THE WOMAN IN THE WALL. BBC 1 sun 9pm - TV PACE. NO SPOILERS

[Blondeshavemorefun]

this is a 6 part drama

1 is shown sun and then 2 on the monday

3456 the following 4 Sundays

it’s will no doubt be on iPlayer but try and not binge lovely people in my phone 😂😂😂

this will be tv paced

Ruth Wilson and Daryl McCormack are teaming up for a gripping new BBC drama, which is inspired by the horrifying revelations around Ireland's Magdalene Laundries.

The Woman In The Wall follows the horrors experienced by Lorna Brady (Ruth Wilson) is a woman from the small, fictional Irish town of Kilkinure, who wakes one morning to find a corpse in her house.

Lorna is chilled to the core as she has no idea who the dead woman is or if she could even be responsible for the apparent murder herself. This is a deadly possibility because Lorna suffers from extreme bouts of sleepwalking, which started around the time she was ripped from her life at the age of 15 and incarcerated in the Kilkinure Convent.

The Woman in the Wall follows Lorna Brady (Wilson), a woman who was incarcerated in a convent from a young age, where she traumatically gave birth – only to have the baby taken away from her to whereabouts unknown.

The awful treatment she endured continues to impact her life, causing extreme bouts of sleepwalking that end with her waking up in strange places with no memory of how she got there.

While her specific story is a work of fiction, the Magdalene Laundries were very real and are thought to have blighted the lives of tens of thousands of women.

Although their history dates back further, more is known about the practices of these institutions in the 20th century, where inmates entered via the criminal justice system, reformatory schools and the Health and Social Services sector.

Once inside, they would have to carry out unpaid labour, while many former inmates have reported being abused.

Magdalene Laundries became the subject of a media scandal in the 1990s, when a mass grave holding 155 bodies was discovered on the former grounds of one such institution in Drumcondra, Dublin.

"Slipped, did he?"

I thought that Thomas was about to hug Amy and apologise for what she went through, but he turned out to be horrible all the way, so good on her for the punch. Do we know if the two older women had babies in the laundry, or were they put there for other reasons? It seems to be only Lorna and Clemence who had babies with fake death certificates, and Clemence is dead so Lorna is the only one who would take any further action against the convent/state.

Michael seems to have disappeared for now, not sure what his purpose in the story is/was. And yes, where is the "daughter" who turned up in one episode and hasn't been seen since? You'd expect her to be sniffing around whether she's a journalist, Aoife's real daughter or Lorna's actual daughter.

That was a much better episode. More plot, less hallucinations (caused in Lorna’s case from lack of sleep as well as trauma?)

I wept a lot at the story of giving birth in that terrible place and cheered when that obnoxious fella “tripped”. I had shouted “punch him!” Half a second before she did indeed punch him.

Adopted people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have had the tight to see their original birth certificate since 1975.
Not so in the Republic of Ireland.
Adopted people there received that right in October 2022 !
47 years later.
Today it has been reported that 16,000 people have been registered in Ireland looking for information or in some cases requesting privacy, on the Contact Preference Register.

So Thomas said Amy perused (was obsessed with (I can't remember the words) him while married. Amy was 15 when she got pregnant with his baby. Poor Thomas 🙄

Do we know if the two older women had babies in the laundry, or were they put there for other reasons?

Peggy was sent there for being too pretty, 'she never even had a boyfriend'

😂😂😂

It was a great episode tonight (well not tonight, but I've only just watched it) I thought, and certainly picked up the pace. Ruth Wilson is excellent.

Is this true?!
This is shocking

The story of Peggy has dredged up a forgotten memory of one of my great aunts. She was institutionalised in Northern Ireland aged 17, for ‘going around with boys’ (as my grandma put it when she told me). I don’t think it was a laundry, I think it was some kind of medical facility, because she was ‘treated’ with electroshock therapy. This is before it was the safe and beneficial treatment it can now be today…

My grandad got her out as soon as he married her younger sister, my grandma, but that must have been after at least five or so years in the place. I know he did have to pay to get her out. But she was mentally frozen in time and often confused.

She very likely didn’t have sex or even have a boyfriend. Looking at pictures, she was just a very pretty, confident teenager and like Peggy, her punishment was that she had her life stolen. Her family were devout Catholics.

anyway…

I now wonder if it was some kind of laundry type institution. It would have been in the 50s. She died a few years ago, and she wouldn’t have been able to tell me anyway. She usually didn’t know my name, she’d call me by my mum or aunts’ names. Awful.

@PhilippePhiloppe my mother was in an industrial school which had a laundry - she never said why she was sent but I suspect it was because she was pregnant. If she was, the baby either didn’t survive or was taken. Either way I sort of feel I had an older sibling (I am ‘officially’ the eldest). I’m English as my mother moved here in the 60’s to train as a nurse (as many did) We had a difficult relationship and she had a very odd view of sex which always made me suspicious as to how she’d come to that view. She’d also developed this whole persona that meant she’d rather die than admit I might have had a sibling. She’s now passed away so unless someone pops up on one of the DNA sites, we’ll never know I guess.

My cousin (who lives in Ireland) now helps reunites missing babies with mothers in Ireland. She hears such utterly heartbreaking stories through this work. I also have a friend who is a psychiatrist in the UK who once told me that they treated quite a few Irish born nurses from that generation who have issues with hoarding (my mother was a hoarder) or who had developed issues with cleaning/housekeeping after being forced to work in the laundries/schools.

I genuinely don’t know how the remaining nuns/priests like Father Percy lived with themselves really.

I've binge watched the first five episodes. An excellent show, it really depicts the horror women must have gone through and the impact on the rest of their lives. Ruth Wilson is amazing I hope Lorna finds Agnes.

@PhilippePhiloppe & @Laundrynotatrainingschool
Such awfully sad stories. Very true about the hoarding, they also had problems with alcoholism. I think they drank to forget.

@purpleme12
Yes it's true, the statistics re numbers registering their preference came from a news report on the RTE ( Irish state tv, similarish to BBC ) News app yesterday.

Blimey that good looking police fella is clever - he can vanquish hallucinatory mental disturbance with one twitch of his on trend furry trucker collar.

Lorna was practically Lucy Worsley by the end of that lot 😂

Amy's child was probably not even registered as a death. She was given no painkillers, no care or stitches after. The baby was a still born. My first great niece was a stillborn baby. She will always be remembered, because times have changed.

There's not a family in Ireland who doesn't know someone or has a relative who has had to endure this. Most is still kept a secret.

When I was house sharing in Galway in the early 80s, I was told to leave because I had my fiance stay over the night. My housemates told the landlady.

That's absolutely awful , making you leave , thank God things are different now .

So sorry for your loss @placemats.

The stuff Amy said about no stitches and no painkillers comes from evidence given to the Commission by a midwife I believe.

Hi @Blondeshavemorefun

Just found this and seen that I AM still on your list - I wonder why I haven't been receiving notifications. And how a DM got to me when these didn't. Curious.

I think that "daughter" was working for the organisation that was selling the babies, and was after the information that Lorna found.

And I think Lorna thought that too, with was why she drove off and left her. She was certainly suspicious,

The "Cruelty Man" existed in the North East, too, but as someone who helped children (as you say NSPCC).

When we were working our tickets we were threatened with being sent to the "raggy school" and got rid of.

(Why, yes. Yes - I did wake up sobbing with fright in the night. How did you guess?)

I was expecting that young detective to find the bodies of 00's of "dumped" babies and toddlers when he was in the catacomb bit beneath the convent (forgive me if this has been speculated - I've just found this thread and am reading backwards). There has been more than one "mother and baby home" where such poor little souls have been found dumped and nameless after decades. There was a documentary about one of them not so long ago. It was harrowing.

I was very surprised when he didn't, and wondered what twist the story was going to take.

Weird

Yes you are tagged in all I do

@Emotionalsupportviper
I too thought they would find the bodies of the children whose death certs were faked, buried somewhere inappropriate as happened at Tuam and probably Bessborough and other places too.