Chapter 4 — Greenmount

Emotional abuse

This same witness spoke well of a system, set up by the Presentation Brothers, where boys were sent to visit families in Cork on a regular basis. He said: Say for argument’s sake, every first Sunday of the month, I think it was every first Sunday of the month, one of the families in Cork would take one of the orphans out to their home and you would spend a day in their home. At the end of the day they might give you lemon sweets or something to take back, a little bag of sweets.

The importance of this regular contact with a family emerged when he disclosed to them that an older boy was bullying him. He explained the circumstances: I think what actually triggered it off, because I didn’t confide in them, you didn’t have a lot to say to people actually, you were just taken and if they said “Get in the car” you got in the car. If they said “dinner was ready” you ate your dinner. You didn’t confide in them in so much as what school was about, you actually didn’t. It came about when she made this awful red and white coat, or red and black coat for me that made me look like – it was a sort of girl’s outfit and I started to cry and it just happened from there on. So sort of one thing led to another and it was an emotion that was coming out. I didn’t specifically go and say, “I have been beaten up”. So it sort of came out from that particular incident. I wouldn’t wear the coat.

He learned later, when he was going to work and calling back to visit this family from time to time, that they had complained to Greenmount on his behalf. His attachment to this family, the first he had known because he was raised in institutions, revealed the importance of such relationships to a maturing child.

By arranging such weekends, the Presentation Brothers were showing their awareness that the children needed more than the Institution could provide. The warning in the 1901 Visitation Report remained part of the culture: Familiarities with the boys should be most cautiously guarded against, being most hurtful to boys and Brothers ... there should always be maintained a reserve that would keep them at a proper distance and enable them to have for the Brothers that respect due to their position.

Many Brothers remained remote figures, who kept control, but who did not show warmth or sympathy and, in their turn, the children learned not to show their feelings. An injury was done to both parties by this unnatural suppression of feelings.

Without an adult as a protector and confidante, the orphans clung to each other and formed a bond. One witness told the Committee: ... we used to confide in each [other] quite a bit, and more so the people who didn’t have families outside were more vulnerable because we didn’t have anybody to complain to and we always sort of knitted together, if you didn’t have a mother and father you sort of knitted with people of that ilk, because you – the others were different. They were actually different from us, the boys from outside, they had a different way of doing things, different outlook because they always saw something on the outside, we never saw anything on the outside ...

These boys were not just cut off from the outside world: they were cut off from people who knew the outside world.

Greenmount had a major advantage being in Cork city, and so contact with families was easily arranged. Boys from Cork city were allowed home visits on the first Sunday of every month. Boys whose families lived further away were allowed home on summer holidays. In the 1940 annual report from the Brothers to the Department of Education, the Resident Manager noted: I believe the Home Leave and Sunday outings have a very beneficial effect – the Boys being kept in touch with their relations and friends, and they grow up having some knowledge of the outside world as well as breaking up the monotony of every day school life.

As illustrated above, those who had no families to go home to were sometimes sent to a sponsoring family on Sundays and for summer holidays. Many boys benefited from this regular contact with family life. When Bishop Lucey visited the School in 1955, he expressed the view that the boys should be let out ‘as much as possible so as by the time they would be finished here, they would have some idea of outside world’.

Boys who were placed in orphanages from their very early childhood suffered from being totally ignorant of their family roots. One witness told the Committee of how his mother left him in Rathdrum when he was six, visited him on the day of his admission, and ‘that was it’. He never saw her again. Subsequently, he made contact with his maternal uncle by chance: When I joined the army in Cork the recruiting sergeant asked me my name and he said, “Did your uncle work here?” or “Was your uncle in the army?” I says, “I don’t know if I have any uncle.” That’s how I found out he was in the army.

He met his uncle, but they were unable to find his mother. He never knew if she was alive or dead.

He spent a total of nine years and three months in institutions. That still rankled with him. He said, simply, ‘My childhood was taken away’. Neglect Department of Education – General Inspection Reports

Neglect

The main source of contemporary evidence about conditions in Greenmount is Inspection Reports of Dr Anna McCabe, who was appointed Medical Inspector of Industrial and Reformatory Schools on 3rd April 1939. She held the post until 8th March 1965. She also carried out general inspections of the schools.

Her first impression in 1939 was positive, and she could not find fault with any aspect of the School. However, her report in 1943 was critical of the patched and tattered appearance of the children’s clothes. It was only in the late 1940s that she expressed satisfaction with the quality of the children’s clothing.

During this period, she also expressed dissatisfaction with the children’s diet. On consulting weight charts, she noticed that a number of children had not increased in weight. Added to this concern was the fact that there had been several cases of TB in the School. She recommended that the Department write to the Resident Manager, advising that the rations of milk and butter given to each child be increased to ensure that each child received at least a pint of milk a day. They did this and also advised that each child receive a quarter pound of meat at each meal at which meat was served. The Resident Manager responded, confirming that they would use their best endeavours to increase rations despite ‘our crushing debt’.