A few minutes’ walk across central Dublin from the GPO, shrine to Irish freedom, stands a monument to a very different side of our history – although maybe not for long. The old Gloucester Street laundry, the last of the infamous Magdalene laundries to shut its doors, will soon, if the city council has its way, be demolished and replaced by a budget hotel and a student residence.
Founded in the 19th century, the Gloucester Street laundry was one of about a dozen such businesses run by Catholic nuns and staffed by unpaid inmates – mostly orphan girls or young women who had become pregnant outside marriage or whose families could not or would not support them – who were given to the nuns to hide them away.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/ireland-s-last-magdalene-laundry-they-should-knock-it-to-the-ground-1.3358058
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/ireland-s-last-magdalene-laundry-they-should-knock-it-to-the-ground-1.3358058
