Des Wilson

MAGDALENES

The recent Mc Aleese Report on Magdalene Laundries may  possibly - but not probably - lead to further reports on how women , and children, and men, have been treated in the past and are being treated at present.
Do people remember that in Belfast rope works the  noise of the machines was so intense that women left the factory deafened for life? Or that women in domestic service had their names changed for  their employers' convenience  ? Or that in the linen mills women worked in bare feet in appalling conditions some of them returning to work  within days of childbirth, some suckling their children at the mill gates , the child in the arms of  another child of the family ? That a good mill employer was one who gave workers a bowl of porridge, which the workers  paid for, in the mornings after a couple of hours work? That women in tobacco factories were exposed to what we now try to get people to avoid ? That  our match factories filled women's lungs  with phosphorus or that the men working in the holds of ships breathed in asbestos which killed many of them ? Is there any report coming about what "hard labour" meant when a judge  handed down that sentence to women as well as men ?
The linen was beautiful and graced many a beautiful table and altar; the ships' tackle and cargoes made some people rich, the tobacco gave many an hour's pleasure , the judge went to lunch satisfied with a good job done.
Some reports then ?

21.2.13.