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Chapter 3 — Society and the schools

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Part 1 Social, economic and family background

32

A great proportion of children in the schools came from families that were non-marital or one or both parents had died. Where it was the mother who died, then the conventional view might be taken that the father, especially if a full-time breadwinner, was not equipped to bring up the family (and even, because of an unspoken fear of incest, where there were daughters in the family should not do so). If it was the father who died then, while the homemaker remained, there was no breadwinner so that the family was likely to be impoverished.

33

If the child was born out of wedlock, the mother was likely to find herself in either a mother and baby home or a county home. The child might then be adopted formally or informally, boarded out or sent to an Industrial School.

34

The Kennedy Committee ascertained that only about 18 percent of children were known to the School to have parents who were married, alive and living together. Some 30 per cent of the children had one parent who was dead and it was not known in 35 percent of cases whether the father was alive, although the mother was.

35

The background of broken homes from which many of the residents came is captured by the Tuairim Report, 29: Some of the children in these schools will have no parents, or a parent with whom they have no contact, others may have both parents living but temporarily or permanently unable to provide for them. The committal of the children of one family to different schools, particularly if one parent is dead, often means the complete disintegration of the family as a unit. The surviving parent may marry again, set up a new home with the new spouse, and, when more children are born, abandon completely those of the first marriage who are, in any case, scattered in schools in different parts of the country. 3) Orphans

36

There was a high number of orphans in Industrial Schools. The Kennedy Committee survey found that the Schools knew that both of a child’s parents were dead in 1½ percent of cases and did not know whether they were both alive in a further 10 percent. Another survey – Lunney’s survey of the Sisters of Mercy Schools – which checked the various school admission registers from the establishment of each School up to 1950 – elicited an average figure of 11.2 percent.24 As a comparison, during the same period, the numbers of orphans was about 0.25 percent of the general population.

37

The full significance of these striking findings, here and under category 2, is brought out by Dr McQuaid: Not to know whether one or other or both of the parents were alive or dead... represents a remarkable level of basic ignorance of the facts about the children, in dealing with whom this information is most fundamental. For the responsible authorities (one does not necessarily mean the schools) not to be aware of these details is one of the most shattering indictments of the ‘system’. For the children themselves, these facts are also vital. When one considers that in all of us the prime requirement for effective functioning is a secure and unshakable sense of identity, it must be plain to everyone that for a child not to know who his parents were, nor where they are, nor how he can get in touch with them and maintain contact, must seriously invalidate whatever else may be done to help and rehabilitate him. 4) Physical or mental illness

38

O’Cinneide and Maguire observe: The Boards of Health and Public Assistance received many requests, from parents and guardians, resident managers of Industrial Schools, and other concerned individuals to have children with physical or mental handicaps admitted to the various institutions that catered for people with disabilities. The various local authorities seem not to have operated according to a standardised set of criteria, and many cases of obvious merit were turned down because parents could not contribute to their children’s upkeep in institutions. For the most part, the Boards were extremely tight-fisted when it came to maintaining children in special institutions, and one can only imagine how many disabled children languished at home, with parents who could not cope or provide them with even a rudimentary education, because of the Board’s strident policies in this area. ...Cases that were clearly worthy, given the circumstances of the parents, were rejected on the grounds that the parents were not eligible for public assistance and thus the Board could not accept responsibility to maintain their children.

39

The Kennedy Report, Appendix F, reported on a survey across different age groups and genders testing for intelligence, perceptual ability and verbal reasoning etc. Each category revealed broadly the same picture. The results of intelligence testing, in essence, were that (at p 113): 11.9 per cent of children in Industrial Schools are mentally handicapped compared with approximately 2.5 per cent in the population, and that 36.6 per cent are borderline mentally handicapped compared with approx 12.5 per cent in the population in general. This leaves 51.5 per cent who are of average or above average intelligence compared with about 85.0 per cent in the population at large.

Part 2 Other institutions for children in care

40

A child might live in a School and, at a different period, in one of the alternative residential institutions. An example of such transfers is given by Professor Dermot Keogh, in a report he prepared for The Presentation Brothers relating to St Joseph’s Industrial School Greenmount and submitted to CICA, at 108: According to Fr James Good, who was appointed chaplain in Greenmount Industrial School in mid-1955, the following arrangements were in place in the Cork area for the receipt of children. Babies born in the home for unmarried mothers at the Sacred Heart Convent, Bessboro, normally stayed there for two and a half years with their mothers. Between the age of two and a half and ten they lived in a junior Industrial School, generally Passage for boys and Rushbrooke for girls. On their tenth birthday, the boys were usually transferred to Greenmount or Upton. At age fourteen, they were ‘out of books’ and usually worked in the bakery or at shoe repairs. At sixteen, they were released to farmers, for whom they worked as labourers or to take up employment in the army, industry, domestic service or the trades.

41

Two comprehensive tables25 show the various facilities available for children in care and also the scale on which they had to be utilised.
Table 5 Number of children regulated by census year
1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1926 1936 1946 1951 1961 1966 1971
Children in workhouses/county homes 12,307 12,089 11,618 6,618 5,527 5,213 1,900 1,291 800 400 100 53 40
Children in mother and baby homes - - - - - - 607 887 869 817 - - -
Children in Industrial Schools under detention - 2,482 6,279 8,547 8,254 8,382 5,927 6,039 6,510 5,844 3,686 2,456 1,072
Children in Industrial Schools voluntarily - 200 434 376 298 427 350 250 150 89 99 123 70
Children in Industrial Schools by health authorities - - - - - 49 - - - 339 388 433 511
Total number in Industrial Schools 2,682 6,713 8,923 8,552 8,858 6,277 6,289 6,660 6,272 4,173 3,012 1,653
Children in Reformatory Schools 539 970 1,151 786 596 652 115 109 237 214 205 145 42
Children in approved institutions - - - - - - - - - 245 425 532 788
Children in orphanages 5,000 5,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 2,500 2,500 2,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 750
Children in prisons (under 16) 1,345 912 912 574 200 5 4 2 2 1 9 2 61
Children boarded out - 1,476 2,250 2,540 2,370 2,623 1,906 2,304 2,419 2,283 1,692 1,162 914
Children hired out - - - - - - - 89 131 170 145 184 100
Children nursed out (infant life protection) - - - - - 411 803 2,800 2,493 1,500 505 382 365
Total 19,191 23,553 25,644 22,724 20,245 20,762 14,112 16,271 15,631 12,902 8,254 6,472 4,713
Population under 14 (,000) 1903 1914 1614 1529 1353 1301 873 820 823 856 877 901 931
Number of children per 1,000 population 10.1 12.3 14.1 14.9 15.0 16.0 16.2 19.8 19.0 15.1 9.4 7.2 5.1
Ratio of children in institutional care to non-institutional care 14.7 10.4 7.8 7.5 5.8 4.2 2.1 2.1 2.3 2.5 2.7 2.4

42

Dr O’Sullivan comments:
Table 5.5a Number of children regulated by census year (%)
1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1926 1936 1946 1951 1961 1966 1971
Children in workhouses/county homes 64.1 52.3 45.3 29.5 27.3 25.1 13.5 7.9 5.1 3.1 1.2 0.8 0.8
Children in mother and baby Homes - 4.3 5.5 5.7 6.3 -
Children in Industrial Schools under detention - 10.7 24.5 38.1 40.8 40.4 42.0 37.1 41.6 45.3 44.7 37.9 22.7
Children in Industrial Schools voluntarily - 0.9 1.7 1.7 1.5 2.1 2.5 1.5 1.0 0.7 1.2 1.9 1.5
Children in Industrial Schools by health authorities - 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.6 4.7 6.7 10.8
Children in Reformatory Schools 2.8 4.2 4.5 3.5 2.9 3.1 0.8 0.7 1.5 1.7 2.5 2.2 0.9
Children in approved institutions - 1.9 5.1 8.2 16.7
Children in orphanages 26.1 21.6 11.7 13.4 14.8 14.4 17.7 15.4 12.8 7.8 12.1 15.5 15.9
Children in prisons (under 16) 7.0 3.9 3.6 2.6 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0 1.3
Children boarded out - 6.4 8.8 11.3 11.7 12.6 13.5 14.2 15.5 17.7 20.5 18.0 19.4
Children hired out - 0.5 0.8 1.3 1.8 2.8 2.1
Children nursed out (infant life protection) - 2.0 5.7 17.2 15.9 11.6 6.1 5.9 7.7
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

43

Besides the Industrial Schools there were alternative residential institutions in which a child in the care of the might be placed.

44

The Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 brought the administration of the public assistance services formally into the Irish Free State. It provided that in each county one workhouse building should be retained as a ‘county home’ in which all the non-medical inmates in the county were lodged. In the clinical language of a 1920s Report on the County Homes, there were approximately: 11,000 itinerant beggars who moved from workhouse to workhouse; a delinquent element, including prostitutes and young criminals, often the product of an earlier workhouse upbringing; a large group of infirm old people no longer able to care for themselves; so-called idiots and imbeciles, mentally handicapped people for whom there was as yet no special public provision; lunatics unable to secure admission to the overcrowded district lunatic asylums; unmarried mothers and their so called illegitimate children; rejects of a disapproving society; and orphaned and abandoned children.26

45

At independence, the only places that would receive unmarried mothers were the workhouses/county homes. In 1926, there were over a thousand unmarried mothers with their babies in county homes; by 1950, there were still over 800 children in county homes, but by 1966 only 53. The children remained for one or two years.

46

The undesirability of having mothers and their infants in the county homes was recognised and in the 1920s and 30s the policy was implemented of providing ‘mother and baby’ homes for unmarried women who were having children for the first time. These were reserved for young mothers who had ‘fallen’ once only and thus were likely to be ‘influenced towards a useful and respectable life’27 (leaving those unmarried mothers pregnant for the second or later time to the county homes). As can be seen from Table 5.5, from the 1930s to the 1950s, there were more than 800 children in mother and baby homes, but none by 1960.

Footnotes
  1. C O’Grada A Rocky Road: the Irish economy since the 1920s (Manchester UP, 1997) 17, 194 and Table 1.5. In 1949, one child in 16 did not live to see his or her fifth birthday. 100 mothers died in childbirth in 1949 compared to fewer than one per year at present (Central statistics Office, 2000).
  2. F Fearon ‘The National Problem of Nutrition’ Studies vol 26 (March, 1938). Twelve similar figures are given in an article based on the families of 60 patients attending the Rotunda Hospital in GC Dokeray and WR Fearon ‘Ante-Natal. Nutrition in Dublin’ (1938) Irish Journal of Medical Science (6th series) 80.
  3. O’Cinneide and Maguire, pp 39-40.
  4. E Holmes ‘Medical Social Work’ at the Rotunda in A Browne (ed) Masters, Midwives and Ladies in Waiting, p 216.
  5. See, to similar effect: TWT Dillon MD ‘The Social Services in Eire’, Studies, September 1945 329; Dunne ‘Poverty Problems for a Patriot Parliament’ Journal of the Statistical and Society Inquiry Society of Ireland, 1922:190; Dr Clancy-Gore ‘Nutritional Standards of some working class families in Dublin’ Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, vol 17 (1943-44) 241.
  6. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Housing of the Working Classes of the City of Dublin 1938-43 (Dublin: Government Stationery Office, 1944), p 15, quoted in O’Cinneide and Maguire, p 22.
  7. TWT Dillon ‘Slum clearance past and future’ Studies, March 1945, pp 13-20.
  8. Department of Health, National Nutritional Survey (Dublin: Government Stationery Office, 1968) quoted in O’Cinneide and Maguire The Industrial Schools: A Monograph, pp 33-4, citing as sources: WT Dillon ‘Slum Clearance Past and Future’ Studies, March 1945, p 163; The Standard, 14th November 1931, p 9; The Standard, 27th September 1935, p 2; Irish Weekly Independent, 25th December 1937, p 8.
  9. K Kearns Dublin Tenement Life (Gill and Macmillian, 1995).
  10. O’Cinneide and Maguire ‘Findings from the ISPCC records’ (2000) second progress report to the Sisters of Mercy. Industrial Schools in context project.
  11. Rotunda Hospital Annual Clerical Reports for 1936-68, Social Services section.
  12. Dillon The Social services in Eire, p 331:
  13. Rotunda Hospital Annual Clerical Reports for 1936-68, Social Services section.
  14. JV O’Brien Dear Dirty Dublin (Dublin, 1978), pp 167-8.
  15. NAI, DT, S4183, report on VD in the Irish Free State: Committee of Inquiry (1924–26). The report was not published (ibid, 7th May 1927) Here one ought also to mention briefly the Carrigan Report on Sexual Offences (1931) which led ultimately to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1935. The immediate reason for its establishment was the fact that the English Law in regard to sexual offences against young person had recently been made more stringent including law on prostitution, carnal knowledge of an underage person. The Committee had a good deal of evidence about such crime, from, for instance, Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy. The Report was not made public on the advice of the Department of Justice and the Catholic Church, because it was thought that it would show Irish sexual morals in a poor light. The general lesson which this Report and its non-publication teaches is that there was a good deal of sexual crime against children in the early 1930s and there is no reason to suppose that this position changed at any rate for several decades; and also that the official approach was to sweep such matters under the carpet. The Report did not discriminate between crimes taking place within the family or at a school of whatever type. See generally: Report of the Committee on the Criminal Law Amendments Acts (1880-1885) and Juvenile prostitution (Dublin, 1931), p 26; M Finnane ‘The Carrigan Committee of 1930-31 and the moral condition of the Saorstat’ Irish Historical Studies (November 2001), p 519; F Kennedy ‘The Suppression of the Carrigan Report’ studies, Vol 89, No 356, p 362.
  16. Louise Ryan ‘The massacre of innocence: Infanticide in the Irish Free State’, Irish Studies Review, No 14, Spring 1996, pp 17-21.
  17. Rotunda Clinical Report for 1945-46, section on Social Services by the Almoner, Miss Murphy.
  18. Lunney’s survey of the Sisters of Mercy Schools.
  19. In Limerick, in 1936, the Society provided boots and clothing to nearly 2,000 families, and disbursed nearly £2,000 in assistance. This was in spite of the fact that the Society’s resources were so diminished, and their donations significantly diminished, that they had been forced to reduce by nearly half the number of people they could assist (The Standard, 3rd April 1936, four cited in O’Cinneide and Maguire The Industrial Schools Over a Hundred Years: A Monograph, p 32). Dillon ‘The Social Services in Eire’ at p 329 states that, in 1943, the society distributed goods and grants to the total value of €150,000.
  20. The other two income-support schemes, old age pensions and insured worker’s benefits, are not relevant.
  21. The Evening Standard, 5th May 1939.
  22. F Kennedy From Cottage to Crèche (IPA, 2003), pp 218-9.
  23. School: A Sociological Study’ (1971) Unpublished M Soc Sci thesis, UCD.
  24. Number of orphans admitted to various Industrial Schools from establishment to 1950
  25. School
  26. Orphans
  27. Total admissions
  28. Percentage of School population
  29. Clifden
  31. ,015
  32. ..25
  33. Clonakilty
  35. ,306
  36. ..39
  37. Dundalk
  40. ..85
  41. Galway
  43. ,090
  44. ..16
  45. Goldenbridge
  47. ,755
  48. ..84
  49. Limerick
  51. ,663
  52. .14
  53. Mallow
  56. .46
  57. Newtownforbes
  59. ,434
  60. .81
  61. Templemore
  64. .01
  65. Westport
  67. ,065
  68. .83
  69. Taken from E O’Sullivan, PhD.
  70. Saorstát Éireann Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, including the Insane Poor (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1928), p 5 (our italics); J Robins From Rejection to Integration: A Centenary of Service by the Daughters of Charity to Persons with a Mental Handicap (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1992), pp 2-3.
  71. Department of Local Government (1928) Annual Report 113, quoted in Kilcummins at p 84. In response about eight ‘mother and child’ homes were set up for unmarried mothers giving birth for the first time. In 1922 the Sacred Heart Home in Bessboro, County Cork, managed by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, was opened. Similar homes were established by the same Order in Roscrea, County Tipperary, in 1930 and Castlepollard, County Meath, in 1935. The Sisters of Charity of St Vincent De Paul opened a similar institution on the Navan Road, in Dublin, in 1918 and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd opened a home in Dunboyne, County Meath, in 1955. In addition, three special homes were provided by local authorities themselves in Tuam, County Galway, Kilrish, County Clare and Pelletstown in County Dublin: See further Kilcummins ‘The Origins of Penal Policy’ in Crime Punishment and the Search for Order in Ireland (IPA, 2003), pp 82-6.
  72. National Archives, DT S14472b – Report of the Interdepartmental Committee appointed to examine the Question of the Reconstruction and Replacement of County Homes, p 24.
  73. Kennedy Report, Appendix E.
  74. At para 3.2.
  75. TE O’Sullivan Child Welfare in Ireland, 1750-1995: A History of the Present (TCD PhD, 1999), pp 204-7.
  76. In other words, in the Irish Legislation there was no equivalent of Part V of the (English) Children and Young Persons Act 1933 provides for the registration of all homes and other institutions, supported wholly or partly by voluntary contributions, and receiving poor children and young persons. By section 25 of the Children Act 1908, there was a bare power of inspection with no power further to intervene in any way and certainly none to investigate individual children; nor was any duty to register imposed.
  77. See eg Health Discovery, 42
  78. Barrett, ‘The Dependent Child’ Studies, Winter 1955 at p 422.
  79. At pp 33-4.
  80. Table 34. Kennedy states: ‘One of the tasks we attempted was to draw up a list of private voluntary Homes. Their principal sources of information were the Irish Catholic Directory and the Church of Ireland Handbook, but as there is no standardised classification of private Homes, it is possible that, in spite of independent checks, we have overlooked some Home or school which should have been included.’
  81. Kennedy, para 1.5.
  82. Sources: Mary Raftery and Eoin O’Sullivan Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools (Dublin: New Island, 1999), Appendix 1; Dail Debates Vol 220, col 687-88 (2nd February 1966); Kennedy Report, para 1.5; Cussen Report, para 17 and Appendix B; Department of Education complied from quarterly returns from each School to the Department.
  83. Classified as a special school with the Department of Education, it is still in law a Reformatory which is managed by the Oblate Fathers who have a long-standing tradition of residential child care in Ireland. It caters for up to 60 boys from all parts of the Republic, as the only Reformatory facility. The age range of boys referred would be between 12 and 17 years and the other main criteria for admission include the seriousness of the offence and whether a committal is for more than one year. The school is run on the basis of four units with one being an intake unit.
  84. This transfer which was effected by means of three forms (until an administrative reform in the late 1950s reduced this to one). First the Manager of the junior School completed a form of transfer which was returned to the Department. This form was forwarded to the Manager of the senior School who returned it, signifying his willingness to accept the child. Finally, the Minister made a transfer order, exercising his power under s 69(2) of the 1908 Act, transferring a youthful offender or child from one industrial school to another. Notification of this was sent to the Manager of each school.
  85. These were the Baltimore Fishing School (under the management of a local board of which the Bishop of Ross was chairman (SD, vol 25, col 495 (5th March 1941)), closed, under Departmental pressure in 1950; and the school in Killybegs, closed, on its acquisition by military authorities in 1950.
  86. Kennedy Committee, para 1.5.
  87. At para 4.6.
  88. The Poor Clares were founded in 1204, committed to a life of prayer and penance, among the strictest orders in the Catholic Church. Generally, one might doubt as to whether celibates would make good mother and father figures (horses for courses). How did the Poor Clares get into this field? Were they in need of the income? A contemplative order, their concepts of love focussed on Christ and Our Lady had complete charge of young children deprived of family life. The isolation of the community of St Joseph’s Orphanage, Cavan meant that the fire of 1943 claimed the lives of 35 girls as well as one woman.
  89. According to the official history of the Christian Brothers order (A Christian Brother (1926), pp 524-5):
  90. This was a congregation which stood apart as a body of men committed to the education of boys, especially poor boys; which before independence, had stayed outside the National System for ideological reasons; which asserted its independence from each local bishop; and which, most significantly, was the principal provider of secondary education for the Nineteenth and most of the Twentieth Century.
  91. In fact, this effect is greater than appears from the Table since the Table treats boys in a single category yet boy’s Schools were divided into those for junior or senior boys. A consequence would be that a greater number of boys than those shown in the Table would have had to be sent outside their home county because there would have been no School available for someone of their particular age. In the interest of simplicity we have not gone into this effect. Another detail that is omitted, but which would have told in the opposite direction, is that, in some cases, girls Schools took junior boys. This would have had the effect of enlarging the number of places available in the county to boys.
  92. DD vol 145, col 946–52 (23rd April 1954); SD vol 75, col 60 (1st June 1973); vol 252 (25th March 1971); DD vol 75, col 150 (28th March 1939); vol 94, col 272-7 (13th June 1944), respectively.
  93. For questions in this paragraph, see respectively DD vol 127, col 274 (7th November 1951) (stating that the police car used to transport children to the schools had been replaced by a station wagon the previous month); vol 49, col 1359 (28th June 1944); DD vol 174, cols 126, 272 (8th and 9th April 1959).
  94. DD vol 88, col 2271 (19th November 1942).
  95. DD vol 88, cols 2270–3 (19 November 1942).
  96. DD vol 88, col 2273 (19 November 1942). See too, col 2536:
  97. I have a case here, for example, of a boy aged 11 years, who was three times before the court before he was committed in July 1941. In August, 1941, I ordered his release. He did not attend school, and during the period after I ordered his release in August, 1941, and before October, 1942, when he was recommitted, he was before the court no less than six times.
  98. DD vol 66, col 25 (31st May 1937); DD vol 126, col 1732, 1744 (17th July 1951).
  99. DD vol 94, cols 272-7 (13th June 1944). See also vol 126, cols 1699, 1731, 1744 (11th July 1951).
  100. DD vol 151, col 20 (25th May 1955).
  101. DD vol 174, col 272 (9th April, 1959).
  102. See eg DD vol 126, cols 1699, 1731, 1744. There were no sweeping condemnation, the equivalent of Deputy Dillon’s comment on Summerhill, (not an Industrial School but a residential institution for juveniles (see 00) run by the Department of Education). He stated:
  103. Summerhill is closed. Ten weary years of battering at the walls of Summerhill have at last brought them down. Deputies may remember the Taoiseach saying that he thought Summerhill a very nice place to which he would send his own children if they did not behave themselves... the alternative accommodation [is] Glasnevin.
  104. FILL OUT. On another occasion, Deputy Dillon said he would not like to see greyhounds or terriers kept in Summerhill: DD vol 88, col 1580 (28th October 1942). For Summerhill (later the place of detention was transferred from Summerhill to Marlborough House) see: para 00.
  105. Deputy A Byrne is an exception, referring to Scotland and the US at DD vol 82, cols 1120-1 (11th December 1940).
  106. M Maguire ‘Briefing Paper Newspaper Research on Former Residents of Mercy Industrial Schools’, Sisters of Mercy Industrial Schools in Context.
  107. At 46. Sources: Connacht Tribune, 24th January 1931, p 2; Connacht Tribune, 22nd January 1938, p 3; Connacht Tribune, 29th January 1938, p 6; Irish Weekly Independent, 13th April 1935, p 1; Irish Weekly Independent, 14th May 1932, p 9; Connacht Tribune, 8th July 1939, p 9; Irish Weekly Independent, 22nd November 1930, p 9.
  108. At p 275 of his PhD thesis.
  109. Brian Quinn, editor of The Evening Herald (1969–76).
  110. See Appendix, Vol V, Part B.
  111. This is one of a number of pioneering series by Mr Viney, 27th April– 6th May 1966. D Gageby ‘The Media’ in JJ Lee (ed) Ireland 1945-70 (Gill and Macmillan, 1979), p 133, refers to ‘a whole new world of cool clinical reporting which came from Michael Viney, with novel studies of unmarried mothers, alcoholics, deprived children and other castaways of the 1960s.’ The other exceptions were The Irish Times, 3rd February 1950
  112. This letter (10th May 1966) was from Captain Edgar White from the First Dublin County Boys ‘ Brigade. It suggested that uniformed organisations like the Boys’ Brigade, Catholic Boy Scouts, could provide persons capable of acting as voluntary welfare liaison officers. A comment in response from Michael Viney indicated that in his opinion, voluntary workers were not the answer and would only provide the State with ‘an excuse for further procrastination’.
  113. Minutes of Christian Brothers’ Managers Meeting of 30th April 1957.
  114. DJ 93/182/17, cited in Keating at pp 201-2. We do not have the Minister’s response. On 18th February 1955, the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers, who had a long-standing interest in the Schools wrote to the Minister suggesting various reforms, among them a visiting Committee for each institution, appointed by the local authority and comprising members of the council and outside social workers.
  115. National School Boards of Management did not start until 1975; and Boards of Management for secondary schools started somewhat later: Fuller Irish Catholicism since 1950 (Gill and MacMillan, 2002), p 161.(There is no need to go into the precise gradation of functions and powers between committee of management or a board of visitors because the essential point here is that there was next to nothing in the way of either type of body.)
  116. DJ 93/182, quoted in A Keating, PhD, pp 224-6.
  117. According to the minutes of a discussion between the Inter-departmental Committee on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment Offenders and the Catholic Godparents Guild, 6th November 1963, (the Kennedy Committee being missing, we are using the evidence to the Inter-Departmental Committee):
  118. The Catholic Godparents Guild originated (1949) in personal contacts when Miss Wogan enlisted the aid of certain individuals in sending presents to industrial school children and it has preserved this personal, discriminatory approach to new membership. (In the first year of its existence it dropped 25 members who did not keep to the high standard set.)
  119. Furthermore, the Guild has now for the first time a surplus of potential godparents, and proposes to communicate with all industrial schools asking for the names of children. This move may enable it to interest more industrial school managers in the idea of the Guild and in the ideas of Visiting and After-Care Committees. Mr MacDaibhid [of the Department of Education] undertook to supply to Miss Fleming a list of all industrial schools. It was remarked that not all industrial schools cooperate with the Guild, but Mr JJ McCarthy was able to assure the representatives that most industrial school managers with whom the question of a Visiting Committee was raised had welcomed the idea.
  120. In view of the experience of the Galway Godparents Association one would suggest that there was an element of wishful thinking here.
  121. However, occasionally suggestions came from, for example.
  122. i) Irish Association of Civil Liberties. On 28th May 1963, the Association proposed that the Department should take advantage of the declining numbers in the 1960s, to widen the categories of children they took, in order not to break up families, for instance: ‘Cavan Senior Girls school is looking for permission to take boys, Rathdrum junior boys wants authority to take girls and Drogheda junior boys would like to keep their children until the age of eleven years.’
  123. ii) See, too, Knights of St Columbanus: letter to the Minister, 4th November 1966, complaining that Daingean residents were not eligible from free health services provided by the State and noting that the Knights took an interest in ‘after-care and improving amenities for the institution’.
  124. iii) Following a visit to Artane by the Junior Chamber Commerce, Junior Chamber, in a letter of 24th June 1966 offers the help of its membership equipping the boys ‘to take their place in society’: see fn 215 of Education Discovery, May 2006.
  125. iv) See also the following extract from the Incorporated Law Society’s (18th January 1971) response to the Kennedy Report:
  126. The Society’s committee was chaired by Cork Solicitor, John B Jermyn. ‘Full use should therefore be made of Organisations like Rotary and the Lions Club. These Bodies consist of representatives of all the Professions and Trades and would find little difficulty in placing any boy or girl on release from an Industrial School. Some years ago a Scheme was evolved with the Cork Rotary Club for such a purpose. The intention was that the Club would form a permanent standing Committee who would make contact through the Manager of Upton Industrial School with all boys aged 14 or 15. They would get to know them as intimately as possible and learn their capabilities so that when their 16th birthday arrived they would be employed immediately in a suitable position. The Committee would then continue to act in loco parentis to the children so placed and be available at all times to advise them and help them out of trouble. Unfortunately the Scheme was killed at birth because the then Manager of Upton Industrial School would not give it his blessing as he felt that it constituted a trespass on his own preserves.
  127. See the Department’s earlier brush-off on a memo submitted by the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers on Children in Institutions, dated 18th February 1955.
  128. As the members of the joint committee heartily endorse the view that a bad home is better than the best institution they obviously have very little sympathy with or appreciation of the excellent work being done in Irish orphanages and Industrial schools for the homeless or deprived child. Indeed the Joint committee would appear to have a strong prejudice against the system and in these circumstances it is difficult to see what contribution they can make to the problem beyond airing their prejudices against the existing system. I hold that while the system can never replace the good or moderately good home, it has a lot to recommend it.
  129. This paragraph draws on the detailed account in A Keating, pp 244-89. See also Keating ‘Marlborough House: A Case Study of State Neglect’ Studies Vol 93, No 371, p 325.
  130. Some of our children – a report on the residential care of the deprived child in Ireland, No 13, January 1966
  131. Mercier Press, 1967.
  132. God Squad, p 38.
  133. At para 20.
  134. M Osocpa’s memo of 4th April, 1951 states:
  135. Committals from Dublin City and County amount to between 30 to 40 per cent of the total committals; yet the accommodation of the schools in the Dublin Area (Artane and Carriglea – 1090) is only 34 per cent of the total accommodation for boys (3,229) and these two schools are required, in addition to giving vacancies for the Dublin committals, to cater for practically the rest of Leinster and the counties of Cavan and Monaghan.
  136. The Department shared the Managers assessment that many schools were ‘in danger of becoming uneconomic’ and accepted that as a consequence ‘the chances of modernising’ these schools became ‘increasingly remote’. One solution considered was the closure of the least economic schools and the transfer of their children to more viable schools, but it was accepted that it would be unfair to put children beyond the reach of those parents and relatives who visit them. See, too, letter of 19th March 1954, letter from Christian Brothers (A OhAulain) announcing closure of Carriglea and suggesting that distribution of former Carriglea residents should be sensitive to the location of their homes.
  137. A similar practice was to be reported in the case of a previous manager by the Tuairim Report (1966) 22 Some of Our Children: See, like effect O’Connor (1963); Kennedy, para 6.22 ; McQuaid (1971)]
  138. Department document Ref No 63/1937. See, to rather similar effect 7th June 1937 internal Departmental memo and letter from Mr Whelan to Deputy Secretary of Department ,14th September 1937 (116/37 DEI P0036).
  139. At p 79.
  140. At para 77.
  141. The Manager had to make a return to the Department annually, giving: the name of each child, the periods of leave, and the total number of days’ leave taken since above the limit of 31 days, the capitation grants would be affected.
  142. As early as 1929, it was noted in a Department of Education memo (Misc /56) that while the numbers of committals to Industrial and Reformatory Schools was somewhat higher than in Saorstat Eireann, the actual numbers in the schools was less because the British school managers were making ‘more and more use of their power of ‘licensing’ the children’.
  143. At pp 79-80.
  144. Table 14.
  145. Letter from M O’S to Assistant Secretary, 4th April 1951. It was also noted earlier that unless committals continued to increase, it was likely that Baltimore would have to close. In fact, Baltimore closed in 1950.
  146. 11th August, 1943. See also Daly, p 78 (see Report of Department of Education 1929-30, p 109.
  147. Minister T O’Deirg to Archbishop. McQuaid letters, 15th August, 23rd September 1944.
  148. On 4th April 1951, M O’S of Department wrote to the Assistant Secretary:
  149. Since 1945 there have on an average been 250 vacancies in the Boys’ Schools which tends to show that (i) the existing Industrial School accommodation for Senior Boys is adequate for the present conditions of comparatively full employment occasioned by the continuance of international tension and (2) with the improvement in the Social Welfare Services and general conditions (including housing) it is anticipated that less children will be committed to Industrial Schools on the grounds of poverty than heretofore. It must be remembered, however, that the incidence of the causes which leads to committals (unhappy marriages, poverty, illness or deaths of one or both parents, lack of control etc) is unpredictable and makes accurate forecasts of the number of committals very difficult.
  150. The Christian Brothers Managers Meeting of 12th January 1954 states:
  151. The question of the desirability of closing, for economic reasons, one of our Industrial Schools was discussed in detail and at length. It was mentioned that the Presentation Brothers were seriously considering the closing of Greenmount. [this actually occurred only in 1959] It was mentioned that His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin had expressed his preference for the smaller rather than the larger type of school. The Committee were of opinion that one of the schools should be closed but that the final decision should be left to the Provincial Council.
  152. Minutes of 28th April 1956 stated that: ‘it would be well, at least in order to shake up the Department, to propose that two of the Institutions (sic) should be closed’.’
  153. The St Joseph’s Industrial School, Greenmount Cork annals for February 1959 record:
  154. The decline in the number of boys being committed to Industrial Schools had become very marked in recent years. The certified capacity of the school was 235 but at this time there were only 131 boys in the school. The meagre grant from the Government of 45/- per boy per week (only comparatively recently increased from 30/-) which had to cover food, clothing maintenance, provision of staff, other than the teachers in the class-room, etc made it very impractical to run the school efficiently. The second Juniorate at Passage West had its serious setbacks too. These two factors influenced the Higher Superiors to make the decision to close St Joseph’s as an Industrial School and made the building available as a Juniorate instead of St Teresa’s, Passage.
  155. However Keogh (p 183) writes:
  156. There is another explanation for the decline in the numbers of the boys being sent to the school. According to Fr Good: ‘there were rumours after the events of 1955, the Church held an inquiry into allegations that two members of the Greenmount Community were involved in an abusive relationship with a number of boys.] Fr Good (Chaplain to Greenmount 1955-70) writes to the Commission on December 29, 2005) that Bishop Lucey had asked the sisters in Passage to ignore government transfer orders and keep the boys to their sixteenth birthday. They did so successfully, and the boys went to secondary or technical schools in Passage.’ Interview with Fr James Good, History Department, UCC Cork, December 2000. I have yet to seek confirmation of this view from the Sisters of Mercy.
  157. Sr Bernadette was in charge of the Boy’s Junior Industrial School, Passage West, Co Cork (recently deceased). Sr Bernadette told me that Bishop Lucey had come to her and directed her to tear up all transfers of boys from her school to Greenmount and Upton. These Government transfers took effect on the child’s tenth birthday. (providing them with the secondary/technical education) until their release from Industrial School care at age 16. This effectively closed both Greenmount and Upton in a relatively short time.
  158. J Coolahan Irish Education: history and structure (IPA, 1981), pp 194-95.