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Frances Finnegan traces the history of the Magdalen Asylums in Ireland, homes founded in the 19th century for the detention of prostitutes undergoing reform, but which later received unwed mothers, wayward girls and the mentally retarded, all of them put to work as forced labour in church-run laundries.
Frances Finnegan traces the history of the Magdalen Asylums in Ireland, homes founded in the 19th century for the detention of prostitutes undergoing reform, but which later received unwed mothers, wayward girls & the mentally retarded, all of them put to work as forced labour in church-run laundries.
First published in 1985, this book explores the social history of the Irish in Britain across a variety of cities, including Bristol, York, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stockport. With contributions from foremost scholars in the field, it provides a thorough critical study of Irish immigration, in its social, political, cultural and religious dimensions. This book will be of interested to students of Victorian history, Irish history and the history of minorities.
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Tracing the history of four English case studies, this book explores how, from outward appearance to interior furnishings, the material worlds of reform institutions for ‘fallen’ women reflected their moral purpose and shaped the lived experience of their inmates. Variously known as asylums, refuges, magdalens, penitentiaries, Houses or Homes of Mercy, the goal of such institutions was the moral ‘rehabilitation’ of unmarried but sexually experienced ‘fallen’ women. Largely from the working-classes, such women – some of whom had been sex workers – were represented in contradictory terms. Morally tainted and a potential threat to respectable family life, they were also worthy o...
The convents, asylums, and laundries that once comprised the Magdalene institutions are the subject of this work. Though originally half-way homes for prostitutes in the Middle Ages, these homes often became forced-labor institutions, particularly in Ireland. Examining the laundries within the context of a growing world capitalist economy, the work argues that the process of colonization, and of defining a national image, determined the nature and longevity of the Magdalene Laundries. This process developed differently in Ireland, where the last laundry closed in 1996. The book focuses on the devolution of the significance of Mary Magdalene as a metaphor for the organization: from an affluent, strong supporter of Jesus to a simple, fallen woman.
Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.
The original 1985 edition of Children of the Poor Clares was the first book to expose the reality of the treatment of children placed in church care in Irelands post-independence horrendous industrial school system. Giving an intimate picture, covering over four decades, of life in one of these institutions, it documented the gross physical and emotional abuse, neglect, malnourishment, exploitation, lack of proper education, deprivation, and humiliation that scarred the children for life. It further identified the collusion of the state and its own lawbreaking that enabled the abuse in its vast apparatus of incarceration of impoverished children. This revised updated edition gives chilling details of revelations that have since become public and of the states ultimate responsibility for what took place.