Thought of what happened to my gran in a Magdalene Laundry haunts me

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

Look to the right of the picture, however, and you see that she's cut somebody out. There's a black void where she's taken scissors and excised whoever is standing beside her.
All that remains of that person is their hand. It looks like a man's hand. It's holding my grandmother by the wrist. There's a sense of possession about that grip, as if whoever it is believes they own my grandmother. Is it a priest? One of the nuns who tormented her?
She'll never be able to tell me now. My grandmother had three wishes: to live to 100; to see me become the first in our family to go to university - starved of formal education she loved books and learning - and finally that she'd one day hold my first child in her arms, her first grandchild.
Only one wish came true. She lived to see me graduate, and frail - so frail - she even made it to the ceremony. But she missed her 100th birthday, though just by a few years; and she missed the birth of her first grandchild, by just a few damned months.
That child carries her name. I hope if my daughter has a baby girl of her own she'll one day hand that name on, so something of Suzanne never dies.
I loved my grandmother fiercely. She was my rock to cling to amid the storms and stupidity of my parent's failing marriage. While they tore themselves to pieces, my grandmother built a world of safety for me. She loved me unconditionally.
What a life she lived. She held me rapt for hours in tales of her adventures. Her life was tough but she lived it on her own terms. The woman was titanium-built.
She was born into hard times: the rural poverty of Ireland, as the Victorian era gave way to the new 20th century.
Both her parents died before she was five. Orphaned, she was taken in by her grandmother, a sadist who beat and humiliated the child with ruthless regularity.
Suzie, as those who loved her called her, was a natural rebel. She would, I believe, sooner have died than yield.
Whilst my granny told me everything about her life, there is, however, one part which she always skirted: her years in the Magdalene Laundries, run by the Catholic Church.
Every time these hellish places return to the news, I wonder what happened to my granny inside their walls. What was done to her?
Currently, in Tuam, near Galway, a mass unmarked grave for hundreds of children is being excavated where a Magdalene Laundry once stood.
These were places where 'bad girls' and 'fallen women' were sent. Over the years - until these cursed institutions were finally abolished - an estimated 170,000 women and children went through their doors. My gran was one.
She was 'sent to the convent', as she called it, aged around 14. All Suzie would say was that she'd refused to submit to her grandmother's bullying, and was banished to the Magdalene Laundries.
They were called laundries as the young women had to work washing clothes. Physical, sexual and emotional abuse were the norm.
I don't know precisely why my gran was sent away. Many of the girls shut up in these evil places were pregnant, but others were just rebellious - perhaps they had boyfriends (my gran always had an eye for a handsome fella), perhaps they'd got drunk or stayed out late.
Girls didn't have to commit a grave sin in Ireland back then to suffer the wrath of family and church.
She was incarcerated for about two years. When she emerged, she was changed. She'd lose her faith in the Catholic Church. Her rebellious streak had grown a mile wide. She wasn't the kind of woman who could - literally or metaphorically - be whipped into shape by anyone.
Within a year or so of leaving the Magdalene laundries, my grandmother had joined what some called 'the old IRA', and was fighting in the War of Independence, the conflict which raged between 1919 and 1921 and would lead to the creation of the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland.
She talked little of this period either, understandably. I was raised in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and anyone who boasted about fighting to free Ireland in their youth - even a pensioner - would have placed a target on their own back.
Read more by Neil Mackay
This I do know, though, she was some kind of scout and messenger, carrying intelligence around the country. Perhaps that makes her an 'intelligence officer', as some in my family have called her, but I think that may be too grand.
After the War of Independence, she went on the run, hiding out in India until she returned home in the late 1920s.
Jobless, she moved to England to work as a servant. The irony wasn't lost on her: slaving for the very people she'd fought.
Suzie married a Cockney in the Royal Navy, and she mellowed. She even came to love England, and became one of the first women firefighters saving London during the Blitz.
But like all Irish folk, she eventually returned home. After the death of her beloved husband Pat - my grandfather was actually called Henry but pals nicknamed him Pat due to his Irish wife - she moved back. I was born around the same time.
Today, I'm writing a novel inspired by my grandmother's life. It will be my fourth book, and I know it's the work I'll most care about this side of the grave.
Suzie told me so much about her life, but those years in the Magdalene Laundry remain mostly blank. Whenever I hear about these places, I pull out that old picture of her, taken around 1918, and I give her a wink and tell her I love her.
(Image: Contributed)
My imagination haunts me when I start thinking about what might have happened to this woman I loved so much in one of those terrible places.
I've researched much of her life as part of my preparation for this novel, but I've never been brave enough to dare find out more about her time in the Magdalene Laundries.
I've now started that work. It's only at the age of 55 that I really have the courage and character to face up to what might have been done to her.
Whatever I find, I'll memorialise it for Suzie. I'll let her have her say all these years after her death.
What I want most of all is to discover the original of that photograph, and to find out who was standing beside her.
If they hurt my granny, I'll make sure the world knows their name.
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Neil Mackay is the Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics