Chapter 6 — Sisters of Mercy

In her 1953 lecture on childcare management mentioned above, the Resident Manager of Goldenbridge, Sr Bianca, made important points about the needs of children in care. She said that children coming from underprivileged backgrounds should be met with sympathy and gentleness. ‘Drastic remedies’ for head lice, such as cutting off hair, should not be necessary, particularly when there were remedies on the market at a very reasonable price. Children should be divided into small groups, including at meal times, to promote an intimate family atmosphere. She added that ‘formal marshalling and regimentation must be avoided’. Whilst there should be an emphasis on domestic training, there was no reason why girls should not follow a commercial or other career path if they had the necessary talent.

She proposed that every child should help with small jobs and chores about the home. They should be encouraged to be creative, and arts and crafts teachers deployed. Dressing the children uniformly should be discouraged. There was no reason why they could not be sensibly and attractively dressed.

She advised that children should be allowed a considerable amount of supervised freedom. They should be allowed to go to the local shop, and older girls permitted to go into town on the bus to run errands.

In addition, she considered that a large playground and hall were a necessity. A field for sports should be made available. Senior girls should have their own sitting room. She felt that music should be encouraged, both playing instruments and singing as well as listening to music on the radio. Dancing should be also encouraged. Caring for pets was another useful occupation for children.

Sr Bianca also felt that the Manager should possess skill and judgement, ‘have a strong personality, without being overbearing or dictatorial ... and above all, she must be strictly impartial’. Furthermore, those charged with the care of such children should have a keen interest in their work and possess the requisite experience and knowledge of psychology.

The fact that Sr Bianca was asked to deliver the lecture is evidence that she was highly regarded as a childcare expert, and the lecture expressed an enlightened and progressive view of childcare in the 1950s. Sr Bianca knew how a good institution should be run, and her lecture provides a standard against which Goldenbridge and other Sisters of Mercy industrial schools may be judged. Moreover, these progressive views demonstrated the principles that could have been inculcated in generations of carers, if training had been provided, with potentially dramatic consequences for children in care.

Impact of vows on institutional care

In May 2006, the Sisters of Mercy submitted a document entitled ‘The Influence of Religious Values and/or Religious Life of the Sisters of Mercy on the Management of Industrial Schools and on Aspects of the Care of the Children’. In this document, the Sisters explored the ways in which their religious vows affected the care they gave to children in their institutions, and it arose out of testimony at the oral hearings, particularly relating to the way in which individual Sisters interacted with the hierarchy in the Congregation and with the children in care.

The Congregation accepted that these religious values and ways of life ‘must have influenced the way in which the schools were run’.

Sisters of Mercy take the three vows common to most religious communities – of poverty, chastity and obedience – and they also take a fourth: to serve the poor, sick, and uneducated. In addition to these formal obligations, other aspects of religious life that were highly valued included prayer, routine, simplicity, silence and work. The Congregation gave examples of how these religious values might have had a negative impact on the way industrial schools were run: The strict routine of prayer followed by Sisters meant that during regular identifiable periods, the children were exclusively in the care of lay staff and it also had the consequence of a regime of strict religious observance being imposed on the children. The importance of routine also manifested itself in everyday activities with Sisters following a strict daily routine. ‘The daily routine of adherence to times for prayer, meals, work or recreation was sacrosanct’. Sisters would have expected the children to follow the same routine, with early rising, Mass, chores, special times for meals and recreation and the Congregation accepted that this ‘could have been experienced as harsh and demanding’. The emphasis on silence as a means of focusing attention on ‘God and the things of God’ had a significant impact on the manner in which individual Sisters interacted with each other and with the children. This could have had the effect of reducing the communication of information about children between Sisters, or Sisters and staff, to a ‘strictly “need to know” basis’. Work played a large role in religious observance: Working hard was viewed as generous, obedient and self-giving. The underpinning theology of the time held that grace would supply for what nature failed to offer. It was not expected or customary that a Sister would complain in any way about the task to which she had been assigned. To do so would be seen as not merely a sign of personal failing, but of inability to cope with the challenges of religious life.

The Congregation stated: The negative aspect was, perhaps, that leisure activities were circumscribed and everyone was caught up in a system where rest, unstructured relaxation and variety were seen as luxuries rather than necessities.

It also said that ‘A life of simplicity and sometimes frugality was valued as an outward expression of the vow of Poverty’. All Sisters pooled their salaries, and they were ‘directed in the main towards the works of mercy engaged in by the Sisters’.

Many Sisters spoke in evidence about the expectation that they would not show affection to the children in care. The Congregation said: The question of the reluctance to show any physical affection for the children found its roots in a positive understanding of caring for all children equally and of not favouring one child over the other.

This desire to treat all equally might have led to children seeing the Sisters as aloof or uncaring, but it would be: ... a grave distortion to see the absence of the overt expression of physical affection for the children as some kind of innate personal failing on the part of each Sister, related in some obscure way, to her choice of a life of celibacy rather than a choice of marriage and motherhood.

Many Sisters spoke about the impact of the vow of obedience.

Chapter VII of the 1926 edition of the Rule and Constitutions dealt with the vow of obedience. It provided: 28. The Sisters are always to bear in mind, that by the Vow of Obedience they have forever renounced their own will, and resigned it to the direction of their Superiors. They are to obey the Mother Superior, as holding her authority from God, rather through love than from servile fear. They shall love and respect her as their mother. Without her permission they shall not perform public penances. 29. They are to execute, without hesitation, all the directions of the Mother Superior; whether in matters of great or little moment, agreeable or disagreeable. They shall never murmur, but with humility and spiritual joy carry the sweet yoke of Jesus Christ. They shall not absent themselves from the Common Exercises without her leave, except in a case of pressing urgency and if they cannot then have access to her, they shall make known to her the reason of their absence at the earliest opportunity. They shall obey the call of the bell as the voice of God.