"fallen woman" !

[rathmore]

http://Http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie
then click on Search Census, then census year box - 1911, surname box - Dillon, Forname Box Catherine, County Carlow then click search, then click carlow, then look down the list to Pellerton, click pellerton

[CarolA3]

Btw very similar attitudes and practices were found in England, and not all that long ago.  Many unmarried pregnant women were committed to the asylum and disowned by their families.  The usual pseudo-medical label was 'moral defective'.
I found this hard to believe until a rellie working in a psychiatric hospital said some of them were still there - in the 1980's.

[toni*]

the film i watched was The Magdalene Sisters 2002 it was very moving not my usual type of film (i.e. Ruichard Curtis or Johnny Depp)  but one that stuck in my mind

well worth watching

[dillonking]

Thank you all for being so ready to help me. I have all the census information but I think Catherine Dillon would have been locked up after 1911. I was wondering whether any of you knew the name of an institution in Carlow itself where she would have been "interned". I phoned my ageing aunt not long ago and she thinks this girl was definitely in Carlow somewhere for all those years. If she is to be believed she eventually died in there in about 1970 but my aunt could not remember the name given by the priest of the institution.

My aunt only found out about the existence of this event when her mother was in her fifties! It was a deep, dark secret never mentioned!

[Pastmagic]

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/its-not-anticatholic-to-seek-truth-about-the-magdalenes-2800531.html

Brownshill was the Magdalen home in Co.Carlow, your best bet is is to contact the Justice for Magdalenes group -someone posted the link here already.

http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/

They are trying to compile records for every poor woman so brutally deprived of a life.
PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thUclLOtUNs

have been active in Carlow - planting a tree for victims from there.

[dillonking]

Thank you so much for that information PM that is exactly what I was looking for. The names of the women incarcerated in Carlow are not yet on line but I will at least be able to write to the site.