The Magdalene Laundries, notorious Irish institutions that imprisoned 'fallen women', are back in the spotlight thanks to a new BBC drama. The Woman in the Wall, starring Ruth Wilson and created by Joe Murtagh, launches on BBC One on Sunday at 21:00 BST. The series examines the abuse that took place in these Catholic-run laundries, which housed unmarried mothers, victims of abuse, and other women deemed burdensome by their families.
The drama arrives shortly after the death of singer Sinéad O'Connor, who spent 18 months in Dublin's An Grianán Training Centre, formerly the High Park Magdalene Laundry, as a teenager. O'Connor described the institution as a 'prison' where girls 'cried every day' and worked without wages. She was assigned tasks like washing priests' clothes for no pay, and had limited contact with her family.
Murtagh said his primary motivation for writing the series was to raise awareness outside Ireland, where the story is not widely known. 'When you read into it, you see how harrowing it was, the scale of it, and how many tens of thousands of lives it's touched,' he told BBC News. Wilson noted that women of all ages were admitted, including those in their 40s who became pregnant out of wedlock, and the oldest was 89.
Research for the show included speaking to survivors. Wilson said she was shocked to learn that in some laundries, women gave birth, nursed their child for two years, and then had the child taken away. Many survivors reported physical and sexual abuse, and spent their time scrubbing floors. An estimated 30,000 women were confined in these laundries over the years, with lasting impacts on their lives.
O'Connor's time in the laundry influenced her famous 1992 Saturday Night Live protest, where she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II to denounce abuse in the Catholic Church. Wilson described the denial of what happened to women as a form of 'gaslighting'. The drama aims to shed light on this dark chapter of Irish history.
