Chapter 3 — Society and the schools

Part 5 Family links

In her evidence to the Commission, Sr Úna O’Neill of the Religious Sisters of Charity observed that there was nothing in place to give the impression that the visits of the parents to the children was a high priority ... I found no evidence of any expression of priority in terms of making sure that parents could visit their children.

A constructive development came in 1971 by way of Circular No 30/71 providing for free travel for parents visiting their children in a school. If they were medical card holders, both parents were allowed the expenses of up to four visits per year.

The operation of the scheme was delegated to School Managers and was extended gradually during the 1970s, culminating in a 1979 Circular broadening the free travel initiative to brothers and sisters.

Part 5 Family links

There are reports of siblings who were at the same school seeing each other only by accident or finding out later that the two had been at the same school at the same time. Here the school authorities must have known and failed to put the two in communication.

Internal memoranda show that the Department was aware of the danger of siblings losing contact with eachother and attempted to do something about it:79 It is the settled policy of this Department to do everything possible to maintain and encourage family ties where it is in the children’s interest to do so. The selection of a school is a matter for the committing justice in the first instance but the Department subsequently does all in its power to arrange transfers, as far as possible, to schools near the children’s homes, and to have members of the same family detained in the same school. Unfortunately, these post-committal adjustments are not always possible and, in any case, only touch the fringe of the problem.

Transfer orders were sometimes made by the Department in order to keep a family in the same School. Lunney80 writes after a study of entry registers in Sisters of Mercy Schools for the period 1869-1950, that: the admission registers of the Schools indicate that the Managers had a policy of keeping sisters together even if some had to be admitted in excess of the certified limit. For instance, the manager of Goldenbridge School in Dublin often arranged for the transfer of a child from St George’s Industrial School in Limerick to Goldenbridge so that she could be with her younger sister.

The probability is that practice and attitudes varied from one school or from one Manager to another.

Home leave was a matter for the School authorities to arrange in accordance with rules laid down by the Department. The maximum home leave allowed each year was seven days, until 1935 when it was extended to 14 days. Following a recommendation in the Cussen Report81 the maximum period was extended, in 1944, to 21 days, and then to 31 days, in 1948.

Generally, the Schools opposed leave.82 A letter from the Resident Managers Association to the Department of Education of 7th June 1949, responding to a proposal, which was not adopted, to extend home leave to six weeks, stated that 37 of the 44 Schools who replied were opposed to the increase: It was pointed out that when the children return from Home Leave there is always a marked disimprovement in manners and conduct; they are often very discontented. All this is highly detrimental to the general spirit of the School, and it takes the children quite a long time to settle down again to the ordinary routine. Numbers of them return ill fed and sickly, in an unkempt condition, with clothes in a filthy condition. It takes weeks to get rid of the vermin. Sometimes their language is vile. Industrial School children generally belong to the poorest families and the home conditions are often most unsuitable and undesirable... A high percentage of these children are illegitimate and the mothers are not just what they should be; others have been the victims of circumstances getting into trouble because parents or guardians failed to exercise proper control... It was also said that children who could with safety be allowed six weeks Home Leave should not be in any Industrial School; they should be discharged to their homes and not allowed to be living on public money.

This debate concerned only the maximum leave permitted, which was rather theoretical, since each Manager had discretion to allow home leave up to the maximum specified by the Department. As regards how much leave was actually granted, in a Departmental minute of 11th April 1949 it was stated: An analysis of the Home Leave Returns for 1948, has been made and it has been ascertained that, of the 10 Senior Boys Industrial Schools, only one (Tralee) allowed all the boys who were given holidays, leave for the full period (31 days). Of the remaining five Christian Brothers Schools – Artane gave a maximum of 21 days, Carriglea 21, Letterfrack, 21 (1 boy, 29 days) Salthill, 28 and Glin, 28. In the other Senior Boys Schools, the maximum period allowed was Baltimore, 18 days (1 boy 20); Clonmel, 30; Greenmount, 26; and Upton, 29. In Upton 46 boys got 21 days, 52, 29 days and 20, 8 days.

Of the 35 girls’ schools, 10 allowed some of the children sent home on holidays the full period (31 days). The other children in these and the remaining Industrial Schools for girls were sent home for an average per child of about 22 days.

Approximately 2,600 children out of an average number of nearly 6,300 children, or about 41 percent under detention, were allowed home on holidays at all during 1948. The reasons why a great number of children were not sent on holidays were given as: 1) unsuitable parents or relatives; 2) unsuitable homes; 3) no parents or relatives; 4) no homes to which they could be sent; 5) inability or unwillingness of parents or relatives to take charge of the children even for a holiday.

In 1960, in an internal departmental survey, it was reported that one-third of detained children were given home leave each year for a period not exceeding 31 days.

Apart from early discharge by the Minister, there were other ways in which a resident might leave a School early. Theoretically, the most promising of these was release by the Manager on licence under section 67 of the 1908 Act (as amended by section 13 of the 1941 Act).83 This provision allowed the Manager of either type of school to ‘licence out’ a child or young person to live with a named ‘trustworthy and respectable person’. Thus a gradual assimilation of the child into society could have been effected.

But at no period does licensing appear to have been given a fair trial. Barnes notes84 that in 1884 the Aberdare Commission [into reformatory and Industrial Schools in Britain and Ireland] found that managers were not using the licensing system extensively enough. Nearly a century later, Kennedy85 found that only 32 out of 2,476 children had been licensed, and commented: the licensing system is being used only in very rare cases. This may in some instances be due to the difficulties which managers experience in contacting, without the aid of an aftercare service, suitable persons to accept the child or it may be due to a reluctance to release a child and suffer a reduction in the capitation fee payable to a school. Whatever the reason, it is obviously regrettable that the licensing system is not used more extensively.