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
But they were on main streets.
You know, the one in Donnybrook where I said, talking about Eileen earlier, where she went.
You know, there was a letter written to the Irish Times in the 1950s where someone described the fine main street of Donnybrook with all of the sort of usual best businesses you get in Ireland.
Dairyman, post office, butcher, Magdalene Laundry.
And, you know, and people knew that they made lace there.
They also, with those items, if they made lace or pin cushions and dresses, they were sold in sales of works and they were big ads in the papers, particularly at Sunday as well as people of the local community would come and buy items in November as Christmas gifts.
And one of the other items I have as a picture in the book
comes from Galway City Museum, which very helpfully I got through a very nice woman called Helen Birmingham, who I was incredibly grateful to.
These were the paper bags and the plastic bags that your laundry were wrapped in in the packing room before they were sent back out to you.
And there in print typed on it said Magdalene Home Laundry or Magdalene Laundry with the telephone number on it.
Lovely branding, you know, and there was no hiding it away.
Yeah, in some ways that's, you know, the silence around them.
I think there's, of course, an element of shame because people spoke about them as charity and salvation.
Aren't we very good that we have these institutions for these women who really need them?
And, you know, the nuns have, there's a neat little way to talk about them that escapes having to face what they really are.
But people were dropping off their washing by a tonne.
Every single week.
Like there's no institution in Ireland that wasn't dropping off their washing there as far as I can gather.
Orison Uchtdron, you know, the washing from Mountjoy Prison would be ferried across to Shaw and McDermott Street and then back to the men's prison in the evening.
Yeah, and it's like a reenactment, isn't it?
Showing 221–240 of 509 · page 12 of 26
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