Chapter 1 — Department of Education

Part 5 The inspection system

Following an inspection of Letterfrack in 1957, Dr McCabe described the difficulty she faced in attempting to improve conditions in the schools: I would really like to see a number of improvements here- clothing, living conditions and cooking arrangements. I have often made suggestions but each time I feel up against a stone wall as always I am told increase the grant – give more money and of course I realize their difficulties – but all the same I will have to insist on better conditions for the boys. Br. Murphy the Resident Manager is very argumentative and difficult to persuade.

Dr McCabe advocated a strong response to Resident Managers who refused to implement recommendations: in striking contrast to the usual emollient words used by the Department, her correspondence with certain Resident Managers was often peppered with strong language and demands for improvements. One such letter to the reverend mother of Newtownforbes in 1940, in relation to unsanitary conditions and neglect of sick children, states: ‘I cannot find any excuse which would exonerate you and your staff.’ The inspector felt the best course of action was to hit the schools in their purses and threatened to reduce or remove state funding or certification if the Resident Managers did not comply Nevertheless, the Department considered it ‘impolitic’ to withdraw the certificates of suitability. However, Dr McCabe did succeed in having two Resident Managers removed from their positions as a direct result of her inspection reports.

Ensuring that the children received adequate food appears to have been Dr McCabe’s primary focus; the common use of excessive corporal punishment does not figure as prominently in her work. In her general report of 1964 she states: Corporal punishment was very prevalent when I first visited the schools, beating of children being quite commonplace; in addition there was a form of sadism deplored by me the cutting of girls hair and the shaving of boys heads. All this has been virtually eliminated except for the unfortunate example of the nuns in Bundoran.

Yet, so far as one can make deductions from a negative, there exists little to suggest that Dr McCabe actively attempted to prevent the excessive physical punishment of boys. Where criticism did exist it was levelled mostly against the girls schools. In 1940, upon finding girls in the infirmary in Newtownforbes showing signs of physical abuse, Dr McCabe wrote a scathing letter to the Resident Manager, in which she wrote; I was not satisfied in finding so many of the girls in the infirmary suffering from bruises on their bodies. 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.

Conversely in a boys’ reformatory the punishment received by a number of the children appeared to contravene Department regulations, Dr McCabe is not recorded as having challenged the Resident Manager. In a report to the Department on the basis of a complaint from the father of a resident of Daingean concerning excessive corporal punishment, Dr McCabe wrote: ‘I failed to discover any marks on any boy including ...’. She also made disparaging remarks about the boys in general, referring to them as ‘terrorists’ and stating that the boy whose father complained ‘is an unpleasant type of boy’.

Despite the 1946 circular stating that principals could draw on the advice of the Department’s Medical Inspector ’regarding any children who are specially troublesome of difficult to control’, there is no evidence that Dr McCabe offered advice on how the troublesome boys could have been treated differently. The standard forms completed by Dr McCabe and the other inspectors did not contain references to issues of discipline or punishment until Mr Granville, Child Care Advisor to the Department, noted that corporal punishment was still in use in the schools.

The requirement to keep punishment books is provided for in Rule 12 of the Department’s Rules and Regulations which states: The Manager or his Deputy shall be authorised to punish the Children detained in the school in case of misconduct. All serious misconduct, and the Punishments inflicted for it, shall be entered in a book to be kept for that purpose, which shall be laid before the Inspector when he visits. The Manager must, however, remember that the more closely the school is modelled on a principle of judicious family government the more salutary will be its discipline, and the fewer occasions will arise for resort to punishment.

Department files do not provide examples of these punishment books being kept by schools or ‘laid before the Inspector’. The inspector did not refer to the checking of punishment books in her/his inspection report but would at times record that ‘Records were well kept’. It is possible that schools kept these journals for a time and subsequently disposed of them when they were no longer needed. On 16th December 1970, the Minister for Education informed the Dáil that: ‘No industrial school now keeps a punishment book’.

In the early part of her career, Dr McCabe was heavily critical of the schools, reporting findings very different from the relatively favourable conclusions in the Cussen Report just a few years earlier. She stated that she was ‘simply horrified at the conditions existing in the majority of the Schools’. However, her reports from the 1950s show a marked decline in detail with little of the critical commentary that had characterised the reports of the 1940s. While it is possible that improvements were made during her tenure, and that the schools were better resourced, it is also necessary to take into consideration the fact that from the late 1940s Dr McCabe was suffering from recurrent illness.

Although there is no definitive diagnosis of Dr McCabe’s condition, it is evident from medical reports in her Departmental personnel file that she suffered from severe depression for much of the period during which she held the position of Medical Inspector with the Department. This illness seems to have commenced in the late 1940s, with a severe episode in 1951 requiring hospital therapy. Unfortunately, over the following number of years Dr McCabe’s health did not improve and began to deteriorate seriously in the mid-1960s. Dr McCabe resigned in 1965.

Part 6 Innovations and Improvements

Before Kennedy, there was little thought given to a fundamental overhaul of the system. One of the few considerations of structural change is contained in the following brief statement. T O’R on 15th March 1967 wrote in an internal memo. A new development in recent years in a number of the Industrial Schools has been the introduction of the Group System. Under this system it is claimed that the children feel a greater degree of security, become more alert, make better progress at school, are generally more friendly and more easily overcome their handicaps. The Minister would be glad if Managers would give consideration to this new development with a view to its introduction, where possible, into their schools. 4.12 .24 noted that in a small number of schools, laudable efforts are being made to break the residential portion of the school into units and encouraged stronger efforts in this direction. One line of approach to the problem of the Industrial Schools is the provision of a Prevention Centre. The importance of the Prevention Centre will lie not only in the turning back of the youngsters from their first steps in delinquency and the caring for innocent youngsters from broken homes, but also in that it will reduce considerably the number of children who will be committed to industrial schools. This raises the question of the second line of approach. It is that the industrial schools will in future have to devote themselves more to rehabilitation type of work. This will mean that they will have to organise the children into smaller groups and so have to employ a much larger staff of skilled personnel. The children will, learn by doing (as Senator Quinlan mentioned in the Seanad debate on ‘Investment in Education’). It might be unwise to bring up the matter of industrial schools as we are in no position to defend our achievement as far as the size of grants goes.

Another rare example of this fundamental question being squarely addressed comes in a letter of response by the Department to criticisms put forward by the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers in 1955. The slogan that ‘a poor home is better for a child than the best institution’ is alright as a catch cry but is certainly not true if is meant by a poor home a home of squalor, hunger and malnutrition, vice and bad example. People before using such slogans should become familiar with bad homes and with institutions such as industrial schools or orphanages which are conducted on proper lines. These latter, at least the industrial schools administered by this Department, have considerably improved in the last 12 of 15 years, mainly through (1) a consciousness on the part of the conductors following the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the R&I. School system of 1934-36, and the passage of the 1941 Children Act of the need for improvement standards in the schools, (2) efficient and regular inspection, (3) the Course in Childcare in 1953 for nuns engaged in Orphanages and Industrial Schools. The improvements resulting from this Course are becoming evident as time goes on. With regard to the recommendation of the Women’s Committee the following comments are made in the order set forth in the Joint Committee’s letter. 1.That the maximum number in any institution should not exceed 250. The only school which accommodates more than 250 is Artane. The question of breaking up that school into smaller schools was recommended by the Commission of Inquiry 1934-36 but nothing came if it mainly due to the opposition of the conductors and the extra huge expenditure involved. I consider that in fact 250 is altogether too big a number for a school and that 50-100 would be the ideal number. 2.Division of children into groups. Kilkenny Girls School (accommodation 130) and St. Georges Limerick (170) have introduced the group system. (Kilkenny in 1952 and Limerick quite recently). This means the grouping of the girls over 6 years of age in sections of 30 approx-each section under the care of a nun who acts as ‘House mother’. In Kilkenny each section has its own Dormitory, Dining Room, Living Room. I attach a description of the grouping system as given by Sr. Laurentia for the Kilkenny school at the Child Course held in Carysfort College in August, 1953. The group system is new to our schools. It involves the school in extra staff and in considerable expenditure to adapt the accommodation to the system. It is probable that with a little encouragement and coaxing form the Departments schools. The question of adopting it in boy’s schools, both senior and junior would present more difficulties than in the case of girl’s schools.

The schools’ population peaked in the late 1940s. There was a steady decline in numbers through the 1950s and the process accelerated in the 1960s. The Department of Education noted as early as 1951 that since 1945 there had been an average of 250 vacancies in the Boys’ Schools.

In 1955, the subject of closure was tentatively mentioned by the Secretary of the Department of Education in negotiations with representatives of the schools. In a letter from the Minister for Education to the Minister for Finance on 21st January 1965, the former noted ruefully that Finance had been urging closures for years and then continued: Naturally your main concern is economy while mine is the upbringing of children. Certain aspects of the matter of transferring children to other schools have to be carefully considered. Many children have god-parents in their school localities and quite a number of children attend schools, national, secondary and vocational outside the industrial school. It may not be possible to accommodate such children suitably if transferred to another district.

In 1950, there were 50 Industrial Schools. In the 1950s five schools closed: four senior boys schools – Baltimore (1950); Killybegs (1950); Carriglea (1954); and Greenmount, Cork (1959) and one girls school, Sligo (1958); but in the case of each of the boys’ schools there were particular reasons that were at least as significant as the general trend. The next closure was Birr, Offaly (1963). During 1964-70, 17 more schools, more than a third of the total, closed, including the senior boys’ schools at Upton, Glin and Clonmel, in each case with the full agreement of the Orders concerned. By the time of the Kennedy Report in 1970, another 13 had closed leaving a total of 29 still operating.