453 entries for St. Joseph's Industrial School, Ferryhouse

The Rosminians also concede that other practices were used to try to stop bed-wetting. The boys were required to wash their own sheets each morning. They would have to take their wet sheets down from the dormitory to the laundry, wash them and then hang them up to dry. In the evening, they would have to collect their own sheets and return them to the dormitory. This practice continued until a new Prefect arranged for the sheets to be washed by a housekeeper. The boys still had to bring down their wet sheets to the laundry room, and that continued to mark them out and humiliate them.

Two further humiliating practices existed for boys who wet the bed. The Rosminians admitted that ‘a very demeaning practice developed for a short time of making boys with enuresis wear a short skirt for a period of a day or two’.

Another practice also developed, whereby bed-wetters would be required to walk around the schoolyard with a mattress above their heads.

It was put to Fr O’Reilly that bed-wetting seemed to have been treated as a problem of discipline, even though it was probably the least subject to discipline. He replied: I would have to agree with you. You know, if a child has a difficulty in that area and is upset, obviously you are going to increase the problem by drawing even more and more attention to it and certainly by punishing the child or by causing the child to be even more afraid than he was.

However, he again added, ‘I don’t know that children were habitually punished for wetting the bed’.

The question of whether bed-wetting was routinely punished was fully answered in the evidence given to the Investigation Committee at the private hearings.

One of the Prefects in charge of the dormitory, Br Ignacio,13 told the Committee: [The top dormitory] was divided into two, they were all the wet beds, as we call them, there on one side, and then the rest of the boys on the other ... When I went there I always thought they were punished ... Which I didn’t agree really, but as it before I went and it was well before I went there, I wasn’t the one to stop the discipline. Hard as it was for me to administer a couple of slaps for each boy ... They were punished every day if they wet the bed ... They went down with their sheets ... to dry them below where the heating for the showers were ...

He added, ‘That is the way it was when I went in there. Boys [who wet the bed] were always slapped ... one in each hand ... before they went to bed the next night’.

He went on to say that he had never agreed with punishing the boys, because ‘some boys I know didn’t do it purposely, just in their sleep they wet the bed, they couldn’t be accountable for that’. However, he added ‘That was the case when I became Prefect and I didn’t discontinue that’.

He was then asked how the boys should have been treated. He replied: If I know what I know now, I wouldn’t have administered punishment at all, but I was young at the time and that is the way it was handed down from Prefect to Prefect during all the course of the years.

He went on to advance the bizarre proposition that some boys deliberately wet their beds, ‘I knew some fellows didn’t mean it, just did it in their sleep ... but there could be others there who didn’t ... I couldn’t distinguish’. It was put to him that he was therefore punishing them all in case one boy deliberately wet the bed. He knew that some of the boys could not help wetting the bed and it was not their fault but, at the same time, he felt that some of them deliberately wet the bed and, as he could not distinguish between them, he punished all who wet the bed. He replied, ‘Exactly, yes and two slaps would not hurt anyone, never, you know’.

He then said, ‘I am very sorry for it, very sorry for having done that indeed’.

His counsel apologised on his behalf to a complainant who had been beaten for wetting the bed. He told him: Br Ignacio does not and will not in his evidence seek to justify the administration of corporal punishment to bed-wetters in an effort to deter bed-wetting. He accepts there is no justification ... for the administration of corporal punishment to people who wet the bed in the hope or expectation of deterring them from wetting the bed in the future ... Br Ignacio now accepts this was a stupid thing to be doing if he wanted kids to stop wetting the bed ... Br Ignacio will say in evidence that the Prefect that he replaced when he took over as Prefect ... and the Prefect who succeeded him ... administered corporal punishment to the bed-wetters ... he accepts now it was entirely wrong.

The Prefect himself apologised again, and the conflict between his own beliefs and feelings about how to treat the children and the requirements of his duty to follow the rules and tradition of the Institution fully emerged: There was one thing I do regret is having to punish the boys who wet the bed. That was all. That was the biggest, or should I say ... the worst and I couldn’t bear to do that and still it was the done thing, give a couple of slaps on the hand and it was against my nature to do that...I didn’t want to do that at all although it was done the whole time, years and years before I went there and that was done all the time and that was the, how shall I say, the order of the time....It was against my nature altogether to do that because I knew very well some of them couldn’t help it but it was the done thing like. I couldn’t very well be the one to stop that, because I would be the worst in the world. You might have the whole lot of them wetting it after a while.

He found it impossible to break with the School’s precedents and tradition. Beating boys to stop them wetting the bed was acknowledged to be ‘a stupid thing to be doing’ because it was ineffective and did not stop the wetting. Indeed, it may have made bed-wetting worse. The practice of beating them, however, ‘was handed down from Prefect to Prefect during all the course of the years’, and the Prefect felt he was powerless to stop it, even though it was cruel and pointless. As in many institutions, tradition outweighed reason. Evidence on bed-wetting from former residents