Dirty Laundry: The crimes a country tried to hide

At seventeen years old, Lily Arthur was caught between an era of women’s liberation and the draconian ideology that young women should be punished for deviating from society’s ‘moral codes’.

For the ‘crime’ of being pregnant, Lily was forcibly taken from the man she planned to marry and incarcerated in Brisbane Watch House before being sent to work in a notorious Magdalene laundry.

Committed to the Holy Cross home for unwed mothers in Woolowin, Lily’s son was taken from her in the labour ward and put up for adoption.

She promised him: ‘I will see you again, little one. I will see you again.’

A true story from the war-torn ravages for East End London to the far north of Queensland, Australia, Dirty Laundry recounts a journey that took Lily and a movement of women like her on a lifelong battle for justice.