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Chapter 3 — Society and the schools

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Part 2 Other institutions for children in care

47

The usual practice in a county home or mother and baby home was for the mother and her child to remain for one or two years, while the mother carried out domestic labour working to pay off their keep and (possibly) to make another lapse unlikely. After that period the child was boarded out28; or adopted (informally or when the Adoption Act 1952 came into force, legally) or sent to a junior Industrial School. By the 1960s, it was also becoming more common for children to be taken by their parents.

48

According to a Health Circular of 1954, there were 43 Schools and institutions approved by the Minister for Health. One was also a Reformatory (St Anne’s, Kilmacud) and 30 were also Industrial Schools, leaving 12 that were neither Industrial Schools nor Reformatories and thus not available for committals through the courts.

49

By 196929 there were 18 institutions approved by the Minister for Health which were not also certified schools. These institutions accommodated (in the 16 homes that responded to the Kennedy questionnaire) just over 700 residents (aged 0-2 years: 278; 2-14: 328; 14-18:73).

50

Kennedy30 showed the distribution of children in the schools with relatively few below the age of six and observed that the figures seemed to suggest that a large number of pre-school children were accommodated in homes and institutions other than Industrial Schools.

51

Historically, by the 1850s, the majority of orphanages had been taken over by local religious congregations. Their funding came from relations of the children in the orphanages or other private sources such as endowments or charity sermons. In addition, boarding out was phased out and the orphanages became exclusively institutional. A number of these orphanages were certified as Industrial Schools under the Industrial Schools Act 1868. However a majority remained outside the State-subsidised scheme of institutional child welfare and a very few new orphanages were established in the twentieth century. These institutions were officially referred to as ‘voluntary homes’ because they were not State funded. In popular jargon, they remained ‘orphanages’.31 but in many cases the residents were not orphans but simply children whose families were in crisis of one sort or another.

52

There was no State control, monitoring or supervision of such voluntary homes32 and consequently no central source of information about them.33 Children were admitted on a voluntary basis. The homes were not certified to receive children committed through the courts. They had considerably more freedom of administration and organisation than did the certified schools and could exercise more flexibility in admission and discharge. They were thought of broadly as institutions for the middle classes34 and this was often indicated in their advertising.

53

The average length of a resident’s stay in an orphanage was shorter than that in an Industrial School.

54

Thirteen of these Homes were run by religious Orders, the others by committees or private individuals. Two were for short-stay children. The Tuairim Report35 found: The Homes’ relative independence makes it possible for the private Homes to develop in different ways from the certified schools. Many of them have evolved a ‘family’ system, and in most children have fewer restrictions on their freedom than children in certified schools. These are some of the quotations from responses to our questionnaires: ‘As far as feasible, I try to make it as much like a home as can be. There is a minimum of regimentation and the boys have much the same freedom as boys who live at home with their parents’. ‘We try to have our Home as like an ordinary Home as possible’. Our own impression of the Homes we visited endorse these statements ... Only one of these Homes does not send at least some boys to an outside school for tuition. Boys, in particular seemed to have greater educational opportunities than those in certified schools. The manager maintains close personal contact with the surviving parents or guardians of the children and very frequently the parents contribute something towards the child’s maintenance. By paying something the parents feel their responsibility and fulfil their duty to the best of their ability.

55

The Kennedy Committee36 has the following information.
Number of voluntary homes contacted Number replying Numbers in various age groups
0-2 Years 2-14

Years		 14-18

Years		 Total
24 20 66 571 365 992

56

The last Protestant Industrial School closed in 1917 so the only institution to which a child could be committed was Marlborough House. Children who came before the courts were usually entrusted, through the local Gardaí, to the care of the local clergyman or minister of religion concerned and he assumed responsibility for having them placed in the care of a suitable family, school or home.37

57

In regard to children who were not committed by the courts but needed to be in care, many of the Protestant homes situated in the State were closed or amalgamated. Although the numbers of children for which the remaining homes had to provide was greatly reduced, so, were the sources of their finance. Sometimes, the closing of a home or sale of a redundant building resulted in the creation of a fund which was applied for the support of children in the remaining homes or in ordinary boarding schools. Money from these and other charities was used to assist needy parents to keep their children at home, each diocese having its Protestant Orphan Society, which made such grants. Dr Barnardo’s Homes also provide grants for Protestant orphans living in Ireland. Another relevant factor is that there was a waiting list of would–be adopters.

Part 3 Facts and figures

58

The size of the schools’ population reflected the fluctuations in economic conditions. After independence, in 1924 the total population of all the Industrial Schools and Reformatories was 5,192. This figure remained steady in the 1920s and 30s. Then it rose to a peak of 6,979 in 1946-47. After the high point of the 1940s, the population declined gradually in the 1950s and more steeply in the 1960s and 70s.

59

The reasons for the reduction from the peak in the 1940s included the introduction of children allowances in 1944, the Adoption Act 1952 and the rising tide of the economy from the mid/late 1950s that lifted all boats. In addition, from the 1950s on and quickening in the 1960s, the courts displayed a greater reluctance to send children away for long periods and when they did do so it was only for shorter terms.

60

While the numbers committed by the courts fell in the 1960s, there was an increase in those placed by local authorities. A possible explanation is that there is an irreducible minimum number of children in the community who require alternative care to that of their own families and that this number was gradually increasing because of a growing population, particularly in the larger urban centres.
School Accommodation Limit Order Date closed**
Senior boys Schools
Artane, Dublin 830 Christian Brothers 1969-70
Baltimore, County Cork 170 Order of Charity 1950
Greenmount, County Cork 235 Presentation Brothers 1959
Upton, County Cork 300 Rosminians 1967
Killybegs, County Donegal 144 Order of Charity 1950
Carriglea, County Dublin 260 Christian Brothers 1954
Letterfrack, County Galway 190 Christian Brothers
Salthill, County Galway 208 Christian Brothers
Tralee, County Kerry 150 Christian Brothers 1970
Glin, County Limerick 214 Christian Brothers 1967
Clonmel, County Tipperary 200 Rosminians
Junior boys Schools
Passage West, County Cork 80 Sisters of Mercy
St Patrick’s, Kilkenny 186 Sisters of Mercy 1967
Drogheda, County Louth 150 Sisters of Charity of St V de P
Cappoquin, County Waterford 75 Sisters of Mercy
Rathdrum, County Wicklow * 100 Sisters of Mercy
Girls Schools
Cavan 100 Poor Clares 1967
Ennis, County Clare 110 Sisters of Mercy 1964
Clonakilty, County Cork 180 Sisters of Mercy 1965
Cobh, County Cork 60 Sisters of Mercy
Kinsale, County Cork 180 Sisters of Mercy
Mallow, County Cork 80 Sisters of Mercy
St Finbarr’s, Cork 200 Good Shepherd Sisters
Booterstown, County Dublin 96 Sisters of Mercy
Goldenbridge, County Dublin* 150 Sisters of Mercy
Lakelands, Sandymount, Dublin * 110 Sisters of Charity
High Park, Dublin 100 Charity of Refuge
Ballinasloe, County Galway 100 Sisters of Mercy 1968
Clifden, County Galway* 120 Sisters of Mercy
Lenaboy, County Galway* 88
Loughrea, County Galway 100 Sisters of Mercy 1967
Tralee, County Kerry* 85 Sisters of Mercy
St Joseph’s Kilkenny* 126 Sisters of Charity
St George’s Limerick 170 Good Shepherd Sisters
St Vincent’s, Limerick 180 Sisters of Mercy
Newtownforbes, County Longford 240 Sisters of Mercy 1970
Dundalk, County Louth 100 Sisters of Mercy
Westport, County Mayo 117 Sisters of Mercy
Monaghan (moved to Bundoran, County Donegal in 1958) 140 St Louis Sisters 1966
Ballaghadereen, County Roscommon 90 Sisters of Charity 1969
Birr, County Offaly 100 Sisters of Mercy 1963
Summerhill, Athlone 200 Sisters of Mercy 1964
Benada Abbey, Ballymote, County Sligo 106 Sisters of Charity
Sligo 200 Sisters of Mercy 1958
Cashel, County Tipperary 125 Presentation Sisters 1969
Dundrum, County Tipperary 80 Presentation Sisters
Templemore, County Tipperary 70 Sisters of Mercy 1965
Waterford 200 Good Shepherd Sisters
Moate, County Westmeath * 74 Sisters of Mercy
New Ross, County Wexford 100 Good Shepherd Sisters 1968
Wexford 146 Sisters of Mercy
Mixed Schools
Killarney, County Kerry * 138 Sisters of Mercy

61

At independence, there were four Reformatories in the Irish Free State and one in Northern Ireland. However by 1927, the number had fallen to two. St Joseph’s Reformatory in Limerick was for girls and was run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. The other was St Conleth’s for Boys at Daingean, Offaly, run by the Oblates. During the years 1934-41, Daingean was temporarily closed and the residents transferred back to Glencree, which had been Daingean’s predecessor. In 1974, Daingean closed, to be replaced by Scoil Ard Mhuire in Lusk,39 which was initially run by the Oblates but later transferred to the direct administration of the Department of Education.

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.