Louise Brangan
speaker
509 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 16 Jul
Louise Brangan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So I was already researching the Magdalene laundries when I went to see small things like these.
But like most people, I presumed these were prisons for women who had babies outside of marriage.
They were like mother-baby home, but more punitive, more extensive, where women stayed longer.
And then I started reading survivor testimony.
There's thousands of pages of survivor testimony collected by various different activist groups.
And the thing in my notes I kept writing was...
Did not have a baby.
Did not have a baby.
Reason for entry, mother died.
Reason for entry, skipping school.
Reason for entry, naughty at school.
You know, but never was it about having babies outside of...
marriage and then I met the survivor Maureen Sullivan at something and I was chatting to her and she has a memoir called Girl in the Tunnel.
It's really moving, really beautifully written about her experience in a Magdalene laundry where she had been sent because she had reported being sexually abused by a family member.
which is another common route into the Magdalene laundries.
And she said to me, you've got to get this story away from mother and babies.
So I spoke to everyone I could and said, were there babies born in Magdalene laundries?
No.
And even the McAleese report, which is, you know...
a contestable document, but even it said, having looked through all of the archives belonging to the church, no babies were born there.
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