10,992 entries for Inspections - State
BackThe Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 brought the administration of the public assistance services formally into the Irish Free State. It provided that in each county one workhouse building should be retained as a ‘county home’ in which all the non-medical inmates in the county were lodged. In the clinical language of a 1920s Report on the County Homes, there were approximately: 11,000 itinerant beggars who moved from workhouse to workhouse; a delinquent element, including prostitutes and young criminals, often the product of an earlier workhouse upbringing; a large group of infirm old people no longer able to care for themselves; so-called idiots and imbeciles, mentally handicapped people for whom there was as yet no special public provision; lunatics unable to secure admission to the overcrowded district lunatic asylums; unmarried mothers and their so called illegitimate children; rejects of a disapproving society; and orphaned and abandoned children.26
At independence, the only places that would receive unmarried mothers were the workhouses/county homes. In 1926, there were over a thousand unmarried mothers with their babies in county homes; by 1950, there were still over 800 children in county homes, but by 1966 only 53. The children remained for one or two years.
The undesirability of having mothers and their infants in the county homes was recognised and in the 1920s and 30s the policy was implemented of providing ‘mother and baby’ homes for unmarried women who were having children for the first time. These were reserved for young mothers who had ‘fallen’ once only and thus were likely to be ‘influenced towards a useful and respectable life’27 (leaving those unmarried mothers pregnant for the second or later time to the county homes). As can be seen from Table 5.5, from the 1930s to the 1950s, there were more than 800 children in mother and baby homes, but none by 1960.
The usual practice in a county home or mother and baby home was for the mother and her child to remain for one or two years, while the mother carried out domestic labour working to pay off their keep and (possibly) to make another lapse unlikely. After that period the child was boarded out28; or adopted (informally or when the Adoption Act 1952 came into force, legally) or sent to a junior Industrial School. By the 1960s, it was also becoming more common for children to be taken by their parents.
According to a Health Circular of 1954, there were 43 Schools and institutions approved by the Minister for Health. One was also a Reformatory (St Anne’s, Kilmacud) and 30 were also Industrial Schools, leaving 12 that were neither Industrial Schools nor Reformatories and thus not available for committals through the courts.
By 196929 there were 18 institutions approved by the Minister for Health which were not also certified schools. These institutions accommodated (in the 16 homes that responded to the Kennedy questionnaire) just over 700 residents (aged 0-2 years: 278; 2-14: 328; 14-18:73).
Kennedy30 showed the distribution of children in the schools with relatively few below the age of six and observed that the figures seemed to suggest that a large number of pre-school children were accommodated in homes and institutions other than Industrial Schools.
Historically, by the 1850s, the majority of orphanages had been taken over by local religious congregations. Their funding came from relations of the children in the orphanages or other private sources such as endowments or charity sermons. In addition, boarding out was phased out and the orphanages became exclusively institutional. A number of these orphanages were certified as Industrial Schools under the Industrial Schools Act 1868. However a majority remained outside the State-subsidised scheme of institutional child welfare and a very few new orphanages were established in the twentieth century. These institutions were officially referred to as ‘voluntary homes’ because they were not State funded. In popular jargon, they remained ‘orphanages’.31 but in many cases the residents were not orphans but simply children whose families were in crisis of one sort or another.
There was no State control, monitoring or supervision of such voluntary homes32 and consequently no central source of information about them.33 Children were admitted on a voluntary basis. The homes were not certified to receive children committed through the courts. They had considerably more freedom of administration and organisation than did the certified schools and could exercise more flexibility in admission and discharge. They were thought of broadly as institutions for the middle classes34 and this was often indicated in their advertising.
The average length of a resident’s stay in an orphanage was shorter than that in an Industrial School.
Thirteen of these Homes were run by religious Orders, the others by committees or private individuals. Two were for short-stay children. The Tuairim Report35 found: The Homes’ relative independence makes it possible for the private Homes to develop in different ways from the certified schools. Many of them have evolved a ‘family’ system, and in most children have fewer restrictions on their freedom than children in certified schools. These are some of the quotations from responses to our questionnaires: ‘As far as feasible, I try to make it as much like a home as can be. There is a minimum of regimentation and the boys have much the same freedom as boys who live at home with their parents’. ‘We try to have our Home as like an ordinary Home as possible’. Our own impression of the Homes we visited endorse these statements ... Only one of these Homes does not send at least some boys to an outside school for tuition. Boys, in particular seemed to have greater educational opportunities than those in certified schools. The manager maintains close personal contact with the surviving parents or guardians of the children and very frequently the parents contribute something towards the child’s maintenance. By paying something the parents feel their responsibility and fulfil their duty to the best of their ability.
The Kennedy Committee36 has the following information.<br><table><colgroup><col></col><col></col><col></col><col></col><col></col><col></col></colgroup><thead><tr><th><strong>Number of voluntary homes contacted</strong></th>
 <th><strong>Number replying</strong></th>
 <th><strong>Numbers in various age groups</strong></th>
 </tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td>
 <td></td>
 <td><strong>0-2 Years</strong></td>
 <td><strong>2-14</strong><br></br><strong>Years</strong></td>
 <td><strong>14-18</strong><br></br><strong>Years</strong></td>
 <td><strong>Total</strong></td>
 </tr><tr><td>24</td>
 <td>20</td>
 <td>66</td>
 <td>571</td>
 <td>365</td>
 <td>992</td>
 </tr></tbody></table>
The last Protestant Industrial School closed in 1917 so the only institution to which a child could be committed was Marlborough House. Children who came before the courts were usually entrusted, through the local Gardaí, to the care of the local clergyman or minister of religion concerned and he assumed responsibility for having them placed in the care of a suitable family, school or home.37
In regard to children who were not committed by the courts but needed to be in care, many of the Protestant homes situated in the State were closed or amalgamated. Although the numbers of children for which the remaining homes had to provide was greatly reduced, so, were the sources of their finance. Sometimes, the closing of a home or sale of a redundant building resulted in the creation of a fund which was applied for the support of children in the remaining homes or in ordinary boarding schools. Money from these and other charities was used to assist needy parents to keep their children at home, each diocese having its Protestant Orphan Society, which made such grants. Dr Barnardo’s Homes also provide grants for Protestant orphans living in Ireland. Another relevant factor is that there was a waiting list of would–be adopters.
The size of the schools’ population reflected the fluctuations in economic conditions. After independence, in 1924 the total population of all the Industrial Schools and Reformatories was 5,192. This figure remained steady in the 1920s and 30s. Then it rose to a peak of 6,979 in 1946-47. After the high point of the 1940s, the population declined gradually in the 1950s and more steeply in the 1960s and 70s.