In his book on Ireland's Magdalene Asylums, James M. Smith shows how these institutions exist ‘in the public mind chiefly at the level of story (cultural representation and survivor testimony) rather than history (archival records and documentation)’.Footnote ¹ In the case of Ireland, this is caused by very restricted access to the Catholic archives, which hold most of the materials, and a rich media and art response to them. In Scotland, by contrast, the archival documents are easily available but there is little interest in researching these institutions. This sometimes results either in a complete lack of knowledge about the Magdalene Asylums’ historical presence in the country or in the assumption that they were the same as in Ireland. In the Scottish context, therefore, the asylums exist neither as story nor as history. This article will analyse the existing archival evidence in order to formulate part of these institutions’ history. It will discuss the ways in which they saw themselves as places of education rather than penance for ‘fallen’ women in nineteenth-century Scotland.

The Magdalene establishments are usually understood as penitentiaries or houses of refuge for ‘fallen women’,Footnote ² which subjected women to a harsh regime. This description, however, although true for some institutions, is one-sided. Whilst the infamous Magdalene Laundries in Ireland contributed to the belief that all Magdalene establishments were places of harsh punishment, abuse and forced incarceration, this image is not always accurate when considering the Scottish institutions, especially in their early stages. They form part of a long tradition of institutions dedicated to Mary Magdalene, whose particular missionary focus originally had been to help, or provide a refuge for, women involved in the sex trade, whether they had entered it voluntarily or were victims of poverty and sex trafficking. These institutions took nuanced and diverse forms in different national contexts across Europe, and changed enormously from their inception in medieval times to the closure of the last such institution in twentieth-century Ireland.Footnote ³

In 1758 a new wave of Magdalene establishments in Britain and Ireland started with the London Magdalene Hospital and spread slowly throughout the region.Footnote ⁴ The first Scottish establishment opened in 1797 in Edinburgh. Glasgow followed its example in 1815.Footnote ⁵ Aberdeen opened its first asylum around 1845, Dundee in 1848 and Greenock in 1853.Footnote ⁶ These were followed by additional asylums in these and other Scottish towns.Footnote ⁷ Scottish Magdalene Asylums became centres of education for women who sought a new start in their lives. They were part of growing efforts of social reform aiming to respond to social problems by considering their causes instead of punishing their victims. Scottish Magdalene Asylums became part of the wider ‘social purity’ movement, which attempted to eradicate prostitution and the sexual exploitation of women and children and became a major outlet for female philanthropy.Footnote ⁸

Most of the asylums combined Protestantism, Magdalenism and lay charity. They were run by male and female committees consisting of middle-class philanthropists. Their main goal was to bring salvation to the ‘fallen’. In Scotland most of them were lay, halfway reformatories, whose emphasis was on providing basic education, training in household duties and skills that were essential to find employment as a servant or in other occupations. At their inception, then, British Magdalene establishments were conceived as places of reformation and education, not of punishment, although some did later make penance and punishment a major part of their programmes, which could quickly lead to abuse. This was education conceived as the transmission of manual skills and knowledge of religious doctrine and practice, rather than education concerned with broadening of the intellect.Footnote ⁹ The institutions’ managers hoped that this would lead to the kind of reform they desired: formerly ‘fallen’ women were supposed to become humble, submissive and grateful for what God had given them. Their everyday life should be characterized by regularity, discipline, hard work, piety and (of course) acceptance of a strict sexual ethic.

Studying Magdalene establishments as places of education rather than oppression contributes to a deeper understanding of the agency of so-called ‘fallen’ women during the nineteenth century. It will add to the existing scholarship surrounding the Contagious Diseases Acts, passed in the 1860s to examine women for venereal disease and regulate prostitution. Debates over the morality of these acts provoked a public discussion on the agency of sex workers in England in the latter half of the century.Footnote ¹⁰ Scholarship on the Magdalene Asylums has centred around the agency of female residents and the negative manifestations of female managers’ power. Learning more about the early Scottish Magdalene establishments can enhance and deepen our understanding. In particular, when seen from the more positive perspective of their aims and objectives, as places providing education and preparing women for independent lives, the Magdalene establishments take on a different complexion. In addition, the history of the Scottish Magdalene establishments reveals much about how Scottish Christian philanthropists, clergy and lay people envisioned suitable education for working-class women and especially ‘fallen’ women. As might be expected, it was an education that was intended to uphold the existing social hierarchy and shape working-class women into useful citizens, as defined by members of the middle and upper social orders.Footnote ¹¹

Discussing Magdalene establishments in this way has the further advantage of using ‘gender as a theoretical category for religious history’, as Sue Morgan has put it.Footnote ¹² It seeks to avoid unnecessary polarization between religion and women's aspirations. An emphasis on religion as oppressive for women is an understandable approach when analysing later forms of Magdalene institutions, but it can lead to distortion when looking at the original ideals of the homes. This article will focus on education during the early years of each institution's existence, when they were relatively faithful to their set goals. For some asylums this means focusing on the first half of the nineteenth century; for others it means considering the 1850s and 1860s.

The Magdalene establishments during the nineteenth century can be described in a variety of ways, as reformatories, refuges, shelters or penitentiaries. Each institution had a different programme, focus and character. Existing scholarship reflects this plethora of different forms of institutions for ‘fallen women’. Paula Bartley, Susan Mumm and Rene Kollar show how Magdalene establishments in England could resemble convents.Footnote ¹³ Unlike most of the Scottish Magdalene establishments, many of the English establishments were managed by religious, either Anglican sisters or Catholic nuns. By contrast, in Scotland most of the institutions were Presbyterian in orientation. They were subject to a complex administrative hierarchy. In many cases male directors and committees had executive powers. Female committees and workers were subordinate to these male structures, although they performed most of the work.Footnote ¹⁴ In Greenock, the president and vice-president were women, but its annual reports show that their male colleagues were in the positions of power.Footnote ¹⁵ An exception was Edinburgh's Female Shelter, whose committee consisted solely of ‘ladies’.Footnote ¹⁶ In England's Anglican asylums, the class dynamic was significantly different from that in Scotland. The background of the English sisters was mainly upper-class, while the residents came from working-class families. Those who were ‘reformed’ sometimes stayed at an institution for life as consecrated Magdalenes, choosing to live a secluded life of charity and prayer; however, they remained subordinate to the sisters.Footnote ¹⁷ In contrast, the Scottish asylums’ main purpose was to educate and facilitate the women's return to society. The matrons, assistants and committee ‘ladies’ were mostly lay people and were usually married, and they saw the asylum as an intermediate state in their charges’ path. The newspaper articles, regulations and annual reports of the Scottish institutions indicate that the members of their committees and the visitors were of middle- and upper-class background whilst the women working every day in the institutions were of lower social status.

There is an ongoing discussion regarding the extent to which Magdalene asylums incarcerated women. This is most pronounced in the research into the infamous Irish asylums, most of which were more similar to their English than to their Scottish counterparts. Mostly Catholic, run by nuns and highly valuing women's decision to stay in the institution as a religious, the Irish Magdalene Asylums have become a polarizing issue for scholars in the field. Finnegan, Luddy and Smith see these institutions as manifesting strong abusive tendencies, and describe them as places of incarceration and forms of social control.Footnote ¹⁸ In contrast, Prunty supports a more sympathetic view of the Irish asylums, seeing abuse as an exception rather than as the rule.Footnote ¹⁹ The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Kollar points to differences even within the same denomination, discussing two kinds of English Anglican asylums which differed significantly in the extent of the freedom they gave to women.Footnote ²⁰ Studying Scottish asylums, which were very different from their English and Irish equivalents, helps us to see the Magdalene training in a more positive, but still critical, way. Possibly due to their decentralized character and complex management structures, they were less prone to abuse. Instead of seeing them as a means of oppression from the beginning of their existence, they can be seen as places of vocational training and religious education.

We turn now to consider what this education entailed. Considerable attention will be devoted to the letters and stories of individual occupants which the managers of the Magdalene establishments decided to publish in their reports. The article uses reports from several asylums, mainly in Edinburgh, which were of different sizes and set up for different kinds of women, but it will also consider institutions in Greenock. This sample presents a wide spectrum of such institutions, representative of those throughout the country. Edinburgh's homes show a variety that could be found in a bigger town where the numbers of ‘fallen’ women and their range of profiles met with an enthusiastic response from local philanthropists. Greenock, on the other hand, is an example of a small town where only one such charity existed and whose annual reports were regularly published in local newspapers. The Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum and Greenock's House of Refuge were each the main Magdalene asylum in their towns. They welcomed any woman who arrived at their door and who demonstrated her motivation by passing the probationary period. Edinburgh's Rescue and Probationary Home for Fallen Women represents a slightly different kind of Magdalene establishment: its purpose was mainly to provide temporary shelter for women coming there at night and only occasionally did it allow longer residence. Nonetheless, its managers still claimed to provide education intended to change their wards’ lives. The St Andrew's House of Mercy, on the other hand, also located in Edinburgh, was a denominational institution under the patronage of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Another Edinburgh institution, the Reformatory Boarding-House for Higher Class Females, did not have a denominational affiliation but, as its name suggests, did not accept working-class women, who usually constituted the majority at other asylums.

Unfortunately, the sources that have survived are very intermittent. Of the institutions discussed here, the best-preserved documents are from the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum, which produced annual – or triennial – reports, most of which have survived. These were mainly published and distributed among donors, subscribers and friends of the asylum. Their aim was to demonstrate that donors’ money was being used effectively and in a worthy cause. Annual reports of the Greenock House of Refuge were published in local newspapers. Their extended readership meant that they must have increased the awareness in the town of the agency's activity; these reports sought to convince readers of its positive influence on the town.

The picture presented by these sources naturally reflects the managers’ ideals and does not accurately portray the wide spectrum of different cases and women's feelings towards the institutions. It does, however, reveal the image that the institutions had carefully constructed. At the same time, the reports could be honest about failures and drawbacks. They admitted that some women fled the institutions, that the education offered in Magdalene Asylums did not always lead to a transformation in women's lives, and that many women managed to trick the directors in one way or another. In the reports, such stories were often intended to show the treachery, or even maliciousness, of ‘fallen’ women. Yet the stories also tell us much more.

It is clear that this type of source keeps us from seeing more disturbing aspects of the institutions and that these accounts should be read in a very critical way. The reports, for example, acknowledged that some women had ‘escaped’, but they usually did not explain why; nor did they recognize the tension between this language and the claim that women were allowed to leave if they wished so. While we cannot know how all the individual occupants viewed their Magdalene education, the reports indicate the middle-class philanthropists’ goals. They show clearly that the philanthropists intended to transform those women whom they understood to threaten their ideals of harmonious society into productive members of the workforce.

William Tait, who was a physician at the Edinburgh Lock Hospital and who in that capacity worked with the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum, described the institutions as

In Tait's schema, the education provided at Magdalene establishments could be divided into three categories: religious, behavioural and industrial. These were perceived to be closely interconnected and all were essential for long-lasting reformation. They were also supposed to be universally applicable to all women, regardless of their specific environment.

The records of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum tell us that upon entering an asylum, the women's skills, education and religious knowledge varied substantially. It is very likely that other asylums were in the same position. The women came from many different social backgrounds, although probably the majority were from poor labouring families. Some were victims of domestic abuse. Some were orphans without even distant relatives or had families who never wanted to see them again; others had relatives who wanted to help them but for various reasons could not. The Female Industrial Home in Corstorphine, Edinburgh, was intended exclusively for women of the more ‘respectable’ social orders.Footnote ²² The Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum also had some also residents who came from better circumstances. ‘E. H.’, who lived there in the early 1830s, was ‘respectably connected, and had received a liberal education’. Her ‘fall’ was attributed to pre-marital sex and her ‘ungrateful’ behaviour towards those who wished to help her.Footnote ²³ ‘E. F.’ was similarly described as having good connections and great talents; she had been born abroad, where she received her education.Footnote ²⁴ Another girl had attended an ‘excellent school’ sponsored by Lady Carnegie.Footnote ²⁵ However, in the 1814 Regulations of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum it is suggested that only a minority of occupants had not been involved in sex trade at some point in their lives.Footnote ²⁶ A similar suggestion was made by the Greenock House of Refuge.Footnote ²⁷ Before the more widespread foundation of asylums across Scotland and the rest of Britain, prospective residents travelled from nearby villages, other Scottish towns or even England to their chosen institution.Footnote ²⁸

The core of the Magdalene establishments’ education was the intention to bring salvation to those whom society had abandoned to sin. Although a full conversion was not expected at the time of entering the institution, a woman was expected to confess her sin and to show her intention to live within the Christian faith.Footnote ²⁹ Religious education was provided through daily prayers and through instruction given by the Ladies’ Committee, the matron and the institution's chaplain or their equivalents, who spoke to women individually and in groups. Many of the Magdalene establishments provided worship twice a day, with a full service and religious lessons on Sundays. St Andrew's Home went beyond proselytizing its own Magdalenes and was also involved in very extensive missionary work in Edinburgh's Old Town, at that period the most impoverished and crime-ridden area of the city.Footnote ³⁰ The managers and staff of the home were also involved in more traditional forms of education (ragged school and evening classes) which went beyond reforming ‘fallen’ women.Footnote ³¹

The Magdalene establishments sought to transform the women into faithful Christians, who would trust God and treat the salvation of their souls as more important than any earthly needs or material aspirations. Revd James Peddie,Footnote ³² minister of the Bristo Street Secession Chapel in Edinburgh, in a sermon on behalf of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum in 1799, lamented that those not yet truly reformed would not ‘be virtuous and starve’ when faced with a choice between ‘sin’ or death.Footnote ³³ A letter from a former occupant of the Edinburgh Rescue Home provided evidence of a successful conversion. She expressed her complete trust in God despite being anxious about her fate as she travelled to Australia: ‘If we are right with God’, she is said to have written, ‘we do not need to care where we go, for He will take care of us. And now, dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I will bid you farewell. You will not hear from me till I get to the other side, that is to say, if spared.’Footnote ³⁴ A Magdalene establishment was supposed to be, in the words of a former Magdalene, ‘a door opened to me by the Lord’.Footnote ³⁵ Indeed, it was sometimes literally a door to heaven. Some women were seriously ill when accepted to an institution and died during their stay, but it was said in the reports that they ‘died in the placid hope of a joyful resurrection’.Footnote ³⁶ A twenty-two-year-old woman was so weak that after being released from the Magdalene Asylum, she had to return to the institution after only six weeks of service in the countryside. Although she was facing death, it was reported that ‘her conversations now breath the spirit of a true penitent and a genuine Christian … she is enabled to trust in [the] Saviour’.Footnote ³⁷

A truly converted penitent was supposed to blame herself for what she had gone through, even though the Magdalenes were simultaneously identified as passive objects rather than active agents in their fate and often described as ‘poor’ and ‘unfortunate’. One former resident informed the committee in a letter from her new home in New York that she was ‘ashamed of [her] past life’.Footnote ³⁸ Another Magdalene wrote: ‘O how I ought to bless the day, my footsteps were led to the Magdalene Asylum … . [It] has been the means, under God, of showing me my errors, and I humbly trust, of saving my precious soul!’Footnote ³⁹

The institutions’ religious education was closely related to the behavioural education they offered. It is apparent from annual reports of the institutions examined in this article that their managers hoped that through developing habits of hard work in the laundry and sewing, and engaging in daily prayers and religious instruction, a ‘fallen’ woman could become a good domestic servant.

Humility and compliance were also seen as essential virtues to be learnt during the Magdalene training. They helped to avoid pride, one of the alleged causes of prostitution. One woman was sent back to her parents in Aberdeen after the reformatory programme in Edinburgh. Her parents reported in their letter to the Magdalene Asylum that ‘she appears very penitent, and that whereas formerly it was impossible to live with her, she is now as quiet and submissive as they could wish’.Footnote ⁴⁰ The Canadian employer of a twenty-seven-year-old former Magdalene informed the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum's matron that ‘she has in every respect been what you or I could wish, and has on all occasions shewn herself most grateful and anxious to give satisfaction’; she asked whether the asylum could send her another such girl.Footnote ⁴¹ Including this story in a report acted as an encouragement for the readers to employ a Magdalene, who once reformed would be an ideal servant, grateful to work for a respectable family.

This submissive, acquiescent character was not, however, the only desirable educational outcome. It was hoped that women would also prove their independence and self-determination. St Andrew's Home reported that many Magdalenes were unwilling to enter domestic service and after the Magdalene training decided to return to their previous occupations as mill or factory girls.Footnote ⁴² This was not in line with the aims of the institutions, which saw domestic service, especially in the country, as more suitable for preserving a Magdalene's new-found morality. Some women continued to live and work within the institution. The Edinburgh Asylum related the story of a young woman, who after about a year of living in the asylum, was put in charge of the laundry and four years later was appointed a superintendent of the sewing section there. While visiting her family she met an old friend to whom she became engaged and, with the permission of the asylum's directors, they were married.Footnote ⁴³ This young woman thus became an example for the Magdalenes and joined the circle of those who managed the institution.

Other women's stories were presented as successful, even when the women had left the institution against the directors’ or matron's will. That was the case of E. F., who wrote to her matron:

The institutions were supposed to teach ‘habits of regularity and industry’, as one of the Magdalenes described it, but these could be manifested in many ways.Footnote ⁴⁵ The paths of the women after leaving the institutions varied. A successful education might sometimes lead to little more than reconciliation with friends and family or quitting an addiction. In 1822, the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum accepted a woman who had been married twice and had several children; however, her second husband had abandoned them because of her drinking problem, and the children were taken care of by their maternal grandmother.Footnote ⁴⁶ This woman spent around fifteen months in the institution and her mother took her back in October 1823 after receiving good reports of her behaviour.Footnote ⁴⁷ Another widow, ‘E. E.’, ‘fell into dissolute habits’ after her husband's death. She spent two years in one institution, relapsed into her bad habits and was then taken in by the Rescue and Probationary Home. Two of her letters are quoted in the home's report. She wrote them from her new workplace, another Probationary Home, where she worked initially as a servant and later, having been promoted, was put in charge: ‘Dear Friends, I think you will be pleased with my choice. I am safer here from many temptations than I would be out in a situation and I have it in my power to do a deal of good.’Footnote ⁴⁸

In an earlier letter, E. E. confessed that her faith and self-discipline were not always exemplary.Footnote ⁴⁹ Even though she experienced doubts and felt that she was not ‘strong’ enough to become a servant, the stability of her desire to change proved the Rescue's successful religious and moral education. Similarly, the Edinburgh Asylum's 1826 report admitted that ‘a great proportion of the inmates’ left against the director's will; yet, it reported, the asylum had accomplished its task: ‘in many of these cases, the instructions they had received in the Asylums have been afterwards improved by them, and there is reason to believe that they had not returned to evil courses’.Footnote ⁵⁰

The religious and behavioural education offered by these institutions in turn formed an essential basis for effective industrial training. For all Magdalene establishments, it had ‘always been considered a matter of the first importance to provide, so far as possible, for the future safety of those penitents who leave the Home’.Footnote ⁵¹ In order to do so, the establishments taught women skills that were essential for finding a job. Occupants were trained in the typical household duties required of a servant: sewing, laundry, cleaning, cooking and gardening. Louise Jackson, discussing twentieth-century English girls’ homes, suggests that they acted as employment agencies that connected their wards with middle-class employers. The asylums discussed in this article similarly set as their goal the training of a reliable workforce. They can, therefore, be seen in the context of Prochaska's argument that the demand for servants was a contributing factor behind eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philanthropy of this kind.Footnote ⁵²

However, the aim of the industrial education seems to have been largely about self-discipline. Depending on the institutions women were employed in occupations which brought profit, such as calendaring, glazing fabric and (as already mentioned) sewing and laundry. In many instances, residents did not know how to undertake either basic household duties or perform typical working-class jobs such as sewing, working in a factory or a mill, and it was indeed crucial for them to learn these if they were to marry and have children or work. The Magdalene establishments, however, tended to emphasize training in laundry services and sewing, something that many residents had already been able to do before or would not need for future employment. Tait complained that the establishments were instructing women in precisely the trades that had led to their ‘fall’ in the first place, due to the low pay and high unemployment.Footnote ⁵³ Unless we view this as managerial incompetence, it suggests that the key to Magdalene education was discipline and hard work, rather than a carefully designed ‘professional training’. However, the often lengthy reformation time also served as an assessment period. Women had a chance to demonstrate their commitment to the establishments’ values and thus earn merit to receive the letters of references essential to start their life anew. Thus it was not only a time of reformation but of continuous assessment of the institution's impact on a woman.

The Magdalene establishments’ emphasis on occupying women with tasks in which they might have already been experienced and the very limited provision of intellectual education shows that the establishments conceived their educational role primarily as facilitating Christian conversion and providing moral training. Their aim was to shape the women into submissive workers, accustomed to a daily routine of hard work. In order to provide ‘respectable’ homes and pass on Christian values to their children, they needed to possess domestic skills, stay away from drinking and keep regular hours. The establishments were less concerned about teaching literacy and numeracy. It is likely that most of them provided lessons in reading, but classes in arithmetic or writing are very rarely mentioned. Even if these did exist, few hours were allocated for them, especially when compared to the time spent on manual tasks. Probably the women were taught as much as it was deemed necessary for them to be able to read the Bible and engage in religious devotion.

This educational approach certainly raises questions about the value of the Magdalene establishments’ instruction. Even though many ‘successfully reformed’ occupants gained a degree of independence, it was limited. The institutions were concerned with training women of the lower social orders to be humble and efficient workers. They taught them to be content with their status in society and to know what this entailed. To be sure, a similar form of education was being offered to most boys and girls of the labouring orders in Scotland at this time. Nonetheless, as the London Female Penitentiary put it, the institutions were, or sought to be, ‘a school of virtue – [whose purpose is] to destroy the habits of idleness and vice, and to substitute those of honest and profitable industry, thus benefiting society whilst the individual is restored’.Footnote ⁵⁴