Children Of The Poor Clares (10 page)

We also met Louis Blessing. Now, over thirty years after the fire, he was portly, bald and considered to be ‘a bit of a character’ in the town. He owned a bar and shop in Pearse Street opposite the convent. He ran the bar and there was a quiet woman in the shop, with its glass cases of Galtee processed cheese and iced cupcakes. He refused to talk about the fire. ‘The place is all closed down now. What’s the point?’ When we asked what became of Cissie O’Reilly, he said nothing but, with a half-grin, gestured towards the quiet woman. She would say nothing either.

Later, we spoke to an old man who remembered Industrial Schools from the turn of the century and abhorred the system. ‘It was fear,’ he said, ‘fear and too much discipline killed those children.’

Many of the men involved in the inquiry were later to reach prominent positions in public life. John A. Costello, who appeared as Senior Counsel for the ESB, became leader of the first inter-party government in 1948 and was Ireland’s Taoiseach from then until 1951 and from 1954-1957. T.F. O’Higgins, who appeared with him as Junior Counsel, twice ran as candidate for the presidency of Ireland, and became a Judge of the European Court of Justice. Tom Fitzpatrick, who appeared for two parents of children who had died, became a Minister in two Coalition governments and was Ceann Chomairle (Speaker) in Dáil Eireann
12
. P. J. Roe, who appeared for the Order, became a Judge, and his Junior Counsel, Brian Walsh, later became a Supreme Court Judge.

The secretary to the tribunal, Brian Ó Nualláin, was a man of many parts: as Myles na gCopaleen he was to become famous for his satirical column in the
Irish
Times
; as Flann O’Brian, he was already, in 1943, the author of novels, including
At
Swim-Two-Birds
, and has become acknowledged as one of Ireland’s greatest writers. As Brian O’Nolan, he was known to innumerable Dubliners as wit and raconteur. Sitting in a bar in Cavan one evening during the inquiry, together with T.F. O’Higgins he composed the following limerick:

In Cavan there was a great fire;

Joe McCarthy came down to inquire

If the nuns were to blame—

It would be a shame—

So it had to be caused by a wire.

Brian Ó Nualláin may have paid for his open expression of cynicism: he lost his job in the Department of Local Government when a Cavan member of the Dail, Paddy Smith was named its minister.

Neither the donations received by the Mother Abbess and the Bishop of Kilmore, nor the grief of the people of Cavan found expression in any memorial to the children. In 1973, when we visited the grave in Cullies Cemetery where the remains of thirty-five girls and the old woman were buried, we found it marked only by a granite coping and a small metal cross. On it was written ‘In Memoriam to the Orphans who died in St Joseph’s Industrial School, Cavan. May They Rest in Peace. Amen.’ There were no names. There was no date.

The names of the children and the elderly ex-pupil who died in the fire were:

Mary Barrett (12) and her twin sister, Nora, of Dublin; Mary Carroll (12) and her sister, Josephine (10), daughters of Mr. Michael Carroll, Castlerahan, and the late Mrs. Carroll; Josephine Cassidy (15) and her sister, Mona (11 1/2), natives of Belfast; Katherine J. Chambers (9) and her sister, Margaret (7), daughters of Mr. James L. Chambers, Enniskillen and the late Mrs. Chambers; Dorothy Daly (7), Cootehill district; Bridget Galligan (17) and her sister Mary (18 1/2), Drumcassidy, Co. Cavan; Mary A. Harrison (15) native of Dublin; Elizabeth Heaphy (4), of Swords district, Co. Dublin; Mary Hughes (15) native of Killeshandra; Mary Ivers (12), Kilcoole district, Wicklow; Mary K. Kelly (10) and Mary Brady (7) of Ballinagh district, Cavan; Kathleen B. Kiely (12) and her sister Frances (9), daughters of Mr. P. Kiely, Drumallard, Virginia, and the late Mrs. Kiely: Mary Lowry (17), Drumcowe, Co. Cavan; Mary Lynch (15) and her sister, Margaret (10), daughters of Mr. Thomas Lynch, Tullymorgan, Cavan, and the late Mrs. Lynch; Ellen M’Hugh (15 1/2) Blacklion, Cavan; Ellen Morgan (10), daughter of Mr. Matthew Morgan, Virginia, and the late Mrs. Morgan; Mary E. M’Kiernan (16) and her sister Susan (14), daughters of Mr. Hugh M’Kiernan, Dromard, Cavan, and the late Mrs. M’Kiernan; Mary P. O’Hara (7 1/2), Kilnaleck district, Co. Cavan; Harriet Payne (11 1/2) and her sister, Ellen (8 1/2), daughters of Mr. L. Payne, Cole’s Lane, Dublin and the late Mrs. Payne; Philomena Regan (9), Dublin; Kathleen Reilly (14 1/2) daughter of Mr. Patrick Reilly, Butlersbridge, and the late Mrs. Reilly; Teresa White (6 1/2), Dublin; Rose R. Wright (11), of Ballyjamesduff district; Mary C. Roche (6 1/2), Dublin; Bernadette M. Serridge (5), Dublin, and Mary (Maggie) Smith (80).
13

Part Two
 

CHAPTER THREE
 

‘
One Of
The Good Schools’

‘These
little
children,
who
had
not
the
care
of
their
parents
 . . .
had
a
beautiful
substitute
in
the
gentle
protection
of
the
sisters.’.

The
Bishop
of
Kilmore
speaking
at
the
funeral
service,
February,
1943

When we met Ellen Neary, she was a woman in her fifties with a sweet expression and a gentle manner. Her mother died when she was three years old. A year later, in 1938, her father was found to have tuberculosis and he had to put Ellen and her two sisters into the orphanage. Sitting with us at the table in her spotless kitchen, exchanging polite formalities, suddenly she put down her sewing and covered her face with her hands.

‘It was a hard place. It really was. I had a brother who died young, before my mother, and never went into an orphanage. I used often to think wasn’t he the lucky one? I’d go into the chapel and pray to St Anthony to die. I had nothing to live for. The day my father left us, it was terrible. We cried our eyes out. So did he. I can still see us going through a door with glass in it. We were bathed and given our uniform, our prison clothes. When father was able, he’d come and bring us sweets. We used to show him the welts on our hands and tell him how we were treated. He’d cry and say “I know, I know”. But sure what could he do?’

When they reached the age of twelve, the sisters were occasionally permitted to visit their father in hospital. Then, one night, Ellen woke to hear the front-door bell ringing loudly through the orphanage. ‘I knew then he was gone. They told me in the morning.’ Her older sister, who was later to die in the fire, was allowed to go to the funeral, but Ellen was not. ‘I got no comforting from any of the nuns. The only difference I knew was that Mother Carmel didn’t beat me for a week.’ Ellen was to discover later that her aunt in Scotland had offered to take the three girls out of the school to live with her, but was refused. The reason given was that she was not a blood relation.

Ellen and Loretta McMahon and Hannah Hughes, the two other women we met who had been in the orphanage at this time, have never forgotten Mother Carmel. Born Mary Josephine Garvey in Sligo in 1904, she entered the Poor Clare’s convent in Cavan in 1932. She had trained as a teacher, but, in the 1930s and early 1940s she also had a supervisory role over the orphanage children. It was an era described by one girl as ‘a reign of terror’. She was not the only one who beat them, but there was an extra quality to her viciousness. As Ellen Neary put it, ‘I sometimes think she must have been insane. She was a cruel, cruel woman. If the children didn’t get up at 6 a.m., the minute she rang the bell in the dormitory, she’d pull back the bedclothes and flog them with a bamboo cane. Sometimes she’d hold back her sleeve and murder them on the bed, stripped, with the black strap. She was a devil.’

Loretta McMahon recalled, ‘I used to get up at five to escape her. That way I knew I’d be ready.’ Hannah Hughes said, ‘It was dangerous the way she’d hit you when you were still asleep. Poor Annie Hegney was beaten on the head with a bamboo cane and it got in her eye and it came up all swollen and sticking out.’ Ellen Neary remembered that ‘Once when some of the children were linking arms in the playground, they crossed the line in the yard dividing the orphanage from the nuns’ quarters. I pulled my sister back just in time. Mother Carmel called out all their numbers, took them upstairs, lined them up in a circle and went round and round beating their hands.’

Extract
from
Rules
and
Regulations
for
Industrial
Schools,
Punishment
Section:

a
)
 
Forfeiture
of
rewards
and
privileges,
or
degradation
from
rank,
previously
attained
by
good
conduct.

b
)
 
Moderate
childish
punishment
with
the
hand.

c
)
 
Chastisement
with
the
cane,
strap
or
birch.
This
personal
chastisement
may
be
inflicted
by
the
Manager
or,
in
his
presence,
by
an
Officer
specially
authorised
by
him
and
in
no
case
may
be
inflicted
upon
girls
over
15
years
of
age.
In
the
case
of
girls
under
15,
it
shall
not
be
inflicted
except
in
cases
of
urgent
necessity,
each
of
which
must
be
at
once
fully
reported
to
the
Inspector
.
Caning
on
the
hand
is
forbidden.
No
punishment
not
mentioned
above
shall
be
inflicted.

But the girls had no knowledge of these rules designed to protect them, and Ellen used to hide her head under the bedclothes so as not to hear the screams of the smaller ones being beaten. ‘It was hot one night and the little ones went to the bathroom for a drink. Mother Carmel found them out of bed and murdered them. I used to hate to see them being beaten. You’d hear them screaming and roaring.’

Many of the children wet their beds. It resulted in severe punishment. Ellen told us ‘There was a pot in one corner with screens round it, but some of the children would be too frightened to leave their beds in the dark. Sometimes they’d be put standing under cold showers and beaten, but sure that only made it worse. If they wet the bed, they got no food the next day, and if it happened again, no food for a second day.’ Hannah said, ‘I remember them watching us eating and we’d try to smuggle them a bit of bread, even though we could hardly spare it.’ One of her most vivid memories is of a child who was made to stand out in the yard in the cold for hours because she wet her bed. ‘I can see her now, all huddled up, wearing a thin little dress and shivering. She died in the fire just before she was going off to become a nun. Mary Lowry was her name.’

Annual
Report
of
the
Department
of
Education,
1932:
Only
in
its
widest
sense
is
the
word
discipline
applicable.
Methods
adopted
for
character
formation
in
Girls’
Schools
depend
little
on
punishment
and
then
of
the
slightest
and
briefest.

Hannah described the daily routine: ‘We got up at 6.a.m., then a line of us would say our prayers, over to the washbasins, then the next line would come. Then over to the chapel, we had communion every day, and a lot of us used to fall asleep there. Then back to our duties, then breakfast which was shell cocoa was made on water and a round of bread and margarine. There would be wriggling things on top of the cocoa but the boiling water would have killed them. We ate out of tin mugs and porringers.
14
For dinner we had vegetables and potatoes, or a bowl of greasy soup with bits of bad potato. We had no meat except on Christmas Day or when the Inspector came. There were times when you’d see big rats running around the Refectory. We had lumpy stirabout made on oatmeal. We were always hungry. Sometimes we’d steal carrots and turnips and chew them raw in bed.’ She said that at school the orphanage children used to go through the waste baskets to find lumps of bread left from the other children’s sandwiches. ‘We were taught to make soda bread and we cooked meat, but we never got any of it.’ Ellen: ‘I remember once I was working in the sewing room, and a man who was working out in the yard threw up a turnip to us, and we cut it up and ate it raw. We were half-starved.’