Girl in the Tunnel: My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries

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The door would whack open, hitting the wall like the wind whipped it, and Marty Murphy would cross the floor to where me and my brothers lay and stop any fighting – even if we weren’t involved – with a box to our bodies or faces.

Brid Murphy and Martin Quinn look at surviving accounts records found on the site, covering the period from 1962 to 1987, to show that the laundry generated a healthy yearly surplus which would have been wiped out if the women doing the work had been paid.In those days widows could not turn to the government for support, and any pension that was available was a pittance, especially for women whose late husbands had dug ditches and cut back hedgerows for a few pence a week. You must remember beneath those habits were women who treated little girls appallingly, and I get in trouble when I say that,” she said. I was got in time and was pumped out, and the rules there was if you try anything like that you have to go for counselling.

I wrote this book because I was silenced as a child when I was a victim of abuse, and I was silenced by society when I left the laundry. Highlights include conversations between The Edge and Brian Cox; Ruby Wax and Ian Robertson; Masha Gessen and Dylan Moran, who will also perform the Irish premiere of his show We Got This; and a football head-to-head with Roddy Collins and Paul Howard. I'll try not to give away everything but I was taken aback in the end at how Maureen left her last institution.It’s something I still struggle with today, as I find myself fretting if I run out of milk, even though I’m the only one here.