The Fallen

Work, work, work. Pray, pray, pray.
In twentieth-century Ireland, an ideology prevailed among those in power: moral decay threatened to undermine the nation's Catholic identity. Those who did not conform ran the risk of being purged from society, leading to a staggering rate of incarceration. By 1951, over 1 per cent of the population were detained in a network of institutions, from Mother and Baby Homes and asylums to industrial schools.
The Magdalene Laundries were the deep end of this regime of social control. Thousands of women and girls were sent to Ireland's ten Laundries - the homeless, sex workers, the disabled, girls from care homes, those who were abandoned and abused. Each of them were perceived to have fallen in some way, and at the Laundries it was believed they would make their ascension. Once they were locked inside, their names were taken, and they were forced to maintain a strict rule of silence. Then they were put to work: they washed, they scrubbed and they prayed, labouring in often indefinite captivity in an attempt to salvage their souls.
In The Fallen, Louise Brangan draws on first-hand accounts and survivors' testimony to recover the lives of women and girls on their harrowing journeys into, through and beyond the walls of the Laundries. She also tells the stories of the nuns who ran them and the communities who lived alongside them.
When the gates of the last Laundry were locked for the final time in 1996, Ireland moved on. Or so it seemed. This has remained one of the darkest and most misunderstood periods in recent history. As we begin to reckon with this shameful past, Brangan compels us to confront a deeper question: what does it truly mean to remember?

Dr Louise Brangan is an Irish academic who researches injustice and punishment. She is a 2023 BBC and AHRC New Generation Thinker and winner of the 2024 Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award. She lives and works in Scotland.