THE President, Mrs Robinson, will unveil a plaque to honour and commemorate the Magdalen Women of Ireland at 11 a.m. in St Stephen's Green tomorrow.
The Magdalens were taken in by the Sisters of Charity at their High Park Convent Drumcondra, Dublin, between the 1860s and the 1960s. The women were single mothers, prostitutes, abandoned, orphaned, unwanted or destitute. Many worked in the convent's laundry before it shut down 27 years ago and were buried in the convent apart from the sisters.
The name of Magdalen - the Biblical figure - appeared on many of the headstones. When the order sold the land where the cemetery was situated, the bodies of 133 Magdalens were exhumed, cremated and buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in September, 1993.