Frances Finnegan

Frances Finnegan is an English historian who resettled in Ireland. She had previously done a study of Victorian prostitution, the last chapter of which was on the Rescue and Reform movement (particularly in York, England.) Finnegan makes no apology for not choosing "to be 'objective' about the subject of this study, no do I think it a necessity, or a virtue, for historians to suspend their moral judgement." As long as she has her facts straight, I have no problem with that. Finnegan points out that the Female Penitentiary (using the term to mean a place where one repents, although the sense of prison is not inappropriate either) was largely carried out by women and "[f]ew questioned the morality of consigning 'fallen' women but not men to penitentiaries."

She was given access to the records of the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd,which dominated the Magdelan system in Ireland for more than a century. Originally a branch of the Order of our Lady of Charity, founded by Saint Mary Euphrasia Pelletier in France in 1835 and dedicated to rescuing fallen women. Finnegan discuss the order as a whole, and then the individual houses in Ireland, comparing them at times with other organizations. She focuses on the last half of the 19th century, although she does briefly discuss the continuation of the system into the 1970s, with the last inmates leaving in the 1990s. Finnegan is disappointed that so few historians are willing to discuss this controversial topic, with most of the literature being autobiographical accounts. Obviously here is a fertile field for oral history. Finnegan has grouped her statistics in tables, mostly towards the end of the book. It would have been helpful to have some slightly more sophisticated analysis, such as not just the average of stays in the institutions, but the distribution, and, if possible from the material, the background of those who stayed longer and shorter periods.

Finnegan is generally appalled by the treatment of the women by the Good Shepherd order. It must really rankle that she thinks that the English Protestant institutions generally did a better job, not that she celebrates them, either.

The first problem, as she sees it, is that in contrast to the mainstream of the Rescue and Reform movement, Good Shepherd made no effort to return the women to society. It was common in English institutions to ask the women to commit to a two-year course of training that would hopefully enable them to earn a living in a more respectable way, and they attempted to place their trainees in situations. At the end of the course, the women had to leave, and if they bolted early, they were not readmitted. Good Shepherd wanted the women to remain with them for the rest of their life, and gave them no training except as workers in their lucrative laundries, and those who left rarely went to a job placement. There were three classes of women committed to a more nun-like existence and residents were praised for joining them. The nuns had no authority to hold residents against their will, but they attempted to discourage them from leaving. Finnegan suspects that some did not know they could leave. Here is a case where accounts from the women would be valuable, but of course there are almost certainly no survivors from the 19th century. The fact that some of those who left are recorded as having gone "over the wall" suggests that Finnegan is correct.

Finnegan is also appalled at the dehumanizing treatment of the women -- again, memoirs would be very valuable if any could be found. The women's hair was often cut very short in an era where women wore long hair, although it must have grown back somewhat since women are recorded as cutting their hair as an offering for some divine favor. They were dressed in shapeless garments, to cure them of a fondness for fashion that was only appropriate for the wealthy. They were forbidden to talk to each other for long period during the day, often being required to recite prayers or sing hymns. And despite the idea that God forgives the penitent, they were encouraged to do penance for the rest of their lives for what might have been a brief period of sin, or indeed, no particular sin at all.

Not all of the women were former prostitutes, or even fallen women who had been seduced. Some were rape victims, incest victims, paupers, children from an attached Industrial School who had simply been transferred over because workers were needed, or women suffering from some physical or, especially, intellectual deficiency. Yet they were all treated the same, as sinners needing to do penance.

In Children of the Poor Clares, Heather Laskey and Mavis Arnold remark that the Irish often thought that the religious orders ran the Industrial Schools and the Magdalen laundries as charities, but they were in fact profit-making. The Irish government subsidized the Industrial Schools, Laskey and Arnold argue that it was generous compared to the wages of many workers. Finnegan argues that the Magdalen Laundries not only paid the expenses the workers, they also subsidized the Good Shepherd sisters. She points out that the end of the laundries came not in response to social changes or questions about its merits, but because "cheap washing machines destroyed its financial basis, and dwindling vocations its power to control."… (plus d'informations)