2,143 entries for Witness Testimony

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.

A complainant who was in Goldenbridge during the 1950s and early 1960s told of the chores she performed every day. She stated that, after roll call, a number of names were called out and these children were sent to do chores. This happened on a regular basis: All I can remember is washing floors, scrubbing floors, scrubbing dormitories, doing laundry, making rosary beads. It was constant, hardly any education at all. The only thing you were really there for was catechism lessons in the morning. Apart from that you were taken out of school as soon as you got to the age where you could scrub floors, do whatever you had to do.

She described the work in the dormitories, each of which had about 30 or 40 beds: We had to lift those, they were heavy metal beds. We used to lift them to one side of the room, and sweep, wash and scrub the rooms ... It would take quite a few hours, because they were big dormitories ... If it wasn’t done properly they would make you do the whole thing again ... there would be eight of us who used to do it together.

She also described working in the laundry as very heavy work. They had big boilers in which to boil sheets. She described the procedure of washing these sheets: you had wooden tongs, which you would pull them from the boiler, into another cooler, which would rinse the sheets, and then put them through wringers and then hang them out. We used to have big baskets with all the sheets into them.

One complainant who was in Goldenbridge during the 1960s said that she believed that the fact that her father was a regular visitor to the School saved her and her sister from the hardest physical work in the School. She lived in fear of something happening to her father, which would have left her at the mercy of the nuns: I remember thinking, if anything happens to you we are finished. We would be totally sucked in here because people that had nobody were the ones that did – and the ones with low intelligence, God help them, they were the ones that were given the hardest work. We had big hoovers in those days, big heavy hoovers, washing hallway floors, the corridors. I was terrified that this is what would become of us. We would end up like cleaners for the rest of our lives. It devastated me.

A witness, who was in Goldenbridge during the 1960s, spoke in detail of the chores that were required of the children: I remember sweeping that dormitory, that sounds like nothing, but first you had to pull every bed into the centre of the room, right, lift the bed ... Then lift the bed and shove it back in. I could do it with one hand I became so adept at it and they were heavy.

She spoke of other duties: the scrubbing and cleaning of the building. I mean we scrubbed and cleaned that entire building and that was a big building, well it seemed huge to us ... When I went there first they didn’t have heavy, you know, the hoovers? ... They had a reddish floor polish. They had mansion polish, stuff like that. I don’t know is that the same, but there is a very strong smelling kind of petroleum type smell off this oil. We used to put it on the floor and then on our knees polish it.

Dr McCabe visited the School again in June 1944. Once again, she noted her dissatisfaction at the children’s milk and butter rations, which fell short of the quantities recommended by her: I insist that children should get 1 pint per head per day also their butter ration. Dripping as a substitute cannot be considered.

Dr McCabe questioned Sr Bianca regarding the shortfall in rations and was informed that the School could not afford the stipulated amounts of butter and milk per child. The matter was again taken up by the Department of Education’s Inspector in a letter dated 6th July 1944. He reiterated that: It is essential that each child should receive a minimum of one pint of milk per day and I must request you to arrange for this without delay.

Sr Alida stated that the Department inspectors did not examine or taste the food that was given to the children: I cannot say that I ever saw an inspector with a spoon or anything tasting food, I cannot say I ever saw it.

A witness described the difference: Oh yes. It was different, it was lovely to go in there, you could see what they were eating. They had a press with all kind of goodies in it ...

One witness said: ’I remember being hungry all the time’.

Another said: I was always hungry, but then I have always had a good appetite but I never felt full. The only time I felt full if you went out with your family and you got sweets and things like that.

Another said she was hungry, and explained: Well, simply because we had so little to eat. I do remember all the girls used to eat, there were plants around a field, there was a hedge and we used to call them bread and butter plants. I remember that. We would eat the leaves off the hedges. Then from 4.30 p.m. when we had supper which consisted of cocoa and bread and butter, that was it then, nothing else until breakfast the next morning.