Words by Ruairi Hawthorne
While it has been out of commission for a long time, there remains one old venerable Glasgow institution that is still the talk of many former patrons.
Women working in a Steamie c.1940
These patrons weave tales of the days when getting your laundry (and sometimes your body) washed was an adventure filled with blood, sweat and occasional tears, mouth-watering gossip, bountiful bottles and community comradery. These are the tales of the old Glasgow steamies, a place where friendships were formed, information exchanged and, of course, clothes washed.
Although these luxurious laundries were primarily used for washing purposes, they are mostly remembered as more of a community hub for overworked mothers to convene, chat, and update each other on all the latest local gossip.
Steamies were also a place for many unwilling children to be dragged, kicking and screaming to, by their mothers to be washed, often followed by reparations in the form of a hot roll from a nearby bakery or a trip to a nearby swimming pool (which often shared the same space as the steamie and wash house). From the first wheelbarrow full of dirty washing to the final dispersal of a group of gossips, the steamies have always been there for maligned mothers, weeping widows, and grateful grandmothers alike.
Unfortunately, like all things, there is a dark side to the Glasgow steamies. While most former patrons see the old laundries as epitomising the sense of community that has been lost in the present day, a woman who worked in one of them tells a very different story.
The Glasgow Magdalene Institution c.1890
The Glasgow Magdalane Institution was for the Repression of Vice and the Rehabilitation of Penitent Females opened 1812 with the express purpose of combating the immoral trade of female prostitution. Wayward girls who were not pregnant or were free of any venereal diseases were given a chance to repent through labour. Very often these women were put to work in the washroom of the Institute and were rewarded with a payslip and free accommodation in addition to learning crucial skills to enable them to get a respectable job when they left. Well, that was the pitch anyway. In reality, the institute was just a new cog in the recently established ‘‘Glasgow System’’. This term was used in reference to the treatment of “prostitutes” in Glasgow in the 19th century by the local police and medical authorities, who colluded to ensure that such women were proven either mentally or physically unwell, leading to their indefinite incarceration. If this wasn’t bad enough, the term “prostitute” was being used rather loosely as a badge of shame to any woman whose behaviour was deemed immoral, such as socialists, unwed mothers, and those whose dress sense was not quite up to snuff. If these women were found to have any sort of venereal disease, they would usually end up having a permanent stay in a place like the Lock Hospital. However, if they were deemed only to be ‘mentally degenerate’, they would end up in a place like the Magdalene Institute.
While the girls were paid for their services, their pay was so meagre that it might as well have been free labour. The “free accommodation” was more like imprisonment and many of these women were never able to leave, making the accruement of workplace skills rather redundant. To be fair, some of these women chose to come to these places of their own free will to find salvation and could leave whenever they wanted. However, often this trust was met with judgement and abuse from the staff. Some of the other women were placed there against their will by parents or social workers and could only leave at the latter’s discretion, making their stay at the institute feel more like a prison sentence; some of the time their stay was permanent. Quite a departure from the conclave of gossiping women that springs to mind when most people think of the old Glasgow steamies.
Young Irish women in a Magdalene Institute
Unfortunately, the Glasgow System and its main beneficiary, the Magdalene Institutes, where both adopted outside of the UK in places including Ireland, the United States, Canada, Sweden and Australia. Of course, not all of these institutes were cut from the same cloth and each adopted different approaches to the treatment of their charges. For example, the Magdalene Society of Philadelphia attempted to function as a refuge for women who were trying to escape unhappy family situations, poverty, disease and abusive men.
Unlike the early Scottish institutes, these women could come and go as they pleased, with many of them getting into a cycle of staying for a few weeks, leaving and then re-entering. This proved to be ineffective at curbing the difficulties that these women faced upon their departure and a stricter policy was implemented that required charges to stay for a minimum of two months. While the institutes harshened their policy on the length of a tenant’s stay (leading to less woman admitting themselves), the nuns severely relaxed the unspoken policy of guilt and judgement directed at these fallen women, finding that it only perpetuated the tragic cycle of self-hatred. Not everyone learned this lesson however, as the New York Magdalene Society ran things in the traditional, judgemental and prison-like fashion, with many women being forcibly committed for up to three years, compelling many to injury and even death in failed escape attempts. Many of these women were taken against their will from their place of work, which varied from brothels to taverns. This was all done under the pretence of saving them from disease, abuse and most of all, themselves and their immoral behaviour.
However, just as in the Glasgow asylums, these words proved to be hollow and in fact, most of the evils that the institute seemingly protected these women from could easily be found within its own walls. For one, unlike the Glasgow asylums, the New York institute allowed women with venereal diseases within their walls and even attempted amateurish medical treatment. In lieu of innovative medicine like Penicillin for the treatment of such ailments, many new arrivals were given mercury to treat syphilis. This was common practice at the time but was unsafe and often led to patients being poisoned, to the point where the symptoms of mercury poisoning were often confused for syphilis until as late as the early 1920s.
The New York Institute
As for abuse, well just like many of their contemporaries, the sisters of the New York institute were extremely judgemental and hostile to their charges, often seeing them as lost causes who could never re-integrate into society, which, in their eyes, justified their indefinite incarceration.
Thankfully, the Congregation of the sisters of Misericorde, which was based in Canada, where much more sympathetic. Founded by experienced midwife Marie Rosaline in 1848, it specialised in taking care of unmarried pregnant woman until the birth of their children whom they were heavily encouraged to put up for adoption. While this might not sound very progressive, the nuns of the congregation where quite sympathetic to their charges and hoped that adoption would bring a more prosperous life for these children. However, the mere thought of unwed mothers being taken care of was outrageous to many, who saw this as encouraging immoral behaviour. This incentivised the nuns to do their work as discreetly as they could, as they knew that these women would not be met with nearly as much sympathy when they left the Congregation. Many of the nuns saw the major social stigma of giving birth out of wedlock as being the main reason that so many women turned to prostitution in lieu of other employment options as they had no choice.
Marie Rosaline, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of Misericorde
Marie was particularly dedicated to the women in her care, often going hungry to feed them if food was scarce and she was known to say that: “Single mothers are the treasure of the house.”. She even used her own home and the homes of her adult children to shelter these women until she was able to acquire proper accommodation. She would even allow them to stay with the congregation after they gave birth and in doing so, she kept them from the cruel world that awaited them outside. This made her congregation one of the only institutes to bear the name Magdalene that actually was a sanctuary for woman, as so many of them falsely claimed to be.
One of the worst examples of this was in Ireland. In 1767, the Magdalene Asylum for Penitent Females was opened in Dublin and was only the first in a long list of such institutes in Ireland, with the final one only closing in 1996. This particular institute only accepted protestant women and played a similar role to the Glasgow Institutes: to give the police, medical authorities and church a place to quietly tuck away any “undesirable women” sometimes indefinitely. This institute and its many contemporaries where especially harsh, which was partly due to the grip that religious organisations had on Ireland at the time. Like Glasgow’s extremely versatile use of the term “prostitute”, the sisters of the institutes used the term “fallen woman” rather loosely, and it became an all-encompassing term for any woman who did not conform to the very rigid standards of Irish morality. Expansion was rapid and many more institutes were opened throughout the country. However, more laundries meant more workers were needed to operate them, which led to the word “fallen” becoming even more flexible to accommodate the forced labour of more woman. As time went on, it became evermore apparent that unlike Miss Rosaline’s establishment, the institute’s stated mission of “protect, reform and rehabilitate” was far from the top priority of the Magdalene Asylum and its contemporaries.
Daily Record’s front page dedicated to the 1958 breakout from the Glasgow Institute
For decades the suffering of these women went unheard and the institutes were able to operate without interference. However, in the Glasgow Institution, the residents made it impossible to be ignored. In 1958, 27 inmates escaped the institute and scattered through the streets. Some left through the fire escape while others fled to the roof to protest. To this day, no one knows who, if anyone, led the escape and what could have been the final straw for these women, who had already suffered through years of abuse and ill treatment despite committing no crime. They were hunted by the police, who justified their ruthless pursuit by claiming that the woman had staged a violent riot at the institute, and the public were told to keep watch for them. Their newfound freedom didn’t last long however, as eventually all 27 women were rounded up and returned to the institute, a task that was made relatively easy due to their distinctive blue dresses.
But the spark of rebellion had already been ignited and another breakout was staged, followed by many more. Every time they were caught, they would vow to escape until their voices were heard. While their freedom was always fleeting, eventually their struggle bore fruit as their claims of mistreatment were finally investigated by the Scottish Home Department. However, by this point these victims of the “Glasgow System” knew better than anyone that injustice would prevail as it had since the institute’s opening, that the Home Department was just another cog in this system and that this investigation would be a mere formality. If they wanted true freedom, they would have to make one final effort that could not be ignored.
When representatives of the home office arrived at the institution to conduct their investigation, the women instigated another breakout, and while they were unable to substantiate any of their claims of abuse, they didn’t have to. In 1958, more than 100 years after its opening, the Glasgow Institute finally closed its doors after years of silent abuse.
One would assume that such a significant event would have created a scandalous ripple that would have affected the other Magdalene Asylums, as well as the various churches and governments that supported them but even after such a high-profile closure, the Glasgow Institute was barely commented on in the press. Even when the home office launched an official enquiry, not a single person was held accountable for the alleged abuses.
Additionally, many of the other Asylums that were scattered across the globe continued to operate. Northern Ireland was probably the worst example of this, with its final institution only closing its doors in 1996. This was preceded by the discovery of a mass grave on the premisses of a former institute, “The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity”, which was discovered by the land's current owner in 1993. This incident, as well as the subsequent attempt by the sisters to exhume and cremate the dead women ended up shining a brighter spotlight on the system of abuse and control that had permeated Ireland for hundreds of years. This sparked a wave of press coverage and investigations throughout the 1990s and 2000s, with documentaries such as 1998’s Chanell 4 production, “Sex in a Cold Climate”, as well as the 2002 drama “The Magdalene Sisters”. This type of mainstream media exposure resulted in many more woman coming forward, with roughly 450 women contacting a helpline after the initial airing of “Sex in a Cold Climate”.
In 2001 the Irish Government acknowledged the existence of the asylums for the first time. However, despite their major role in filling the institutes with wayward women, they accepted no responsibility and refused to investigate further. It wasn’t until 2011 that, after years of lobbying from the group “Justice for Magdalene's”, that the government finally launched an official inquiry into the asylums, and after a further 18 months of investigation, admitted that there had been “significant state collusion” with the institutes. Even then, none of the survivor's accounts of physical abuse, horrendous living conditions and forced labour were ever confirmed, with verbal abuse being the full extent of the sister's cruelty in the report.
Additionally, the report suggested that the residents were actually free to leave whenever they wanted, much as in some of the other institutes previously mentioned, which led many to speculate that the government was attempting to soften the perception of the institutes and diminish their culpability for the suffering of 11,000 women. Even after the report was published, there was still no talk of a formal apology from the government or a compensation scheme for the many surviving women. These both came in 2013, with Enda Kennedy issuing a formal apology on the behalf of the state government, describing the institutes as the nation's shame and declared that a compensation scheme would be initiated that would include both financial and psychological support.
Group of Magdalene Campaigners, 2017.
On the other hand, the Catholic Church, who were arguably just as guilty as the state, with two anonymous sisters even claiming that they had provided a free service, and that they were being used as a scapegoat for a myriad of other social issues that had caused the suffering of these women. In addition, none of the three major religious institutes that had run the laundries contributed at all to the compensation of the 600 or so surviving victims, and to this day have refused to acknowledge their role in the exploitation and lasting trauma of these women. While the delayed response of the Irish government and the complete apathy of the church is abhorrent, at least it was talked about.
Most of the other Magdalene Institutes have barely been mentioned in the press, and when they have, they have often been defended as a necessary measure to combat the plague of prostitution. While some of the institutes were genuine in their endeavour to save these so-called fallen women, most of them merely used this pretence to lock away any woman who strayed from the very narrow path of moral decency, subsequently being exploited for a profit. While the local governments where either indifferent or active participants in this abusive system, the only person who made a significant effort to help the Magdalene women, besides the women themselves, was Jacob Christian Shaffer, the creator of the washing machine.