The Magdalene Laundry

By Alison Roberts (Printed in an edited form, May 2003)

Part 2

The “Disappeared”

Census returns from the period show that many of the women who were locked away in East Finchley’s refuge were little more than young girls, some as young as 12 or 13-years-old. These girls became an early example of the "disappeared", nearly always with the connivance of their own families.

Technically, every woman who entered one of the closed laundries did so voluntarily, following the example of Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who became the "13th apostle" of Christ, after whom the convents were named. But there was nothing voluntary about the grinding work, the beatings, the forced fasting or the weekly mortification sessions, when the women were stripped and laughed at for their vanity.

Sadly, the demise of the Magdalene laundries appears to have been driven more by simple economics than by any concern for the women’s welfare. By the 1960s, the wide availability of automatic washing machines reduced the requirement for the laundries to the extent that they were no longer financial viable.

Up in Flames

Most of the original East Finchley convent and boarding school – by then known as St Joseph's – burned down one Sunday afternoon in October 1972, though the Good Shepherd Sisters still occupy a small convent there today. The rest of the site is now home to Bishop Douglass RC School, The Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute and the Thomas More housing estate.

In 1993 Servite Houses, a housing association founded by Joan Bartlett of the Servite Secular Institute, completed the final phase of its development on Thomas More Way. The land now provides low-cost housing for families and young people, sheltered housing for the elderly and a day-centre for those with special needs. Only the road names (Clare, Helen, Juliana and Cecilia Close) provide a clue to the unsettling history of this comer of East Finchley.

© Alison Roberts 2003

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