Joni Mitchell’s Turbulent Indigo album cover
Hello to everyone who is reading this. My name is Lisa Fox, pen name Jade Li, writing from my blog, Tao-Talk, which is an eclectic mix of music, poetry, photography, flash fiction, and more. Before getting into what led me to choose the song I did to write about, I would like to thank Randy at MostlyMusicCovers for inviting me to participate in “Herstory in Harmony.” Randy is a blogger who, besides focusing on cover songs, likes looking at statistics to see who is or who isn’t being heard on the airwaves at different times and places. He notices trends. It is important that all creative people in the world are being heard. I would like to thank Randy for that also. Thanks, Randy!
When Randy asked me to choose a song for Herstory in Harmony, the first song I thought of was “Nothing Compares to U.” It’s a song that Prince wrote. The lyrics are androgynous, just like Prince was androgynous. The song was also covered by Sinéad O’Connor, who got a mega-hit off of it. It was also covered by Chris Cornell, who is one of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters. These 3 songs would cover the male, female, and androgynous aspects. The reality that all three of these iconic performers have passed on made it that much more powerful of a draw.
But what would the connection, more than generic, be to “herstory.” I started to think of Sinéad and her long battle with being heard – and understood – shaded as she was by her traumatic background and resultant and ongoing struggles with mental illness. Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor was born in 1966 and was raised by a physically and emotionally abusive mother who, per Sinéad, encouraged her to shoplift. In her own words, via a letter to The Washington Post in 2010:
After being caught once too often, I spent 18 months in An Grianán Training Centre, an institution in Dublin for girls with behavioral problems, at the recommendation of a social worker. An Grianán was one of the now-infamous church-sponsored “Magdalene laundries,” which housed pregnant teenagers and uncooperative young women.
As soon as I read this, I remembered that Joni Mitchell had written a song titled, “The Magdalene Laundries.” Things clicked into place. This is the feminist anthem I chose to write about as a song written by a woman and sung by themselves or for/with another woman.
I tried to find information on An Grianán Training Centre specifically and found a 2019 article in the Irish Journal where “a religious order was ‘adamant’ with the government that women seeking redress did not work in a Magdalene Laundry after 1980, despite their claims and testimony. Last year, the government’s compensation scheme was expanded to women who worked in the Magdalene laundries of 12 religious institutions but were resident in one of 14 adjoining institutions… An Grianán training centre … was attached to St Mary’s High Park Convent’s Magdalene laundry in Drumcondra.”
Doing research to learn more about Magdalene Laundries (abbreviated onward as ML) I learned a lot. Here are just brief bits.
Per wikipedia, ML, named after the Biblical figure Mary Magdalene), were initially Protestant but later mostly Roman Catholic institutions that operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries, ostensibly to house “fallen women,’’ where fallen referred to female sexual promiscuity or prostitutes, young women who became pregnant outside of marriage, or young girls and teenagers who did not have familial support. Many of these “laundries” were effectively operated as penitentiary workhouses. This contradicted the perceived outlook that they were meant to help women as opposed to punishing them.
Perhaps most shocking to me was that, “laundries such as this operated in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, the United States, and Australia, for much of the 19th and well into the 20th century, the last one closing in 1996.”
When I saw Canada on the list of countries as having operated such laundries, I began to suspect that perhaps Joni knew some of them were operating in Canada and was concerned enough to try to bring their reality to the public eye? In a Far Out Magazine article in 2024, I learned that Joni wrote the song after “news in 1993 that after the sale of the land where the former High Park convent in Dublin had been, an unmarked mass grave containing the bodies of 130 former inmates of a laundry was uncovered.”
“The touching thing about it,” explained Mitchell, “Was to me that unmarried women in some very, very moralistic parishes, could be sentenced to a life of paleless drudgery under Dickens-like conditions for life, simply because they were unmarried and the men were looking at them.”
Trying to find actual statements from those who had been placed in a ML, I found Maureen Sullivan, author of, _girl in the tunnel: My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries. I watched Maureen on an episode of Oprah, talking about how she, at age 12, ended up being placed there after she mistakenly trusted a nun at her local parish and confided that her stepfather was sexually abusing her. Instead of holding the stepfather accountable, she was sent to a ML. (She also talks about how her stepfather first “laid a foundation” that she was a liar to the point where nobody believed her about anything.) Maureen is now an advocate for other survivors.
In another video, I listened to Diane Croghan talk about being sent to a ML at the age of 8.
“The Magdalene Laundries” is on, “Turbulent Indigo,” the fifteenth album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, released in 1994. The album won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Album. Is it any coincidence that the last one closed in 1996? There are a lot of YouTubes and at least several books out there on the ML.
Before concluding my post, I wanted to mention a 2024 movie I saw recently, “Small Things Like These,” where Cillian Murphy plays Bill Furlong, the father of 5 girls, all being educated at Catholic School adjacent to a ML. Bill owns a fuel company and delivers coal to the place. He starts to see things happening at the laundry. At the same time he realizes the Sisters rule the town and that his daughters’ education and general well-being depend on him maintaining the secret that everybody knows. I mention the movie because it pulls in the male perspective and how these laundries rippled evil into their communities.
The Magdalene Laundries
I was an unmarried girl
I'd just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a Jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I'd be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries
Most girls come here pregnant
Some by their own fathers
Bridget got that belly
By her parish priest
We're trying to get things white as snow
All of us woe-begotten-daughters
In the streaming stains
Of the Magdalene laundries
Prostitutes and destitutes
And temptresses like me
Fallen women
Sentenced into dreamless drudgery
Why do they call this heartless place
Our Lady of Charity?
Oh, charity
These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Then they'd know, and they'd drop the stones
Concealed behind their rosaries
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They'd like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries
Peg O'Connell died today
She was a cheeky girl
A flirt
They just stuffed her in a hole
Surely to God, you'd think at least some bells should ring
One day I'm going to die here too
And they'll plant me in the dirt
Like some lame bulb
That never blooms come any spring
Not any spring, uh-uh-uh
Not any, uh-uh-uh, uh-uh-uh-uh
Oh-oh
No, not any spring
Not any spring
Tao Talk 
Lisa…one of the best posts you have ever done. Thanks!
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Max, thank you very much. Happy to “see” you. I know you have things to do during the week, but I miss you.
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I feel the same Lisa! This week was especially rough and next week will be as well….hopefully after that it will slow down at work.
Again…this post will be an impossible post to follow! I have the misfortune of having to do that next Saturday.
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Good news today. Xfinity is now available to me. Just chatted with an online person and I can get 1 gb speed for $40/month, WITH PHONE for a year. Hard to believe! Will have it sometime in March.
Looking forward to your Herstory in History next Saturday.
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That is great! Wow I wish we had those prices. I did go to Spectrum mobile phone for 30 bucks a month.
Oh I thought about rewriting mine after I saw yours…mine is more on a personal level…well like I usually am.
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Hoping it works as well as they promote it. Verizon has been offering some major perks lately, with contracts so you can’t leave for these deals at xfinity without penalty, but dang they have been charging me a fortune for my phone.
Max, it’s all good on the music posts. I’ve written a lot with personal stuff if I’m bonded with the song. My post was more about the political aspects of the situation for this one.
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I left AT&T…they were charging us 190 bucks for 3 cell phones and refused to go down. I told them the hell with you…and Spectrum is better!
Mine I guess is sad because she didn’t get to enjoy it.
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An incredible piece of herstory and an incredible song. Thank you.
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Steve, thank you. One piece at a time…
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Wonderful post, with so much information! I, too, watched the Cilian Murphy movie – I didn’t realise know the term Magdalene Laundries – didn’t remember hearing it in the movie.
Not just the priests were awful… The crap children have had to live through (when they survived it).
Joni is wonderful. She sings about real things.
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Thanks so much, Dale. I’m not sure they mentioned it by name in the movie. The nuns hurt the kids as much as the priests from what I know at least in the laundries (and their close relatives, the Indian Boarding Schools.) Watching a few clips of the adults who had spent time in them, their nightmares haven’t gone away.
Yes, Joni is, and she does <3
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I think you’re right. I don’t remember hearing the name. But yes, they are the same as the residential schools, and all of their ilk. It’s disgusting how supposed “God-loving” people were so cruel. They survived horrors.
Love Joni! 💞
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<3
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💞
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I had not heard this album by JM. A sad song. I have a couple early ones but all in storage now. My favorite was Court and Spark 1974 which I still know the words to the songs😃
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Someone, is this Cheryl? I don’t think I’ve heard the whole album either. Court & Spark is an excellent album, I agree. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite. I really like Blue. I also love the live album Miles of Aisles, where she’s backed up by Tom Scott jazz band.
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A tragic story Li. Thanks for the telling. Coincidently, a few weeks ago my wife and I came across a small park in inner Melbourne with a plaque telling the same story about how the site had been abused and was one of abuse of “fallen women”. Despite this very public awareness of past inhumanities people continue to treat others that inconvenience them as disposable and blithely ignore abuse, particularly of minority groups. I despair that humankind as a whole will never learn not only that such acts are wrong and must not be ignored, but also it can happen to anyone who loses wealth or favour.
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Sean, I’m sorry you came across one of the sites. I hate the term “fallen women” as many times it was those who had wealth or favor that confined females in those places and not through any fault of circumstance beyond that. It eerily echoes the means by which the global sex trafficking ring that’s in the headlines these days was able to continue for so long.
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Reading this again here after seeing the post on Randy’s site, and even writing on it myself some time back doesn’t diminish the anger and revulsion at the despicable treatment of young women in these institutions. Mitchell’s writing of the song is incredibly potent, and you’ve captured the essence very well.
To our discussion about Mitchell’s collaboration version with the Chieftains, it does indeed seem to be drawn from a similar arrangement to the studio recording of the song on that album. That was the first version of the song I’d heard. A brilliant combination.
Thanks for sharing this here, Lisa, and the live version.
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You are very welcome, Steve. The more who know of it the better.
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Absolutely agree with you on that, Lisa. It’s one of the main ways to ensure something like that isn’t allowed to happen again.
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The abuse of both girls and boys by the Catholic Church is well known yet it still goes on, still gets covered up. Girls and women, of course, being particularly vulnerable, damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Joni pulls no punches. We know who the real sinners are, then and now.
Thanks for all the detailed information. Hard to digest, but necessary. (K)
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Kerfe, I appreciate your potent comment.
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Wow, that’s quite some pretty explosive stuff. I had not been aware of these despicable institutions – sounds like yet another less than glorious chapter of the Catholic Church!
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Yes it is and actively occurring not so long ago.
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It’s like you’re staring evil in the eye!
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EXACTLY. Not sure if you saw my book review on Emphyrio? I would highly recommend you read it and let me know what you think.
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I read the book the movie, Small Things Like These was based on- and that was my introduction to the Magdelene Laundries. I am so glad you have been shedding some very needed light on this travesty called charity. It really wasn’t so long ago. I had never heard the song wither. Thank you!
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V, I didn’t know there was a book. Both happy and sad to share the info . Glad you heard the song now. So powerfully told.
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