Analysis: The antagonism of management at Dublin Laundry Company for the way in which religious, institutional laundries operated is revealing
By Olivia Frehill, TCD
Recent years have seen the spotlight placed on Ireland's historic institutions with state commissions into Magdalen laundries and Mother and Baby homes. In the case of the Magdalen laundries, known as Magdalen asylums in the nineteenth century, we often rightfully talk of those running the institutions and those who were institutionalised. But what can we learn from considering other voices of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who spoke on these institutions?
Considering other, more minor voices on the Magdalen asylums can add further nuance and complexity to our understanding of these institutions and their place in past Irish society. Thinking about how different individuals and groups reacted to Magdalen asylums in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries helps us to shed light on how they were regarded in the past.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Dublin had a thriving commercial laundry sector outside of institutional religious or state-run laundries. The commercial steam laundry sector catered for the demand of the more affluent for freshly laundered linen, in an era prior to the advent of domestic washing machines. At the lowest levels, it was an industry that employed many poor and relatively lowly-skilled women workers in the city, or sometimes the returned female emigrant seeking work. In terms of its worker profile at the bottom rungs, it was a female dominated industry. Robert Tweedy, manager of Dublin's Court Laundry, remarked that management of the various commercial laundries in Dublin at the top-levels tended to be in the hands of Protestant businessmen— Quaker, Presbyterian, or Church of Ireland.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, Dr Maeve O'Rourke, of the University of Galway, and Dr Mark Coen, of University College Dublin on the Magdalene Laundry at Donnybrook
Drawing attention to the attitudes and views of the management of one commercial laundry to the competing network of Magdalen laundries helps shed some light on attitudes at the time. One of Dublin’s key commercial laundries was Dublin Laundry Company based in the suburbs of Milltown. A thriving steam laundry, it was founded in 1888 by Quaker businessman, Thomas Edmondson and employed around 300. As hard-headed capitalists, the company exacted strict requirements of the female workforce in terms of efficiency and behaviour and utilised a system of worker fines and discipline to maintain order.
Indeed, the commercial and institutional laundries were parallel but frequently overlapping worlds. Crucially, the antagonism of management at Dublin Laundry Company for the way in which religious institutional laundries operated is revealing. Their antipathy to institutional laundries revolved around two issues: the fact that institutional laundries were not subject to the same inspection systems as commercial laundries initially, and some rivalry regarding the perceived possible profitability of religious laundries.
The laundry trade generally had been exempted from the factory acts' legislation and the attendant systems of inspection which regulated industrial work, which has been studied in detail by Desmond Greer and James W Nicolson in their work The Factory Acts in Ireland, 1802-1914. However, following trade union pressure, the 1895 Factory Act brought commercial laundries within the legislation. Religious laundries were at first excluded from the legislation following opposition from them.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Doc On One, In the summer of 1945, women laundry workers went on strike for over 13 weeks for a second week's holiday. The strike involved around 1,500 workers and affected 14 laundries in Dublin
In an 1895 letter, management at Dublin Laundry Company argued against the exclusion of religious laundries on the basis that, it 'would constitute a gross injustice to legitimate trade concerns and would practically be encouraging the employment of labour, often of a doubtful moral character, at the expense of the honest, sober and well-rounded employers’. It is interesting that the morality of the workforce was invoked in this way by commercial laundries.
The morality of those in institution laundries was also referenced by the lady inspectors examining religious laundries on behalf of the state in 1905, who argued that laundry work may not have been most suitable for the character reform of the women of reformatories or penitentiaries because it was ‘a trade in which the temptations to drink are rampant’. This highlights the way in which groups and individuals within the society of the day differentiated between the figure of the commercial and Magdalen laundress and created a sense of hierarchy between these figures.
Following the factory acts' legislation, commercial laundries were still accused of the twin problems of long hours and ventilation issues, and so many of the problems continued despite regulation of commercial laundries. This shows how legislation had not solved many of the problems within the laundry industry. A 1905 state inspection of religious laundries remarked on the 'profitable nature’ of the exempt religious laundries. Following this review, the 1907 factory act, which came into operation the following year, brought religious institutional laundries under the scope of the factory acts, making them subject to its inspection system.
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From RTÉ Archives, Kathy O'Beirne’s memoir is an account of a cruel childhood and her experience in a Magdalene Laundry (Broadcast 2005)
In 1920, commercial laundries withdrew from the trade board over the position of institutional laundries, showing how division between the two systems continued. Trade boards had been established in the pre-independence period in several lowly paid industries for the purpose of ensuring employers paid certain minimum wages. In April 1922, a letter from the Dublin Laundry Company stated that, ‘laundries are essential services…to the health of the community…Furthermore, laundry employees are mostly women and girls and comparatively few men are employed…I am loath to drag in the old question of the convent laundries, but I must point out that they would probably be working even if commercial laundries have to stop’.
This demonstrates how commercial laundries perceived religious laundries as places subject to more lenient rules, and, potentially even as places of constant labour in their eyes. While this may not have been a correct assessment, profit in religious laundries was clearly a contentious issue for the competing commercial laundry system. However, we must consider that there was likely great variation from institution to institution in terms of their individual profitability. We cannot take this as an accurate picture of the situation as commercial laundry management evidently had their own agenda as competitors within the trade, as well as individuals coming from a different religious tradition.
Yet this example highlights how religious, institutional laundries were about more than ideas of morality, sin, and reform. They functioned as part of a wider network of laundry businesses in the period which all competed for resources, money, and opportunities. Unearthing the views of groups such as the above shows the multi-faceted way the religious and institutional laundries were regarded in this period by their competitors within the industry, and in doing so gives us a broader understanding.
Dr Olivia Frehill recently completed a PhD in History at TCD pertaining to women’s work and welfare in Dublin c. 1890–1930s. She is also a former early career researcher in the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
