137 entries for Sr Alida

Ringworm was more difficult to treat because there were abscesses on the children’s heads. Sr Alida said: They went to Steeven’s Hospital with those. In the hospital, first of all, they were drawing pus and the hair was stuck onto their heads, it was very nasty to describe. I think in Steevens’ Hospital they recommended cutting the hair and you had to take it off bit by bit to get the hair away ... Lotion was then applied to the scalp which killed the hairs and plaster was put on the head in strips, which was then pulled off and when they pulled off the plaster they pulled the roots of the hair out as well.

The next inspection took place on 27th January 1944 and she commented that the premises were ‘very well kept, clean and tidy’ and most areas were found to be ‘satisfactory’, but she found that the ‘children looked far from being neat and tidy’. She said that their clothes were ‘tattered and untidy’ and their blankets were ‘thin and worn’. The cause of the thinness of the blankets, according to Sr Alida, arose from the process of disinfecting them during the scabies outbreak in 1942. Dr McCabe recommended replacing the blankets and supplying each child with a toothbrush and for the dentist to visit every quarter. She also sought greater supervision of the younger children. In her evidence, Sr Alida said that it took years to replace the blankets and eventually they got seconds from Foxford Manufacturers.

Dr McCabe’s General Inspection Reports from 1948 until her retirement in 1963 were, without exception, very positive. Her reports during these years were not very detailed and were, in fact, quite repetitive in content. She frequently stated that the School was ‘well run’ and in some years remarked that it was ‘extremely well run’22 or ‘very well conducted’.23 She also commented in her reports that ‘many improvements had been made and continued to be made’ to the School.24 The exact nature of these improvements was not detailed in these reports. Throughout this time period, Dr McCabe singled out the Resident Manager for praise. In her General Inspection Report of January 1959 and 1960, she said ‘Sr Alida an excellent nun ... knows many things about running a good school’. Dr McCabe’s General Inspection Reports of 1963 referred to the fact that ‘Sr Venetia is now Res. Manager and is doing very well being a disciple of Sr Alida she is excellent’.

The severity of the problem tackled by Sr Bianca and Sr Alida disclosed evidence of severe neglect. The work undertaken by these two nuns was heavy and relentless and brought about immediate improvements to the School. The absence of reference to these problems in the Departmental Medical Reports discloses a weakness of the inspections.

Within seven years, standards in the school had plummeted. Sr Alida painted a grim picture of conditions in the internal national school. She recalled that, upon her arrival in 1942, there were only two untrained lay teachers responsible for educating 150 children of different ages and abilities. These two teachers were ill-equipped to deal with this workload.

Sr Alida testified that, when she arrived in Goldenbridge, there was a very poor standard of education in the School. There were only two untrained lay teachers, Ms Kearney and Ms Dempsey, whose duties were not limited to the classroom. Apart from being responsible for the education of the entire school, they also acted as carers to the children and were provided with board and lodgings in the School. Sr Alida stated that she did not know how they managed.

Both Sr Alida and Sr Bianca took up teaching positions in the school alongside Ms Kearney and Ms Dempsey, who at this point moved to lodgings outside the School. Sr Bianca had 10 years’ teaching experience behind her, and Sr Alida had none. Sr Alida had hoped to give up teaching and dedicate herself full-time to the care of the 150 children aged between four and 16. However, as she was a qualified teacher and there was a clear shortage of teachers in Goldenbridge, her teaching skills were too valuable to put to one side. Her principal role in the Institution was as a teacher and, even when she took over as Sister in Charge in 1954, she continued to teach full-time until she left. When asked whether she received any training or instruction in relation to how to deal with such large numbers of children, Sr Alida said she had received ‘none whatsoever. I think you had to use your own head’.

Only two of the classrooms appeared to be in use, the other two had clearly fallen into disuse, and one even lacked the most basic classroom equipment such as desks and benches. There was no roll book in use. Sr Bianca set about acquiring equipment for the classrooms in Goldenbridge. She also ordered playground equipment from England, and Sr Alida recalled swings, a merry-go-round and a drinking fountain being installed in the playground.

Sr Alida was adamant that she did the best she could to give the children a proper education: I did as good as I could to give the opportunities to children and given the best I could give for them in clothes, food and everything else and education. In between there must be many children who said to me today, "I didn’t get a chance." There is one who does say it, "I didn’t get an education”. ... Many of them got into assistant nursing and into children’s nursing. Our standard of education couldn’t be that bad. I am not saying it was first class or high, because the children coming in to us had experience of school before they came. Many came from non-school attendance. Our level –- we never had trouble with inspectors about the level of education in our schools.

Ms Kearney stated that she had been of a sunny disposition before starting in Goldenbridge, but that this changed as the years went by. Ms Kearney found her job more difficult after the arrival of Sr Bianca and Sr Alida. She noticed a deterioration in the attitude of the children, who became sullen and defiant. In her view, Goldenbridge was not a happy place, but she did the best she could in the circumstances.

One complainant who attended Goldenbridge in the 1950s stated that she left Goldenbridge without being able to write at the age of 14. She recalled: In Sr Alida’s class I know I was very stupid. I didn’t seem to be able to learn. All I know is that I was getting smacked, for being stupid I was getting smacked ... She would put me down in the corner ... but then I was so happy to be in the corner, because when you are in the corner you don’t have to learn.

Sr Alida spoke about the difficulty in choosing children to send to the external secondary school to progress their education: When secondary education became available in the local school I promoted one child once, four in the next set and then – looking back on it now it was difficult because there are people complaining that they weren’t chosen. It was very hard to know who you could pick, who was most entitled to, who would benefit most from it, and you had to try and give the advantage where possible. I did that to the best of my ability and people benefited from it in the ways that others did not.

Sr Alida said that there was a course in domestic economy training including cooking, sewing and laundry for girls over 13 years of age. They partook in this training in the afternoon, having spent the morning in school.

On chores, Sr Alida accepted that: It would be correct to say, and I only recently appreciated it, that all the caring in the house, when I say caring, the chores, the housekeeping jobs, were all done by big girls and remember we would have about 80 girls over 12 in the house ...

Chores included washing and dressing the younger children, sweeping and scrubbing the floors, caring for the babies, and working in the kitchen and the laundry. Sr Alida accepted that the chores could be difficult: In my early day the charges were quite difficult in the sense that it was maintaining the floors mainly around the house and dormitory, but particularly in the corridors and the kitchen. They were old tiled floors, black and red tiles, and they were worn with the hundred years of wear. They were horrible to work on. That was one of the biggest chores in the house because there were long corridors on the ground floor, the front door and the hall. The hall was new and modern but the rest was old.