Speaker 1: What's hurting my ears my new Zoom. This meeting is
Speaker 1: being recorded. Boys. I'm Robert Evans, host behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: And if you are a user of Zoom, which hopefully
Speaker 1: less people are, because the world is in some well
Speaker 1: parts of the world are slightly better than they were
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to phrase this adequately. Um, but fucking Zoom
Speaker 1: just put in a new change where this horrible woman
Speaker 1: tells you that you're being recorded in a voice that
Speaker 1: makes me want to either die or do violence. UM.
Speaker 1: And I don't like it. I don't prefer it. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the next thing she says is she's like
Speaker 1: blue lives matter, and then she definitely talking about white
Speaker 1: farmers in South Africa, And yeah, it gets like really weird,
Speaker 1: how blonde people are going extinct. It's it's bizarre. I
Speaker 1: don't understand why Zoom put all that in. She asked
Speaker 1: me if I knew how to spell eugenics the last
Speaker 1: it seems out of place. Yeah, she actually poses the
Speaker 1: old s s racial heritage questions to make sure that
Speaker 1: you're legally allowed to be in a relationship with your
Speaker 1: significant other. Um. That's zoom that's the zoom Lady, actual Nazi,
Speaker 1: the zoom Lady, the urban legend of this, the biggest
Speaker 1: Karen of them all. We have to see Sophia, We
Speaker 1: have we have you. This is a podcast about bad people,
Speaker 1: the worst in all of history. Uh. And we have
Speaker 1: an especially dark episode today. Today we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about one of the darkest chapters in Irish history. Now,
Speaker 1: if you know anything about the Irish you know that
Speaker 1: that's saying thing when you're like, this is one of
Speaker 1: the worst things that ever happened in Ireland. Like you're already,
Speaker 1: you're already, you're getting You're on the top of a mountain,
Speaker 1: and maybe there's like two or three other mountains. There's
Speaker 1: like there's a indigenous American history, there's like Ukrainian history,
Speaker 1: you know, one or two other mountains that you can
Speaker 1: see peaks above you when you're on top of the
Speaker 1: Irish history mountain. Um, so this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: bad one today, gonna be a real bad one today.
Speaker 1: Um And I know that since I am here it
Speaker 1: is there's gonna be piles and yeah, siles of and
Speaker 1: piles of babies who are diseased. Yeah, that is my
Speaker 1: calling card. The working title for this episode is how
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church killed all of Ireland's babies. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're, we're, We're gonna fucking zoom in on that,
Speaker 1: and obviously, as that probably keeps you in on the
Speaker 1: villain of today's episode is primarily the Catholic Church. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how the Catholic Church we got a deal with
Speaker 1: all these fucking kids. I am starting to think I'm
Speaker 1: misunderstanding who we're cheering for in this pos This is
Speaker 1: a very pro killing babies podcast. This is Behind the
Speaker 1: Baby Killers, a podcast that celebrates reducing the surplus population.
Speaker 1: Look as I signed to get drunk at two in
Speaker 1: the afternoon, that's the behind the bastards here. Yeah, Sophie
Speaker 1: is getting drunk and I'm yelling about are there no workhouses?
Speaker 1: Are there no prisons? I'm Benezer Scrooge. That's the long
Speaker 1: frame of the show. Are you married to the zoom lady?
Speaker 1: I am, I am. You're very happy. We're having our
Speaker 1: wedding at a plantation. Several plantations were plantation hopping for
Speaker 1: the wedding. May I ask the color of the skin
Speaker 1: of the people that will be attending your wedding. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean servers are attending, right, Yeah, that's what I meant,
Speaker 1: attend to your white guests. Yeah, Sophia, what do you
Speaker 1: what do you? What do you? What do you? What
Speaker 1: do you know about Ireland? Well, um, I do consider
Speaker 1: them a sister country to my Eastern your because we
Speaker 1: do worship the potato as well worship and you also
Speaker 1: worship hardcore drinking, So hardcore drinking, and they very close
Speaker 1: to my heart. Ireland, and in both Ukraine and Ireland,
Speaker 1: the hardcore drinking is driven in part by the fact
Speaker 1: that you are the two most colonized countries within Europe.
Speaker 1: Both both Ukraine and Ireland were victims of colonization. Look,
Speaker 1: oppression will drive you to drink, It absolutely does. And
Speaker 1: there's some you know, we had everything exploding in Gaza,
Speaker 1: in in in in Palestine recently, and some reminders that,
Speaker 1: like the Irish, are some of the most within sort
Speaker 1: of the Western world, probably the most consistent allies of
Speaker 1: the Palestinian cause, as they were consistent allies as a
Speaker 1: nation of the you know, indigenous American cause. Um, because
Speaker 1: they've you know, they've been through some of the same
Speaker 1: ship and a story that's dropping that's just dropped this
Speaker 1: week is about the residential schools in Canada, which we covered.
Speaker 1: One of them was found to have a mass grave
Speaker 1: with two hundred and fifteen children in it. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about a very similar story today, but it's of
Speaker 1: course within the context of Ireland. Um. Now, before we
Speaker 1: get into what exactly happened that led to the mass graves,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about today mass baby graves. Good times. Um,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about about roughly thirteen hundred years
Speaker 1: of Irish history, um, which we're gonna do in like
Speaker 1: a page, which is I think responsible and good. Um.
Speaker 1: So so strap in here's here's th hundred years of Ireland. So.
Speaker 1: Ireland's history of foreign domination started around the seven hundreds,
Speaker 1: when Scandinavian vikings started to raid monastery and towns for
Speaker 1: precious gold. Over the next two hundred years, they settled
Speaker 1: in several cities, including Dublin, and dominated the island until
Speaker 1: ten fourteen, when an Irish king named Brian Buru beat
Speaker 1: a Viking army in battle. Now, this only brought the
Speaker 1: Irish about a century of independence, because in eleven sixties,
Speaker 1: six war between two Irish kings ended when the defeated
Speaker 1: king invited the Normans to invade. The Normans who had
Speaker 1: took it, taken over what is today like England. This
Speaker 1: Irish king who loses a war invites them to invade
Speaker 1: Ireland in eleven sixty nine, and his plan is like,
Speaker 1: this is gonna lead to me being in charge. Of
Speaker 1: course it doesn't. It backfires and the Norman's takeover Ireland,
Speaker 1: and this begins seven hundred years of direct domination, uh
Speaker 1: of Ireland. Yeah, just a bunch of It's just Norm McDonald,
Speaker 1: thousands of Norm McDonald's with axes, just taking Ireland, of course.
Speaker 1: And I think Norm McDonald is probably Irish or Scottish,
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever. Fuck him, he's an assholes what
Speaker 1: he is. There's the mascot of Beverly Hills High School,
Speaker 1: That's what That's what I was picturing, which is also right,
Speaker 1: which is very colonizer as ship. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the origin is, but I'm assuming it's not great.
Speaker 1: It's not great. Um. Now, over the following centuries there
Speaker 1: were a bunch of different like subsequent English invasions of Ireland,
Speaker 1: and people will quibble that, like, oh, I shouldn't call
Speaker 1: them whatever. It's people who live in where the English.
Speaker 1: Fuck it, they're the English. I don't care. In even
Speaker 1: seventy one, King Henry the Second land of a huge
Speaker 1: army at Waterford to funk up some of his own
Speaker 1: nobles who had taken over chunks of Ireland. And we're
Speaker 1: getting too rich oppressing oppressing the Irish without him, so
Speaker 1: like other English people are oppressing the Irish, and the
Speaker 1: King is like, but I'm not getting enough money from
Speaker 1: sucking up the Irish, so he and never want to
Speaker 1: be left out on other people. Know why why would
Speaker 1: you look like that? You're just leaving money and blodies
Speaker 1: on the table. I found out Sophie was oppressing you
Speaker 1: without me. You know, you you you, I know that's why.
Speaker 1: That's why you both have access to the to the
Speaker 1: online trigger for the shot caller that I wear constantly
Speaker 1: in order to stop me from doing bad things. Um,
Speaker 1: that's only partly a joke, because Twitter is kind of
Speaker 1: a shot caller now in the fifteen thirties, King Henry
Speaker 1: the Eighth, you know this guy? Have you heard of
Speaker 1: this guy? Hey? Hey, Mark Marin boys, who are your guy? So?
Speaker 1: King Henry the eighth real piece of ship. He's the
Speaker 1: guy who invented the Church of England and like made
Speaker 1: his country leave the Catholic Church because he wanted to
Speaker 1: funck more ladies. But that meant divorcing and marrying more ladies.
Speaker 1: It was a whole thing. There's a song about it,
Speaker 1: um anyway. Uh, well, it's not about that, but it
Speaker 1: has the named Henry the Eighth. Anyway, it's very funny.
Speaker 1: So he decides the Church England is going to be
Speaker 1: a thing now because I want to be able to
Speaker 1: get divorced and marry new women. The Irish were committed Catholics, um,
Speaker 1: and some of their commitment to Catholicism came from the
Speaker 1: fact that the English, who they hated, were like, we're
Speaker 1: not Catholics anymore. This led to a series of what
Speaker 1: you might call um race kerfuffles with the English that
Speaker 1: ended with the Irish population population devastated and the mass
Speaker 1: confiscation of Irish land by English colonists. Um. Now in
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, the Spanish. Near the end of the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century, the Spanish briefly show up to help the
Speaker 1: Irish rebel against their masters, but that ended disastrously. This
Speaker 1: happens a couple of times in history. The Spanish and
Speaker 1: the Germans on a number of occasions try to help
Speaker 1: the Irish for their own purposes, and it never really
Speaker 1: works out for the Irish. Um. In sixteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: noted piece of ship Oliver Cromwell invaded Ireland yet again
Speaker 1: to destroy Catholic Irish power. By sixteen fifty two, he
Speaker 1: held most of the country and he launched a vicious
Speaker 1: counterinsurgency to wipe out the remaining guerilla resistance to his reign.
Speaker 1: Cromwell's campaign in Ireland was absolutely an act of genocide.
Speaker 1: He may have wiped out fully fifty percent of the
Speaker 1: population um, which is again the Holocaust and Europe kills
Speaker 1: about fifty percent of the Jewish population. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty pretty genocidey genocide, right, Like when we talk about
Speaker 1: the Irish is genocide victims, we're not we're not exaggerating here, um.
Speaker 1: And around fifty thousand Irish laborers were also deported as
Speaker 1: indentured laborers to the Caribbean, which was a step up
Speaker 1: from slavery, but not as not a giant step. It's bad, um.
Speaker 1: So we could do a whole podcast on the Mountains
Speaker 1: of Ship the Irish have had to endure over the
Speaker 1: last three quarters of millennia um. In particular, probably the
Speaker 1: best known chapter in the ship history was the Irish
Speaker 1: Potato Famine, or the Great Hunger. This kicked off in
Speaker 1: ety five when a fungus killed half the year's potato crop,
Speaker 1: and then three quarters of the crop over the next
Speaker 1: seven years. Because the Irish were a colony of England,
Speaker 1: the whole population were tenant farmers. All power on the
Speaker 1: island came from English landowners. Catholics were prohibited from owning
Speaker 1: or leasing land, voting or holding elected office until eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine, so this is an apartheid state as well.
Speaker 1: So by the time the famine started, the island's politics
Speaker 1: were still dominated by absentee British Church of England landlords.
Speaker 1: Tenant farmers owed food as rent to their landlords, and
Speaker 1: potatoes were supposed to help them subsist, but when the
Speaker 1: crops started failing, they didn't have enough food to pay
Speaker 1: their debts to their landlords, who again didn't live in
Speaker 1: Ireland generally, and to also eat. Roughly one million Irish
Speaker 1: people starved to death during the famine. Another million were
Speaker 1: forced to flee their homeland, often leaving for the United States.
Speaker 1: This was out of a population of a little over
Speaker 1: eight millions, so between death so they lose half their
Speaker 1: population the six hundreds of their Cromwell and then in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds um a quarter of the population either
Speaker 1: is killed or forced out of the country by famine. UM.
Speaker 1: Pretty rough millennia for the Irish all things told. So
Speaker 1: given all this, it's not hard to understand why the
Speaker 1: Irish wanted independence from Great Britain. In nineteen sixteen, with
Speaker 1: World War One and media rez a group of Irish
Speaker 1: revolutionaries tried to overthrow their colonial oppressor. They succeeded in
Speaker 1: taking over a chunk of Dublin and declaring an Irish
Speaker 1: Republic for like a couple of days before the British
Speaker 1: sailed in a battleship and pounded the city with naval
Speaker 1: guns from the sea. As tragic as the Easter Rising was,
Speaker 1: it played a key role in leading to the Treaty
Speaker 1: Settlement in nineteen twenty one that brought the Irish some
Speaker 1: manner of independence. Basically, it's carved into you got your
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, which is still a part of the UK,
Speaker 1: but you've got your Republic of Ireland now, which is
Speaker 1: you know, the capitals in Dublin, and it's like the
Speaker 1: bulk of the island, which is not Again, still a
Speaker 1: lot of people angry about the partitioning of Ireland, but
Speaker 1: it's a better situation than had existed before. Um So
Speaker 1: the modern Republic of Ireland comes about as a result
Speaker 1: of this process, and in nineteen thirties seven, the Irish
Speaker 1: government drafts a constitution. Now, if you've been paying attention
Speaker 1: through this very reef overview of Irish history, you'll note
Speaker 1: that the Catholic Church pretty important to the Irish who
Speaker 1: want independence, right, kind of a big, big deal for them,
Speaker 1: and for most of the his the history of like
Speaker 1: the Irish independence movement, the Catholic Church has been kind
Speaker 1: of a countercultural and liberatory force. Being Catholic was a
Speaker 1: symbol of resistance to the Crown. Now in nineteen you know,
Speaker 1: thirty seven, when they're making this new constitution, the Republic
Speaker 1: of Ireland is completely fucking broke. They've got no goddamn
Speaker 1: money because the English had spent seven hundred years or
Speaker 1: so robbing them blind, uh, and they especially did not
Speaker 1: have money for social services. What they had was the
Speaker 1: goodwill of the Catholic Church, who they wrote into their
Speaker 1: first Constitution as the primary provider of social services, particularly
Speaker 1: education for children. Now, that constitution did note that the
Speaker 1: rights of children were quote inalienable and imprescribable. But the
Speaker 1: rights of children were also subsumed within the rights of
Speaker 1: the family, which is not necessarily the best thing because
Speaker 1: it means kids don't have independent rights on their own.
Speaker 1: That's generally how this was was translated. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from a write up in the Child Abuse Review
Speaker 1: by Claire mcluon Richards quote it. It being the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church's major role in the education of children was accepted,
Speaker 1: and the acknowledgement of the good works of the religious
Speaker 1: orders in the care of the sick, poor and needy
Speaker 1: was considered to be of benefit to wider Catholic society,
Speaker 1: which was the dominant sector of the population. The opportunity
Speaker 1: to formalize and secure the power of the Catholic Church
Speaker 1: over its people without the impediment of British rule was critical.
Speaker 1: The Church is the true religion of the people, would
Speaker 1: exercise its authority and status and negotiations in agreements with
Speaker 1: the state. Um the expectations of the state were to quote,
Speaker 1: safeguard and uphold religious interests. It is bound to extend
Speaker 1: protection and all reasonable assistance to the Catholic Church in
Speaker 1: the exercise of her own proper functions. So you see
Speaker 1: the budding issue here, right, Ireland is finally a free state.
Speaker 1: Uh And since Catholic Catholicism has been punished for so long,
Speaker 1: it was seen as inextricable from Irishness, which leads to
Speaker 1: the enshrining and law of the Catholic Church dominance in
Speaker 1: social services, particularly childcare. It was believed that Ireland, as
Speaker 1: an independent nation, should be a holy and pure state,
Speaker 1: and part of ensuring that purity was punishing people who
Speaker 1: violated Catholic morality. You see, we're gonna have a problem here.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you mean, because I feel like
Speaker 1: deciding who's moral or not it's always great. It's always great.
Speaker 1: I really think it ever leads to any problem. Absolutely
Speaker 1: think I have the right to decide whether you're moral
Speaker 1: or not. I I agree, and I think even better
Speaker 1: than you, Sophia is a completely unaccountable group of old
Speaker 1: Richmond who never fuck. That's who I want deciding how
Speaker 1: how we get to live our lives is a bunch
Speaker 1: of weirdos in Italy who don't fuck. But that's also
Speaker 1: essentially uh, you know, our government to you, don't they fuck?
Speaker 1: Look at Matt Gates, it's not consensual. Well well, I
Speaker 1: guess you know. You know that that image Macro of
Speaker 1: the two hands clasping in the middle, it's like Matt
Speaker 1: dates the Catholic Church fucking children right in the middle.
Speaker 1: Look at Mac's yeah, and I think there's I'm not enough.
Speaker 1: I'm an expert. I'm not an expert at all in
Speaker 1: Irish history. I wonder how much of kind of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church's dominance after has to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that so a lot of these Irish revolutionaries in nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: these guys are socialists, these guys are anti colonial, their
Speaker 1: left wing, they have a their idea for how the
Speaker 1: government should be as kind of a radical and socialist
Speaker 1: one for the time they'll get massacred by the British um.
Speaker 1: I wonder how much that had to do with kind
Speaker 1: of the fact that that, I mean, honestly just based
Speaker 1: on sort of culturally where the Church was probably still
Speaker 1: would have owned up dominant I don't know. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's probably something someone with more knowledge of the history
Speaker 1: than I could could could weigh in on. The easter
Speaker 1: Rye thing is an interesting bit of history. Those guys
Speaker 1: were fucking rad for the most part. Um So anyway,
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church gets the gig in the Constitution basically
Speaker 1: of legislating morality, particularly when it involves children. Now, when
Speaker 1: Ireland was founded, the age of criminal responsibility was seven
Speaker 1: years old. So that's when you're capable of being so
Speaker 1: you can get the chair. Well I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think they're doing the chair, but you can you can
Speaker 1: go to prison. Yeah, you can go to prison for crimes.
Speaker 1: And it's actually much worse than that, Sophia, much worse
Speaker 1: than than a normal prison system. Well, we're about to detail.
Speaker 1: I feel like the normal prison system is already inappropriate
Speaker 1: for people, so for children, when I say this is
Speaker 1: worse than our prison system in a lot of ways, um,
Speaker 1: I mean it. Um, it's bad not not to minimize ours.
Speaker 1: But so at the start of the Irish Republic, age
Speaker 1: of criminal responsibility is seven. It eventually rose to twelve.
Speaker 1: You want to guess what year they increased the age
Speaker 1: of criminal responsibility to twelve. No two thousand six, oh
Speaker 1: my god, which I think is also when Ireland legalized
Speaker 1: the blow job. Like, I'm not joking about that. It
Speaker 1: was illegal to give blow jobs in Ireland until more
Speaker 1: recently than you'd expect. Hey, everybody, I actually got this wrong.
Speaker 1: It was not two thousand six. It was ninete three
Speaker 1: when Ireland made sodomy, which included like oral sex and
Speaker 1: stuff that wasn't you know procreative heterosexual sex was made legal.
Speaker 1: Uh so Ireland nineteen three, not two thousand six. Apologies
Speaker 1: for slandering the Emerald Isle. So children convicted of crimes
Speaker 1: in this period became the responsibility of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: So the good thing is they're not putting them in
Speaker 1: adult prisons. They're not trying them as adults. There if
Speaker 1: you're a seven, an eight, or a nine or a
Speaker 1: tin or whatever. If you're a child who commits a crime,
Speaker 1: you're handed over to the Catholic Church in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases. Judge how hot children are? Okay, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is important for for the science now the
Speaker 1: average No, I'm not that's not a joke. That's not
Speaker 1: a choke lane. We should go down. We're in a
Speaker 1: Matt Gates territory here. Um, we're into average Catholic priest territory. Here,
Speaker 1: We're into Dennis Haster, longest serving Republican Speaker of the
Speaker 1: House territory. Here, we're into probably Bill Clinton territory here. Um, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's Keith. Yeah, we're definitely in Raneer reneeratory. Um. So
Speaker 1: so despite all the like all the d Anglish anglicization
Speaker 1: sentiment reformatory schools, you know, the anti British sentiment or
Speaker 1: whatever anti English sentiment. I don't know, fuck it, Like
Speaker 1: everybody keeps yelling at me about that. To hell with
Speaker 1: all of them, I say, um, reformatory schools were still
Speaker 1: based on a British model that had originally been established
Speaker 1: to deal with all the thieving orphans and street urchins
Speaker 1: that Charles Dickens novels harbor over. Um now back at
Speaker 1: night again. If you consent children to prison, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a healthy society that deserves to rule the entire world.
Speaker 1: But if you have the laws on the books and
Speaker 1: they're even just send them to prison. Send them to prison.
Speaker 1: We'll send him to a reform school that is worse
Speaker 1: than most prisons. Today, just send them to child prison,
Speaker 1: all right, stop writing these novels about them, I mean
Speaker 1: glorifying the orphans. Don't the orphans, Dickens, give them the chair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking noted leftist Charles you think should be fed? You cook?
Speaker 1: Are you simping for kids? You fucking loser. So back
Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight, when Perfidious Albion still ran things
Speaker 1: in all of Ireland, the government had instituted a set
Speaker 1: of laws designed to protect the well being of children.
Speaker 1: Since this was at that moment the UK, protecting children
Speaker 1: went meant incarcerating them if they were caught begging or homeless,
Speaker 1: or if they were found to have been neglected skipping school,
Speaker 1: or who had like stolen something as well. All of
Speaker 1: these are all of these kids exactly. Well everyone's that's
Speaker 1: that's the big Now that Biden's in charge, We're we're
Speaker 1: just gonna criminalize being poor as hard as we can,
Speaker 1: and people continue to go to brunch. It's gonna be great. Um.
Speaker 1: So these kids, and this is back again we're talking about.
Speaker 1: This is in the UK, this is in Ireland, this
Speaker 1: is before independence. Kids are being sent to these these
Speaker 1: English reformatory schools which are also called industrial schools um
Speaker 1: now under the English government, under the Crown or whatever.
Speaker 1: These schools are run independently. Most of them were religious
Speaker 1: in nature, but they were monitored by the state. When
Speaker 1: the UK left most of Ireland and the Republic took over,
Speaker 1: these industrial schools were officially managed by the Department of
Speaker 1: Local Government, and then by the Department of Justice and
Speaker 1: then by the Department of Education, but the Church did
Speaker 1: all of the actual work. Since the state was broke,
Speaker 1: they were more than happy to let the church take
Speaker 1: care of their social services. The church considered this a
Speaker 1: worthwhile expense. Historian dicey okarrain, I'm so sorry. Gaelic is
Speaker 1: a beautiful language. Irish is a beautiful language. I'm going
Speaker 1: to butcher it every time I try to say one
Speaker 1: of these names. It is BEAUTI yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: the it's gorgeous. I've spent a lot of Ireland's the
Speaker 1: first place I ever trailed outside of the US. I've
Speaker 1: been back seven or eight times. I love listening. I
Speaker 1: take an Irish literature class in uh In College and
Speaker 1: since then I've been like so in love and like
Speaker 1: I said, a lot of the similarity of the depression,
Speaker 1: the good writing, it's wonderful from Ireland. That's good. Um.
Speaker 1: So this historian I've butchered explains quote that social service
Speaker 1: provision is designed to propagate the Catholic faith. So that's
Speaker 1: why the Catholic churches want to go out of pocket.
Speaker 1: At least they're framing it as like, will pay since
Speaker 1: the government's broke, will pay for your social services because
Speaker 1: we see this as helping to expand the Catholic faith. Right,
Speaker 1: that's why we're going to cover social services for the country. Um.
Speaker 1: And while the wording of all these laws talked about
Speaker 1: criminal children, it's worth noting that again most of them
Speaker 1: had not committed anything we would recognize as a crime today.
Speaker 1: In fact, the most common crime for which children were
Speaker 1: put in these facilities was that they were born to
Speaker 1: single mothers. Now no, me too. Yeah you're a crime
Speaker 1: baby throwing you in baby prison. As one researcher wrote
Speaker 1: in nine of the Church in Ireland, quote, the body
Speaker 1: was seen as a major source of evil. This was
Speaker 1: particularly true for women, whose proper role was to become
Speaker 1: there's in a good Catholic family. Any alternatives to this
Speaker 1: Catholic ideal were a threat to the status quo. As
Speaker 1: a result, the Church and state worked together too heavily
Speaker 1: police children born out of wedlock, unsupervised and unkimpt children,
Speaker 1: poor children, and children in any other living situation that
Speaker 1: didn't seem Catholic enough. So when I talk about criminal
Speaker 1: behavior from children, this is what the Church considered criminal
Speaker 1: being born to a single mother, having a d h D,
Speaker 1: or something that made you misbehave in school, or coming
Speaker 1: from a family without much money. Claire mcclun richards describes
Speaker 1: this as pathologized Catholicism, basically religion that has turned any
Speaker 1: behavior that dissents from the religious mainline into an illness
Speaker 1: or a crime. When the British left the Church. When
Speaker 1: the British left Ireland, Sorry, the Church saw that departure
Speaker 1: of that state as a way to legislate Catholic ideas
Speaker 1: about proper behavior. From a write up in the Child
Speaker 1: Abuse Review quote, the children of poor or inadequate parenting
Speaker 1: were deemed to be in moral danger as the abused
Speaker 1: and neglected child was contaminated by adult knowledge. He argues
Speaker 1: that children were responded to and treated by the Church
Speaker 1: and state not in terms of what they were, but
Speaker 1: what they were going to be. This may explain why
Speaker 1: so many boys who had committed petty crime or who
Speaker 1: were seeing at risk of committing crime, were placed in
Speaker 1: reformatory schools, and why so many girls, although having committed
Speaker 1: no crime, were placed in industrial schools because of the
Speaker 1: perceived risk of their sexual immorality. The patholomy is criminal
Speaker 1: a crime. It is that banksy drawing, but instead of
Speaker 1: a dude, it's a girl in a dress. Instead of
Speaker 1: throwing a malatov with like a flower in it, it's
Speaker 1: a vulva, just tucking a volva? Is could is? Could
Speaker 1: we just get like? So obviously we're making tiny handcuffs
Speaker 1: for all the babies we're putting Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't work. Are they also finding a tiny single handcuff
Speaker 1: for the vulva for the services are throwing it over
Speaker 1: the cervix? What are we doing? The good news they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not handcuffing these kids. They're not putting them behind bars.
Speaker 1: They're just putting them in what I might call a
Speaker 1: rape factory. So that's good. Oh, they're not locking them up.
Speaker 1: They're not locking them up though, you know, other than
Speaker 1: they locked them inside the rape factory with the rapists anyway,
Speaker 1: is like music factory. What what was that? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: exactly That's actually what the C and C Music Factory
Speaker 1: is based on, which is why they're banned in Ireland. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: you know who is not banned in Ireland? I don't
Speaker 1: think hopefully not maybe probably not the products and services
Speaker 1: and support this podcast services unless it's yeah, because the
Speaker 1: EU has some laws and stuff, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: we might get an advertisement from my favorite gun manufacturer,
Speaker 1: sig Sour, in which case probably isn't legal in Ireland. Um,
Speaker 1: dick pills might not be either, you know, they let
Speaker 1: us know. Yeah, here's ads did pills. All right, we're
Speaker 1: back and we're thinking about the concept of dick pills
Speaker 1: and the Irish who until fairly recently could not legally
Speaker 1: perform or received blow jobs. Um. I'm going to continue
Speaker 1: that quote from the Child Abuse Review, which is talking
Speaker 1: about how children are being pathologized as a as a
Speaker 1: thought that they might commit immoral, sexual or other type
Speaker 1: of crimes. Quote. The pathologizing of these children may have
Speaker 1: been may well have been because they were seen as
Speaker 1: undesirable and uncomfortable, reminders of the lack of sexual control.
Speaker 1: Or moral values of their parents, particularly their mothers, who
Speaker 1: were deemed as sinful or unchaste. The rigors of discipline,
Speaker 1: enforcement and punishment under repressive practices driving Catholic doctrine at
Speaker 1: that time may have granted an entitlement to cure the
Speaker 1: social ills, problems, and products of sexual immorality as manifested
Speaker 1: by the children in these institutions. This entitlement and authority,
Speaker 1: which were endorsed by the silence and collusion of the
Speaker 1: agents of the state, sealed the fate of thousands of children.
Speaker 1: So that's so. Wait, it's kind of dope though that
Speaker 1: if you having sex with your Catholic wife, the children
Speaker 1: that you have after somehow do not change the fact
Speaker 1: that you're chased. But if you are not in a
Speaker 1: Catholic marriage and you have a child, yeah, that is
Speaker 1: evidence of you not being chased, even though any children
Speaker 1: are evidence of you not being chased. Chased. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: if it's within a Catholic relationship, it's fine. If it's not,
Speaker 1: the children are guilty and need to go to prison. Um.
Speaker 1: So the question now becomes, as we've alluded to, what
Speaker 1: were these schools like in practice? Well, if you know
Speaker 1: anything about the Catholic church for the last I don't know,
Speaker 1: two thousands of years. You've probably assumed that it involved
Speaker 1: a lot of child molestation. So if you can we
Speaker 1: get an air horn for child molestation. Yeah no, I
Speaker 1: like that, like a solemn, mournful lairhorn. No no, no no,
Speaker 1: you want like a sad tromboe and you want like more.
Speaker 1: It actually seems more disrespectful to do the more more
Speaker 1: more than Yeah, when we're talking about shout molestation, Um,
Speaker 1: you are broken? Okay, Yeah, that's the theme of the show.
Speaker 1: I think it should just be like one of those
Speaker 1: like like crash sounds like you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: What if we like sing a little? What if we're like,
Speaker 1: let's talk about rape, baby, let's talk about the Catholic
Speaker 1: Let's talk about rape. Let's talk about nuns and pretty rape,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about rape. There we go. I think it works.
Speaker 1: I think we got an I think we got an album.
Speaker 1: I once again think I don't get paid enough. Wait,
Speaker 1: how about this one. It's a cal flick summer. Don't
Speaker 1: leave your kids with a priest. It's a kath kath
Speaker 1: lick summer. I don't know how to continue it, but
Speaker 1: you know, we've got we've got enough. This is the
Speaker 1: start of the cruel Summer summer? Is that Jaylor Swift? No,
Speaker 1: that's not Taylor. That's older than that. Okay, sorry, the
Speaker 1: Cruel Summers? Are there a couple anyway? Let's talk about
Speaker 1: one of the inmates in one of these industrial schools.
Speaker 1: Des Murray, arrived at the Art and Industrial School in
Speaker 1: Dublin when he was twelve and a half years old.
Speaker 1: He'd been born in nineteen forty one, the son of
Speaker 1: a Yeah, prime hard time, that's twel he's ready, a
Speaker 1: twelve and a half year old man. Get him in here. Um.
Speaker 1: He'd been born in nineteen forty one the son of
Speaker 1: an unmarried mother and was almost immediately taken from her
Speaker 1: and thrown into the system. We discussed in our Georgia
Speaker 1: Tan episode how up until like the seventies in the US,
Speaker 1: it was very common for single mothers to have their
Speaker 1: children taken from them straight away without any kind of recourse.
Speaker 1: That happened here to god knows how many women. And
Speaker 1: then the Georgia Tan episodes, you were saying that they
Speaker 1: were like a lot of fake signing the way like
Speaker 1: you know, that's what you were signing, and that was
Speaker 1: happening when like Carter was in office not that long ago.
Speaker 1: Here in Ireland it was worse because not only were
Speaker 1: children separated from their mothers, but both were put in
Speaker 1: church run prisons. So here's Death's experience of this system
Speaker 1: from a rite up in the Irish Examiner. Artaine was
Speaker 1: a concentration camp. He says quietly. I was singled out
Speaker 1: by two brothers to sadists. My biggest regret is that
Speaker 1: I didn't kill those two bastards. One was particularly savage.
Speaker 1: One fella I knew had a rheumatic heart, but brother
Speaker 1: B used to make him fill a wheelbarrow with stones
Speaker 1: and wheel it around the yard three or four times.
Speaker 1: The Artan School was run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers,
Speaker 1: a worldwide religious community founded in Waterford, Ireland in eighteen
Speaker 1: o two. Their goal was to educate poor Catholic boys
Speaker 1: and ed you to expect. They have a long history
Speaker 1: of allegations of sexual abuse, and a quote again from
Speaker 1: the Irish Examine are here. Dez witnessed sexual abuse in Artaine,
Speaker 1: but did not encounter it directly himself. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: a brother on the landing and he was spotting the boys,
Speaker 1: He says, they carefully chose their victims. You wouldn't see
Speaker 1: the boys going into the brother's room, but sometimes you'd
Speaker 1: see them running out screaming. They chose the vulnerable ones.
Speaker 1: Valentine Walsh was not as fortunate, and he went to
Speaker 1: St Joseph's Industrial School of Charlie, County Kerry. So while
Speaker 1: des just witnessed sexual abuse, Valentine was sexually and physically
Speaker 1: assaulted at St Joseph's from the ages of nine to thirteen. Valentine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the article of Valentine shows a photograph of himself
Speaker 1: as a little kid. He's seven, it's the day of
Speaker 1: his first communion um. And yeah, he's a nice little
Speaker 1: boy in a suit with his his hair and til
Speaker 1: done up. But he's very much not smiling. From the article,
Speaker 1: he doesn't ever remember a reason to smile. All Valentine
Speaker 1: remembers is the terror, a locked door, a darkened room,
Speaker 1: and three Christian brothers who sexually and physically abused him.
Speaker 1: This is the world that lay in wait for the
Speaker 1: little boy in the commune group of nineteen sixty and
Speaker 1: Saint Joseph's Industrial School. The first memory I have of
Speaker 1: being sexually abused by Brother D. Was when I was
Speaker 1: nine or ten, says Valentine. He would take me into
Speaker 1: his own classroom in the evening when it was empty,
Speaker 1: he would lock the door behind me. He recalls how
Speaker 1: it happened and how brother D prepared the room for
Speaker 1: this hell. I remember the blackboard and the wind in
Speaker 1: the classroom and used by Brother D to block off
Speaker 1: the windows. Other clippings in newspaper were on the windows
Speaker 1: and blocked off any site into the classroom. The clippings
Speaker 1: in the blackboard prevented anyone from the outside looking in.
Speaker 1: We were locked in and they were locked out. So
Speaker 1: that's what happened to the boys in this was a
Speaker 1: mix of physical abuse that kid recalls like a kid
Speaker 1: with a bad heart being forced to wheelbarrow around rocks
Speaker 1: just because one of the brothers of say this, and
Speaker 1: like mass child rape. That's what happens to a lot
Speaker 1: of the boys in these schools. Now, what happened to
Speaker 1: Valentine and Deza's mothers. You know they're both taken from
Speaker 1: their mothers, their single moms, at an early age. They
Speaker 1: don't know, They have no idea where their mothers wound up.
Speaker 1: Because the Catholic Church considered their mothers to be dangerous
Speaker 1: criminal influences. There is a fairly decent chance, though, that
Speaker 1: both mothers were sent to what we're called the Magdalene laundries,
Speaker 1: now officially called them sisters. It's about to be. It's
Speaker 1: about to be, and it's also about to involve the
Speaker 1: game mouse trap oddly enough, so officially called yeah just
Speaker 1: just just wait, Sophia. Oh, you're gonna have a good
Speaker 1: time with this one. So officially called the Magdalene asylums.
Speaker 1: These were essentially prisons for unwed mothers. They had their
Speaker 1: roots in the mid seventeen hundreds in a campaign by
Speaker 1: the church to put so called fallen women, who were
Speaker 1: often sex workers to work. Um now, this was actually
Speaker 1: a rare joint Catholic and Protestant Effrica. It's really quick though.
Speaker 1: It's in the name sex workers. What do you mean
Speaker 1: to put sex workers to work? Honest God fearing working? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not giving him another job. That's fucking rude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is a pretty rude religion. Um Now,
Speaker 1: I should note that when the Magdalene asylums started, because
Speaker 1: this kicks off in the seventeen hundreds, Ireland still under
Speaker 1: the UK. This starts is actually a very rare joint
Speaker 1: Protestant and Catholic effort, which tells you how much about
Speaker 1: Irish society at all levels despised single mothers and English society.
Speaker 1: The first of these institutions was actually run by the
Speaker 1: Protestant Church of Ireland, the Magdalene Asylum for Penitent Females
Speaker 1: in Dublin. Now, there was a worry on the time
Speaker 1: that prostitution was on the rise. Wayward women who were
Speaker 1: willing to have sex outside of marriage and get pregnant
Speaker 1: outside of wedlock were thought to be in danger of
Speaker 1: becoming sex workers. So when I say these fallen women
Speaker 1: were sex workers, off and they were just women who
Speaker 1: wanted to have sex with people they weren't married to,
Speaker 1: that was the same thing at the time. Fearing this,
Speaker 1: parents started sending their unwed daughters to the Magdalene asylums
Speaker 1: because they were worried, like, your daughter looks at a boy,
Speaker 1: you send her there, or your daughter gets pregnant, you
Speaker 1: send her there. Either way you're worried your daughter might fuck,
Speaker 1: you send her to the Magdalene Asylum. Now the goal
Speaker 1: here was twofold. First, it was to hide the shameful
Speaker 1: fact that a woman in the family had gotten pregnant
Speaker 1: or had been having sex without a husband. And second,
Speaker 1: it was hoped that time in the asylums would rehabilitate
Speaker 1: sinful sex and baby havevers. Initially, inmates were only meant
Speaker 1: to be incarcerated for limited periods of time. They would
Speaker 1: be sentenced to several years, during which they would learn
Speaker 1: a respectable profession so that when they left they'd be
Speaker 1: able to avoid the horrific sin of having consensual sex
Speaker 1: for money. However, the work they did at the Magdalene
Speaker 1: asylums made money for the church, and as decades and
Speaker 1: eventually centuries passed, the Magdalene Asylums became institutions within the
Speaker 1: Irish Catholic Church. From a write up and history dot
Speaker 1: Com quote, the stints the prison sentences grew longer and
Speaker 1: longer women were off sent there were often charged with
Speaker 1: redeeming themselves through lace, making, needlework, or doing laundry. Though
Speaker 1: most residents had not been convicted of any crime, conditions
Speaker 1: inside were prison like. Redemption might sometimes involve a variety
Speaker 1: of coercive measures, including shaven heads, institutional uniforms, bread and water, diets,
Speaker 1: restricted visiting, supervised correspondence, solitary confinement, and even flogging writes
Speaker 1: a story in Hell and j self. So that's good.
Speaker 1: I love a casual flogging you didn't expect. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: an adult tasks woman live in your life getting flogged
Speaker 1: for not washing clothes fast enough because you winked at
Speaker 1: a boy when you were fifteen. Yes, also like so
Speaker 1: fucked up. You were just like maybe giving like blow
Speaker 1: jobs and ship and now you have to learn how
Speaker 1: to needle point. Yeah. Yeah, it's not great and I
Speaker 1: don't want someone to force me to do that. Like,
Speaker 1: those are really different skills. They are very different skills. Um,
Speaker 1: both can involve needles, but only if your partners into
Speaker 1: sounding so initially honestly, I mean hand iye. A coordination
Speaker 1: is important in both, it is, Yeah, but that's probably
Speaker 1: where the similarity ends. They're like, they're both like basketball
Speaker 1: in that both needle point and blow jobs a lot
Speaker 1: of similarities to basketball, which is why NBA players give
Speaker 1: such famously good blow jobs. Yeah, so that's why they
Speaker 1: Paul Lebron King James King King James, because job, that's
Speaker 1: what that documentary song My Milkshake brings all the Boys
Speaker 1: to the Art was about Lebron James. I will not
Speaker 1: be so good at blow jobs. And you know what else,
Speaker 1: that's the reason that you know he has a little
Speaker 1: bit of a bald spot on the top of his head.
Speaker 1: Job happen. Don't come for his hair line, I'm not.
Speaker 1: But when he's blowing and he's on his knees, he's
Speaker 1: so good. People literally rubbed the hair off his head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a compliment. That's yes, that's all I'm saying. That's
Speaker 1: evidence of how skillful he will not. I will not
Speaker 1: accept this slander of Lebron James. Famously, Jerry West hella jealous,
Speaker 1: Hella jealous of lebron sucking skills. I just put it
Speaker 1: out there, So, yeah, why I think you were just
Speaker 1: talking about fun, consensual sex with an NBA slash blowjob star.
Speaker 1: That's fine. Um, it's not children in prison, putting children
Speaker 1: in their single mothers in prison slash rape factories. Now Sophia.
Speaker 1: Initially most of the inmates at the Magdalene laundries. They
Speaker 1: came to be known as that because doing laundry for
Speaker 1: money was one of the most common things that they
Speaker 1: would have these women do. Um, Initially, most of these
Speaker 1: inmates went voluntarily and the focus was on rehabilitation, but
Speaker 1: over time these grew into penal institutions. As this happened,
Speaker 1: their scope change from providing rehabilitation to fallen women to
Speaker 1: taking in women who had been admitted to psychiatric institutions,
Speaker 1: women with special needs, victims of rape and assault, and
Speaker 1: girls deemed too flirtatious or tempting to men. So if
Speaker 1: you're a girl, who draw me out, my God exactly.
Speaker 1: Pregnant teenagers continue to be sent to the laundries as well,
Speaker 1: but by the early nineteen hundreds and that to come
Speaker 1: of the Independent Republic of Ireland, things had reached a
Speaker 1: point where large numbers of women were being incarcerated for
Speaker 1: no clear reason at all. While the laundries were run
Speaker 1: by various Catholic orders, they also received support from the
Speaker 1: Irish government, who paid the Church for laundry fees. Since
Speaker 1: the Church didn't pay incarcerated women, this was basically free money.
Speaker 1: And what was it like to live in the Magdalene laundries, Well,
Speaker 1: we don't have a whole lot in the way of
Speaker 1: detailed testimony from the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds but
Speaker 1: we know a lot about how they were in the
Speaker 1: middle of the twentieth century. I'm gonna quote again from
Speaker 1: that rite up in history dot com. Nuns ruled the
Speaker 1: laundries with impunity, sometimes beating inmates and enforcing strict rules
Speaker 1: of silence. You didn't know when the next beating was
Speaker 1: going to come, said survivor Mary Smith in an oral history.
Speaker 1: Smith was incarcerated in the Sundays Well laundry and Cork
Speaker 1: after being raped. Nuns told her it was in case
Speaker 1: she got pregnant. Once there, she was forced to cut
Speaker 1: her hair and take on a new name. She was
Speaker 1: not allowed to talk and was assigned backbreaking work in
Speaker 1: the laundry, where nuns regularly beat her for minor infractions
Speaker 1: and forced her to sleep in the cold. Due to
Speaker 1: the rama she suffered, Smith doesn't remember exactly how long
Speaker 1: she spent in sundays Well. To me, it felt like
Speaker 1: my lifetime, she said. Smith wasn't alone. Often women who
Speaker 1: women's names were stripped from that. You survive rape and
Speaker 1: then someone fucking puts you in prison for it, for life,
Speaker 1: for life. Yeah, Smith wasn't alone. Often women's names were
Speaker 1: stripped from them. They were referred to by numbers or
Speaker 1: as child or penitent. Some inmates, often orphans, are victims
Speaker 1: of raper abuse, stayed there for a lifetime. Others escaped
Speaker 1: and were brought back to the institutions. Another survivor, Marina Gambled,
Speaker 1: was placed in a laundry by her local priest. She
Speaker 1: recalls being forced to eat off the floor after breaking
Speaker 1: a cup and getting locked outside in the cold for
Speaker 1: a minor infraction. I was working in the laundry from
Speaker 1: eight in the morning until about six in the evening,
Speaker 1: she told the BBC in twos thirteen. I was starving
Speaker 1: with the hunger. I was given bread and dripping for
Speaker 1: my breakfast. So pretty bad ship. Yeah, pretty bad ship.
Speaker 1: Pretty not good ship. And the Magdalene laundries really came
Speaker 1: into being their more into their modern form in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. This was the first decade of the Irish
Speaker 1: States existence, but it was also a time when rates
Speaker 1: of illegitimate childbirths started to rise precipitously. This sparked panic
Speaker 1: among moral ninnies like the Catholic clergy. Initially, they worried
Speaker 1: that single mothers would become prostitutes somehow, locking these women
Speaker 1: up hadn't stopped prostitution or unwed motherhood, so they decided
Speaker 1: the solution to the very real struggles faced by poor
Speaker 1: single mothers was to separate them from their children and
Speaker 1: incarceerate them for life. Mother and child were kept together
Speaker 1: until the moment it was possible to semi safely separate them.
Speaker 1: Starting in the nineteen fifties, when adoption was legalized in Ireland,
Speaker 1: that became the standard for newborn children who were in
Speaker 1: reasonably good health. Historian diffy Or Karaine told the BBC
Speaker 1: there was a viewpoint perhaps that by facilitating adoption or
Speaker 1: putting them into an industrial school, that those children were
Speaker 1: being given a chance at a better and more stable life. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of um wild that these are named after
Speaker 1: Mary Magdalene when the whole thing was told that Jesus
Speaker 1: was like pretty good friends with her. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: wasn't punishing her for being a sex worker. That was
Speaker 1: kind of the whole thing and pretty positive. The vibe
Speaker 1: wasn't like fuck you. Mary Magdalene's absolutely part of these
Speaker 1: places that were like fuck you women, and then they
Speaker 1: named them after her, like the audacity. It's bizarre because like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole if I am understanding that part of the Bible, right,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is that like she was a quote
Speaker 1: unquote fallen woman, but Jesus was like, I don't give
Speaker 1: a funk. I'm Jesus. Like everybody's shit, I still love you.
Speaker 1: Was his attitude, right, Yeah, I think his whole vibe
Speaker 1: was like, I don't care. You're not any better than
Speaker 1: this woman just because she's a prostitute. You got shipped,
Speaker 1: you're going on too. It's whatever, Like I'm Jesus, I
Speaker 1: don't care, I think was his attitude. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they take this as like, let's make a prison for
Speaker 1: women and their children. Um. And to be honest, the
Speaker 1: fact that they were finally adopting these children in the
Speaker 1: fifties is better than incarcerating them. But that said, as
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, they were only adopting the marketable children.
Speaker 1: So a big part of this story is like kids
Speaker 1: with physical disabilities, right, kids with mental disabilities, um, kids
Speaker 1: who just aren't attractive as adoption candidates for whatever reason
Speaker 1: by the standards of the time, those kids still stay
Speaker 1: incarcerated because you can't you can't sell them, and it
Speaker 1: is they're selling them. They're profiting off of the adoption
Speaker 1: of these children. The Catholic Church is trafficking babies, is
Speaker 1: is what this turns into is a for profit baby
Speaker 1: trafficking operation. Even when you're getting abused, do you have
Speaker 1: to be hot? So well? Yeah? I mean, like God,
Speaker 1: can I just be ugly if you're gonna fucking like
Speaker 1: steal my whole life? Anyway? Yep, it's good stuff. You
Speaker 1: know what won't traffic chldren for profit? These goods down services.
Speaker 1: That's the only promise we make about these goods and services.
Speaker 1: They are not child traffickers as best as we know
Speaker 1: from googling them once. So far we're back, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: having a great time, just talking about cool and fun
Speaker 1: things with my friends. So, from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: some of the women incarcerated in the Magdalene asylums were
Speaker 1: set free once their newborn child was taken from them,
Speaker 1: And I don't have a clear rubric for when that
Speaker 1: was done and when they were kept in It was
Speaker 1: not that was not always what was done, it was
Speaker 1: not even necessarily often what was done. A lot of
Speaker 1: women were incarcerated for life, um and this seems to
Speaker 1: have been about money as much as it was about
Speaker 1: anything remember, the Irish state is too broke to fund
Speaker 1: any of their social services. If we can even like
Speaker 1: this is their calling this a social service. I would
Speaker 1: argue kidnapping and trafficking children and their mothers is not
Speaker 1: a service, But honest men can disagree. The Catholic Church um.
Speaker 1: The way this was framed as like, we the church,
Speaker 1: because we so love faithful Ireland and want to facilitate
Speaker 1: the growth of our religion, will pay for the social
Speaker 1: services you know ourselves. This is a service that will
Speaker 1: provide to the state. The reality is that the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church was rich as ship and could have provided excellent
Speaker 1: social services to the entirety of the island of Ireland,
Speaker 1: but instead made a profit um off of trafficking their bodies.
Speaker 1: Um because they didn't get that rich by giving their
Speaker 1: money away to poor countries, I think is the gist
Speaker 1: of the story. Estimates of the number of women who
Speaker 1: went through the Magdalene laundryes Ferry. Getting an accurate count
Speaker 1: has been complicated by the fact that various the various
Speaker 1: religious orders responsible for these particular crimes against humanity have
Speaker 1: a vested interest in refusing to provide archival information to historians.
Speaker 1: As best as anyone can guess, around three thousand men
Speaker 1: were incarcerated in the laundries over a two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty one year period. At least ten thousand of those
Speaker 1: inmates went through the system after nineteen The Magdalene laundries
Speaker 1: operated without major criticism or controversy well into the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: It is well worth asking why and how this was allowed.
Speaker 1: History dot Com rights to start with, Any talk of
Speaker 1: hearts treatment at the Magdalene Laundries and Mother's homes tended
Speaker 1: to be dismissed by the public, since the institutions were
Speaker 1: run by religious orders. Survivors who told others what they
Speaker 1: had been through were often shamed or ignored. Other women
Speaker 1: were too embarrassed to talk about their past and never
Speaker 1: told anyone about their experiences. Details on both the inmates
Speaker 1: and their lives are scant now. Healthcare was obviously not
Speaker 1: great in the laundries. The work was often unsanitary, as
Speaker 1: we've heard from some of the eyewitness accounts I read earlier.
Speaker 1: Women were often starved and beaten. Some of them died
Speaker 1: from illnesses or as a result of the physical abuse
Speaker 1: they endured. We have no idea how many perished. But
Speaker 1: we do know that in nineteen the Sisters of Our
Speaker 1: Lady of Charity decided to sell some of their land.
Speaker 1: Um Sisters of Lady of Charity sold their land anyway,
Speaker 1: but also the whole name for a place that just
Speaker 1: souses women. When the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity
Speaker 1: sold some of their land that they had operated laundries
Speaker 1: on for profit, it was because they didn't need the
Speaker 1: land anymore. The laundries were closing down at this point.
Speaker 1: They weren't making money. Yeah, after we had beaten the
Speaker 1: greatest number of women we could beat the vacation and
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to beat anymore. We couldn't be more charity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also like when you reach you know, iconic status,
Speaker 1: it's like, maybe it's time to hang up the paddle,
Speaker 1: you know, the Cat of nine Tales. Yeah, maybe you stop,
Speaker 1: you know, beating people for just a little bit to reset,
Speaker 1: you know, find out who you really would rather be beating. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the sisters they decided to do this. They decide
Speaker 1: they got to clear out, you know, they sell this
Speaker 1: land because they can't operate this laundry for profit anymore.
Speaker 1: When they sell the property, they apply with the government
Speaker 1: to have a hundred and thirty three bodies moved from
Speaker 1: unmarked graves real sisters of our Lady of charity. Stuff
Speaker 1: is unmarked Matt's graves. So thankfully this was the nineties,
Speaker 1: and even though Ireland in the nineties little bit of
Speaker 1: a ship show, still the government was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: how many bodies in a must grave are we talking
Speaker 1: about here, and so that they were like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of infants in an adult size grave.
Speaker 1: You're not nearly enough babies in these graves. So the
Speaker 1: government quickly realizes that actually there were much more people
Speaker 1: in the unmarked grave than the sisters of our Lady
Speaker 1: of Charity. It admitted. They find the remains of at
Speaker 1: least a hundred and fifty five people there, and bonus
Speaker 1: dead babies and hair that was an appropriate accent. Journalists
Speaker 1: dig into the matter and find only seventy five death
Speaker 1: certificates that can be traced to this grave with a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five dead people, which means the sisters
Speaker 1: of our Lady of Charity, we're covering up an awful
Speaker 1: lot of dead people. That's a lot of dead people.
Speaker 1: It was a bogo sales. Yeah, it was a bogo
Speaker 1: on corpses report one for the deaths of two yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Now the nuns claimed this was all just the result
Speaker 1: of an administrative error. Then they burned the corpses and
Speaker 1: reburied the ashes in a mass grave somewhere else. That's
Speaker 1: a go administrative error, classic nuns. You know what they
Speaker 1: always say, babies don't stay buried unless you do it twice.
Speaker 1: It's not nice. It's one of those things you talk about,
Speaker 1: let's say the Spanish Civil War and the anarchists who
Speaker 1: murdered a lot of priests and nuns in that war,
Speaker 1: and who also would dig up graves of priests and
Speaker 1: nuns and incinerate the corpses, and you're like, what a
Speaker 1: horrible crime, And then you realize this ship was definitely
Speaker 1: happening in Spain too, and maybe people just had the
Speaker 1: church's fucking number, because most nuns and most priests in
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church have been fucking monsters. It's the SS
Speaker 1: with better branding is the fucking Catholic Church in most
Speaker 1: of its history, in most of the places where it's operated. Um.
Speaker 1: With a notable exception of liberation theology, Catholicism in Latin
Speaker 1: America during this most recent century, which did some red ship.
Speaker 1: It's a big church, right, but like this fucking ship
Speaker 1: happened all over the place. It's not just Ireland. Ireland's
Speaker 1: just where the documentation is best right now. It happened everywhere. Now.
Speaker 1: The women who survived and escaped often did so only
Speaker 1: after enduring profound abuse. Mary Merritt was incarcerated by the
Speaker 1: Sisters of Mercy when she was sixteen. She had been
Speaker 1: born in a workhouse to a single mother, and her
Speaker 1: own entrance to the Magdalene laundries was assured when she
Speaker 1: was caught stealing apples from an orchard. You gotta throw
Speaker 1: that bitch in prison. She stay at apples, so the
Speaker 1: nuns renamed her Attracta, and she was. She spent the
Speaker 1: next fourteen years of her life in a convent where
Speaker 1: she was regularly beaten and abused. When she was thirty,
Speaker 1: Mary managed to escape. Unfortunately, the first person she went
Speaker 1: to for help was a Catholic priest who raped her.
Speaker 1: She became pregnant and was taken back into the system
Speaker 1: because now she's a sinful single mother. Her child was
Speaker 1: taken from her and given up for adoption without her consent.
Speaker 1: The good news is that Mary did eventually escape forever.
Speaker 1: She found love and was married for more than fifty years.
Speaker 1: Mary's story makes the peculiar dimensions of incarceration, and the
Speaker 1: laundry is clear. She was repeatedly told you are free
Speaker 1: to leave at any time, and in the legal sense
Speaker 1: of the word, that was probably true. She was not
Speaker 1: legally incarcerated for life, but she was kept there much
Speaker 1: longer than she wanted to be because leaving was not
Speaker 1: really an option for her most women. Not only was
Speaker 1: their physical coercion, there was the fact that a lot
Speaker 1: of these women had no money, no family support, no
Speaker 1: way of supporting themselves outside of the church. And if
Speaker 1: you leave the church and you have no money and
Speaker 1: you wind up on the street, where do you go
Speaker 1: a facility operated by the Catholic Church. If you decide
Speaker 1: the only way I can make money is by selling
Speaker 1: my body on the street because I have no other options,
Speaker 1: where do you go? You go to the again, it's this,
Speaker 1: you're free to leave. You're not free to leave? Now again?
Speaker 1: About ten women, maybe much more, we don't know. There
Speaker 1: is no escape. Well, I mean she did get out eventually,
Speaker 1: but it took her thirty years, you know, yeah uh,
Speaker 1: And thankfully, you know, she she seems to have found
Speaker 1: true love and was married for fifty years and had
Speaker 1: a good life after that, which is about the best
Speaker 1: case scenario you get for someone who has to go
Speaker 1: through this ship. She doesn't find her kid um. Now again,
Speaker 1: about ten thousand women were run through the laundries from
Speaker 1: about to the nineteen nineties, but that doesn't give the
Speaker 1: whole story of the scale of church incarceration in Ireland.
Speaker 1: The laundries were one set of institutions. There were also
Speaker 1: workhouses for young boys and young adult men who had
Speaker 1: been incarcerated as children. There were asylums for people with
Speaker 1: special needs. The Irish Times writes, quote in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: this country locked up one percent of its population. We
Speaker 1: incarcerated more people per head of population than Stalin did
Speaker 1: in Russia. The Catholic Church during the entirety of the
Speaker 1: Cold War incarcerated a higher percentage of the Irish population
Speaker 1: for like stealing apples and ship than Stalin did in
Speaker 1: the U s s R. Not to whitewash Stalin, but
Speaker 1: let's let's let's keep in mind the scale of the
Speaker 1: crimes of you know, organizations opposed to the Catholic Church. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's putting up some serious numbers, Like you come in
Speaker 1: here with a triple double when no one even knew you.
Speaker 1: Gotta like that. And one of the points a lot
Speaker 1: of people will rightly make is that the Irish, the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church and ire Ireland in its earliest decades of
Speaker 1: independence was a theocracy. It was not a free nation.
Speaker 1: They had fought so long for free and and again
Speaker 1: that's why I started with the English. I don't want
Speaker 1: to just be harping on the just be harping on
Speaker 1: the Irish government the Catholic Church, because part of this
Speaker 1: is inevitable just by how horrifically abused they are by
Speaker 1: the English right. That's how abuse works in societies as
Speaker 1: well as individuals. If you don't actively attempt to reform it,
Speaker 1: it gets perpetuated down through the generations. Yeah, but truly
Speaker 1: the only trickle down economics. Um, So it's important that
Speaker 1: we note that, Like, as much as we should be
Speaker 1: blaming the Catholic Church and the Irish government in this period,
Speaker 1: a decent amount of this is also on fucking Great Britain. Right,
Speaker 1: they start a lot of the they start a lot
Speaker 1: of this cycle of trauma. Um. And in part they
Speaker 1: start because the government has no money, has this need
Speaker 1: for the church to provide services, and because being Catholic
Speaker 1: had been oppressed for so much, it's become part of
Speaker 1: the Irish identity of oppression, which led to people not
Speaker 1: being as sort of you know, and they've massacred a
Speaker 1: lot of the people who maybe would have fought for
Speaker 1: a more secular state. You know. All of this stuff
Speaker 1: factors into it. But Ireland is a fucking theocracy in
Speaker 1: this period of time with a brutal car serrale state. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's it's it's cool, Um, it's cool and
Speaker 1: good Sophia. And on Thursday we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: how the most popular board game company in the world
Speaker 1: tied into all of this. But Sophia, that's a story
Speaker 1: for another day. May I wear my Monopoly Man out
Speaker 1: the next please dresses the Monopoly Man, stick your fingers
Speaker 1: in the operation guy and trap mice for episode two
Speaker 1: of How the Catholic Church Murdered Ireland's babies. And anyway,
Speaker 1: let's get an air horn or two here, really buck
Speaker 1: us up. Thank you. Thank you, sad Air Horns Sofia
Speaker 1: you've got any plugables to plug? Sure? Um, it's almost
Speaker 1: a year since I released my album Father's Day. You
Speaker 1: should definitely get it. It was number one on ITUE.
Speaker 1: It's stand up, it's fun and good. Uh. You can
Speaker 1: get it anywhere that you get albums, but you can
Speaker 1: also get it at Sophia Alexandra dot com. And as always,
Speaker 1: you can catch me on my other podcasts for Fiance
Speaker 1: with Miles Gray about and Private Parts Unknown about Love
Speaker 1: and Sex Around the World with Courtney Kosak and We
Speaker 1: Just Want to Believe. Hell yeah, so yeah, check that out?
Speaker 1: Do it? You cowards? Listen? Do you do? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: I've been Robert Evans. This has been behind the bastards.
Speaker 1: If you want to read a book that doesn't involve
Speaker 1: mass rape by the Catholic Church, although it does involve
Speaker 1: Christian extremists, yeah, you can read my novel After the Revolution.
Speaker 1: It's available online at a t R book dot com. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's also available wherever podcasts are found if you
Speaker 1: just look up After the Revolution, so you can find
Speaker 1: the text online line where there's both an in browser
Speaker 1: version and there's a free e pub no ads or anything.
Speaker 1: You can just get it for free, read it on
Speaker 1: your ear reader. And there's a podcast with sound effects
Speaker 1: and ship that's After the Revolution, So check it out
Speaker 1: every Monday, right and UM, I don't know, uh, tear
Speaker 1: up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live
Speaker 1: if you get the chance. If you're on Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 1: do a send O'Connor based O'Connor. Um. All right, hey everybody.
Speaker 1: Initially I was going to plug the go fund me
Speaker 1: for the sequel to my book, UM After the Revolution,
Speaker 1: which you can find at a t r book dot com.
Speaker 1: But um, here in the Pacific Northwest, we're having an
Speaker 1: unprecedented heat wave and it's causing disastrous conditions, life threatening
Speaker 1: conditions for a lot of houseless people, a lot of
Speaker 1: people without air conditioning. UM, particularly in the city of Salem.
Speaker 1: UM activists everywhere have been kind of gathering to try
Speaker 1: and mitigate uh, set up cooling stations, hand out cold drinks,
Speaker 1: to do things to help people get their temperature down. UM.
Speaker 1: I want to try and raise funds for the Free
Speaker 1: Fridge of Salem, UM, which are doing cooling stations in
Speaker 1: the capital of Oregon, Salem. So if you go to
Speaker 1: venmo at Free Fridge Salem. That's venmo At Free Fridge
Speaker 1: Salem and send them a couple of bucks. They could
Speaker 1: really use it. Um. Local government has destroyed a number
Speaker 1: like police particularly have destroyed a number of water and
Speaker 1: cooling stations they've set out. Um, it's you know, we're
Speaker 1: not going to be in triple digit heats for the
Speaker 1: next couple of days after I'm recording this on Monday,
Speaker 1: but it's still going to be very hot. People still
Speaker 1: need this, So please venmo at Free Fridge Salem if
Speaker 1: you have the wherewithal and the financial resources to do
Speaker 1: so one more time. The venemo is at Free Fridge Salem.
Speaker 1: Thanks