While out for a picnic, Dot and Hugh find the body of a young woman in the river. When the victim is discovered to have resided at the Magdalene laundry, Phryne and Jack investigate, where Phryne earns the ire of the laundry's officials for her disgust at the conditions the girls have to work in.
Phryne's irreverent attitude, coupled with an attempt to sneak into laundry for further information (where she makes contact with Mary, a heavily pregnant girl), earns the ire of George Sanderson, newly promoted to Chief Commissioner, who takes Jack off the case for being unable to rein Phryne in, and threatens to dismiss Jack if he and Phryne continue to investigate the case.
Tropes
- Action Survivor: Joan. In spite of being a girl up against grown men and blind without her glasses, she not only escapes her bonds and hides, but thinks to leave a warning to the other washer girls.
- Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: George Sanderson, the new commissioner, and Officer O'Shaugnessey, the officer he assigns to the case of Bernadette's disappearance.
- Broken Pedestal: Jack can't hide his disgust at George Sanderson being part of this.Jack: I looked up to you, George. I respected you.
- George's own daughter is irate at her father and horrified. When he tries to defend he didn't know what was truly going on, she snaps "how could you not?"
- Bound and Gagged: Phryne, Dot, Cec and Bert end up this way when they are caught at the docks.
- Everyone Has Standards: The nuns who run the Magdalene laundry are running an awful operation that would, per Jack, have them banged up for child cruelty if it wasn't run by the Church, and indulge in Slut-Shaming, among other things. However, the Mother Superior in particular is horrified by how one of her subordinates, Perpetua, was selling some of the girls - the fair-haired 'virtuous' ones - to Human Traffickers to help fund the laundry, retorting to Perpetua's claim that the girls are all damned due to their birth to 'fallen women' by saying that it is her soul that is lost.
- Human Traffickers: The villains of the episode are engaged in the trafficking of young women from the laundry.
- It's Personal: Dottie insists on having a more direct role in the investigation, both for practical reasons and because both she and the victim of the week—who she had fished out of a river at the start—are Catholic.
- Screaming Birth: Mary screams with pain giving birth to her son.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!:Mother Superior: You used innocent girls to further your own cause?
Perpetua: Innocent? They were born out of wedlock, most of them. The offspring of whores. Their souls were already lost.
Mother Superior: It's your soul that's lost, Perpetua.
