Chapter 3 — Ferryhouse

Physical abuse

He conceded, however, that boys who wet were kept in a separate area known as ‘the sailor’s dorm’, and that boys were also given the term ‘sailors’. The Rosminians explained, ‘It is generally felt that these beds were kept together so that the smell of urine did not pervade the whole dormitory and thus the boys who did not wet the bed did not have to suffer the smell’.

The Rosminians now accept that it would have been humiliating for a boy to be known as a ‘sailor’ or ‘bed-wetter’. They also state that ‘it is quite possible that certain Prefects used this as a way of asserting their authority’.

The Rosminians also concede that other practices were used to try to stop bed-wetting. The boys were required to wash their own sheets each morning. They would have to take their wet sheets down from the dormitory to the laundry, wash them and then hang them up to dry. In the evening, they would have to collect their own sheets and return them to the dormitory. This practice continued until a new Prefect arranged for the sheets to be washed by a housekeeper. The boys still had to bring down their wet sheets to the laundry room, and that continued to mark them out and humiliate them.

Two further humiliating practices existed for boys who wet the bed. The Rosminians admitted that ‘a very demeaning practice developed for a short time of making boys with enuresis wear a short skirt for a period of a day or two’.

Another practice also developed, whereby bed-wetters would be required to walk around the schoolyard with a mattress above their heads.

It was put to Fr O’Reilly that bed-wetting seemed to have been treated as a problem of discipline, even though it was probably the least subject to discipline. He replied: I would have to agree with you. You know, if a child has a difficulty in that area and is upset, obviously you are going to increase the problem by drawing even more and more attention to it and certainly by punishing the child or by causing the child to be even more afraid than he was.

However, he again added, ‘I don’t know that children were habitually punished for wetting the bed’.

The question of whether bed-wetting was routinely punished was fully answered in the evidence given to the Investigation Committee at the private hearings.

One of the Prefects in charge of the dormitory, Br Ignacio,13 told the Committee: [The top dormitory] was divided into two, they were all the wet beds, as we call them, there on one side, and then the rest of the boys on the other ... When I went there I always thought they were punished ... Which I didn’t agree really, but as it before I went and it was well before I went there, I wasn’t the one to stop the discipline. Hard as it was for me to administer a couple of slaps for each boy ... They were punished every day if they wet the bed ... They went down with their sheets ... to dry them below where the heating for the showers were ...

He added, ‘That is the way it was when I went in there. Boys [who wet the bed] were always slapped ... one in each hand ... before they went to bed the next night’.

He went on to say that he had never agreed with punishing the boys, because ‘some boys I know didn’t do it purposely, just in their sleep they wet the bed, they couldn’t be accountable for that’. However, he added ‘That was the case when I became Prefect and I didn’t discontinue that’.

He was then asked how the boys should have been treated. He replied: If I know what I know now, I wouldn’t have administered punishment at all, but I was young at the time and that is the way it was handed down from Prefect to Prefect during all the course of the years.

He went on to advance the bizarre proposition that some boys deliberately wet their beds, ‘I knew some fellows didn’t mean it, just did it in their sleep ... but there could be others there who didn’t ... I couldn’t distinguish’. It was put to him that he was therefore punishing them all in case one boy deliberately wet the bed. He knew that some of the boys could not help wetting the bed and it was not their fault but, at the same time, he felt that some of them deliberately wet the bed and, as he could not distinguish between them, he punished all who wet the bed. He replied, ‘Exactly, yes and two slaps would not hurt anyone, never, you know’.

He then said, ‘I am very sorry for it, very sorry for having done that indeed’.

His counsel apologised on his behalf to a complainant who had been beaten for wetting the bed. He told him: Br Ignacio does not and will not in his evidence seek to justify the administration of corporal punishment to bed-wetters in an effort to deter bed-wetting. He accepts there is no justification ... for the administration of corporal punishment to people who wet the bed in the hope or expectation of deterring them from wetting the bed in the future ... Br Ignacio now accepts this was a stupid thing to be doing if he wanted kids to stop wetting the bed ... Br Ignacio will say in evidence that the Prefect that he replaced when he took over as Prefect ... and the Prefect who succeeded him ... administered corporal punishment to the bed-wetters ... he accepts now it was entirely wrong.