THE FALLEN

A notorious chapter in Irish history still holds the power to shock in this resurfacing of women entangled in a repressive social system.

Brangan, an Irish academic, recounts a shameful history with the urgency of personal confession: the terrifying abuse of women in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries. An unofficial yet normalized carceral system, when the final laundry’s gates clanged shut in 1996, general public sentiment held that a sad chapter had finished, case closed. But for the thousands who had been forced into servitude—some spending a lifetime in laundries, exiting only to unmarked graves—the story had no neat endpoint. Sifting through archival records of victim accounts and interviews with survivors, Brangan plumbs the deep sorrow of lives lost to repression, clothed in the guise of religious charity. With few official public services in the 1920s, girls and women were compelled to enter after having a child outside of marriage, having parents unable to feed another mouth, or even after being accused of being too unconventional or uncontrollable—violations of conservative Catholic mores. In laundries, so-called industrial schools, and mother and child homes, some connected to convents, women lived and performed years of unpaid work. Washing clothing, scrubbing floors, and following religious routines overseen by nuns, they were removed from public view, as families and neighbors stayed silent. As Brangan notes, collusion and collective silencing of women were woven into the social system: “The courts, police, social workers, priests, and parents sent women and girls there, and they sent their laundry in after them.” Brangam uses evocative photos and previously unknown victims’ accounts to document the reality of their suffering, concluding, “If there were really any fallen people back then, it was not them—the women and girls—but the proverbial us.”

A wrenching reminder that human injustice repeats in the dark corners of human history—and a call to remain attentive.