Heart breaking photo of Dolly who was incarcerated for being pregnant.

[JenniferBooth]

This has made me cry and given me the fucking rage at the same time. What was going through peoples minds when they did this to her. Poor lady I hope she is at peace. How could they. Bastards. Psychopaths.

https://x.com/IanBeesleyphoto/status/1762216625518891090?s=20

Just in terms of the 'for life' bit: some of the women in Magdalene Laundries and other institutions were so institutionalised, it wasn't possible or fair to move them out, so the reason for the late closure of some of the laundries was until the last of the women had passed away.

They were often put in their for pregnancies when unmarried but very often just because they were wayward or outspoken, in some way 'different'. They'd be classified as mentally unwell. If there were suspicions that they'd been behaving 'improperly' with a boy / man (not necessarily pregnant), they could be incarcerated for moral failings.

It was a grim era.

Well, it's quite ancient (plenty of Celtic traditions around marriage) but it wasn't always linked with having children.

It is sickening.

All those poor women.

We don't get ourselves pregnant yet I can't appear to find figures for how many of the men who impregnated these women were imprisoned for life in these institutions.

Yes, it made me cry for her too. And for all of them - ruined lives. My Mum was brought up by her Gran, when her mother was put in an asylum for having Mum out of wedlock. She died in the asylum from TB when she was 27 and Mum was about 5, so in 1927. A catastrophe for the family (among many - the family history reads like a Greek tragedy for those generations).

Important to note that the Magdalene Laundries were not just in Ireland and neither were they just Catholic. They were originally Protestant and were in England, Wales and Scotland and mainland Europe and the US, Canada and Australia.

The abuse of women and girls know no boundaries - not time, not geography, not religion.

There is a great movie, The Magdalene Sisters, about those laundries

They might have been sisters/apostolic women religious, rather than nuns - so they worked, they lived in the convent (or elsewhere), then retired, but took simple vows, rather than solemn ones.

My Mum used to tell me the story of a relative of hers who attempted suicide in the early 1930s, basically as the only way she could see to escape an abusive marriage. She was admitted to a mental hospital and wasn't released until the 1970s by which time she was completely institutionalised and of course extremely confused, as you would be if you'd not seen the outside world since before WW2! She was readmitted and died in the institution. I've been tracing our family history and managed to find her on a list of patients from 1939. There are pages and pages of the names of women, many of whom I imagine were there under similar circumstances and probably not mentally ill at all, just not behaving the way the the world thought they should at the time. And it's not even that long ago. Horrific.

💔
thank you for posting & to others who shared stories

i feel like all we can do now is be sure they are not forgotten/we do not forget

I also met some elderly female patients when training to be a mental health nurse in the early 90's who had been hospitalised for promiscuity and lesbianism. They were completely institutionalised and had never got out.
We also read some really old nursing notes from the early 20th century where the nuns had forced learning disabled women into cold showers for masterbating.

It wasn't uncommon. My sister worked in a psychiatric hospital where they're older women were in simply because they've been pregnant. In the 80s my friend photographed returned to the community from a psychiatric hospital and when the notes were read you could see just how many people were in for either having a baby or for having had sex or just simply for not having any money.

When I say they were in, they were in for the rest of their lives.

@NeverDropYourMooncup I didnt know that was a thing. Thank you.

@Morwenscapacioussleeves I think there should be some form of acknowledgement like there is with our colonial past.

There have been many Dollys. Many women with learning disabilities were sent to institutions for having a baby 'out of wedlock' and spent decades there, until they died or were released as part of the 'care in the community' programme. Some would always carry a doll, as they were grieving for the babies they had lost and who were never spoken of again. It's absolutely shocking what they had to endure.

How awful. What man, ever, has had to suffer like this for having sex?

It's terrible. In the late eighties my gran was in a geriatric psychiatric hospital on a locked ward, and there was an elderly lady on the ward who had been there since having a baby out of wedlock, it shocked me to see that. The poor lady would spend the day pacing the length of the ward like a caged animal.

Yes, I knew someone who worked in care homes for the elderly from the 1960's to the 90's. When people in mental health institutions reached retirement age, and if they weren't considered dangerous, the local council moved them into the retirement homes. The care worker I knew said that almost all of them were not mentally ill. Most of the woman had been locked up for sex before marriage or becoming pregnant. One poor woman had a nervous breakdown after being jilted at the altar aged 22 and was institutionalised for life. One apparently lovely man stole something from a garden aged 10 (this would have been pre-First World War) and was moved from institution to institution. Many of the people, men and women, just had physical or learning disabilities and were written off as children.

Heartbreaking.

This is why no woman should ever be judged for having an unplanned pregnancy. Any baby that is wanted is a blessing. No judgment, ever.

It's awful. My Great Aunt was out in a psychiatric hospital for getting pregnant young and out of wedlock as well. She died in there.

That'll be their biology, they get to walk away.

It's very recent indeed that women have been able to have children outside marriage without (much) censure.

When I was a child in the 80s, teachers made spiteful comments about my siblings and me because my parents weren't married.

Then Tony Blair wanted to bring back homes for unmarried mothers, in the late 90s.

@teaandtoastwithmarmite

I wonder how many were rape victims and I wonder how many were neurodivergent.

A not uncommon story. I know from women who were in service as young girls that the man of the house (and often his sons too) wouldn't leave them alone. Then, when they became pregnant, they were thrown out.

This is my mum's story - I think the man was a stable hand rather than someone from 'upstairs', but that's how she came to be.

My disabled sister has recently died (she had an amazing, full life) and I've often thought about the different life she might have had in a different family/generation, not so long ago...

I do think this is one of the reasons women are full of 'feeling' about comtemporary matters where our lives seem to be summed up in a whiff of perfume and a swish of hair - I think that those of us who are aware of these kind of stories - and many of us only have to think back to our mother or grandmother to get there - carry these stories with us, and the reason we fight is for those women too.

full of 'feeling' = trying not to say anger
comteporary matters = stupid post-modern shit

Heartbreaking. I’m currently doing some family research and I am unearthing a similar story. Often women were admitted and had no record of their individual lives attached to them. They lived in these hell-holes for decades and all the countless staff just saw them as another mentally ill person to ‘process’. Often abandoned by their families or the families were told to forget them. I can find no record of my family member because she didn’t matter. The only record I’ve found is on the 1939 register - as someone upthread mentioned - just one of a long list of women incarcerated in a miserable institution. The only ‘treatments’ on offer would have been bringing on malaria, insulin comas, leucotomies, ECT - really grim and tragic.