THE SISTERS of Our Lady of Charity, who ran a Magdalene laundry in North Dublin, received thousands of pounds from numerous wills and legacies from the 1920s through to the 1970s, documentation shows.
Yet, the nuns ran a laundry where hundreds of women and young girls were forced to work six days a week for no pay and no pension. During the 1970s, the nuns, based in Drumcondra, were also in receipt of funding from the Departments of Justice and Health, according to research unearthed by the Justice for Magdalenes group.
The same nuns made regular appeals for funding to the public, in newspapers and radio, such as the radio appeal recorded by a Reverend Tyndall in 1947 seeking charitable donations for the laundry at High Park, Drumcondra.
Newspaper clippings show another radio appeal made by a Rev Robert Nash where he highly praised the rehabilitation of the women at St Mary’s Home for Girls, High Park.
Fr Nash said: "Thousands of girls had entered St Mary’s lonely, disappointed, disillusioned and embittered and their problems had been unfailingly listened to sympathetically."
A 1939 appeal on Radio Éireann, made by a Capuchin priest, Fr Aloysius on behalf of another Magdalene Asylum at Gloucester Street in Dublin, said the nuns had changed the girls’ lives.
"Those who had the good fortune to be brought into close contact with the work could realise the beauty of the lives of the girls that were sheltered in the home and heights of sanctity to which many of them have attained," he stated.
Details of at least 17,000 pounds in legacies bequeathed to the High Park laundry were uncovered when a laundry survivor found files containing the will details in a skip at the North Dublin site.
Donations from £5 to over £1,000 were given to the mother superior at Hyde Park from former residents, people who had heard radio appeals and a number of legacies were also left by male donators.
Professor Jim Smith of the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) group last night said: "The Sisters appealed for charitable donations in support of their work with marginalised women and young girls throughout the 20th century. At no time, however, did the nuns draw attention to the commercial, for-profit nature of their enterprise or to the fact they were in receipt of capitation grants from various government departments".
The independent chairperson of the interdepartmental group, which is to examine the treatment of those at the laundries, will be announced next week, according to the Department of Justice.
The same nuns made regular appeals for funding to the public, in newspapers and radio, such as the radio appeal recorded by a Reverend Tyndall in 1947 seeking charitable donations for the laundry at High Park, Drumcondra.
Newspaper clippings show another radio appeal made by a Rev Robert Nash where he highly praised the rehabilitation of the women at St Mary’s Home for Girls, High Park.
Fr Nash said: "Thousands of girls had entered St Mary’s lonely, disappointed, disillusioned and embittered and their problems had been unfailingly listened to sympathetically."
A 1939 appeal on Radio Éireann, made by a Capuchin priest, Fr Aloysius on behalf of another Magdalene Asylum at Gloucester Street in Dublin, said the nuns had changed the girls’ lives.
"Those who had the good fortune to be brought into close contact with the work could realise the beauty of the lives of the girls that were sheltered in the home and heights of sanctity to which many of them have attained," he stated.
Details of at least 17,000 pounds in legacies bequeathed to the High Park laundry were uncovered when a laundry survivor found files containing the will details in a skip at the North Dublin site.
Donations from £5 to over £1,000 were given to the mother superior at Hyde Park from former residents, people who had heard radio appeals and a number of legacies were also left by male donators.
Professor Jim Smith of the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) group last night said: "The Sisters appealed for charitable donations in support of their work with marginalised women and young girls throughout the 20th century. At no time, however, did the nuns draw attention to the commercial, for-profit nature of their enterprise or to the fact they were in receipt of capitation grants from various government departments".
The independent chairperson of the interdepartmental group, which is to examine the treatment of those at the laundries, will be announced next week, according to the Department of Justice.
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