Survivors of Magdalene Laundries deserve peace after years of suffering. It’s often gut-wrenching, but Dr. Rie Croll says there’s a
sense of “urgency” in her research aimed at collecting stories of women
forcibly confined in female-only laundries and reformatories before
“they are forever lost to history.”
Her current research brings together stories of women from Ireland,
Canada and Australia who spent time in institutions known as Magdalene
Laundries. Many of these facilities were run by various orders of Roman
Catholic nuns. The laundries operated from as early as the 18th Century
before the last one closed in Dublin, Ireland 20 years ago.