2 entries for Br Gardiner

This was not the first complaint that had been made against Br Perryn in respect of his use of excessive corporal punishment. In April 1917, the Sub-Superior of Letterfrack, Br Gardiner,9 wrote to the Superior complaining of Br Perryn’s ‘notorious’ severity towards the boys: Last Autumn I complained of Br Perryn’s harsh and cruel treatment, and now he still continues along the same lines. About a month ago he took a boy out of bed at near 10 o’clock at night and punished him in the lavatory in his night-shirt, and that because the boy took a pinch of salt out of the salt box on the table in the boy’s kitchen. About a week after he did the same to another boy who took a potato off the table in the boy’s kitchen and on last Thursday night, about 10 o’clock, he did the same to another boy for calling him names! In each case he acted on the report of another boy ... I stood and counted 27 slaps given in the space of about five minutes to some juniors in the knitting room. He uses a rod also and strikes them on the legs and I have been told uses it wildly and wantonly as if for sport sometimes ... His severity in the knitting room is notorious – and the more so to be deplored as many of the young children are delicate and their hands are sore, chilblains being prevalent among them.

Br Perryn was described as being stern and distant and notoriously severe by Br Gardiner, another Brother in the Letterfrack Community, in a letter to the Br Superior dated 3rd April 1917.