In Belfast, in Northern Ireland, the Church of Ireland-run Ulster Magdalene Asylum was founded in 1839, it closed in 1916. Parallel institutions were run by Roman Catholics and Presbyterians (the Ulster Female Penitentiary and Laundry). Ferriter described the laundries as "a mechanism that society, religious orders and the state came up with to try to get rid of people deemed not to conforming to the so-called… Irish identity." The Irish government claimed that the State was not legally responsible for the abuse suffered by women and girls in the Magdalene Laundries, as these were religious institutions.