Academy Award winner Cillian Murphy stars in the new film Small Things Like These, which exposes the Catholic Church’s long-hidden abuses committed against women and girls held within the Magdalene Laundries in 20th-century Ireland. The historical drama, directed by Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants and written by Enda Welsh, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2024. This “absorbing, committed drama” is based on Claire Keegan’s best-selling novella Small Things Like These, published in 2020 under the same title. At the beginning of her book, she dedicates her work to the “women and children who suffered time in Ireland’s mother and baby homes and Magdalene Laundries.” Like the novel, the upcoming film is set in a small town in Ireland in 1985, where Murphy’s character, Bill Furlong, works as a coal merchant to support his large family. As he uncovers disturbing secrets about the town’s convent, he struggles with whether to stay silent on these heinous crimes or speak out against the influential Catholic Church, potentially endangering and ostracizing his family from their community. In exploring this moral dilemma, Keegan focuses on the culpability of Irish society, including that of average citizens like Bill Furlong.
The Magdalene Laundries, or Magdalene Asylums, operated under the authority of the Catholic Church throughout the 20th century. Since 1922, four religious orders—The Sisters of Mercy, The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Charity, and the Good Shepherd Sisters— managed these institutions in ten different locations around Ireland. Their mission was to eradicate what they believed to be the moral failings of Irish society: ‘fallen’ women. According to the Justice for Magdalenes Research page, these women included unwed mothers and their daughters, orphans in the care of the Church and State, industrial school transfers, victims of sexual abuse, homeless women, sex workers, and convicts. The same source finds that girls and women were sent to these asylums through the judicial system, transfers from Mother and Baby homes, hospitals, members of the clergy, local authorities and even family members. One survivor spent eight years in the Galway Magdalene Asylum because she was “pretty as a picture” and would pose as a serious temptation to men. Another, an eleven-year-old orphan, spent fourteen years in the High Park laundry for stealing an apple from an orchard.
Once sent to a laundry, girls and women were stripped of their names, voices, and clothes with no knowledge of their fate. Confined behind locked rooms, they were forbidden from contacting the outside world, including their friends and family. The Church fundamentally stripped these women of their identities, with many Magdalenes and their relatives still struggling to rehabilitate into today’s society. Inmates were expected to attend daily mass and confession and were forbidden to speak any words but their recitations of prayer. However, most of their time in the convent was characterized by slave labour involving washing, ironing, packing laundry, embroidering, sewing, and other arduous forms of labour. Inmates were punished by starvation, physical abuse, solitary confinement, forced kneeling for long periods, and humiliation rituals. A combination of poor diet and unhygienic conditions created a breeding ground for lice and illness, leading to the deaths of many women in the convents, including more than half of those incarcerated at the Donnybrook Laundry between 1954 and 1964. These deaths are a result of the broader complicity of Irish society, as the laundry washed by victims came from community members and state-sponsored institutions, such as public schools, hospitals, parliament, and the President’s Residence. Irish society not only tolerated the cruelty inflicted on these women and children but depended on it.
These houses are not a recent nor uniquely Irish invention, with the earliest Magdalene Asylum traced back to 1765. However, the modern iteration emerged in the 20th century following the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922. Reviving the formerly suppressed Catholic Church coincided with the desire for a distinct national identity characterized by purity and moral virtue. For example, the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. Gilmartin, maintained in 1926 that “the future of the country is bound up with the dignity and purity of the women of Ireland.” Threats to those virtues posed by fallen women would bring dishonour to themselves, their families, communities, and the nation. Therefore, as feminist philosopher Clara Fischer writes in “Gender, Nation, and the Politics of Shame,” women were punished and ostracized to conceal the visible impurities of a newly founded nation seeking to exhibit strength and autonomy. Many conscientious Catholics believed this reasoning to be logical, fearing scandals related to illegitimacy and promiscuity could taint their image. Fear, shame, and guilt permeated Irish society, fostering a silent acceptance that allowed the laundries to persist.
Public opposition to the laundries remained minimal until 1993 when unmarked graves containing the remains of over 100 women were discovered in the backyard of the High Park convent. Citizens could no longer forget about the atrocities occurring. Subsequently, the last asylum finally closed on October 25, 1996. In 2013, the McAleese Report officially identified 10,000 women and girls incarcerated in the laundries. Researchers later identified glaring inaccuracies within the report, including a gross undervaluation of victims, the reported average duration of the women’s stay, and claims that the laundries operated on a subsistence basis rather than for profit.
In the same year, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny faced pressure to issue a formal apology to the victims of the Magdalene Laundries, conceding: “As a society, for many years we failed you. We forgot you, or if we thought of you, we did so using untrue and offensive stereotypes.” The Irish government also announced a reparation plan; however, it exempted the Sister Orders from redressing victims, even with the enormous profits made from slave labour and the sale of convent estates after the institutions closed. Victims, such as PJ Haverty, a survivor of a home in Tuam, feel the amount owed is not enough: “We’re only getting peanuts, we’re only getting a fraction. When you think like it was seven years taken out of my life—locked up in what I call a prison […] and your mother [was] taken from you.” Victims want the nuns who abused them prosecuted for human rights violations, none of whom have ever apologized. They demanded that the Catholic Church release records that would reunite mothers with their babies. They press for an end to the lingering stigma faced by survivors of the Magdalene Laundries. They urge the people of Ireland to reflect on their complicity and question their national identity. Their fight for justice is far from over.
Watch the trailer here: Small Things Like These – Official International Trailer – In Cinemas November 1
Small Things Like These is in theatres on November 8, 2024 (Canada).
Edited by Campbell Graham
Lily Christopoulos is in her first year at McGill University, currently pursuing a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Philosophy. As a staff writer, she is particularly interested in globalization and corporate power.