For decades, "bad" Irish girls were sent away to convent-run
laundries, where they worked for no pay in awful conditions for years on
end. Now, writes Jane Wheatley, survivors are finally getting
compensation.
Martina Keogh was 16, selling newspapers outside a Dublin
cinema, when a fight broke out on the street beside her. She was
arrested along with the girls involved, sent to court and convicted of
disorderly conduct. Her punishment would be two years' incarceration and
unpaid labour in a convent laundry run by nuns.