Magdalene asylums, also known as Magdalene laundries (named after the Biblical figure Mary Magdalene), were initially Protestant but later mostly Roman Catholic institutions that operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries, ostensibly to house "fallen women".
The term referred to female sexual promiscuity or prostitutes, young women (teens and children) who became pregnant outside of marriage, young girls and teenagers who did not have familial support, or young women (teens and children) who were deemed “difficult to handle” or “bad eggs”. Some were girl children of prostitutes. They were required to work without pay apart from meagre food provisions, while the institutions operated large commercial laundries, serving customers outside their bases. Many of these "laundries" were effectively operated as penitentiary workhouses in which women did laundry, hence the name.
The strict regimes in the institutions were often more severe than those found in prisons. The nuns were brutal in their treatment of the young women, teens and children in their care. This contradicted the perceived outlook that they were meant to help women as opposed to punishing them. A survivor said of the working conditions: "The heat was unbelievable. You couldn't leave your station unless a bell went." Many of the properties “laundries” resided on have mass graves around and underneath them. Laundries such as this operated in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, the United States, and Australia, for much of the 18th century, all of the 19th century and most of the 20th century, the last one closing in 1996.
The first Magdalene institution was founded in late 1758 in Whitechapel, England. A similar institution was established in Ireland by 1767. The first Magdalene asylum in the United States was the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, founded in 1800. All these were Protestant institutions. Other cities followed, especially from around 1800, with Catholic institutions also being opened. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Magdalene asylums were common in several countries. By 1900, there were more than 300 asylums in England and more than 20 in Scotland.
By country England, Scotland, and Wales
The first Magdalen institution, Magdalen Hospital for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes, was founded in late 1758 in Whitechapel, London by Robert Dingley, a silk merchant, Jonas Hanway and John Fielding. It was established in response to a public competition for the best scheme to tackle prostitution. Ten plans were judged by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce between late May and early June 1758. These included plans already published by Dingley, Hanway and Fielding, as well as new proposals from Saunders Welch and Joseph Massie. D. G. C. Allan and J. L. Abbott, ‘Studies in the Society’s History and Archives: “Compassion and Horror in Every Humane Mind”: Samuel Johnson, The Society of Arts, and Eighteenth-Century Prostitution (ii)’, RSA Journal, CXXXIV, October 1988, pp. 829–30. The history of its name stems from Robert Dingley’s suggestion that the institution be called ‘Magdalen Charity House’ and begin life in the London Infirmary’s old buildings. R. Dingley, Proposals for Establishing a Public Place of Reception for Penitent Prostitutes,. &c., London, 1758, pp. 8–9. The building in Whitechapel initially comprised a row of five seventeenth-century houses on Prescot Street, Goodman’s Fields. Several years after the Magdalen Hospital opened, Dingley publicly exhibited a design for a new building. The plan was inspired by churches and monastic complexes, featuring a large central chapel with an ornate dome. A. Graves, The Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1760–1791, the Free Society of Artists, 1761–1783: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from the Foundation of the Societies to 1791, London, 1907, p. 256. It was not built on account of its expense, and perception of being too grand for its purpose.
The women at Magdalen Hospital worked at services and crafts to help provide financial support for the house. They were also given a small sum of money for their work. Additional income was generated by promoting the house as a tourist attraction for the upper classes. Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford, described staging one of these entertainments. This was in keeping with visits to Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Foundling Hospital. It later moved to Streatham, and could eventually house about 140 women, admitted between the ages of 15 and 40. Bristol (40 women) followed in 1800, Bath (79) in 1805, and many other cities in the years following, though their names mostly no longer included "Magdalene". Historians estimate that by the late 1800s, there were more than 300 Magdalene Institutions in England alone.
Visual literature for the Magdalen Hospital is generally limited to depictions produced by its governors and close associates. Key images from the eighteenth century include the frontispieces to 'Thoughts on the Plan for a Magdalen-House for Repentant Prostitutes' and 'Reflections, Essays and Meditations on Religion' by Jonas Hanway, as well as various published accounts of the charity from the 1760s. The exception is a rare satirical etching published anonymously on 12 June 1758. Emma Boyd, ‘The Advent of the Magdalen Hospital: A Rare Satirical Print’, Print Quarterly, vol. XLII, no.4 (December 2025), pp. 390–40. The only known impression of this print survives in the Ashmolean Museum.
In 1797, the Edinburgh Royal Magdalene Asylum was founded in the Canongate in Old Town, a popular location for street prostitutes. Some of the women were drawn to the city by industrialisation, some were pregnant and some had been forced into prostitution. Mary Paterson (also known as Mary Mitchell) was murdered by William Burke shortly after leaving the institution on April 8, 1828. The Edinburgh asylum moved to Dalry around 1842. The programme was supported in part by laundry and sewing work done by the residents. In Glasgow, the Magdalene Asylum became the Magdalene Institute and functioned until 1958.
Writer Charles Dickens and philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts established an alternative in 1846, thinking the Magdalen Hospitals too harsh. At Urania Cottage, the young women were prepared for re-entry into mainstream society or for immigration to the colonies.
By the late 19th century, many of the institutions had departed from the original model and resembled penitentiary workhouses. The question of whether they should become subject to labour regulations and inspections as commercial laundries were became particularly controversial around the turn of the century, with sides often drawn on Irish/English and Catholic/Protestant lines. The Factory and Workshop Act 1901 (1 Edw. 7. c. 22) limited working hours for girls of thirteen to eighteen years of age to twelve hours a day, but exempted religious institutions. However, work by female factory inspectors during the 1900s decade managed to convince religious institutions to submit to voluntary inspections, and by the end of the 1900s, inspections were interdenominationally accepted in England. The normalisation of inspections and other regulations of institutions in England is considered to have softened their regime and improved conditions compared to Ireland.
By the 1950s Magdalene asylums in Britain had mostly either closed or transformed into institutions with a narrower focus, like vocational training centres or approved schools.
Ireland
The first Magdalene laundry or asylum in Ireland, an Anglican or Church of Ireland-run institution, Magdalen Asylum for Penitent Females, opened on Leeson Street in Dublin in 1767, after two years of preparation. It was founded by Lady Arabella Denny, admitted only Protestant women, and had an episcopal chapel. Around 1805, John England of Cork established a female reformatory together with male and female poor schools. Pending the opening of the Church of Ireland-run Magdalen Asylum in Cork, he maintained and ministered to many applicants. The Magdalene Asylum in Cork (Sawmill Street) opened in 1810. The last Magdalene laundry closed on 25 September 1996 on Seán MacDermott Street in Dublin.
In Belfast, Northern Ireland, the Church of Ireland-run Ulster Magdalene Asylum and episcopal chapel, was founded in 1839. The asylum closed in 1916 and the St Mary Magdalene chapel became a parish church.St Mary Magdalene celebrates 175 years Diocese of Connor, November 7, 2014. Parallel institutions were run by Roman Catholics and Presbyterians (the Ulster Female Penitentiary and Laundry). Irish historian Diarmaid Ferriter described the laundries as "a mechanism that society, religious orders and the state came up with to try to get rid of people deemed not to conforming to the so-called ... Irish identity."
The discovery in 1993 of a mass grave on the grounds of High Park – a former convent in Dublin – led to media articles about the operations of the institutions. Ultimately the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called for a government inquiry into the Magdalene laundries. A formal state apology was issued in 2013, and a €60 million compensation scheme for survivors was established. By 2011, the four religious institutes that ran the Irish asylums had not yet contributed to compensate survivors of abuse, despite demands from the Irish government, and the UN Committee Against Torture. The religious sisters continue to care for more than 100 elderly Magdalene women who remain in their care. An estimated 600 survivors were still alive in March 2014.
Senator Martin McAleese chaired an Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen laundries. An Interim Report was released in October 2011. In 2013 the BBC did a special investigation, Sue Lloyd-Roberts' "Demanding justice for women and children abused by Irish nuns."
The Magdalene Sisters, a 2002 film by Peter Mullan, is based on historical facts about four young women incarcerated in a Magdalene laundry in Ireland from 1964 to 1968.
In 2011, a monument was erected in Ennis, County Clare, dedicated to the Sisters of Mercy, who had an industrial school and a Magdalene Laundry in the town. In 2015, Ennis municipal council decided to honour the same order by renaming a road in recognition of their "compassionate service to vulnerable women and children." The road runs through the site of the former industrial school and laundry. Local residents are divided about these honours.
United States
The first Magdalene asylum in the United States was the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, founded in 1800. Other North American cities, including New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago quickly followed suit.
Asylum records show that in the early history of the Magdalene movement, many women entered and left the institutions of their own accord, sometimes repeatedly. Lu Ann De Cunzo wrote in her book, Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions; The Magdalene Society of Philadelphia, 1800–1850, that the women in Philadelphia's asylum "sought a refuge and a respite from disease, the prison or almshouse, unhappy family situations, abusive men, and dire economic circumstances." In its early years, the Magdalen Society Asylum functioned as a refuge for prostitutes. Most of these stayed a few days or a few weeks, just long enough to get reclothed and recuperated. Attempts at rehabilitation met with little success. In 1877, the asylum was changed into a home for "wayward girls", with a rule requiring a stay for twelve months. As the Magdalen Society Asylum became more selective, relaxed its emphasis on personal guilt and salvation, and standardized the treatment of inmates, its rate of failure diminished.
The Penitent Females' Refuge Society of Boston was incorporated in 1823.