Chapter 7 — Goldenbridge

Neglect

The Sisters of Mercy submitted that, given the substantial amount of chores, it is not surprising that complainants had general memories of much work and little recreation. They added that it is possible that former residents may not have very precise memories of the age at which they performed certain chores; what jobs were done before school and on Saturdays, and what jobs fell within the remit of the industrial training programme, in which all girls over the age of 13 participated.

The Congregation submitted that laundry was a large part of the routine in Goldenbridge, given the number of children. Children of all ages were expected to help. The older children would have been required to do the heavier work. It was suggested by the Congregation during hearings that younger children would have gone along to help the older girls and that it was in fact quite a social occasion. It does not accept that young children were taken out of school to work in the laundry. In support of this, the Congregation pointed out that laundry only took place on two days during the week, one of which was Saturday, when many of the children helped out. The existence of such a practice would have meant that the School relied, rather irrationally, on the labour of small children, when there was a ready supply of older, stronger girls available. The Congregation added that, given the fact that children may have done laundry as part of the domestic training programme as well as laundry on Saturdays, it may be the case that complainants were confused as to when precisely they did laundry. The Sisters of Mercy noted that none of the complainants appeared to remember laundry featuring as part of the industrial training programme at all. They contended that what complainants regarded as an onerous chore was in fact industrial training for their own benefit.

The Sisters of Mercy conceded that the School was self-sufficient because of the input of the girls helping around the School, and they made reference to a woman employed to work in the laundry, and a member of staff who helped in the kitchen. They contended that the chores which the children performed were not out of keeping with the standards of the time and could not be labelled abusive.

The Congregation was adamant that children as young as seven or eight were not taken out of school to perform chores, but that children over 13 years of age participated in an industrial training program in the afternoons. This programme adopted a three-pronged approach to industrial training: cookery, laundry, and housekeeping duties. This would have entailed a certain amount of domestic work around the Institution. The Congregation stated: At this remove in time, it is probably impossible to say that children over the age of twelve were not, on occasion taken in the afternoon to carry out domestic chores, be it laundry, minding younger children or helping in the kitchen. This may have been more likely with girls who showed little interest or ability at school.

Sr Alida said that there was a course in domestic economy training including cooking, sewing and laundry for girls over 13 years of age. They partook in this training in the afternoon, having spent the morning in school.

On chores, Sr Alida accepted that: It would be correct to say, and I only recently appreciated it, that all the caring in the house, when I say caring, the chores, the housekeeping jobs, were all done by big girls and remember we would have about 80 girls over 12 in the house ...

Chores included washing and dressing the younger children, sweeping and scrubbing the floors, caring for the babies, and working in the kitchen and the laundry. Sr Alida accepted that the chores could be difficult: In my early day the charges were quite difficult in the sense that it was maintaining the floors mainly around the house and dormitory, but particularly in the corridors and the kitchen. They were old tiled floors, black and red tiles, and they were worn with the hundred years of wear. They were horrible to work on. That was one of the biggest chores in the house because there were long corridors on the ground floor, the front door and the hall. The hall was new and modern but the rest was old.

She added that, under her management, these corridors were covered with a substance called tapiflex, which made a huge difference to cleaning. Sr Alida accepted that the chores were difficult, ‘except that there were many hands to do it’.

Ms Garvin spent 13 years working as a teacher in Goldenbridge. She stated that, when she arrived in the School, there was an extensive domestic training programme in place for the older girls. The household chores performed by these girls formed part of the household management element of this programme. Chores included cleaning, laundry, cookery and sewing.

Sr Gianna’s duties involved working in the workroom, mending and sorting clothes or working in the laundry on a Monday or Friday. She never saw children younger than 13 working in the laundry. She stated that the older girls were involved in keeping the School clean.

The evidence of the complainants was that they had a number of chores to perform daily, from a very young age, and that these were in addition to the many hours spent at bead making.

A complainant who was in Goldenbridge during the 1950s and early 1960s told of the chores she performed every day. She stated that, after roll call, a number of names were called out and these children were sent to do chores. This happened on a regular basis: All I can remember is washing floors, scrubbing floors, scrubbing dormitories, doing laundry, making rosary beads. It was constant, hardly any education at all. The only thing you were really there for was catechism lessons in the morning. Apart from that you were taken out of school as soon as you got to the age where you could scrub floors, do whatever you had to do.

She described the work in the dormitories, each of which had about 30 or 40 beds: We had to lift those, they were heavy metal beds. We used to lift them to one side of the room, and sweep, wash and scrub the rooms ... It would take quite a few hours, because they were big dormitories ... If it wasn’t done properly they would make you do the whole thing again ... there would be eight of us who used to do it together.

If the work was not completed satisfactorily, it would have to be redone, and she was sent to the landing to be punished by Sr Alida.

She also described working in the laundry as very heavy work. They had big boilers in which to boil sheets. She described the procedure of washing these sheets: you had wooden tongs, which you would pull them from the boiler, into another cooler, which would rinse the sheets, and then put them through wringers and then hang them out. We used to have big baskets with all the sheets into them.