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hayir: Magdalene Asylums were institutions that were supposedly...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:39:59 -0500

Magdalene Asylums were institutions that were supposedly constructed to house women who were sexually promiscuous or otherwise believed to be “of poor moral character” from the 18^th century to the mid-20^th century. These asylums operated for girls and women throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States.

“Five years ago in Dublin, Ireland, an order of nuns sold off part of its convent to real estate developers. On that property the remains of 133 women buried in unmarked graves were discovered. It turned out that the women had been incarcerated by the Catholic Church to work as virtual slave labourers in institutions known as Magdalene Asylums.

The asylums were a network of laundries named after Mary Magdalene, who, according to Christian theology, was a prostitute turned devout follower of Christ. The Magdalene Asylums were set up in the 19th century, first as homes to rehabilitate prostitutes and then as industrial orphanages in response to the growth in the number of abandoned children resulting from the devastating Potato Famine of the middle and late 1840s. By the early 20th century, their role was expanded to function as workhouses for women who in a variety of ways had offended the country’s moral code. Run by the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland, the asylums functioned as commercial laundries, financing the order’s operations.

Under pressure from the Church and its archaic mores, families sent daughters who were deemed wayward to the asylums. The girls were brutalized and worked long hours every day but Christmas, for no pay. The choice of work was not accidental. Called “Magdalenes,” or penitents, the inmates were intended to scrub away their sins by scrubbing clean the dirty laundry from orphanages, churches, prisons and local businesses. Many of the women were so broken in spirit and isolated from the outside world that they chose asylum labour over leaving the institutions, some remaining until they died. The Catholic Church in Ireland indentured more than 30,000 women and girls in the Magdalene Asylums. Amazingly, the last one was not closed until 1996.”

-(http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/madg-s01.shtml)

hayir: Nicholas II of Russia on Red Square. 1913, celebrating...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:37:28 -0500

hayir:

Nicholas II of Russia on Red Square. 1913, celebrating 300 years of the Romanov dynasty, which would end before the conclusion of the decade. (Moscow in Pictures, 2004, ISBN 5874171584)

bigmagnets: Dorothea Lange —”Destitute peapickers in...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:34:12 -0500

bigmagnets:

Dorothea Lange —”Destitute peapickers in California; a 32 year old mother of seven children,” California, February 1936.

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean—to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.

fuckyeahhistorycrushes: I would suggest Baldwin IV...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:29:55 -0500

fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

I would suggest Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, this is actually a picture of Edward Norton playing him in Kingdom of Heaven, but he was so brave I consider it to be incredibly sexy. He was the badass king of that time period even though he had leprosy and he died at 24, everything about him is amazing. But maybe that’s just me :)

life: In Ed Clark’s masterful, unforgettable picture of one...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:24:09 -0500

life:

In Ed Clark’s masterful, unforgettable picture of one man’s grief over the the death of a president, we see — and, what’s more, we feel — an entire country’s measureless loss.

(Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)