Magdalene Laundries & The Shocking History Behind 'The Woman in the Wall'

If you’ve been watching The Woman in the Wall on Showtime or Paramount+, you've been experiencing some unspeakable history, unveiled piece by piece as the series unfolds. However, especially for American audiences, the concept of paces where families sent pregnant teenage girls, basically to forget about them, seems almost fantastical, including some of its claims in the early going, including the statement that last closed in 1996, less than a year before the Good Friday Agreement. Is The Woman in the Wall based on real events? Tragically, the Magdelene Laundries and the facts the show cites are all too real.

A blot on Irish history, and a challenge to the integrity of the Catholic Church and the government, the history of the Laundries and their victims is something that’s still difficult for many to deal with. Joe Murtagh, the creator of the series, explained in a BBC interview that the lack of awareness of this harrowing and relatively recent history was his inspiration:

Outside of Ireland, in my experience, this isn't really known about, and with the people who do tend to know about it, it's because they've seen films including the 'Magdalene Sisters' or 'Philomena.' When you read into it, you see how harrowing it was, the scale of it, and how many tens of thousands of lives it's touched. It was a bit of history that interested me and engaged me emotionally, but the driving factor was just people not knowing about it enough.