Small Things Like These

A Note on the Text

This is a work of fiction based in no part on any individual or individuals. Ireland’s last Magdalen laundry was not closed down until 1996. It is not known how many girls and women were concealed, incarcerated and forced to labour in these institutions. Ten thousand is the modest figure; thirty thousand is probably more accurate. Most of the records from the Magdalen laundries were destroyed, lost, or made inaccessible. Rarely was any of these girls’ or women’s work recognised or acknowledged in any way. Many girls and women lost their babies. Some lost their lives. Some or most lost the lives they could have had. It is not known how many thousands of infants died in these institutions or were adopted out from the mother-and-baby homes. Earlier this year, the Mother and Baby Home Commission Report found that nine thousand children died in just eighteen of the institutions investigated. In 2014, the historian Catherine Corless made public her shocking discovery that 796 babies died between 1925 and 1961 in the Tuam home, in County Galway. These institutions were run and financed by the Catholic Church in concert with the Irish State. No apology was issued by the Irish government over the Magdalen laundries until Taoiseach Enda Kenny did so in 2013.

‘Is it five you have, or six?’

‘It’s five we have, Mother.’

She got up then and took the lid off the teapot, and stirred the leaves. ‘But it must be disappointing, all the same.’

Her back was to him.

‘Disappointing?’ Furlong said. ‘In what way?’

‘To have no boy to carry on the name.’

She meant business but Furlong, who’d long experience of such talk, was on known ground. He stretched a little and let his boot touch the brass, polished fender.

‘Sure, didn’t I take my own mother’s name, Mother. And never any harm did it do me.’

‘Is that so?’

‘What have I against girls?’ he went on. ‘My own mother was a girl, once. And I dare say the same must be true of you and half of all belonging to us.’

‘But what if it was one of ours?’ Furlong said.

‘This is the very thing I’m saying,’ she said, rising again. ‘Tis not one of ours.’

‘Isn’t it a good job Mrs Wilson didn’t share your ideas?’ Furlong looked at her. ‘Where would my mother have gone? Where would I be now?’

‘Weren’t Mrs Wilson’s cares far from any of ours?’ Eileen said. ‘Sitting out in that big house with her pension and a farm of land and your mother and Ned working under her. Was she not one of the few women on this earth who could do as she pleased?’