Chapter 3 — Ferryhouse

Physical abuse

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.

The Prefect himself apologised again, and the conflict between his own beliefs and feelings about how to treat the children and the requirements of his duty to follow the rules and tradition of the Institution fully emerged: There was one thing I do regret is having to punish the boys who wet the bed. That was all. That was the biggest, or should I say ... the worst and I couldn’t bear to do that and still it was the done thing, give a couple of slaps on the hand and it was against my nature to do that...I didn’t want to do that at all although it was done the whole time, years and years before I went there and that was done all the time and that was the, how shall I say, the order of the time....It was against my nature altogether to do that because I knew very well some of them couldn’t help it but it was the done thing like. I couldn’t very well be the one to stop that, because I would be the worst in the world. You might have the whole lot of them wetting it after a while.

He found it impossible to break with the School’s precedents and tradition. Beating boys to stop them wetting the bed was acknowledged to be ‘a stupid thing to be doing’ because it was ineffective and did not stop the wetting. Indeed, it may have made bed-wetting worse. The practice of beating them, however, ‘was handed down from Prefect to Prefect during all the course of the years’, and the Prefect felt he was powerless to stop it, even though it was cruel and pointless. As in many institutions, tradition outweighed reason. Evidence on bed-wetting from former residents

The Prefect whose evidence has just been discussed expressed the belief that ‘two slaps would not hurt anyone’. Many of the former residents told the Investigation Committee about the effects of facing these beatings at the end of every day. A resident from the 1940s said: It was rampant throughout, not just the bed-wetters, everybody got beaten. If you were a bed-wetter my God it was a second helping, a third helping, but you got beat during the day as well, but you were guaranteed it every night. I wished they would give it to us in the morning, get it over with. No, you were all day sweating and you got a few handers during the day and you still had to take whatever. Once it was over thank God, but you got it the next night again because you knew you were going to wet.

He had earlier tried to express the pain of the experience: The wet-the-beds went into the toilet, in they would walk. You would have to hold your sleeve of your corduroy to get the full whack of the hand. When you are getting beat, you shake, you can’t help it, you couldn’t with them. “Keep your hand still” and there you are – we had a little thing at the beginning but they copped on to that very quick. When the slap came down we used to bring the hand with it. Anyway, if you didn’t they would keep beating you until you keep it still. You try to keep a still hand and the blue marks and the pain and the swelling with a leather strap. If you didn’t stop they would just put it across the sink and you couldn’t move it then so you got it.

A resident in the early 1960s told of how the beatings had shifted to the mornings, but the inevitability of being beaten for wetting the bed remained. He had not wet the bed in the previous institution, but on his way down to Ferryhouse he drank too much lemonade. That night he wet the bed, was beaten and consigned to the ‘sailor’s’ section. From then on, he lived in fear of doing it. He explained: I used to try and stay awake until I wanted to go to the toilet and then I would go to the toilet, but it didn’t work. I would fall asleep eventually.

He described the ritual the next morning: If you wet the bed you had to put your hand up the next morning. They would go around and ask, “Any sailors?” and you would put your hand up. So you took your mattress and your sheet and brought it downstairs to a drying room and you got a cold shower ... If you stepped out of line in the cold shower, if you didn’t stand directly underneath the cold shower, you were hit with a strap. If you stood underneath the shower you still got your punishment over in the office. Once you wet the bed you were due a punishment ... Some of them would hit you up there (indicating his arm) ... Some of them would barely get you up the wrist ... Some of them would hit you right up the arms.

He differentiated between one Brother, who ‘would take pleasure in hitting you for nothing’, and another Brother who ‘would kind of gave you your slaps and let you go ... he would just give you your dose of medicine and you would be gone’.

According to the evidence of Fr Antonio, he did occasional holiday relief work in Ferryhouse from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. He later worked as Director of Ferryhouse from the early to mid-1990s. He said those who wet their beds during his time were not physically punished. That had stopped sometime in the mid-1960s. Also, boys were no longer segregated into a separate section. However, the boys who wet the beds still had to take their sheets down the old fire escape and across the yard to be washed in the laundry. He told the Committee: Some of the saddest memories I would have is of the boys who wet their bed bringing out their sheets to laundry in the morning because there was only one woman in the laundry and they used to have to bring them out.

During the 1960s, other steps were taken in an effort to ease the situation. During Fr Rafaele’s14 time (mid-1960s to early 1970s), electronic devices that woke the boys went on trial. The segregation of those who wet the beds in the designated section of the dormitories ceased.

Fr O’Reilly admitted to the Investigation Committee that the number of boys who wet the bed decreased only when conditions got better, because there was a reduction in the level of fear and anxiety about bed-wetting and because boys were no longer humiliated by being required to carry their sheets down to the laundry room themselves. Documentary evidence on the punishment of bed-wetting

In 1962, a County Waterford mother wrote a letter of complaint to the Department of Education about the way in which her son was punished for wetting the bed while in St Joseph’s, Ferryhouse. She wrote: Dear Sir I am writing this to ask you about my boys ... whom Justice Skinner released three weeks ago, well I want to tell you what happened their brother ... who was only sent also [earlier in the year] for three months, he was suffering from kidney trouble and the punishment they were giving him for wetting the bed was stand under a cold shower and one night he was put out of the bed by the Brother and given four showers at 9:30 p.m. Then into the office in the morning and nine whips of the leather on each hand, and they told him they would increase it, well he had to run and I said it to the Priest, you would run too and so would I. Well he ran home in a terrible state chilled to the bone so I thought he would have a nervous breakdown so I wired for his father to come for him.

Fr Alanzo15 twice wrote to the Reformatory and the Industrial Schools Branch of the Department of Education about the mother’s complaint. In his first letter in 1962, he spoke despairingly of her: ‘I have had more trouble from their mother than I have had from the rest of the boys’, but he does not deal with the complaints raised. His second letter to the Department, sent a month later, is revealing insofar as it conceded that cold showers were given, and suggested that bed-wetting was 99% a bad habit and the result of bad upbringing and laziness on the part of the boys, and it goes on to describe the mother as a neurotic person. Fr Alanzo failed, however, to deal with the question of whether corporal punishment was administered for bed-wetting, and, if so, whether it was the Institution’s policy. The Commission does not have any documentation suggesting that the Department followed up this issue.

What does emerge from the correspondence is the way in which the mother was seen as a neurotic troublemaker. The Manager’s main concern was not dealing with the substance of the complaint, that her son had been ill-treated and beaten for bed-wetting, but placating the Department of Education on the matter. In another sense, her persistence paid off, because her third son was released before the end of the month.