Women who had their childhoods ‘stolen
away’, locked up in Catholic-run workhouses received a qualified
apology from the Irish government yesterday.
Over
a period of 70 years, an estimated 10,000 were sent to the ‘Magdalene
laundries’ to carry out unpaid manual labour under the supervision of
nuns. Some were sent because they were the children of unmarried mothers, others for crimes as minor as not paying a train ticket.