Chapter 8 — Letterfrack

Neglect

The farm was an essential part of life in Letterfrack. The Congregation stated: The land under the care of the Brothers comprised 837 acres, but most of this was poor land consisting of bog and mountain. Nevertheless on the available 70 acres of arable ground the Brothers, farm workers and boys worked the land to provide for the needs of the institution.

Until 1954, the farm was under the charge of one Brother, Br Aubin, who was consistently praised for his farming skills by Visitors to the school: ‘a good religious Brother and a capable farmer, a very useful devoted Brother’. The farm was, however, very labour intensive, and large numbers of boys were used as workers to keep it going. In 1942, the Visitor remarked that the rough nature of the ground, that did not allow for the use of a plough, meant that most of the tillage had to be done by spade. It was a significant source of income to the Institution and it provided the basic food requirements of the entire establishment. Even with the large numbers of boys assigned to the farm, it was hard, gruelling work. Full-time workers were assigned to the farm from 14 years of age, but all the children were engaged on a part-time basis after school and during holidays and weekends. Turf-cutting, sea-weed harvesting and saving the hay were some of the jobs undertaken by the younger children.

One complainant described how a field of hay was raked by hand by up to 50 boys who worked in a line the length of the field. He also described crushing the silage in the winter: they would fill it up and it went right up to the top, but it had to keep getting crushed ... any day it was raining, they would put us all in there walking around like that, (indicating) dancing, jumping on it and all that, and then go around and around and they would get it down a certain amount of inches every day until eventually they couldn’t get anymore into it’.

In 1944, the Visitor noted that Br Aubin had 40 of the bigger boys under his control at farm work. The Visitor criticised the fact that Br Aubin was frequently not with the boys when they were out working and they were left with a workman whose suitability for such a charge was very doubtful.

In 1950, the Visitor commented on the large number of boys (46) on the farm, noting the ‘large number compared with the number in the establishment. As all the work is spade work, that number is required’.

The Interdepartmental Committee reported that the main occupational work carried on by the boys was farming. It stated that ‘a fully qualified instructor should be available to give vocational training in woodwork and carpentry, particularly to the large number of inmates from town and city areas who [were] unlikely to seek farm work on discharge’.

Ex-residents who spoke to the Committee were critical of the work they were required to do on a daily basis in Letterfrack, and were dismissive of the idea that it could ever be described as ‘training’.

One former resident present in the late 1960s, when asked whether he learned a trade in Letterfrack, said ‘if you call dragging a bag of turf around a bog or going around stamping silage’.

Another resident from the late 1960s said that he did not learn a trade, he spent his time either darning socks or working in the fields and bogs. He said his work on the farm was all labour, pulling turnips, planting, digging etc. He was never involved with the cows or the pigs or anything like that.

The farm made a healthy profit almost every year, which was paid into the school accounts. It is not possible to determine how the farm income or profits were calculated or whether the School received the full benefit of the income generated. It did benefit to a significant extent, however, and the money from the farm kept the School solvent for much of the 1940s and 1950s.

Letterfrack was an industrial school and its avowed purpose was to provide industrial training and, if it was incapable of doing that, its function should have been re-assessed.

The majority of children were assigned to the farm at some time. The conditions in which the children worked and the tasks they were expected to perform were far in excess of what could be described as ‘helping out’ on the farm and could not be described as training. Complainants spoke of being used as slave-labour on the farm.

In their Opening Statement for Letterfrack the Christian Brothers stated that the most common health problems in the School were outbreaks of measles and the ‘flu. There was a nurse employed and she resided in the infirmary which was located on the hillside above the School. There was a large proportion of very young boys in Letterfrack until 1954, and they would have required greater medical care than the boys in senior schools such as Artane.

The presence of a nurse appears to have ensured a higher standard of care than that available in other institutions.

In their Opening Statement the Christian Brothers provided details of deaths that had occurred in the school from 1940 to 1970. This showed a total of 15 deaths of boys during the relevant period. A peak occurred in 1941/1942, when seven of these deaths were recorded. The cause of death was stated to be consumption (tuberculosis) in five of these cases, and tuberculosis and pneumonia in the other two.