Magdalene asylums, also known as Magdalene laundries (named after the Biblical figure Mary Magdalene), were initially Protestant but later mostly Roman Catholic institutions that operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries, ostensibly to house "fallen women".

The term referred to female sexual promiscuity or prostitutes, young women who became pregnant outside of marriage, or young girls and teenagers who did not have familial support. They were required to work without pay apart from meagre food provisions, while the institutions operated large commercial laundries, serving customers outside their bases.

Many of these "laundries" were effectively operated as penitentiary workhouses. The strict regimes in the institutions were often more severe than those found in prisons. This contradicted the perceived outlook that they were meant to help women as opposed to punishing them. A survivor said of the working conditions: "The heat was unbelievable. You couldn't leave your station unless a bell went." Laundries such as this operated in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, the United States, and Australia, for much of the 19th and well into the 20th century, the last one closing in 1996.

The first Magdalene institution was founded in late 1758 in Whitechapel, England. A similar institution was established in Ireland by 1767. The first Magdalene asylum in the United States was the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, founded in 1800. All these were Protestant institutions. Other cities followed, especially from around 1800, with Catholic institutions also being opened. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Magdalene asylums were common in several countries. By 1900, there were more than 300 asylums in England and more than 20 in Scotland.

The first Magdalen institution, Magdalen Hospital for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes, was founded in late 1758 in Whitechapel, London by Robert Dingley, a silk merchant, Jonas Hanway and John Fielding. The women worked at services and crafts to help provide financial support for the house. They were also given a small sum of money for their work. Additional income was generated by promoting the house as a tourist attraction for the upper classes. Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford, described staging one of these entertainments. This was in keeping with visits to Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Foundling Hospital. It later moved to Streatham, and could eventually house about 140 women, admitted between the ages of 15 and 40. Bristol (40 women) followed in 1800, Bath (79) in 1805, and many other cities in the years following, though their names mostly no longer included "Magdalene". Historians estimate that by the late 1800s, there were more than 300 Magdalene Institutions in England alone.

In 1797, the Edinburgh Royal Magdalene Asylum was founded in the Canongate in Old Town, a popular location for street prostitutes. Some of the women were drawn to the city by industrialisation, some were pregnant and some had been forced into prostitution. Mary Paterson, (also known as Mary Mitchell) was murdered by William Burke shortly after leaving the institution on April 8, 1828. The Edinburgh asylum moved to Dalry around 1842. The programme was supported in part by laundry and sewing work done by the residents. In Glasgow, the Magdalene Asylum became the Magdalene Institute and functioned until 1958.^{[citation needed]}

Writer Charles Dickens and philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts established an alternative in 1846, thinking the Magdalen Hospitals too harsh. At Urania Cottage the young women were prepared for re-entry into mainstream society, or for immigration to the colonies.

By the late 19th century, many of the institutions had departed from the original model and resembled penitentiary work-houses. The question of whether they should become subject to labour regulations and inspections as commercial laundries were became particularly controversial around the turn of the century, with sides often drawn on Irish/English and Catholic/Protestant lines. The Factory and Workshop Act 1901 (1 Edw. 7. c. 22) limited working hours for girls of thirteen to eighteen years of age to twelve hours a day, but exempted religious institutions. However, work by female factory inspectors during the 1900s decade managed to convince religious institutions to submit to voluntary inspections, and by the end of the 1900s, inspections were interdenominationally accepted in England. The normalisation of inspections and other regulations of institutions in England is considered to have softened their regime and improved conditions compared to Ireland.