Chapter 2 — Upton

Neglect and emotional abuse

An ongoing area of dissatisfaction for Dr McCabe, and one which she often raised in her General Inspection Reports, was the clothing provided for the children.

The first recorded complaint is contained in Dr McCabe’s General Inspection Report of 10th November 1943. She described the boys’ clothing as ‘fair – but rather patched’. She had the same complaint to make two years later, on 19th March 1945, when she characterised the clothing as ‘Fair – rather patched’. On her next inspection, on 2nd September 1946, Dr McCabe noted that the clothing ‘Could be improved’. No details are given in this report about the exact condition of the clothing or the nature of the problem. When she spoke to the Resident Manager, he informed her that they had experienced ‘great difficulty in obtaining material for suits’, and as a result they had to purchase a number of them from shops in Cork ‘which was most expensive’. He nevertheless said that he would ‘endeavour to make improvements’. She noted that he ‘is severely hampered on account of small quota of material’ and wanted to obtain a permit for supplies so that he could ‘obtain sufficient material’.

When Dr McCabe called on the School on 27th October 1947, she commented that the clothing was ‘improved’ but she gave no information as to how the clothing had improved. In her Inspection Report of 22nd October 1948, Dr McCabe again described the clothing as ‘improved’ and added that ‘much remains to be done’. Again, no further details can be elicited from her report on the extent of the problem or what exactly needed to be done to rectify the situation.

Four years later, Dr McCabe, in her General Inspection Report of 21st May 1952, again found that the clothing of the boys had ‘improved’ and added that the tailors were busy making new suits. There are no Inspection Reports in existence between 1948 and 1952. For the years 1953 and 1954, Dr McCabe described the clothing situation as ‘much improved’. In her Inspection Report of 1955, clothing was simply described as ‘improved’ but, by 1956, the clothing was again described by Dr McCabe as ‘much improved’. From 1957 to 1960, Dr McCabe consistently used the words ‘improved’ or ‘much improved’ in the section on clothing in her General Inspection Reports.

On 22nd February 1961, Dr McCabe noted that the clothing was ‘improved’, but she specifically recommended that the boys ‘could do with a new issue of clothing all around’. The subsequent Inspection Reports do not provide any insight as to whether this recommendation was carried out. When she visited the School on 20th June 1962, she again remarked that the clothing was ‘improved’. In 1963, she said it was ‘much improved’ and, by 1964, she described it as ‘much better’.

The Lord Mayor, who visited the School in January 1965, was also critical of the boys’ clothes. He was told the boys slept in their shirts, as they had no nightclothes. According to his report, their everyday clothing was ‘rough and ready’.

The General Inspection Report of 15th June 1966 by Dr Lysaght provided somewhat more information on this matter. He described the boys as being ‘well clothed neat and clean’. According to his report, the tailor on site made the boys’ suits with the assistance of some of the boys. In the summer, they wore shorts and blazers.

A former resident who was in the School in the 1950s gave evidence about the type of clothes the boys wore. He told the Committee that the clothes were unsuitable and inadequate, and summed up the situation as follows: We wore the same things year in year out; khaki shirt, khaki pants and a short jacket. No pullovers, no underwear.

The footwear, he said, consisted of leather ankle boots, which were made by the boys. He said that sometimes he had socks and sometimes he didn’t, by reason of the fact that they each got only one pair, and when they needed repair they were sent to the knitting shop. While they were being repaired, boys went without socks, as there was no replacement.

Another witness, who was in Upton in the 1950s, described the clothes he wore as ‘rags’, comprising a top, shorts and a pair of sandals. He also said that they wore no underwear and had a change of clothes once a week. They did have nightclothes, in the form of a nightdress, and there were no heavy winter clothes provided. Bed-wetting

Bed-wetting was a persistent problem for some of the boys in the School. It was treated as a disciplinary issue by the Rosminians, and they attempted to solve the problem by the use of physical punishment. They sought at the time to halt the problem by waking children during the night to go to the toilet. Boys who wet the bed were known as ‘slashers’ and were placed in a separate section of the dormitory. Each morning, these boys had to take their wet sheets or mattresses to the boiler house to dry. Fr Matthew Gaffney, in his general statement in 2002, accepted that this was the regime regarding bed-wetting, but stated that: In past decades the psychological nature of the difficulty was not understood, and it was thought that deterrence through corporal punishment or embarrassment in front of others was an appropriate remedy. I can appreciate by present standards, that such a response was obviously humiliating and unfair.

Former residents gave evidence of being beaten for bed-wetting. This allegation is accepted by the Rosminians. Fr O’Reilly, at the Phase III public hearing, stated, ‘I accept that boys, regrettably, were punished for bed-wetting’.

Bed-wetting was seen principally as a disciplinary issue. Fr O’Reilly added, ‘the response to bed-wetting was more than wholly inadequate, it was terrible. It was terrible on boys to be punished for this’.

He also conceded that the practice of carrying wet sheets down to the boiler house to dry was a humiliating ritual for the boys: ... I think that boys felt humiliated by having to carry sheets. Whether it was intended to do that or not, I don’t know. But obviously, having to carry your sheet in front of other boys ... was a deeply embarrassing thing to boys. There might have been just a practical reason in terms of removing the sheets from the bed where they’re wet to another place where they’ll be dried. But obviously it was embarrassing.

A witness, who arrived in the School in the late 1940s, recalled that he was relegated to the bed-wetting section of the dormitory. He clearly remembered the nightly visits to the dormitory by the night watchman, who used to call the boys three times during the night to go to the toilet. He described this night watchman as a ‘savage’, as he would hit the boys with his walking stick to wake them and get them out of bed. According to this witness, it was like trying to ‘run the gauntlet’ to the toilet, trying to avoid a blow from this man’s walking stick. If they wet the bed during the night, the next day they had to carry their mattress across to the boiler house to dry, which this witness found degrading. On the way to the boiler house, they were teased and humiliated by the other boys. His entire memory of Upton was of ‘stale urine, overflowing toilets, abuse ...’. This witness also recollected that the night watchman used to have a slice of bread and butter with sugar for his ‘pets’ that did not wet the bed. Eventually, he got the treat of bread and sugar when he stopped wetting the bed so in that sense he felt that giving a treat did work in halting bed-wetting.