Download or read book Do Penance Or Perish written by Frances Finnegan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frances Finnegan traces the history of the Magdalen Asylums in Ireland, homes founded in the 19th century for the detention of prostitutes undergoing reform, but which later received unwed mothers, wayward girls and the mentally retarded, all of them put to work as forced labour in church-run laundries.