Magdalenes at Aras
President pays tribute to the ‘resolve and courage’ of 200 survivors
IRELAND’S youngest-known Magdalene survivor has described her time in the laundry as ‘worse than prison’ and said she walked from Wexford to Dublin to escape.
Having been born in a mother and baby home, Diane Croghan, 78, was later committed to the Wexford Magdalene laundry when she was just eight years old.
She spoke to the Irish Daily Mail yeseverything terday as Magdalene women from all over the world were given a Garda escort to Áras an Uachtaráin for the Dublin Honours the Magdalenes event.
Once there, they enjoyed lunch in the gardens with President Michael D Higgins and his wife, Sabina.
The President told the women: ‘I commend your resolve and your courage in facing your painful past. I pay tribute to you for your decision to share your experiences with each other.
‘Most of all, I thank you for helping Ireland and contemporary Irish people address a great wrong.’
Earlier yesterday, the Magdalene women arrived in Dublin’s Citywest to begin a two-day commemoration of their time in the religious-run institutions, with the presidential reception at the Áras a highlight.
Diane Croghan, a mother of eight, said she still doesn’t know why she was taken from a foster home and put in the Summerhill Laundry in Wexford at eight years of age.
‘I was born in a mother and baby home, so I was on the back foot in that sense,’ she said.
‘But then I went out to a lovely foster family. Something went wrong, they took me off that family and put me into the laundry.
‘I worked like a slave. You couldn’t answer back, you couldn’t ask questions, you worked washing, cleaning, scrubbing and having terrible food and no love or comfort.’
That was in 1948, and Diane stayed in the laundry until she escaped at the age of 13. She sneaked out in a laundry van with her friend and never looked back.
She walked from Wexford to Dublin and was taken in by a worker in the Shelbourne Hotel on St Stephen’s Green, who got her a job as a domestic servant.
For Diane, her children make worthwhile: ‘I am very proud of my children. As long as they are happy, that is all that matters.’
Diane’s eldest son, Declan, is a renowned TV scriptwriter who has had huge success in the US with cult favourite, The Waking Dead.
Other survivors spoke out yesterday at the hardship they endured at the hands of the nuns.
Elizabeth Coppin said: ‘We were all slaves to the nuns and the Church, and we were trafficked.
‘The people who are not with us are in mass graves in Glasnevin and graves all over Ireland. They couldn’t even give them the dignity of their own grave with their name and their identity.
‘We have to think of them women. Some were in there for 52 years.
‘We have to think of those people who are not able to be with us today,’ she added.
While there are no official figures for the number of women who were in the institutions, it is believed up to 30,000 women were committed to the laundries.
Many were accused of flirting with local boys, were deemed too pretty and at risk of falling pregnant, or gave birth in a mother and baby home and were sent on to laundries.
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‘Address a great wrong’