Freedom of the City for two extraordinary ‘ordinary’ women

“Two ordinary women who did extraordinary things” is how the Mayor of Galway described two recipients of the Freedom of Galway City at a ceremony in their honour last Friday.

Patricia Burke Brogan and the late Ena McEntee were awarded the highest honour the city can bestow on any citizen in recognition of their work to help the women and girls subjected to horrific treatment in the Magdalen Laundry on Forster Street.

Patricia, who is originally from Clare but came to live in Moylough as a child, first encountered the laundry as a Noviciate after she joined the Sisters of Mercy and it was through her 21-year-old eyes that she came to witness what she would later describe in one of her works as ‘Dante’s Inferno’.

Shocked by the treatment of the women and girls whom she was told were ‘outcasts’ who would, if released, become pregnant again, she left the Order despite warnings she was committing a ‘mortal sin’.

She became a force for change in Irish society through her work as a writer, teacher and artist. The city resident is perhaps best known for her play, Eclipsed, which details life in a Magdalen laundry, has reached international audiences since it was first staged in Galway in 1992.

Other works include Stained Glass at Samhain and her celebrated memoir, Grykes and Turloughs.

Ena McEntee’s extraordinary efforts to affect change also begun at the laundry on Forster Street where she was one of a small number of paid staff working alongside the women.

Born Ena Kennedy from New Road in the city, she married the late Hugh McEntee and had three sons – Andy, Hugo and Declan – and it was from their Mervue home that they helped around 15 women escape the horrors of life in the laundry.

In 1960s Ireland, described as ‘the valley of the squinting windows’, one of her boys would meet the young woman at the gate of the laundry, directing them to the church at Forster Street where another son was waiting in a laneway with a van which, driven by their dad, they used to escape back to Mervue.

Accommodating these women and girls for up to weeks at a time, they would, despite their own limited income, provide them with enough to get to England – taking them to Athenry or Woodlawn train stations where they could begin the final leg of their journeys, away from the close watch being kept on Ceannt Station by Gardaí.

Read the full inspiring story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now – or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.