Gritty BBC drama The Woman in the Wall tells the story of one of Ireland’s most shocking and little-known scandals. The six-parter started over the Bank Holiday Weekend and stars Ruth Wilson as Lorna Brady.
Lorna suffered abuse by nuns during her time in a convent as a teenager. She gave birth to daughter Agnes in the institution and her baby was cruelly taken away from her, leading to Lorna’s quest to find out more about her daughter’s fate.
But when Lorna wakes up to find a dead body in her home, she has no idea who the dead person is or if she’s guilty of a crime because she suffers from extreme bouts of sleepwalking – a hangover of her childhood trauma.
Now writer and creator Joe Murtagh has explained that The Woman in the Wall is based on the heartbreaking true stories of the Magdelene Laundries.
Inspiration behind The Woman in the Wall
Run by Catholic nuns, the Irish institutions for “fallen women” were home to women considered “problematic”, often unmarried mothers, sex workers and the abused.
The women were often deeply mistreated, made to do backbreaking work without pay under harsh conditions and exposed to inhumane treatment. One of the most common “jobs” was commercial laundry, earning the name Magdalene Laundries.
And while Lorna and the dead body are fictional, the institutions are not.
‘A sense of outrage’
In fact, Joe Murtagh was shocked to learn that the last Magdalene Laundry had only closed in 1996.
He told Tripwire: “I just couldn’t believe what I was reading. I couldn’t believe that it had happened. Anyone I spoke to after that didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Primarily, I was inspired to do this just by a sense of outrage. Because it was so unknown, I wanted to get the story out there to as wide an audience as possible.”
The Woman in the Wall airs on BBC One, Sundays at 9pm.
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