194 entries for Dr Anna McCabe

Dr Anna McCabe carried out General and Medical Inspections of Artane between 1939 and 1963. Before she resigned from her position in 1965, she prepared a report on the industrial and reformatory schools system in Ireland dated 29th February 1964, in which she made specific reference to Artane. Although critical of specific aspects of care in Artane, Dr McCabe was complimentary of the overall management of the Institution. She regarded the School as very well run, and described the boys as healthy and well looked after. She was satisfied with the medical care available to the School, which she noted involved weekly visits from a GP and regular attendances by a dentist.

In 1946, Br Tyce wrote to Dr McCabe on behalf of the Disciplinarian, requesting permission for the height and weight of the boys to be measured every six months rather than every three months as ‘it is very troublesome here on account of the very large number of boys; and it affects the different departments of the Institution’. He received a terse response from Dr McCabe dismissing the proposal. By 1948, Dr McCabe noted with satisfaction that the medical records were well kept.

Dr McCabe reported her complete satisfaction with the medical facilities, treatment and monitoring provided in Artane. She referred to her own regular medical and general inspections and medical checks carried out every two years by the local authority. She commended the hygiene and said that the boys’ diet was very good. The dormitories were ‘large, airy spacious and very well maintained’. Dr McCabe concluded: I would also wish to state that there is a most pleasant relationship between the Brothers and their care and I have never met with any fear on the boy’s behalf of those in charge of them.

Before Dr Anna McCabe retired from her position as Medical Inspector, she furnished a General Report on Industrial and Reformatory Schools dated 29th February 1964. She made specific reference to Fr Moore’s report, and stated that she was in substantial agreement with most of its contents. However, she rejected outright his findings regarding the boys’ clothing, diet and medical facilities available in the School, and she complimented Br Ourson on his management and attributed many improvements to his intervention.

Dr McCabe reported that the food was slightly improved in 1957 although ‘much remains to be done – old archaic system still in use for cooking – very poor facilities, no modern equipment’. Again she made a general observation: Well conducted school on the whole – I would really like to see a number of improvements here – clothing, living conditions and cooking arrangements. I have often made suggestions but each time I feel up against a stone wall as always I am told – increase the grant – give more money and of course I realise their difficulties – but all the same I will have to insist on better conditions for the boys. Br Ruffe the Resident Manager is very argumentative and difficult to persuade.

In 1957 and 1958 the Congregation Visitor reported that the boys’ food had improved since Br Delmont,60 who was interested in his work and did his best to provide good meals to the boys, had taken over the kitchen. Dr McCabe was pleased to see in 1958 that an Aga and new steam boiler had been installed in the kitchen.

Dr McCabe was in complete agreement with the Resident Manager that the food was ‘plentiful, fresh and wholesome’ and, in a handwritten note to the Inspector, she stated that she did not agree with the statement made by the mother about the food served.

The 1954 decision of the Provincial, taken in the face of opposition by both the Department of Education and District Justice McCarthy, was ill-considered and detrimental to the welfare of the boys in Letterfrack. If it was desirable to restrict admission to Letterfrack to a specific category of boys, it was unreasonable and contrary to policy to retain a substantial number of boys from previous intakes who were outside that category. By insisting that increases in grants had to be applied equally to all schools, smaller institutions like Letterfrack were at a serious disadvantage. It required extra funding to compensate for the low numbers after 1954 but no special case was made. It was an indictment of the Congregation that extra funding promised to the Resident Manager to compensate for the removal of up to 100 pupils was refused at a time when funds were available. The deprivation of funds caused hardship to the boys in Letterfrack. The decision to close Carriglea as an industrial school and to keep Letterfrack open was not taken in the interests of the children in Letterfrack. The unsuitability of Letterfrack as an industrial school was apparent from the start and was strongly reiterated by District Justices and by the Department of Education. The will of the Provincial prevailed, however, and it is an example of the power the Christian Brothers had in determining the direction the industrial school system took. From the comments in her Inspection Reports, Dr McCabe believed that low standards were the inevitable consequences of inadequate funding. However, when this issue was raised in public in 1959, neither the Department nor the Congregation acknowledged the difficulties but were at pains to paint a rosy picture of life in Letterfrack. The argument put forward by the Congregation in its Opening Statement, that the care the boys received in Letterfrack was better than they would have received if they had remained in their families, misses the point. The Congregation was paid by the State to care for these boys to a standard set down by law, and failed to do so.

Dr Anna McCabe4 visited the School in 1940 and had noticed in the infirmary that there was bruising on many of the girls’ bodies. In her letter of 12th February 1940 to the Reverend Mother of the School, Sr Lucia, she stated: I was not satisfied in finding so many of the girls in the Infirmary suffering from bruises on their bodies. I wish particularly to draw attention to the latter as under no circumstances can the Department tolerate treatment of this nature and you being responsible for the care of these children will have some difficulty in avoiding censure.

The discovery contained no response to this letter, suggesting no reply was written by the Reverend Mother. The Sisters of Mercy contended that the letter of 12th February 1940 from Dr McCabe had not in fact been sent, as no such letter was found in their archive. The Congregation also said that it had been unaware of these allegations of neglect until these documents were furnished to it by the Commission as part of the discovery process in 2004. It acknowledged, once it had seen these documents, that it was ‘deeply disturbed’ and it accepted the negative reports of the Department.

Four of the 13 Sisters who submitted witness statements were in Newtownforbes serving as postulants in the early 1940s, the time when Dr Anna McCabe was highly critical of the Institution. Yet, each of these nuns claimed that the children were well cared for. It is impossible to reconcile these Sisters’ memories of Newtownforbes with the documented material. The repetition of the words ‘corporal punishment was used only as correction for misbehaviour’ was formulaic and defensive and tended to undermine the independence of the statements.

The picture of the School that emerges from the Department’s records is one of serious neglect in the early years under review. A letter dated 12th February 1940 to the Resident Manager of the School from the Department’s Medical Inspector, Dr Anna McCabe, reveals the appalling neglect of the children. In this letter, Dr McCabe expressed her disappointment at the ‘lack of supervision’ in the School and, more importantly, her dismay at the filthy dirty condition of the children: I cannot find any excuse which would exonerate you and your staff from the verminous condition of several of the children’s heads.

Dr McCabe was highly critical ‘in finding so many of the girls in the Infirmary suffering from bruises on their bodies’, stating, ‘under no circumstances can the Department tolerate treatment of this nature and you being responsible for the care of these children will have some difficulty in avoiding censure’.

It is strange that conditions had deteriorated so rapidly in just 10 months because, in April 1939, when Dr McCabe had visited the School, she found it to be in ‘a clean healthy state’ and the food, she noted, ‘was of very good quality’.

By 1944, conditions had deteriorated yet again in the School. When Dr McCabe visited the School on 15th June 1944 she wrote, ‘I regret to state that this school has gone back since my last inspection’.