Chapter 9 — Clifden

Neglect

Sr Casey confirmed that children had to rise early in the morning, on a rota basis, to light the furnaces and fires. This practice stopped when central heating was installed in the School in the early 1950s.

The children did various chores around the School and, when old enough, assisted in the laundry and bakery and on the farm. She did not accept, based on the enquiries she made, that the children engaged in heavy-duty work on the farm. The extent of their involvement would have been limited to collecting eggs, cleaning the hen-house and making butter. She conceded that the work in the laundry was hard until the 1960s, when machinery was introduced. She did not accept that children were taken out of school to assist with domestic chores.

She added that the Congregation: again with hindsight would wish to acknowledge that the routine nature of the School reflected in the institutional nature of the setting was very far removed from what children would have experienced in the ordinary rhythm of a family home. It’s possibly true to say as well that the routine nature was the way Sisters’ lives was organised themselves so it was transposed to the Industrial School setting.

Most of the complainants alleged that they had to rise early in the morning, on a rota basis, to carry in turf and coal to light the boilers. One complainant, who was in Clifden from the late 1950s and remained there until the early 1970s, added that, if the pot of water for tea was not boiled by 8am, those on duty were beaten and were put on the rota for the following week.

Another recurring complaint was that older girls were taken out of school to look after babies and toddlers, a claim denied by the Congregation.

A complainant, who was committed at the age of 10 in the late 1950s and remained there until the mid-1960s, asserted that she worked on the farm and assisted with haymaking. She also worked in the laundry from the age of 11 and washed the nuns’ clothes.

Another complainant, sent to Clifden at the age of 12 in the early 1960s for just over a year, stated that regular chores included picking weeds and thistles from the nuns’ graves, washing and polishing floors, and working in the laundry.

The Congregation submits that it is likely that complainants merged together the different types of chores they engaged in at different ages and failed to distinguish between chores and industrial training.

In Clifden, as in all girls’ industrial schools, much of the maintenance and upkeep of the School was done by the residents, often in the guise of domestic training.

Clifden was characterised by an exceptionally small staff, and it is therefore inevitable that the heavy maintenance work associated with a large institution was done by the girls themselves. Even complainants who were critical of the School conceded that it was kept spotlessly clean, and it was clear from the reports of Dr McCabe that she was impressed by the hygiene standards there. This was achieved by a disciplined round of chores and duties on the part of the girls. It also appears that the older girls had to provide the high level of care needed by the very young children. The distinction between using children as a labour force and providing them with industrial training was an important one. The failure to observe this distinction in Clifden sometimes led to exploitation. Health/Hygiene

A complainant described the general state of cleanliness of the children as follows: They were filthy, black eyes, dirty clothes or torn clothes ... the hair was sore, and the fleas used to eat right through the hair, all scabbed. The children’s hair was full of scabs, full of sores, oozing and the filth and dirt and blood coming from the hair.

She said she never had a toothbrush in Clifden. The children washed their teeth with bread soda. They were bathed about once a month. There were two big baths, and the children queued up naked for their baths. She found this humiliating as she started to develop. The younger children went first and, while water was added at intervals, it was filthy by the time the last of the girls took their bath.

A witness from the mid-1960s said that the older children checked the younger children’s heads for lice and, if lice were discovered, the children were called dirty or filthy.

Head lice were a constant problem which was treated by putting a white powder in the child’s hair and by keeping the hair short. The Resident Manager, Sr Roberta, used to check their heads for lice and children whose heads were infested were beaten.

Another complainant, sent to Clifden at the age of 12 in the early 1960s stated that the children had to sit down every evening and inspect each other’s heads for lice.