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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2019
The Magdalene Asylums were penitentiaries for ‘fallen’ women. A high percentage of such women had been involved in sex trade in some form; others were betrayed fiancées, unmarried partners or women with drinking problems. This article explores the Magdalene Asylums’ education as a tool for reforming the inmates into women reflecting the managers’ ideals of femininity and Christian virtue in nineteenth-century Scotland. The reports of these institutions describe their aims, quoting selected letters of former inmates, their parents and new employers. They give us an insight into how these Christian philanthropists imagined and applied educational programme for this group of women and girls. The two main areas of the asylums’ education were religious teaching and instruction in a range of skills necessary for becoming a servant or a factory worker. Those who could not read and write also received basic literacy lessons. Magdalene Asylums in nineteenth-century Scotland offer a rich case study of a context in which education had a very narrow meaning and served a precisely defined purpose. They provided a broad spectrum of skills, although never at a comprehensive level. The article explores the managers’ intentions and ideals by analysing the language they used to talk about ‘successfully reformed’ women.
1 Smith, James M., Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment (Manchester, 2008), xviGoogle Scholar.
2 I try to avoid the word ‘prostitute’ as much as possible, despite its being a widely used term of the time. I prefer the term ‘sex worker’ to avoid sounding contemptuous towards the women described. Importantly, ‘sex worker’ in this article does not imply that all women under discussion had full agency when choosing this occupation (whether it was occasional or full-time). It merely indicates the method of earning money, and does not imply any assessment of women's agency. When a more inclusive category is called for, I refer to all women who were considered ‘fallen’ (which included any woman who had sex outside marriage or even women with drinking problems). I adopt the contemporary term ‘fallen women’ in quotation marks, to distance myself from the moral judgement of nineteenth-century philanthropists. Most twenty-first-century readers will understand ‘prostitute’ as referring to a sex worker; however, the nineteenth-century definition of the word was much broader.
3 Bullough, Vern and Bullough, Bonnie, Women and Prostitution: A Social History (New York, 1987)Google Scholar, 111, 130, 154, 185, 245–6, 274; McCarthy, Rebecca Lea, Origins of the Magdalene Laundries: An Analytical History (Jefferson, NC, 2010)Google Scholar, 73, 76.
4 Compston, Herbert F. B., The Magdalen Hospital: The Story of a Great Charity (London: 1917), 15Google Scholar; Hanway, James, A Plan for establishing a Charity-house, or Charity-houses, for the Reception of repenting Prostitutes, to be called the Magdalen Charity (London, 1758)Google Scholar.
5 Mahood, Linda, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1990), 75Google Scholar.
6 The New Statistical Account of Scotland, 12: Aberdeen (Edinburgh, 1845), 55; The Dundee Directory for 1850 (Dundee, n.d.), 35; Walsh, Lorraine, Patrons, Poverty & Profit: Organised Charity in Nineteenth-Century Dundee (Dundee, 2000), 49Google Scholar; Rules of the Greenock House of Refuge, instituted 1853 (Greenock, n.d.), 2.
7 The Magdalene Asylums in nineteenth-century Scotland have been a neglected topic in British history. While more has been published on the Magdalene Asylums in Ireland, especially in the twentieth century, the Scottish homes have received little attention. There are many relevant Scottish primary sources; some are used in this article, but many have yet to be studied.
8 For more on the rescue movement, especially in the Irish context, see Finnegan, Frances, Do Penance or Perish: Magdalen Asylums in Ireland (Oxford, 2001), 1–5Google Scholar; Prunty, Jacinta, The Monasteries, Magdalen Asylums and Reformatory Schools of Our Lady of Charity in Ireland, 1853–1973 (Dublin: 2017), 93–108Google Scholar.
9 D. C. Phillips and Harvey Siegel, ‘Philosophy of Education’, in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 edn), online at: <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/education-philosophy/>, accessed 30 March 2018.
10 See Finnegan, Francis, Poverty and Prostitution: A Study of Victorian Prostitutes in York (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar; Walkowitz, Judith, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 For a discussion on the influence of middle-class values and rejection of these norms by working-class Magdalenes of these institutions, see Mahood, Magdalenes.
12 Morgan, Sue, A Passion for Purity: Ellice Hopkins and the Politics of Gender in the Late Victorian Church (Bristol, 1999), 9Google Scholar.
13 See Kollar, Rene, ‘Magdalenes and Nuns: Convent Laundries in Late Victorian England’, Anglican and Episcopal History 73 (2004), 309–34Google Scholar, largely reproduced as idem, A foreign and wicked Institution?: The Campaign against Convents in Victorian England (Cambridge, 2011), 309–34; Mumm, Susan, ‘“Not Worse than Other Girls”: The Convent-based Rehabilitation of Fallen Women in Victorian Britain’, JSH 29 (1996), 527–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bartley, Paula, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860–1914 (London, 2000)Google Scholar.
14 See, for example, Rules of the Philanthropic Society of Edinburgh, 1st August 1797 ([Edinburgh, 1797?]).
15 40th to 43rd Annual Reports of the Association of the Greenock House of Refuge or Shelter (Greenock, 1894–7).
16 Ninth Report of the Female Shelter in Connection with the Scottish Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of the most destitute of their own Sex, in Prisons and other Institutions (Edinburgh, 1850).
17 Mumm, ‘“Not Worse than Other Girls”’, 528.
18 See Finnegan, Penance; Luddy, Maria, Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800–1940 (Cambridge, 2007)Google Scholar; Smith, Laundries.
19 Prunty, Jacinta, Our Lady of Charity in Ireland (Dublin, 2017)Google Scholar.
20 Kollar, Magdalenes, 320.
21 Tait, William, Magdalenism: An Inquiry into the Extent, Causes and Consequences of Prostitution in Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1840), 241Google Scholar.
22 Maitland, J. H., Female Industrial Home at Corstorphine, or Reformatory Boarding-House for Higher Class Females (Edinburgh, 1864)Google Scholar.
23 Report from the Directors of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum for 1830, 1831, & 1832 (Edinburgh, 1833), 12.
24 Ibid. 14.
25 Report Read at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Support of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum, December 7. 1835 … for 1833, 1834, & 1835 (Edinburgh, 1836), 10.
26 Regulations of the Society for Support of the Magdalene Asylum (Edinburgh, 1814), 11.
27 ‘House of Refuge’, Greenock Advertiser, 11 January 1866, 2.
28 Report from the Directors of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum for 1827, 1828, & 1829 (Edinburgh, 1830), 16; Report of the Society for the Support of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum, for 1843 (Edinburgh, 1844), 8.
29 Report from the Directors of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum for 1820 (Edinburgh, 1821), 6.
30 Grant, St Andrew's Home, 3, 8.
31 Ibid. 7.
32 Kenneth B. E. Roxburgh, ‘Peddie, James (1759–1845)’, ODNB, online edn (23 September 2004), at: <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/21753>, accessed 26 May 2018.
33 Peddie, James, The Parable of the Lost Sheep explained and applied: A Sermon preached for the Benefit of the Edinburgh Philanthropic Society (Edinburgh, 1799), 22Google Scholar.
34 Rescue and Probationary Home for Fallen Women. Fourth Report (Edinburgh, 1865), 4.
35 Report of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum 1830–2, 13.
36 Ibid. 16.
37 Report of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum 1833–5, 11.
38 Report of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum 1830–2, 11.
39 Ibid. 15.
40 Report [from the Directors of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum for 1822?] (Edinburgh, [1823?]), 9.
41 Report of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum 1833–5, 8.
42 Grant, St Andrew's Home, 6.
43 Report by the Directors of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum, for the Year 1819 (Edinburgh, 1820), 8–9.
44 Report of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum 1830–2, 14–15.
45 Report of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum 1833–5, 12.
46 What happened to ‘fallen women’ with dependent children is a topic that needs more research. At this stage, I have found no evidence that care for children was provided by the asylums, unless they were run by the Anglican sisters. It is important not to confuse the Scottish Magdalene establishments of that time with the later mother and baby homes which were created specially for pregnant women and had very different objectives to those of the Magdalenes. Later, in the twentieth century, some Magdalene Asylums changed their function (and name) and transformed into mother and baby homes. However, most women discussed here did not have children.
47 Report from the Directors of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum for 1823 (Edinburgh, 1824), 9.
48 Rescue and Probationary Home for Fallen Women. Fourth Report (Edinburgh, 1865), 5–6.
49 Ibid. 5.
50 Report from the Directors of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum for 1824, 1825, & 1826 (Edinburgh, 1827), 14.
51 Grant, St Andrew's Home, 5.
52 Jackson, Louise A., ‘“Singing Birds as well as Soap Suds”: The Salvation Army's Work with sexually abused Girls in Edwardian England’, GH 12 (2000), 107–26Google Scholar, at 120–1.
53 Tait, Magdalenism, 245.
54 Ibid. 246.
