Chapter 7 — Artane

Neglect

It is difficult to reconcile that Visitation Report of November 1957 with the one of just seven months earlier, in which the Visitor remarked: Br Gerrard has charge of the boys kitchen and does his work very efficiently. The food served is good and plentiful and the boys looked healthy and strong.

It is even more difficult to reconcile this Report with the Reports of Dr Anna McCabe. She did not mention any of the matters raised in the late 1957 Report, which would indicate that either she did not actually see the boys in the refectory or she did not see anything remiss in the way meals were served. Either explanation has disturbing implications.

The condition of the boys’ kitchen may be contrasted with the provision made for the kitchen that looked after the 24 Brothers in Artane. The Visitor noted in 1960: The food supplied to the Brothers is excellent and very well cooked. There is a cook, assistant cook, six boys in training, and a Brother looking after the Brothers’ kitchen.

The boys’ kitchens were renovated and a new Brother put in charge in 1960, and the Visitation Reports noted an immediate improvement, as in 1962 when the Visitor stated: There is very little trouble on this score and the Brothers think that the improvement in the meals has a lot to do with the easier discipline among the boys.

The Committee heard evidence from a respondent who spent four years in Artane in the mid to late 1950s. He was in charge of supervising meals for a period, a task he carried out with the assistance of a lay staff member. He stated that, despite the large numbers in the School, meals were conducted in a very orderly fashion and the boys were very well behaved. He does not recall mealtimes being particularly difficult, as documented in the Visitation Report of 1957. He stated that meals were not conducted in silence and were quite lively events.

A respondent, who first went to Artane in the mid-1950s and spent almost 15 years there, accepted in his evidence to the Committee that ‘while the food was adequate that, at that particular time, the serving of the food and the way it was presented wasn’t the best’. He acknowledged that this was not satisfactory. In addition, the large number of boys being catered for in the refectory made things more difficult. Things changed dramatically for the better when a new Brother took charge of the kitchen. He changed the way in which food was prepared and presented.

Fr Moore was critical of the food served and the way it was served. In his report of 1962 he stated: The boys are reasonably well fed. There is fair variety but obvious essential requirements such as butter and fruit are never used ... In general I feel that the boys are under-nourished and lacking calcium and other components. At table I have observed the unruly indelicate manners of the boys.

During his inspection in 1966, Dr Lysaght81 commented unfavourably on the lack of variety in the diet of the boys and on the institutional nature of the refectory. The dining room was large, and all of the boys ate together at the same time, which gave: a feeling of institutional mass feeding and just as the large numbers in each dormitory it tends to hinder or delay development of individuality.

While the meals were ample and well cooked, the weekly menu lacked imagination and variety. With the newly modernised kitchen, there was no excuse and, once again, Dr Lysaght placed his faith in the nuns to turn things around.

Many of the complainants who gave evidence to the Investigation Committee from the 1940s era complained about food. One ex-resident described the diet: I would sum up my time in Artane as cold, brutal and hungry and the cold was because of the hunger. There was this enduring feeling of cold and this gnawing pangs of hunger. There was never any satisfaction, never any way to relieve the hunger. That was it, hungry, everybody was hungry all the time.

Another complainant, committed in the early 1940s at the age of nine, recalled that his mother often sent him food parcels, but that he only received a parcel once as they were stolen by the other boys. He did not blame them for this, as he stated that they were always hungry, ‘We ate the grass for God’s sake’. He stated that they had a small loaf dipped in fat for breakfast, and vegetables with gravy for dinner. He recounted how one Brother would conceal sticks of bread in his cassock and distribute them to the boys: ‘As soon as he appeared we went around him like a pack of dogs looking for food’.

A witness, committed in the mid-1940s, alleged that the food was diabolical. He stated that, during mealtimes, younger boys were sometimes moved to older boys’ tables on a temporary basis. When this occurred, the younger boys invariably went hungry because they could not get to the food fast enough. He also asserted that, whenever visitors came to the School, the boys got better food.

A further complainant from this era recalled how the boys divided the loaves between them. The first boy would cut himself a big slice, and the second boy would do the same, so that, by the time the last boy came to take his slice, there was little left. The younger boys were often left hungry as a result of the system of distributing food.

On the other hand, a complainant who was committed in the mid-1940s and remained in Artane for six years asserted that he had no complaints to make about food, as ‘the food was better than what I was getting outside’. He described living in abject poverty before being sent to Artane, and his records indicate that he was malnourished and underweight on admission.

While complaints about food feature with decreasing frequency in the 1950s and 1960s, a complainant who was committed to Artane for five years in the early 1950s stated that there was never enough food, and that the boys had to resort to scavenging from the swill buckets to sate their hunger. He singled out one Brother who would slip him extra food. He also alleged that bullying took place during mealtimes, with the result that some boys got less food than others.