Man hands on misery to man for sure – but the misery man has handed on to woman sometimes seems of another order entirely. And so to The Woman in the Wall, the BBC’s new six-part drama set in Ireland where the power of the Catholic church over female bodies and their fates was unassailed and, until the blink of an eye ago, looked to be unassailable.
Written by Joe Murtagh, it is based on the experiences of those who were sent – usually by their families, usually with the encouragement of their local priest – to the Magdalene laundries or, if pregnant, to the mother and baby homes that were often attached to the facilities that ran on the girls’ indentured servitude. The bar for the “wayward” behaviour that could get you banished there was low. As one of the local laundry’s former residents explains to the detective investigating the case with which the drama opens, her friend was sent there because “she was a great beauty” and everyone feared she would soon get an eye for boys and married men. “She never even had a boyfriend.” The last laundry closed in 1996.
