Chapter 16 — Marlborough House

Physical abuse

The dismissal of Mr Jacob sparked another round of newspaper articles, and it was even raised in the Dail. The Minister for Education stated that he ‘certainly was not dismissed because of the fact that he made allegations in relation to this home’, but was dismissed ‘because of unsatisfactory performance of his duties’.

An injury to a boy in 1971 highlighted problems in Marlborough House that had been present for many years. The 12-year-old boy was attacked by two 15-year-old residents. He was severely kicked in the course of the assault, as a result of which he began passing blood and had to be removed to hospital, where he received treatment for a considerable period of time. In response to complaints made by Free Legal Advice Centres, a member of staff who reported on the incident commented that the staff had done their best to keep these unruly boys out of Marlborough House ‘but the courts still sent them to us’. The report concluded: We have no way of keeping the boys apart here, and young and old have to stay in the one recreation room and dormitory. In my opinion and with experience over the years this building is no longer suitable for the detention of boys or for staff to work in.

In early 1972 there was an incident that resulted in an attendant striking a boy with a torch. It became the subject of a Garda investigation that resulted in a recommendation that no further action be taken. It involved a confrontation between attendants and a number of the 25 boys who were resident at the time. The Garda investigation revealed two conflicting accounts of the events that night. The boy who was struck described how an attendant shouted at him to keep quiet in the dormitory and then hit him with his hand, at which the boy got out of bed and hit the attendant back. Another attendant struck him on the head with a flash lamp a number of times. The attendants’ version was that the boys were troublesome and one of them was put into a cell. The others demanded his release and about eight or nine jumped out of bed and attacked the attendants. In order to prevent the boy getting a poker which he might use as a weapon one of the attendants struck him with a torch. Although it was never resolved and did not give rise to any prosecution, the incident revealed the tense atmosphere that prevailed in the institution. Violence could erupt quickly with little provocation.

An internal memorandum of the Department of Justice dated 23rd July 1969 referred to the attitude of the Department of Education when these allegations of physical abuse were reported: It will be recalled that the Probation Officers had complained of boys being beaten in their presence in Marlboro House. While I was in Ormond Quay I transmitted complaints of this nature to Education. Justice Kennedy had also complained about boys from Marlboro House coming before her with obvious signs of ill-treatment. It took the best part of six months for [the Assistant Secretary] to reply to the Justice. Apparently [the Inspector of Industrial and Reformatory Schools] simply ignored complaints of this kind. [The Assistant Secretary] admitted that there was ill-treatment by the staff and investigations are still going on. Some of the ill-treatment was however between the boys themselves.

In April 1956, the Department of Education received a letter from the father of an eight and a half year-old boy who was detained in Marlborough House for one month for stealing ‘Sweets Lemonade & Cigarettes, from the [a local club], this is his first offence’.

The father wrote that he had visited his son on the previous Sunday and had noticed he was pale. He asked him what was the matter, and was told by another boy that he had been hit on the head by another detainee. His son then told him that he had also had his head stuck in a wash basin and the water turned on by the same boy. The father lodged a complaint with the Superintendent, and wrote to the Department noting in this letter that the ‘young man who Ill Treated my Child is No other than the one who stabbed his Brother to death with a knife’. He requested that his child should be returned to his custody.

The boy’s father also complained in person to the Minister for Agriculture on the same day as he wrote the letter. The Minister for Agriculture telephoned the Department of Education that afternoon. The Department official who took the call informed Mr Grange, the Superintendent in Marlborough House, immediately and he undertook to enquire fully into the alleged ill-treatment.

Mr Grange investigated the matter by taking statements from the attendant on duty on the day, and from the mother of another boy involved in the same incident, and from the boy accused of the ill-treatment. The attendant on duty, and the woman who witnessed the visit of the father with his son, both alleged that the father was intoxicated on the day and had become violent when he discovered that his son was in the same place as a boy who was accused of fatally stabbing his brother.

The boy who was alleged to have been responsible for the incident wrote a two-page statement, in which he did not deny that either incident took place, but instead gave an innocent explanation for the blow on the head and the washbasin incident.

The day after the letter of complaint was received, the boy at the centre of the allegation was examined by a medical officer, who found ‘no evidence ... of any injury to his head or any other part of his body’.

The Probation Officer was also contacted by the father at the request of the Minister for Agriculture. He, in turn, wrote to the Department of Education, informing them that, in his view, the father was ‘just using the incident to force the discharge of his son from the punishment the court has seen fit to administer’.

Mr Grange and his wife, the matron, both gave statements that they recalled the scene made by the father of the boy during the visit to his son. Mr Grange believed that the father came that day with a view to causing a scene, because he was aggrieved that all the boys involved in the club break-in and theft had not received similar punishment. He stated that, the following week, the rest of the boys received similar detention periods, and the parents of the boys had calmed down. He did not address the issue as to whether the allegations were true or not.

A few days later, the father wrote to the Department of Education and withdrew his complaint. On the same day, he called into Marlborough House and apologised to the Superintendent for the ‘trouble caused’.

The Department were happy that ‘no harm came to the boy. All that was involved was the usual argy bargy between young boys’. No further action was necessary, as the father ‘wishes to withdraw his complaint and to forget the matter’.

1.Complaints of physical abuse in Marlborough House were not independently investigated but were usually investigated by the Superintendent in charge of the detention centre. 2.Senior officials in the Department of Education either ignored complaints or delayed in responding to criticism which was coming from independent sources and not just from the boys themselves. 3.Witnesses spoke of multiple severe beatings in the course of relatively short periods of detention. One attendant was particularly brutal, and yet was promoted by the Department even after complaints were made. 4.The wide age differences between the boys and the lack of any segregation made bullying and peer abuse inevitable. There is no evidence that this was regarded as a problem by the authorities. 5.There were many complaints about assaults by staff and at least one was witnessed by another staff member who reported it.