Chapter 11 — Dundalk

Background

Elaine, a witness who spent her entire childhood from aged three to 16 years in the Institution in the 1940s and 1950s, was able to recall the living conditions. She was born in a home for unmarried mothers in Dublin and, at the age of three, transferred to St Joseph’s as a voluntary admission. Her earliest memories of the School were from age seven. She described life in the School as being ‘dull ... grey. Nobody cared ... The food was awful’. She said there was very little meat and the dinners consisted mainly of soup and potatoes.

She criticised the clothing. She was given a set of summer clothes in April that had to last right through until September and October, with the result that she was often frozen. Her dress was made of calico. All the children suffered from chilblains. The jumpers and stockings which the children knitted themselves did not keep them warm in the outside yard where they spent a lot of time. They wore their winter coats only when they went for walks on Sundays.

She described the daily chores that the children were required to do. She explained that every child was given a chore that was her special responsibility: There was two lasses looked after the kitchen ... Other girls would ... look after the convent ... There was one lassie that had the laundry ...We all had chores. Some had the kitchen duties, some was cleaning up the pantries and things like that. Mine was the youngsters, there wouldn’t have been many, not in today’s terms. It seemed an awful lot then and it seemed a big chore. You had to look after them. You combed their hair, you fine combed their hair and make sure there was no nits and things like that. We didn’t have any toothbrushes so we didn’t have to look after our teeth ...

She began this ‘child minding children’ from the age of about 10 or 11. She went on to explain the system: We would have lived on landings. Well there was the first landing, second and third landing. Mine would have been the charges on the third landing, they were the younger people ... They would have been maybe two to seven.

Elaine recollected that, when Dr McCabe would visit, everything would be lovely and clean. The beds would be dressed to perfection and the children would receive eggs twice a week for a few weeks prior to the visit by the Medical Inspector.

She spoke positively of the ‘Fairy Godmother’ system, introduced in the early 1950s, which was a programme for people from the area to take the children in the Institution out for an afternoon and take them to tea. They would also visit them at Christmas and Easter. She spoke with fondness of the godmother to whom she was sent. She also spoke favourably of the summer holidays spent at the nuns’ house in Carlingford. She recalled that, at the holiday home in Carlingford, there were some lovely nuns who did not work in the Institution.

Physical abuse

The position of the Congregation was that the first time they became aware of complaints about St Joseph’s was in October 1999, with the publication of Suffer the Little Children by Eoin O’Sullivan and Mary Raftery. In their Opening Statement the Congregation submitted: Allegations of abuse from former residents of St Joseph’s came as a source of deep shock to us, and particularly to the Sisters of the Dundalk Community, a number of whom had worked in the industrial school over the years, and were in regular contact with many former residents.

They went on to say: Former residents differ in their memory of the use of corporal punishment during their time in St Joseph’s. Some have painful memories of it and say they experienced it as excessive, others say it was not. While it is denied that excessive punishment was used in St Joseph’s, given the number of years covered by the period under review, together with the number of children in residence, it is unlikely that corporal punishment was not sometimes administered unfairly or harshly.

Elaine spoke of ‘harshness’. She recounted several instances of beatings. One occasion was when she asked the then Resident Manager if she could sit the scholarship examinations for the secondary school. She was bright and loved school. When she made her request the Resident Manager ‘beat [her] within an inch of [her] life for taking that scholarship from people outside’.

The worst part was the fear of the punishment, and the waiting to be punished. She described one nun as ‘very rough ... for an old nun’ and added: She would give you six of the best and you would be lined up for half an hour before you got the six of the best, so the trauma of waiting to be punished and then being punished. They could be punished for little or nothing, for talking after lights out at bedtime: It didn’t have to be anything in particular ... Because ... we were always told we were bold anyway so it didn’t matter.

She recalled two other occasions when she was beaten. One was when she was aged 12 or 14 years and was in charge of younger children on a walk. Because she was unable to time the walk, they went too far away and returned hours late and she was beaten with a stick. The second occasion was when young children in her care contracted ringworm and she was beaten for that.

She also complained of being struck by a member of the lay staff, one of a number of young women from a domestic college in the west of Ireland who were sent to St Joseph’s on work placement for approximately one year.

The witness recalled this lay staff member as being very rough with the children: But she would often get a child and she would pull her by the hair and swing her, only the wall would stop the person. They would go sliding down. She broke every brush we ever had in the house. We didn’t have many ... She would be murdering them, using them as rulers. She just flogged people. When she left the place, and she was only there for a year, there wasn’t a brush in the place when she left.

The children did not complain about this staff member and she completed her placement. The witness explained that there was no one to complain to: I don’t think that any of us had the knowledge or the wherewithal to complain. We were at these people’s mercy.

On the other hand, although physical punishment from the nuns was not as severe, she found what she called the psychological abuse more damaging: I wish sometimes they would have beaten the living daylights out of me, it would have been easier, but the psychological abuse, it stays forever and ever and ever.