Chapter 1 — Department of Education

Part 5 The inspection system

The annual reports of the Department of Education frequently refer to the fact that the medical inspector had viewed the quarterly medical reports kept by school Managers in consultation with the local medical officers. Furthermore, despite what appears as initial resistance to their use by some school Managers, Dr McCabe was able to cite evidence from medical records as proof of underfeeding in schools in the mid 1940s.

Not all schools were inspected each year, as required by the legislation. The frequency of school inspection varied from school to school and from year to year and some schools were visited more frequently than others.

For example, Baltimore school was subject to three inspections in one year (1947), while Artane went three years without any inspection (1950-52). The records did not reveal why some schools were inspected more often than others. In certain cases complaints or issues of a serious nature were brought to the Department’s attention and a special inspection of a school was ordered. Geography and accessibility may also have been a factor. In 1949, for example, no Industrial School in either Connacht or Ulster received a visit from a Department inspector. In the same year, the inspectors had five contact days (days where the inspector was present in a school to conduct a general or medical inspection or both) with Dublin’s seven Industrial and Reformatory Schools; seven contact days with the 12 schools in the rest of Leinster; and five contact days with the Munster schools. The following year, 1950, the number of contact days between the Department and the various schools revealed the following regional spread: Connacht (1); Dublin (1); Leinster (9); Ulster (2); and Munster (3).

Province	No of schools	Total no of inspections	Average inspections per school per year
Connacht	9	74	.82
Dublin	6	43	.72
Leinster	12	112	.93
Munster	21	146	.70
Ulster	2	14	.70
Total	50	389	.78

With regard to the rate of inspections Dr McCabe wrote in 1943: I agree that these institutions should be subject to frequent inspection – my practice at present is to pay a visit at least once a year to such institutions and if there is any need I revisit them within three or four months to find if my instructions have been carried out.

The figures show that in the 1950s the average number of inspections increased significantly. By the 1960s the number of inspections fell again, to below 1940s levels. There were on average 0.78 inspections per school per year during the 1960s, although the number of schools decreased steadily in the second half of the decade as a result of closures. Another reason for the decline in inspections at this time was the retirement in the mid-1960s and non-replacement of Dr Anna McCabe as Medical Inspector.

144 inspections for 32 schools were carried out during the 1970s, representing an average of 0.45 inspections per school per year. The lowest point was 1975, when the Department inspected no residential or special school.

A significant limitation that runs through the school system was that the Department’s inspectors were in no position to promise or provide additional resources to schools to enable them to address shortcomings and bring about improvements. Inspections and action taken on the basis thereof were pursued within the context of the available resources at the relevant time. The focus was confined to material and physical aspects of residential care and, until the establishment of the Child Care Advisor, was without reference to the developmental and emotional needs of children. It would appear that, in the main, schools were given advance notice of inspector’s visits and residents have described how, as a result, proper blankets, eiderdowns, dishes – never otherwise used etc. – were all on display. However, unannounced visits were not uncommon and were used on occasion to check on schools where concerns had arisen. The Resident Manager of Letterfrack, for example, protested that Dr McCabe periodically visited the school unannounced.

Instances of abuse would not normally be brought to the attention of inspectors during the course of a routine inspection of a school. Occasionally, as in Newtownforbes in 1940, inspectors identified evidence of mistreatment, and in this case the threat of censure was mooted: ‘I was not satisfied in finding so many of the girls in the infirmary suffering from bruises on their bodies’, Dr McCabe informed the Resident Manager in a letter: ‘I wish particularly to draw attention to the latter as under no circumstances can the Department tolerate treatment of this nature and you being responsible for the care of these children will have some difficulty in avoiding censure.’

However, most of the abuse cases were not discovered as a result of normal school inspections.

Official concern at conditions in the school – and also the incomplete character of the information available and perhaps a feeling of helplessness – was apparent from the response of the senior childcare officer in the Department of Health to the medical report of the death of a child in St Joseph’s Ferryhouse. She wrote: This shocking report confirms some unofficial information that I have had over the years concerning Ferryhouse...from what I have heard the ill treatment of the boys could do with investigation also. One person who spoke to me about this matter was an inspector of the ISPCC. It is scandalous that only the death of one of the boys has led to the conditions there coming to light.

Sometimes particular complaints or episodes were serious enough to lead to an inspector’s being sent to make a more wide-ranging investigation than the usual regular visit. The following are examples from the Department’s records.

In Rathdrum in December 1947 a child of three was put in to a very hot bath and died a few days later from his injuries. Dr McCabe was sent to inquire and discovered that at the time the victim was in the care of a 14½-year-old laundry maid. The school was inadequately staffed, partly because the 14 nuns in the Rathdrum Convent were old and incapable. The next month Dr McCabe returned to see what improvements had been made and wrote the following internal report: I informed the Resident Manager that I did not consider she had sufficient staff at present and that she should employ at least two extra helpers immediately, one religious if possible and the other a capable woman with experience of children. She told me she accepted this suggestion and would try to meet my requirements. She then informed me that she expected a castigation since the school had been ‘in the news’ so often. I told her that the most recent episode amounted, in my opinion to criminal negligence... I then informed her that I had given her one last chance to remedy her deficiencies and that if the school had any further complaints, which on investigation proved to be true that I would ask for her removal. Also I informed her that I would like to see the Mother-General in Carysfort and ask her aid in insisting on this Resident Manager carrying out her duties properly. One facet of the resident manager I do not like is that she is inclined to be parsimonious and grasping about money and again on this occasion she said the grant was not adequate. I told her not to talk nonsense that schools catering for big boys 10-16 years could very well manage and that these boys eat far more than little boys and required more clothes! I consider it would be well to follow up my visit with a letter insisting on my suggestions being carried out and warning the resident manager that if she cannot cope with the situation she will have to be replaced.

In fact, the letter of 25th February from the Department to the Manager, which was issued on the basis of this internal report, recommended an increase of two staff but did not repeat any of the condemnations or threats that, according to Dr McCabe’s memo of 14th February, she had made orally. These oral directions from Dr McCabe as to how the school should be improved were unusually specific.

An earlier visit to Rathdrum in October 1944 by the general inspector gave rise to an internal memo to the Assistant Secretary, prepared as part of the discussion as to whether to dismiss the Resident Manager (which did not in fact happen): Since I was appointed to this branch I have frequently drawn attention to the fact that children in industrial schools are, in general, not properly fed...This is a serious indictment of the system of management of industrial schools by nuns. If the children’s parents subjected them to semi-starvation and lack of proper clothing and attention from which they suffer in some industrial schools, the parents would be prosecuted. No laywoman, for instance could treat children as the former resident manager of Lenaboy did and escape punishment. Evidence is not wanting that the public have a shrewd idea of the conditions in many of these schools and that the public conscience is stirring. Last February for instance, the Minister for Local Government and Public Health sent the Minister the following extract from a letter which he had received from Deputy B Butler: — ‘A strong supporter of ours in the Ranelagh area – I think he is a sort of Probation Officer – asked me on Monday night to pass on the hint to you that the Labour Party are about to make capital out of the fact that the children in industrial schools are being literally starved through stoppage of supplies of oaten-meal and meat. I don’t think this can be so, but he appeared very earnest and insistent.’ Dr McCabe and myself have conducted a strenuous campaign against this semi-starvation. On her inspections she has attacked it in every school where she found it ... I have followed up her reports in all such cases with official letters, generally in strong terms. We have before us the task of uprooting the old idea that industrial school children are a class apart who have not the same human needs and rights as other children. There may have been something to this idea in the last century, but the present position is that from a material point of view, running an industrial school on an aggregate grant of about 18s/3d per head per week is a business proposition and the community should get value for its money.

Nothing more was heard of the matter.