She was told Mary had a job in Tralee, had left it, and no one knew where she was.
Sister Laurence got Mary a job in a laundry in Newcastle, Co Limerick around this time. Soon Mary was back in Sneem, where she worked for two years before heading off to England. She remained there until 1993 before returning to Co Kerry with her husband, Victor.
Her mother had married the man who had been visiting, but it was not a happy affair. She too had gone to London and lived on the same street as Mary for eight years, dying in 1989 surrounded by many of her children.
The story of "Sarah Williams" (she is using her mother's name as she does not wish to use her own name, to protect others) has many similarities. Her mother was working in service for a professional family when she became pregnant by the man of the house. She gave birth to Sarah in 1937 in Roscrea, Co Tipperary. Sarah's grandfather brought her home and a married aunt raised her.
She was not allowed to attend the school nearby, but had to go to one further away. And when the family travelled by pony and trap she was made lie on its floor, covered by a blanket. All intended to avoid awkward questions from neighbours. Sarah discovered her birth status at 12, when she saw that the birth certificate she needed to be confirmed described her mother as a "spinster" and her father as "unknown". At 13-and-a-half she was placed in service, looking after a family of five. But she became ill.
On recovery she went to Dublin and got a job in a B & B on Parnell Street. One day, the Legion of Mary came and said they were getting a job for her. She was brought to a big building, and was met by a nun who showed her to a bare room containing a bed and bucket. The nun left, locking the door from the outside. Sarah cried all night.
Next morning, an elderly woman came to her room with a bundle of clothes - a dress, cap, stockings, boots. "You're number 100 and don't you forget it," the old woman said. As long as she was there she was "100".
She was brought downstairs to the laundry, where in one room about 40 women were folding sheets. A nun was walking up and down praying and singing hymns. Sarah whispered to one girl "what's this place?" The girl said she couldn't talk. Later she whispered: "It's a convent. Irish Sisters of Charity, Donnybrook. For penitents."
Her routine was similar to Mary's in Cork. It was very strict. Any misdemeanour was met with "a belt of the keys" every nun carried. Sarah and two other girls made a futile attempt at escape from that laundry and were quickly recaptured and had their heads shaved as punishment. Sarah was in Donnybrook two years when a nun told her she was being sent to the Irish Sisters of Charity Magdalene laundry in Cork. It was separate from the Good Shepherd laundry. The regime was a little more relaxed than Donnybrook. They washed laundry from hospitals and factories. Sarah, too, was suicidal at times.
Then, when she was "going on 20", they let her out. They were sending her home to her aunt, who up to then had thought she was working as a domestic in convents during the missing years. The first person she asked for when she got out was her mother. But she had died three years before. Her aunt explained how they had contacted the nuns in Donnybrook to tell them Sarah's mother was dying in Kilkenny and had sent for her. No one in Donnybrook told Sarah.
Her own health broke down then and, besides, she was afraid to go outside the door for months. She didn't want anyone to know where she had been. She returned to Dublin and got a job in a nursing home. Two years later she went to England, where she married and lived until the 1970s, before returning to Ireland.
She remembers her 30th birthday as one of the happiest. On that day she met her younger brother for the first time. His father was the same "man of the house" where their mother worked. She has four children now, and seven grandchildren. She lost seven babies, through miscarriage, stillbirths, and an accident.
Years later, she tracked down her mother's grave. She had married a widower and was buried in an unmarked plot beside his grave and that of his wife. Sarah placed a headstone on it.
Both Mary and Sarah are high in their praise of The Magdalene Sisters. Mary was "very glad it was done", and is "grateful to the man who had the courage to do it". Sarah was "very impressed." Both think it accurate, except for some scenes where the girls have contact with outsiders other than a priest. That did not happen where they were. And they are unsure about a humiliating strip scene, while agreeing that could have happened in other laundries.
"Maybe now Irish people will begin to believe," says Mary. And she continues: "Wasn't Our Lady lucky? If she was in Ireland she'd have been put in a Magdalene laundry and Jesus would have been adopted!"