Interview with James M. Smith on Ireland's Magdalen laundries and the nation's architecture of containment, by James Smith

Abstract

Focusing on the ten Catholic Magdalen laundries operating between 1922 and 1996, [this book] offers the first history of women entering these institutions in the twentieth century. Because the religious orders have not opened their archival records, Smith argues that Ireland's Magdalen institutions continue to exist in the public mind primarily at the level of story (cultural representation and survivor testimony) rather than history (archival history and documentation).