Chapter 3 — Society and the schools

Part 1 Social, economic and family background

Against this background of extreme poverty, some saw the Schools as no worse than anything else and as offering children at least adequate food and housing. The type of situation which might easily lead on to entry to an Industrial School is described in the Rotunda Hospital Annual Report for 1955: Mrs X was delivered of her fifth child in November, 1954. She was under the care of the Hospital for her four previous confinements in 1946, 1947 1952 and 1953. She is of low intelligence and has served several sentences in prison always on charges of stealing. Her husband is frequently unemployed. The family is almost constantly in debt. When a social science student visited the home, both gas and electricity had been cut off due to non-payment of accounts and arrears of rent amounted to £3. In early February, 1955 the new baby was brought to the Paediatric Unit and found to have gained no weight since birth and was in poor condition due to neglect. The child had to be admitted to Hospital forthwith.17

A newspaper report (source not given, in Lunney, at 93-9418) gives a graphic description of conditions in some Dublin homes under the heading of ‘Shocking Case of Neglect’, during the Second World War years. Miss Hannah Clarke, Inspector of the NSPCC gave evidence in court, stating that when she visited the one roomed home of this particular family in Dublin, she found three very neglected children in the room. The eldest girl was six years of age. They were alone. According to Miss Clarke: ‘Mary was dirty, her hair verminous and her clothes dirty and verminous. She was wearing old slippers. Margaret was in the same condition. Carmel was lying on a filthy bed. Her head was a moving mass of vermin. There was no food in the room and witness went to a shop and purchased bread, butter and milk for the children’s tea. The father stated that it was not his duty to clean the children while the mother admitted negligence but pleaded ill health. Both parents were sentenced to imprisonment. The report went on to state that in the opinion of the presiding justice, Mr Little, ‘the children should be sent to one of those admirable institutions, miscalled industrial schools, which were really boarding schools for the poor.

In the Rotunda Report for 1945-46 in the section on social services by the almoner, Miss Murphy, another case was summarised as follows: Mrs N developed phlebitis following her discharge from the wards on her seventh confinement and she was advised to rest in bed at home. We were asked to arrange for a district nurse to dress her leg. Her home consisted of one small attic room. There were holes in the floor, the walls were wet and plaster was falling off them. All water had to be carried up from the ground floor. Mrs N was in bed. The head of the bed was against the damp wall and beside an open window. As a result, the baby had developed a cold. Mrs N and her husband and five children – the eldest aged 6 & 12; years lived in this room and slept together on the only bed. In spite of the difficulties, the home was reasonably clean. Mr N, an unemployed cattle drover, was dependent on 18/4 unemployment assistance, 12/6 food vouchers and 5/- children’s allowance pr weekend and his rent was 10/-. Occasionally he obtained a day’s work and earned about £1. In addition the Society of St Vincent de Paul was giving him a food voucher value 4/- per week and the Catholic Social Service Food Centre was giving Mrs N dinner and milk every day. We applied at once to the Corporation Housing Department for accommodation for this family and seven months later they moved into a four-roomed corporation house.

In 1948, the maximum rate of unemployment assistance was 38 shillings per week. So, for a family with five children, the total income including children’s allowances would have been 45s 6d. The NSPCC Annual Report of the Dublin Branch 1947-48 stated: Allowing for a moderate rent of, say, 5 shillings per week, the amount available per head, viz, 5/9½ is well below the minimum necessary to provide food alone. ...It is true that in the worst cases the home assistance authorities sometimes intervene with an allowance for rent; but the total is still insufficient to provide proper nourishment for the children, to say nothing of clothing or bedding, much less for any less necessary amenities. It is a small wonder that some parents give up the unequal contest and apply for the committal of their children to industrial schools on the grounds of inability to support them, when, as we have so often pointed out, they cost the public funds 15/-a head.

The unemployment figures were as low as they were because of the emigration of thousands of fathers, throughout the 1950s especially, and the fact that many do not feature in these figures because they were trying to eke out a living on smallholdings of land.

Despite the valuable work done by private philanthropic organisations, like the Saint Vincent de Paul19 or the Catholic Social Welfare Fund or such local charities as the Marrowbone Lane Samaritan Fund, Evening Herald Boot Fund, Belvedere News Boys’ Club, Rotarians or the Penny Dinners, the long-term problem was so great that only State support could ameliorate it.

At independence, systematic State assistance to poor people was confined to two relevant20 supports. The first of these were the unpopular workhouses, which had been established in each Poor Law Union. Immediately after independence, in 1922, these were reorganised so that, in each county, there was one central institution, under the control of a local board of health. Between 1913-14 and 1924-25, the numbers of people, including some young children, living in these institutions declined by one-third (from 27,000 to 18,000).

The second form of assistance was originally known as ‘outdoor relief’ (so called, by contrast with the workhouses). After independence, outdoor relief was renamed home assistance and restrictions on its payment to able-bodied persons or widows with a single child were dropped. As a result, between 1920 and 1925, the numbers receiving outdoor relief/home assistance increased from 15,000 to 22,000, which was still a very small figure having regard to the level of need, with total annual expenditure going from £114,000 to £373,000. The 1937-38 annual report of the Dublin branch of the NSPCC pointed out that while the rate of home assistance for Dublin was adequate at 25 shillings per week for a family of five children, rates prevailing elsewhere, specifically in Wicklow and Kildare, at a maximum payment of 10 shillings per week, were insufficient. Home assistance took the form not only of money but also food, clothing and bedding. Another form that home assistance might take – free or low-cost footwear – bears directly on committal to Industrial Schools: for, to take an example, during a three-month period in 1944, the Dublin Corporation School Attendance Committee dealt with 480 cases of non-attendance and, in at least 80 cases, the reason given was that the children had no footwear in which to attend school.21 In 1939 the unemployment figure was at 100,000, with over 83,000 people in receipt of home assistance, of whom one-third resided in Dublin City or County).

During the relevant period three further welfare benefits were instituted. The first of these, provided under the Unemployment Assistance Act 1933 was unemployment benefit, that is (means-tested) relief of able-bodied men and women, during periods of temporary unemployment. Before the 1933 Act, only a relatively small proportion of the population had been eligible for unemployment benefit which was funded mainly by social insurance. This meant that generally it was confined to better-off working people. The rest, including all agricultural workers and smallholders many of them unemployed in all but name, had to rely on home assistance or the occasional emergency relief provisions provided out of central funds during periods of severe unemployment.

Secondly, the Committee of Inquiry into Widows’ and Orphans’ Pensions (1932-33) made recommendations that bore fruit rather quickly, in the form of the Widows’ and Orphans’ Pension Act 1935. This established pensions, on a contributory basis, for widows and orphans of wage earners; and also, on a non-contributory basis, for anyone in need.

But most significant of all in the present context was the children’s allowance, which was introduced in 1944. At the start, when it was confined to the third and subsequent children under 16, it benefited 320,000 children. This was not means tested, and provided a regular allowance, initially at the rate of 2s 6d per week. Dr Kennedy summarises the subsequent extension of the children’s allowance:22 Children’s allowances were extended to the second qualified child in July 1952, and to all qualified children from November 1963. Under the Social Welfare Act, 1973, the qualifying age for children’s allowance was raised to 18 years for children in full-time education, in apprenticeships, or disabled. The total number of families in receipt of children’s allowances has risen from 132,000 in 1944 to about 500,000 at present [2001].

When first introduced, children’s allowance cost the State £2¼ million. This was the equivalent of 1¼ percent of national income or a quarter of the amount spent on all the other welfare payments put together: old age pensions, widows’ and orphans’ pensions, unemployment insurance and assistance, workmen’s compensation, national health insurance and public assistance.

It is generally accepted that the decline in numbers in the Schools from the mid 1940s was partly due to children’s allowances and it is noteworthy that the numbers being committed to the Industrial Schools peaked in 1943, the year before they were introduced.

Children from the following socio-economic groups were more likely to end up in a certified school: 1)Low-income and large families 2)Single-parent families 3)Orphans 4)Mentally-ill children. 1) Low-income and large families

Children from the lower socio-economic groups were represented in disproportionately high numbers in the Schools. The reason for poverty or deprivation might be badly-paid, insecure employment, unemployment or the loss of a parent. The Kennedy Report, Appendix E, Table 31 (Committee’s survey) gives the following figures (as of 1968) for the occupations of residents’ fathers. The penultimate column gives the percentage for each occupation as their children were represented in the Schools. For comparison, the final column shows the percentage of each occupation in the general national population.

Father’s occupation	Industrial Schools	Reformatories
Boys’ Schools	Girls’ and junior boys’ Schools	Totals	Boys’ Schools	Girls’ Schools	Totals	Totals for Industrial Schools and Reformatories %	National %
Farmer	4	42	46				46	1.9%	28%
Higher professional		7	7				7	0.3%	2.5%
Lower professional		9	9				9	0.4%	3%
Employer/ manager		4	4				4	0.2%	1.5%
Commercial worker (eg agent)		12	12				12	0.5%	12%
Clerical worker	10	29	39	3			42	1.7%
Intermediate non manual worker	27	85	112	4	1	5	117	4.7%	9.5%
Skilled tradesman	44	118	162	6	1	7	169	6.8%	7%
Semi-skilled worker	34	122	156	12	5	17	173	7%	7%
Agricultural labourer	22	76	98	1	1	2	100	4%	9%
Non-skilled worker	43	268	311	27	3	30	341	13.8%	5.5%
Unemployed	39	169	208	16	-	16	224	9%	7.3
Disabled	6	67	73	5	1	6	79	3.2%
Itinerant	11	51	62	4	1	5	67	2.7%
‘In England’	10	71	81	4	-	4	85	3.4%
Occupation unknown	95	349	444	3	1	4	448	18.1%
No reply	306	203	509	20	24	44	553	22.3%
Totals	651	1,682	2,333	105	38		2476