“You can leave at any time.” The disembodied voice in the dark, tiny room in the Little Museum of Dublin crackles with injustice, anger and strength. It is the voice of Mary Merritt, Magdalene Laundry survivor.
Born Mary O’Conor in a workhouse in Dublin, raised in an orphanage in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, and then in 1947 sent back to Dublin to High Park Magdalene laundry in Drumcondra at 16 for the “crime” of robbing apples.
In High Park she was incarcerated with other girls and women, doing unpaid labour, cleaning the dirty linen of the great and the good, for 14 years. They did laundry for the department of justice and Áras an Uachtaráin. “We were slaves,” she says.
You can leave at any time.
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