Chapter 3 — Ferryhouse

Physical abuse

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.

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.