All That Was Old Is New Again 0
As my two or three regular readers know, I’m a bit of a mystery buff.
I’ve recently reread one of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels, Champaign for One, which was first published in the mid-1950s. Prominent in the plot is a “home for unwed mothers,” a place where expectant unwed mothers could go to hide their shame until their children were born and given up for adoption, once a common practice. (The one featured in the story, the Grantham Institute, was no Magdalene Laundry by any means, but a gracious and humane institution, but that’s neither here nor there. A true Magdalen Laundry does feature in one of Kerry Greenwood’s Phrynne Fisher stories.)
Rebecca Watson fears a return on such institutions (Magdalene Laundries, that is, not Grantham Institutes) may be in the offing.
