They told me my baby was still-born then they gave me shock therapy
After 40 years ‘as a slave’ in the Church’s care one woman tells her story...
AFTER spending over 40 years in Church-run institutions, Catherine Mary O’Connor describes her life in Magdalene laundries as that of ‘a slave’, and says she can only compare the institutions as being ‘close’ to Hitler’s concentration camps.
At a reception to honour Magdalene survivors, hosted by President Michael D Higgins this week, 76-year-old Mary revealed her harrowing story of years of imprisonment and punishment and how she ‘has never known love’.
Born into a family who lived on Northumberland Street in Dublin, Mary – who prefers to go by her middle name – was put into care aged three and a half.
She ran away from an abusive foster home aged 12 and was placed in St Joseph’s School, a Church-run reformatory in Kilkenny.
During her teenage years she was also sent to St Joseph’s Industrial School and St Anne’s Reformatory School in Kilmacud, Dublin. They were established to accommodate girls considered a risk to other children due to sexual experiences.
‘Closer to Hitler’s concentration camps’
Most of the girls sent there – some as young as seven – had been raped or abused.
Even children who were in contact with these girls were themselves considered unsuitable for an ordinary industrial school. Mary had, at this stage, not been sexually abused but was sent there anyway.
When she turned 16 she was sent to the Magdalene laundry on Dublin’s Seán McDermott Street. Before it finally closed in 1996, the laundry and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity who ran it had a reputation for cruel treatment.
But when Mary was 19 she was sent to the laundry in Donnybrook where she spent the next 30 years of her life. That laundry had been in operation for 150 years when it closed in 1992. During that time it housed between 100 and 120 women living at any one time.
Mary says she will never forget what she endured there.
‘It was so cruel; it was so cruel to treat us that way. They wouldn’t want their children to be treated like that if they were in those places. It was closer to Hitler’s concentration camps than anything.
‘If I refused to clean, the nun put me up to my room with no clothes on me, just bed linen and no food for two days.
‘I was cleaning without being paid, we were really slaves. In the laundry, we used to have to wash with a washing board and the top of your knuckles were all skint and bleeding. If you had to go to the nun to dress them, she’d say, “Go on and do your washing.” It makes me sad to think of it.’
On her 30th birthday, Mary was sexually assaulted by a delivery man employed by the nuns.
‘I didn’t want it. It was my birthday and there was a group of friends I was working with. This fella comes over and he does the delivery in the convent and he said, “Come on,” and I said, “No, I know what you want.” I kept pushing him away. Then, he went off and got drunk and came back. Grabbed me. That’s when it happened.’
Mary became pregnant and was moved to Ardmore mother and baby home in Dunboyne, Co. Meath. It was run by the Good Shepherd Sisters, who at the time managed the four largest mother and baby homes in the country.
On May 26, 1972, Mary was transferred to Dublin’s Holles Street maternity hospital to give birth. She was ‘put to sleep’ for the procedure and was told by staff when she awoke that her baby girl was still-born. She was then told she could not attend her funeral.
The recording of the circumstances surrounding the birth are suspiciously scant. Nothing is clearly recorded on Mary’s file and the only mention of a still-birth is in a Sister of Charity report of the incident. Notes from Holles Street refer only to a baby being born to an O’Connor. There is no reference to the cause of death or gestation at birth, or any other information.
The still-birth register wasn’t set up until 1995, which may explain the lack of information. However, Glasnevin cemetery records confirm a baby O’Connor was born at Holles Street with no mention of the name of the mother.
At the time a still-born baby would usually be buried the day after birth – several days later at most. Mary was told her daughter was buried in Glasnevin’s Angel’s Plot on June 3 – nine days after birth.
Mary was distraught after losing her baby. ‘It was horrific. I was devastated. So, they sent me to St Brendan’s.’ This was not her first time in the psychiatric facility in Grangegorman in Dublin. She had been sent there aged 14 for electroconvulsive treatment. After losing her baby the same treament was administered before she was returned to Donnybrook.
More than a decade later she was sent to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Sunday’s Well in Cork where it is thought a laundry was still operating into the 1990s.
Mary remembers one nun, Sister Brendan, would let her out for cups of tea in the 1990s and how she treasured this taste of freedom.
In 1996, Mary was transferred into the care of the HSE and says she now enjoys her life and independence. But the month of May is always a difficult time.
‘I do feel sad in May. I think of the baby. It’s good to talk about it, I feel brave talking about it. I saw a friend of mine from Seán McDermott’s talking about it on the television and I thought, “If she can do it, I can do it.”
‘People need to know about the homes and what happened to us.’ COMMENT Page 21