Chapter 8 — Letterfrack

Neglect

Following the Committee’s visit the Resident Manager wrote to Mr McDevitt in the Department of Education on 31st December 1962, saying that a new oven had been purchased and that ‘I have already purchased about 50 tweed and gabardine overcoats for the boys and I hope to have one for each boy in the very near future’.

He went on to say: I hope we will soon get an increase in the Maintenance Grant it would help to pull down my overdraft, and if I had about 20 more pupils I should then be in a position to do more for the boys. We get several applications for vacancies but very few are committed.

There were 128 boys in Letterfrack in 1962.

Department Inspectors continued to stress the need for improvements in the quality of clothing provided well into the 1960s and conditions did improve slowly.

In 1966, Dr C.E. Lysaght carried out the general inspection. He stated that the School menu provided a ‘well balanced diet and variety’. He noted that the dinners, which he witnessed during his inspection, were ‘ample’, ‘satisfactory’ and that ‘little food was left behind’.

In 1970, the Congregation Visitor reported that the boys now had modern clothing and sporting gear.

In the second Visitation carried out in 1970, Br Dax was singled out for further praise. The Visitor noted that Br Dax who had taken over the kitchen had a different menu each day of the week and that the meals served to the boys were ‘very ample and tastefully served’.

The 1972 Visitation Report stated that the food was satisfactory and commended Br Dax for his efficiency: ‘it would be impossible to equal his dedication and efficiency’. In the 1973 Visitation Report the Visitor stated: Br Dax the Sub-Superior, lives an almost eremetical life since he supervises all the boys’ meals seven days a week and consequently must eat by himself. He is regular and his meals keep the boys contented. He does not cook but does the ordering and supervising. His only other duty is to supervise the boys’ showers. He maintains good discipline though his methods may be a little crude at times. He seems ripe for a total change of environment and the visitor suggests that he might be a suitable candidate for the international tertianship next August.

A number of former residents complained about the clothing they received. Some of these complaints related to the absence of proper work clothes. Boys who worked part-time on the farm (up to 40 at any time) had no work clothes. They wore their school clothes on the bog and in the fields in all weather and, no matter how wet or mucky they got, they had to stay in the same clothes until the end of the week.

One former resident said that he occasionally worked on the farm. Although he had Wellington boots he did not have proper work clothes like the boys who worked there full time. He wore his normal school clothes.

Another resident present in the Institution in the late 1950s and early 1960s said that he received so little food that he was reduced to eating swedes out of the fields. He contrasted the food the boys received with that of the staff. He said that: I actually seen the table in the monastery one time and there was enough food on that table to feed the 120 lads that were in that school. We never got food, anything like that. There was so much sheep and cattle and vegetables that were in that school, we should have been all little barrels.

One resident from the early 1960s said that the quality of the food was awful and that there was never enough of it. Another resident from the late 1950s said that there was never a lot of it and that boys would trade food they did not like. One resident in the late 1960s said that, of all the institutions he was in, Upton, Daingean and Letterfrack, the food in Letterfrack was the worst.

Another resident present in the late 1960s and early 1970s stated: The food wasn’t good food ... I remember kids breaking out in scabies and all sorts of stuff, weak and pale. It was very cheap food from Galway City, I don’t know where they got it from. The porridge, on many occasions it was very weak stuff and we used to pick little worms out with the spoons. The bread used to come in at the time, we used to be picking bits of green mould out of it and stuff, fighting for a small piece of margarine on the table to spread on it. It was just like animals, dog eat dog stuff, but I don’t remember any healthy food.

Br Dax was employed as the cook in Letterfrack from the late 1950s until it closed in 1974. In his evidence to the Investigation Committee he stated that: I would say quite honestly as far as I am concerned the food was reasonably good.

The 1954 decision of the Provincial, taken in the face of opposition by both the Department of Education and District Justice McCarthy, was ill-considered and detrimental to the welfare of the boys in Letterfrack. If it was desirable to restrict admission to Letterfrack to a specific category of boys, it was unreasonable and contrary to policy to retain a substantial number of boys from previous intakes who were outside that category. By insisting that increases in grants had to be applied equally to all schools, smaller institutions like Letterfrack were at a serious disadvantage. It required extra funding to compensate for the low numbers after 1954 but no special case was made. It was an indictment of the Congregation that extra funding promised to the Resident Manager to compensate for the removal of up to 100 pupils was refused at a time when funds were available. The deprivation of funds caused hardship to the boys in Letterfrack. The decision to close Carriglea as an industrial school and to keep Letterfrack open was not taken in the interests of the children in Letterfrack. The unsuitability of Letterfrack as an industrial school was apparent from the start and was strongly reiterated by District Justices and by the Department of Education. The will of the Provincial prevailed, however, and it is an example of the power the Christian Brothers had in determining the direction the industrial school system took. From the comments in her Inspection Reports, Dr McCabe believed that low standards were the inevitable consequences of inadequate funding. However, when this issue was raised in public in 1959, neither the Department nor the Congregation acknowledged the difficulties but were at pains to paint a rosy picture of life in Letterfrack. The argument put forward by the Congregation in its Opening Statement, that the care the boys received in Letterfrack was better than they would have received if they had remained in their families, misses the point. The Congregation was paid by the State to care for these boys to a standard set down by law, and failed to do so.