Tag: Goldenbridge

Shunning Part I

There’s been a lot of talk lately in the blogosphere corners I frequent on shunning. It has prompted me to write a few thoughts on what shunning means to me personally. 
The very thought of the word absolutely sends shivers down my spine. Shunning is indicative of pure ruthless social rejection, a thing I grew up with in Goldenbridge. I also associate it with children who were very friendly with each other in the institution, who, alas, were severely mocked and jeered and separated from each other by staff. The latter called them ‘love birds’ then castigated and shunned them. There were also children who were different from others, and they too were deliberately avoided by other children and not allowed to associate with the group. Goldenbridge children, who did not know the meaning of mother or father figures, should not have been targeted in a shunning manner by grown-ups, whose sole responsibility was to act in loco parentis. It was the antithesis of any kind of loving parenting or caring guardianship. The children who turned their backs on other children, however,  were only doing what they had seen those in charge doing all the time. It was learned behaviour. A warped environment begets warped behaviour. 
Mother and father figures are most important in children’s lives and deprivation of them was punishment enough, without having the added burden of being shunned by grown-ups. Mother and father words meant nothing to institutionalised inmates…excepting that they were words synonymous with beatings, whereby children had hollered out those very words…’O Mammy…O Daddy’ after a big thick shiny polished bark of a tree was rained down heavily by the nun in charge after the children had spent hours on a cold landing awaiting said floggings. Child inmates were also prevented from knowing  or [O1]  speaking to the nuns in the convent. The latter were just like aliens from another planet. When child inmates dared to look back at them sitting in their personal convent chapel pews, with black hooded heads completely hidden and matching black gown trails sprawling all over the aisles, they were invariably told by the nun who caught them to go and wait on the dreaded cold landing for punishment.

The nuns rather reminded me of the TV advert of the ghost of death who on one stormy blizzard night knocks on the door of one Mrs. O’Connor. The ghost beckons to her to come along, that it was waiting for her. Fortunately for the blind aged woman, she saw not his black skeleton hooded demeanour and decided not to go with him, saying that she was busy cooking Xmas mince pies. Or – when the nuns came to the Rec hall on an annual basis to watch a film. Their black robes matched perfectly with the black cloths that covered the windows. Before the film reel was turned and children sat there in the pitch darkness there was an eerie ghostly feeling, as the black-attired aliens in the hall of horrors were totally invisible, but if the blood-red painted walls could speak – would whisper to them of the constant violent daily beatings that occurred there when the nuns in charge were out sight and sipping tea in the convent.

The nuns were never allowed to have any personal interaction with GB child inmates. The latter were totally shunned. The parents used Goldenbridge and other industrial “schools” as weapon phrases to frighten children in their homes – if they were bold. “Now, if you don’t behave properly we’ll send you to the nuns at Goldenbridge.” The threats invariably worked, as no child wanted to be seen dead by anyone in an unfriendly Dickensian, cold, dark dank institution.

Shunning happens when groups form solidarity with each other. It happens to religious groups and tightly knit organisations and communities. The intended targets are seen as enemies. Goldenbridge child inmates were easy shunning targets because the defenceless humble targets had nobody to look out for them. Period! Children in the nearby ‘outside’ national school in the same grounds had been warned by the nuns that they were not to glance at or dare to speak to children from GB industrial school. Woe betide them if they chanced to do so. That also included children who might have been connected to the inmates in a familial way. There was a stigma attached to children who were deemed the lowest of the lowest by Irish society. Think Untouchables [Dalits.]

I think that I make assumptions about people SHUNNING me, because of looking through a very disturbed emotional lens. I do know that I’ve the propensity to get triggers, and because of these triggers everything can get super-heightened and writing can become disproportionately illogical and irrational. Think confirmation bias. It creeps into a lot of stuff. I think it comes into play a lot and perhaps distorts reality. I don’t, however, know how to fix the distortions. Rational thinking just goes out the door when there are trigger factors involved. Someone known to me put it to me succinctly:  “you read backward from the intensity of your emotions to the (imagined) malice of other people. The more you hurt, the more malicious they are. Everybody does that, but you do it in an exaggerated way.” Yes, that pinpoints it exactly. It has to do with tremendous feelings of inferiority from the past. The template for this was laid in Goldenbridge, and it forever replays the same old “you will never amount to anything” spiel that was perpetually flung at child inmates. The lack of feeling validated eternally encompasses my very being.

I know that I’ve been immensely scarred by an excruciatingly painful childhood spent in a Victorian child prison refuge. All my memories are of so much torturous acts.

For example: I have vivid recollections of sumptuous scraps of Marietta biscuits, soldier crusts of toast, and particles of cake from St. Ita’s staff table, that had been placed in an aluminium sieve by minor staff, and each day methodically flung out of the corridor window that faced directly into the sunless prison yard ground. Child inmates flung themselves to the ground and fiercely grabbed at the luscious leavings. The ‘scraps’ were as regular as clockwork, so inmates eagerly awaited them, as the scraps by the inmates had been considered as rare sumptuous food items. Inmates, who never had toast to eat, would gobble down the black burnt bits, as if they were expensive oysters. Dog-fights ensued. Some inmates snatched not only the gorgeous tasty scraps, but also the hair on the heads – the little that was left, anyway, – after-all getting heads shorn and cut short was the norm – of some inmates, and locked themselves into each other for a half an hour or so, at any given time, as they were so enraged at each other for getting the best scraps. The staff thought theses scenarios were hilarious. They thrived on inmates being vicious towards each other.

I also remember on rare occasions such as feast-days when child inmates sitting on hard benches in the REC (euphemistically known as “the wreck” because of the savage beatings that regularly occurred there by staff members when the nuns were up praying in the convent) were given two or three bulls-eye sweets. The children were forced to put index finger on lips for long durations. If a dislike by a staff member to a particular child occurred, with the shiny silver mirrored can with delicate handle the nasty staff member would bypass that child, and the one sitting next to it got extra sweets, to rub it in even more. The horrible staff member – hugging the can – would then glide along the benches with a smirk on her face. It not only caused terrible tension in the child who was left sweet-less but also to the rest of the onlookers who wondered whether they were going to suffer the same ignominious despicable fate. Shunning innocent children was normal behaviour.

The vivid cruel Goldenbridge childhood memories that I relate to, where horrendous cruelty and shunning were ever present natural occurrences, still dreadfully haunt me. They come very strongly into play on a regular basis. It takes very little for them to be sparked off. The holding back – and not reacting to them is sometimes a full-time job.

Shunning Part 2 Scrawny pigeon

I remember years ago during lunch-hour from my job at the specialised Metallurgical library at Carton House Terrace in London– strolling around nearby St. James’ Park. I stood for a long while watching the pigeons being fed by various people, including myself. There was one particular scrawny pigeon who, instead of vying for the nuts and the like that were strewn on the ground, had decided to constantly chase the other birds away, so that they wouldn’t get all the rich pickings. Alas, the worn out scraggy pigeon was doing itself a terrible injustice. Indeed, it was its own worst enemy, because, if it had any wit at all it would have joined in gathering the nuts, instead of defeating the object by daftly chasing away the other pigeons, who were clearly benefitting greatly from the bird feed. However, I could empathise with the scrawny pigeon so much, as it clearly had no insight. If it had it would have been as self-seeking and cunning as the rest of the pigeons and thought of itself in a flawless commonsensical way. The scrawny pigeon’s actions reminded me of all the negative energy I have wasted going after assumed shunning sources. It’s uninspiring to think of all the negative energy that’s harboured in the brain, with all the good energy gone to waste. Just like the klutzy pigeon too it’s chasing away at the wrong sources.

When I returned to Ireland from Birmingham in the mid-eighties I resided in Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan. It is a small rural town in the province of Ulster, which now comprises fewer than 2,000 inhabitants. Its claim to fame is Father Brendan Smyth, who was a notorious paedophile – who in the early nineties almost brought the Irish government to its knees because of the child abuse scandals. In this community I experienced shunning on a gargantuan scale by a certain section of that close-knit society. I put the shunning down to not having had any proper place, or family status, and due to being friendly with an unmarried mother, who by large swathes of the community was forever shunned. Some townies would cross the other side of the main street to avoid her. I saw it on so many occasions and was absolutely infuriated with their low-down ignorant behaviour. Think fallen woman! She had become hardened to all the hostility she grew up with in the town and was aware of the two-faced shenanigans of some specific insular folk. The same community that mostly never spoke out about alleged heinous crimes of the priest for fear of offending the religious. The hypocrisy knew no bounds.

Here’s an example of the shunning of a pregnant young woman in Granard – not very far from Ballyjamesduff – and the dire consequences that unfolded because of having lived in a town that shunned girls and women who bore children out-of-wedlock.

For there before the two lads lay the half-naked figure of fifteen years of age Ann Lovett, whimpering in shock and pain, gritting her teeth through tears, delirious and mumbling. Beside Ann, in a pool of blood, lay her stillborn baby boy who she had just delivered, alone and unaided, there, below the statue of the Virgin. Beside the dead child lay its placenta severed from Ann’s body by a pair of scissors she had carried around in her school bag for several weeks now, in preparation for this very event.

Read more: A History of Sexuality In Ireland [2]: The Nineteen Eighties

I also lived in a bed-sit and was frowned upon by snootier elements of the town. They were wont to steer clear of those less fortunate. Survival of the fittest! The things as they were must always be maintained to keep their superior status – one mustn’t let one’s self be contaminated by the mere riff-raff who wandered out of nowhere into town, and even worse still, a returning emigrant. I was “a blow-in.” In small towns everyone must know everyone else’s business. They have to know one’s intergenerational antecedents. My Goldenbridge institutional past was a well-kept secret. I had never spoken to a sinner in my entire life about my childhood. In fact, I had spent my entire time in England concocting stories about a family that never existed. I created them to suit the occasion. A lot of survivors of industrial “schools” would know exactly what I’m talking about here, as they would have resorted to similar survival tactics. I was completely unaware of the trap I was falling into upon deciding to live in a wee town in “the valley of the squinting windows.” My mother and her husband had lived three miles away in the country, so I fell naturally into that situation. Besides, I never would have dreamt of going to live in Dublin, as I was actually afraid of any association connected to Goldenbridge. It actually took me ten years to come to terms with facing Dublin. To this day I still cannot go back to the industrial “school” area. I thought I was safe in a small town, but no, not at all. The opposite.

There was a particular incident where I went to an audition to join The Frolics Musical Society. A whole group of people who were known to me by sight was in full conversation on my arrival to the audition. There was suddenly utter silence when I entered the room. One person even got up from her seat to move away from me, when I sat down in the chair beside her. I was so mortified that I quietly went into the loo and disappeared. I know that I was in a bad place with respect of familial problems, and it might have shown in my demeanour. I thought that by entering into a hobby that I was very interested in, that it would bring me out of myself, and help me to get back on my feet. I was gobsmacked, as the amount of courage it took me to even contemplate on going there, knowing that a lot of them would not even bid me the time of day on the street was devastating to the psyche. I just didn’t have the emotional skills to turn it around and change things, as such emotional energy had until then been drained because of having to continually cover up about my past.

Related: Ballyjamesduff Co.Cavan Revisited

Shunning Part 3

To this day I carry the residue of shame that stems from shunning that was relentlessly piled on me by all as a child in Goldenbridge. I get paranoid thinking that parts of the blogosphere that I frequent are out to shun me, in the same way that happened to me in Goldenbridge. I become convinced that if bloggers don’t interact with me personally, well, it certainly has to do with me not being intellectually good enough for their Interwebs presence.

Children in Goldenbridge industrial “school” should not have been shunned, as they had to already withstand being shunned by their mere incarceration. It should have been the practice of caregivers to embrace them and not to have continually sent them to Coventry. They suffered enough punishment.

I hold very strong views on shunning because of my past institutional upbringing and a whole young life of feeling shunned by the world. So I feel fit to talk about the negative consequences of this dastardly practice that is so common with religious. I know too of many religious people themselves who were on the receiving end of shunning when they decided in the past to leave religious life. They had given their lives to God and in one fell swoop because they started to disbelieve were cast asunder and shunned for the rest of their lives. They had to face an alien world all on their own without support from the religious. Yet, they’d previously devoted their entire lives to religious life and given up everything. Eaten bread is soon forgotten. There was also a recent case of an elderly priest, Father Bob, in Australia, who was cast aside and shunned by the church and asked to leave his dwellings because he spoke out on child sex abuse issues.

The religious from all persuasions have a lot to answer for the way that they shun children and adults alike. The religious who practice shunning should have not messed around with the delicate nature of human beings. They had no right to separate children and adults from their loved ones. The legacy of separating children from their parents and denying the former any knowledge of their familial backgrounds has specifically done irreversible damage to those sent into the industrial school system in the past inIreland. The nuns were more concerned about their own image that they denied children the love of their parents.

There was one particular incident of Goldenbridge twins, who were denied knowing who their family was by a nun because the nuns did not want disgrace blighting the good image of the Mercy order. It transpired that the head-honcho nun was a friend of two aunties belonging to the twins, as both of the former were also Sisters of Mercy. The head-honcho denied the twins the right to know their mother because of shame attached to a sister of the aunties because of having had the twins out-of-wedlock. For fifty years the nun in charge flatly refused to tell the twins anything about themselves, despite the constant pleading and suffering. It was only revealed when the nun was threatened by someone – with the interest of the twins at heart – with legal action. This occurred at the outset of the commission to inquire into child institutional abuse. What a despicable act.

Shunning Conclusion

As I pointed out at the outset, my personal experiences vis-à-vis shunning harks back to my long childhood incarceration years at Goldenbridge. I know that I must be extra mindful not to blame the world out there because of the tremendously damaging wrongdoing by a society that was far too closed-minded and ignorant to care about the impressive fragile minds of children. I soaked up the shunning. I soaked up the rejection. I soaked up the harshness of my surroundings, with not a moral compass to guide me along the way. I had no compass to steer me in the right direction, as do those who grow up in normal home-loving families mostly take for granted. I don’t know how to fix the distortions implanted in the brain at a time when the mind was like a sponge soaking and absorbing all. However, I do know that being cognisant of a propensity for confirmation bias towards the world at large, I must intermittently stretch my elastic wristband to alert me to the predilection I have for negative thinking and steer the mind into a more positive direction. The onus is on me not to be a target for shunning. As a child I was helpless to turn it around, but now as an older adult I must become aware that I DO have the power to turn it around.

Ultimately to reiterate: I was very alert all those years ago to the scrawny pigeon’s immense deprivation, when it took a fit of squawking at all the other pigeons in sight – with the sole intention of deterring them from consuming the nuts that were laid out in sight. It was thoroughly absorbed in seeking out the wrong sources to the detriment of its own need. I should have noted and learned from that experience, and not have applied similar maladaptive principles throughout life. Nevertheless, there is no point in dwelling negatively on it, as hindsight is 20/20. On a more positive note to finish – I’m now at the critical thinking stage of adult literacy learning, and because of this, it is now incumbent on me to examine the unexamined with a fine tooth-comb. The past was yesterday, and it is gone forever. I can invoke it at will, though, and choose to dwell on the parts that cause me to shudder and the like, such as thinking that the world is out to get me and shun me. Or I can become as wise as the pigeons that got all the nourishing nuts and begin to thrive on expressing myself in a more encouraging way. It behooves me to learn that the encumbrance is no longer mine to bear.

“The Children Act allowed destitute children to be sent to industrial schools, even if they hadn’t committed a crime.” Paddy Doyle.

Incarceration

This “destitution” lark was a ruse used by the judiciary and the religious in order to obtain convictions. I was, for example, in a feeder institution, known as The Regina Ceoli, Mother and Baby unit for over four and a half years. So how could I have been even considered “destitute” by the judiciary? “Destitution”, this terminology, was in my estimation “illegally used” on my committal order to Goldenbridge Industrial School – where I was incarcerated until I was sixteen years old. There was no limit on my stay in the “hostel”.

It is imperative for people to comprehend that “touting for business” explicitly from feeder institutions, such as the aforementioned hostel, went on big time. As well as, I might append, “baby farming” which is an additional gigantic undeclared subject. Like the Magdalen Laundries, it is an extraordinarily brittle subject. The Irish powers-that-be are fearful to shine the torch down that very indistinguishable shadowy road.

The religious colluded in this unauthentic committal lark in order to boost up their numbers in the mainstream industrial schools. They railed at the judiciary who were becoming unenthusiastic about sending children to the gulags. They insisted on wanting to know why their wishes were not being adhered to as they (the religious) were very bothered about the up-keep of their mammoth Victorian “private” buildings. As with all, they unquestionably won out! The Irish Church/State was and is synonymous with conjoined twins.

At first, girls only went into the industrial schools run by the Sisters of Mercy and others, but when numbers began to diminish, they asked for boys up to the age of ten. Consequently, survivors like Paddy Doyle landed up in one. On attainment of ten years the boys customarily thereafter graduated to the industrial/reformatory schools such as Artane, Daingean, and Letterfrack. These boys-only child labour camps were run by the Christian Brothers, Oblate Fathers and other orders of that ilk. A majority of older boys in these industrial schools were there for minor criminal activities, such as mitching (skiving) from school or stealing apples from orchards. A smaller number of older boys would have been there for more serious misdemeanours. These boys were naturally more streetwise. They had the wherewithal to be able to differentiate between the outside world and their newfound abodes. Boys who came from the female-religious-run institutions on the other hand did not have a clue about outside life and were thus treated abominably by the system, which could or would not tolerate their social inadequacies. They were classed as orphans, yet they too, like myself, would have been taken from their parent or parents, and would have been hauled before the courts and would have been considered to have been “destitute” and would have been sentenced until they were sixteen years old. Boys who were criminally committed would have received sentences ranging from as little as six months to roughly six years.

Mass and Breakfast time in Goldenbridge.

Throughout the winter months those who were not doing duties like getting small children up, cleaning dormitories, washing soiled sheets in cold water in the uniformly cold stone school laundry, lined up in the cloister, which was situated just outside the wicket gate, with no warm clothing other than our berets. We could not enter the chapel without the arrival first of the convent chaplain to the chapel. He generally arrived at 6:55am for 7 am mass. It was okay though, at this time, for the convent nuns to sit comfortably in their pews. The chapel was a private one and it would consequently have served the children who were usually freezing to have been able to have to go into it even – just for warmth’s sake. There was never any such luck. We were mere mediocre little people who must at all times be kept in place.

On the arrival of the chaplain, we made our way silently to the chapel. The priest said the mass in Latin. Again, those on the lowest rungs of the Goldenbridge ladder would not have been allowed by the nuns to serve mass. This was a very privileged task! Children couldn’t dare to turn their heads around in the chapel to look at the nuns behind. The all-black, bended, hooded figures sat some distance behind us in rows of pews. It was always a scary, eerie pursuit for the children when they did turn their curious heads as the nun’s heads were hidden, I always wondered why they were hiding – after all did these holy nuns not sacrifice their lives for God? It should have been an uplifting happy experience. They exactly reminded me of people who were waiting for death.

During the course of mass children fainted through sheer hunger, as no food would have entered the children’s’ bodies from 6 o’clock the preceding evening, and that would have been a inadequately two slices of smelly bread and marge and a cup of black sugarless cocoa. The children who passed out also had the misfortune of being reprimanded by the nuns in charge of the institution. The nuns consistently told the weakened children “You are a notice box – looking for attention, and what will the other nuns be thinking” how dare ye show us up in their presence.” Children who fainted were indeed also told to go to” the notorious Goldenbridge landing” by the nuns or staff to wait for a flogging from the head capo, Sister X. It was suffice it to say hard luck all round.

In the classroom

St Bridget’s classroom had massive windows, we sat two to a desk which were made of heavy oak, attached to curved wrought- iron legs. Each desk also had two inkwells with copper lids. The dark walls were adorned with pictures depicting the Joyful, Glorious, and Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Posters, also of mothers/fathers in domestic situations for teaching purposes bedecked the walls. Children were not allowed under any circumstances to write with the right hand it was classed as “the devils work”. I am naturally citeog, so one can imagine how difficult that was to use right hand.

Ms. L was legendary for using the corner of the ruler on the very young children’s knuckles and tip of the fingers. Ms L always for some strange reason, cried out: “I will draw blood. I will write your name in blood.” She was not though despite all the cruellest teacher.

Sister Fabian always called children by disparaging names; she had a list as long as her arm. Amadan; oinseach; gombeen; half-wit; crackawley; cracked; dope, clown, clot, crackpot; she predominantly said to me; “there is a ‘want’ in you Lougho” – meaning that I was not “the full shilling!” Nonetheless, at the time of declaration it went in one ear and out the other. I did not have the foggiest discernment as to its denigrating meaning.

We were mere nonentities who were never going to quantify to anything in this life. We were never, ever, going anywhere. The sisters could as a result unremittingly lay before us reminders of our lowly status. We were everlastingly receiving negative sound bytes.

Sister Fabian also systematically threatened children with”Moate” again, nobody had a notion what this word signified. “You ninny hammer, if you do not watch yourself, or pull yourself together you will find yourself up in Moate.” I now know that Mount Carmel, Moate, Mullingar, was an Industrial School run by the Sisters of Mercy. I heard from others that it was not as bad as Goldenbbridge.

Sister Fabian, being a Donegal country sister, loved flowers; in later years, there was a rockery outside the Wicket Gate, which lay along the side footpath leading up Goldenbridge Avenue. I remember helping with the spraying of the bi-annuals. The children in general considered it an honour when Sister Fabian specially selected them to do this interesting task. It was in colossal disparity to the more repugnant, loathsome, monstrous and detestable chores I (and other girls – on different occasions) had to do which was to sweep up residue of excrement from the never-ending overflowing, end of the yard shores. No wonder children ended up with scabs, warts, ringworm, serious forms of conjunctivitis, or as we called it – “shut eye”, and every other conceivable ailment.

Miss G, who taught “third” and “fourth” 8 to 10 yrs class was something else, she, like Sister X, put the fear of God in us. We were petrified of her; she too, moreover was also an un-trained “jam” teacher. I have never forgotten the merciless, callous ruthless acts of this teacher, for example, she compelled us to stand on top of the school seats or desks with our hands held high in the air for unwarranted extravagant amounts of time, and she would at the same time flay us on the legs with a long bamboo stick or long ruler. She also made us stand on one foot for some unknown reason. She also would boomerang the long “ruler” at children who, she professed, were not learning fast enough.

We learned parables, miracles, and the catechism off by heart. Children had to circle around her desk and thump each other whilst almost singing the above in unison. Little boys learning the Koran would not have been up to the likes of us. Again, we also rocked like mad in order to learn the whole lot off. She invariably unexpectedly crept up behind us and gave us thumps on our backs with her fist that jolted us or else she needled us with the bamboo stick, causing stinging pain. Monday mornings were the worst as she was enthused with fierce energy.

St Teresa’s classroom was nestled on its own in the back of Goldenbridge. It was a cold miserable large open spaced room, which also doubled up as a locker room after classes. Ms G, as it were, could do what she liked as there was no authority figure in near sight to hear her or our cries. Everyone in Goldenbridge dreaded this teacher.

The children who were privileged to go to “the outside” National School, said that they were initially asked to spell the word “ingredient” and do a simple arithmetic question which they got correct hence their getting selected from Ms. G’s class.

Children were also made to stand in the corner of St Teresa’s classroom with the name Amadan or Dunce pinned to their backs. I also explicitly remember at various times a wicker waste paper basket being put over the heads of the children while they stood in the corner of the classroom. Some children were always told to stand outside the classroom. Two children at any given time were also sent into a separate area and the brighter of them was obliged to thump religion into the slower one. They were bright enough then but not enough to secure them a position in the national School.

We were sporadically sent out of this class to do work in the scullery or outside yard,washing and cleaning vegetables which were placed in a big aluminium tub.

Ms G hailed from Kildare and commuted to Goldenbridge Industrial School each day. She was very prejudicial in that she repetitively uttered the following mantra, ‘dirty Dublin, dirty Dublin, dirty Dublin!’ I believe at one stage Ms. G lived on the premises in Goldenbridge, she was thick with Sr. Xaveria. We knew not what she was on about notwithstanding the fact that we were approximately near the heart of the city of Dublin. Gosh, in retrospect, we were implausibly institutionalised and in this fashion hideously green. Dublin could have been in Timbuktu as we were concerned!

Each year a priest came to examine us in cathechism – I recollect winning 2/6 but remember even more not being in receipt of same, it was typical. This also was very prevalent with the making of the rosaries, in that we too never got our proper yearly earnings of 2/6d – it was always deviously clawed back.

Christine Buckley told me that she was grateful to Ms G, as the teaching that she indisputably had in her class stood her in good stead. Bernadette Fahy, who was given a similar “outside” education became a Psychologist. Christine eventually went into mainstream outside school afterwards. She then became a midwife by profession, so she had a lot to be indebted in that respect. Ironically, both ended up doing fantastic work on behalf of victims/survivors of institutional abuse, and many are much indebted to them.

I would have endured any punishment from this teacher if it would have gotten me somewhere later on in life as she certainly knew how to teach.

Sr. Fabian’s Classroom – One afternoon

Valerie made a clatter as Sister Fabian tackled inhumanly with her “soiled” clothing in order to remove them. Valerie clasped forcefully on to them to save herself from this loathsome embarrassing act. All was in vain as poor Valerie was conquered by this malevolent piece of work. She succeeded in savagely stripping her of her soiled clothing – this sister of mercy – who always said to Valerie “you have evil eyes, you have the devil’s eyes.” It caused her to keep her head untiringly down, as she was so feeling shame at having even been born with all the systematic abuse that was consistently thrown at her. It was said, by Sister Fabian to Valerie, “it is nothing more than the devil that is coming out of you”.

This episode occurred in front of young girls in St Philomena’s classroom. Children were totally beside themselves frightened out of their wits and with ignominy and astonishment and did not know where to put their heads. Unexpectedly, like lightning, Valerie roared like a wild animal and with all her power went for the jugular, the “sacrosanct” holy “veil”. All hell was let loose. Sister Fabian then let go of Valerie as she tried to fix her veil into position. She then said to us “get on with your work”.

The raison d’être behind this whole monstrous performance was medical. Valerie had a severe hormonal problem whereby she haemorrhaged profusely. Her face was always as white as snow. She thus became delirious and hallucinated, and constantly talked about ‘moving’ statues before they ever came into vogue. Also because of the nature of her illness and no medical treatment/supervision, she was at a loss as to what to do. There was no considerate or kind adult in Goldenbridge to direct her in her need. Ironically, the washroom was right next door to St Philomena’s but it was out of bounds, so when she was having hygiene problems there was nowhere for her to go. As a corollary, foreseeable accidents occurred which resulted in overshadowing repugnant smells. It permeated all over, but what was she to do? Well enter Sister Fabian, she indisputably sorted it out. A lot of victims and survivors have never forgotten this sad sordid saga.

Sr. Fabian for all time held her nose at children and said “you dirty thing, get out of my sight.” She was a very intolerant sister and caused huge damage to children because of it. One afternoon in St. Philomena’s was no exception to the rule. Valerie died last year due to self neglect, but she lived long enough to tell the sad tale.

Valerie, who unendingly held her head down in shame, had Bambi-type beautiful brown eyes. She also made the most neatest of rosary beads, and we always complimented and sought out her assistance. I wrote in my best English a long witness statement to both the CIRCA and the RIRB on behalf of Valerie, who was not conversant. Bernadette Fahy also stood up for her.

Valerie’s mother who hails from the North of Ireland was only fourteen years old when she gave birth to her first boy child, and was sixteen years old when Valerie was born, there was also another girl some years later but she was lucky enough to be contentedly adopted. The boy went to another disreputable Industrial School – Artane. So he too was just a stranger to his sister.

The adopted sister some years ago suddenly arrived at Valerie’s abode. It caused great consternation as Valerie never knew of her existence. She took Valerie under her wing, but the wounds were way too deep for her to appreciate any kindness. Valerie could not grasp the logic as to why she was also not adopted, and it caused deep friction and resentment. This type of thinking is very common with those who were detained in Goldenbridge. The sadness of it is that one is not dealing with just normal sibling rivalry.

Valerie’s mother went on to have a second family and wanted nothing to do with any of her children who were born outside of that union. A cousin whom she had no contact with sadly died in the Northern Ireland Omagh Bombing of some years ago. Christine Buckley, Bernadette Fahy, and a host of us from Valerie’s era were all present at her funeral. She had insisted on being cremated. Everything about one’s bodily functions was cloak and dagger stuff. Prepubscent children were an enigma to sister Fabian.

Memory

Time, never erased my memories of Goldenbridge, I did not have the added distraction of the outside world to contend with.

I worked to rule, every day was the same, with the exception of summer time when other children and I, who had no family, went to a holiday home in Rathdrum Co Wicklow, which was, incidentally, paid for with monies accrued from the Rosary Beads “lark”. The only happy memories I have are connected to this exquisite environment, (not staff) which was the only positive thing in our lives. Not ever having human comforts we could at least enjoy the absolutely natural beauty of our surroundings. To this day I still love the Garden of Ireland. There is now a statue of Charles Stewart Parnell standing on the spot where once the old rambling Victorian house stood. We always thought that there should have been a plaque erected to all the Goldenbridge inmates as well.

Appendix: Some Testimony from the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Public Hearing, Dublin, 15 May 2006. Evidence of Sister Helena O’Donoghue

Q: …I am more concerned with the statements of Sr. Fabian, as it were, against interest both on her part and the interest of the Sisters of Mercy, that the general atmosphere was excessively and consistently cruel, even relative to the standards at the time?

A. Well, we have acknowledged that we believe that industrial school life and system was not an appropriate system for children who had come into care through various difficulties. We do recognise that it would have augmented the regime itself being so stylised in many ways, would have augmented their pain, but we do not accept that it was excessively harsh.

Q:…but in his report he records her confirming that: “Fear of and actual beatings and verbal abuse was a matter of routine. And that the general account of children, for example, waiting on landings was accurate…Wetting was defined as a crime and, therefore, punishable through humiliation and physical beatings. Sr. Fabian confirmed the allegations in relation to the tumble drier and drinking from the toilet cistern. She also confirmed the bead making and that failure to obey rules was normally punished by physical beatings”.

…….

A: We cannot be absolute about it, but I think it was a feature of Goldenbridge that when a number of children came to 16, and were for one reason or another, people, children, young women who might have been at risk or unable to manage outside of the school, and there was no further funding for them, a way of, if you like, meeting their need in particular was to become helpers, as they were called. It was not, I suppose, looked at in the way that we might look at it today, which was, well, were they appropriate for the care of children? They were young people who had actually lived through their years in the institution to that point and were familiar, obviously, to everybody there.

Q. Yes. I think you have fairly acknowledged in your written statement of evidence that poor educational achievement and inability to find employment, other than domestic service, was a consequence for many children; cleaning and scrubbing and household work elsewhere. These staff then retained were clearly not up to that standard of being let out into the world and were put in the care of children?

A. That is the reality and we regret that that was an aspect, that there wasn’t an awareness or a sensitivity to at the time.

Q. Have you any reason to think that they received any training at all other than their experience of having gone through Goldenbridge themselves?

A. I would be confident in saying there was no training. There was no training for the adults or the teachers who were employed at that time in childcare.

Q. Is there any evidence of which you are aware, that they were made familiar with any rules relating to discipline and punishment?

A. I couldn’t make any comment on that at this distance back.

A: Why were children in Goldenbridge not allowed out to attend the local national school? Why did there have to be one secured up in Goldenbridge?

A. I am not in a position to answer that.

Q: One of the things that the Commission will have to consider is obviously the nature of the education facilities and the teaching staff, but also its interrelationship with the work regime in Goldenbridge. There seems to have been a considerable lack of opportunity for a number of children, perhaps unquantifiable, who were pulled out of classrooms to do work, when perhaps they should have been staying in the classroom to become educated, and being required to do the laundry two days a week and prepare vegetables and minding of babies, cleaning of windows, tilling the land, tending the vegetable garden. All taken away from their schooling for this work…I have referred already to the passage in your statement of evidence about the lack of opportunity that the education provided for getting employment, other than sort of domestic work as scrubbers and cleaners, many of them feel they were educated to be. Would you be concerned, and have you heard complaints over your years of contact with the survivors, about a high level of functional illiteracy on the part of those who are said to have been educated by the Sisters of Mercy? One of the other complaints made about the relationship between study and work is that there was little time allowed for any sort of study or reading in the evenings. In your own statement, you say: “A few pupils persevered and sat the Leaving Certificate. Such students did not do much of the domestic chores carried out by the other children, but instead had extended study time”. Do I understand from that, that it was only the few who were chosen would get out of the work and therefore have the extended study time?

A: I understand from the Sisters who were there at the time, that that was the practice. That those who went out to the secondary school did not have to take the same share in the chores as those who were inside.

Q. Okay. So the heavier burden then would fall on others, who were then deprived of their study time, to allow some of the few to be released?

A. I would have to say about Goldenbridge it is acknowledged that homework at primary school level did not feature really in the after school time of the children. Now I am not in a position to say why was that.

Q. Can I suggest to you it was because they were required to do other work?

A. In actual fact they weren’t doing other work at that time. They had a half an hour after school for play in the yard. They then went to the bead making, perhaps  that is what you are referring to, but it wasn’t the ordinary chores of managing the house.

Q. Just touching on that point. Do you accept on behalf of the Sisters of Mercy that the burden of work placed on the children there was excessive?

A. No, we don’t accept that. We would recognise that children had chores to do, and the children who were doing the industrial school training, particularly in the afternoon, there would have been 70 to 80 children in that group at any one time. So the sharing out of the tasks would have eased the amount of work to be done.

01 February 2007

Marie-Therese O’Loughlin can be reached at mariethereseoloughlin@yahoo.com

Making rosary beads

From the middle 1950s to the late 60s, after ‘school’ at 4pm, children from the age of six were issued one slice of bread and margarine and then sent into St. Bridget’s classroom to make rosary beads. The classroom did duty as a mini-factory for the manufacture of rosary beads.

Each day of their lives children had to reach a quota of sixty decades and twelve threes. The task of rosary bead making is a very skilled one, and it required strict deliberation. Beads are strung onto a length of wire and are looped into the relevant beads very intricately, with the aid of heavyweight pliers. There were variations in the thickness of the wire. Silver wire, even though thin was very lustrous and burnished; it was hard to grapple and would flutter all over the place it was that temperamental. If the wire got crooked as we worked it, we positioned the wire under our sandals then impressed on it with the back of our sandals and with the aid of the pliers gripped at wire endings. Children pulled the wire towards them to straighten it.

The holes of pearl beads were very small, which made them an unqualified blight to work with. Silver wire, which was very costly, was exclusively used for the pearl and other such types of beads. Twisting loops with pliers into pearl beads was a thorny ordeal. Children cried at the painful prospect of having to work with these convoluted beads and wire.

Thick wire was used for beads with big holes. This wire consistently ripped into the skin and it resulted in deep indentation marks in the left index fingers and inside of the right palms. The hands got black from sweat and the coated substance that was on the wire. More energy was required in the making of these beads as the cutting with pliers of the thick wire was more demanding. It was very hard for small children who found the practice of cutting wire overwhelming. Not a soul gave a damn. The sizes of pliers never changed with the age of the child, the same size was used at six and at sixteen.

Irish horn beads were bockety [crooked, irregular] and came in various sizes and holes, which made them extra difficult to work with. The glass beads were lethal, as they splintered or fractured with the pressure of the pliers encountering the hole; the splinters then sprayed into the eyes of the child worker.

Life in the factory

We raced each other and tried to be in rivalry in seeing who would get their quotas done first. The beads were placed in discoloured pewter-like cans on grey padded desks; the cans could be toppled over if the loser so determined . We bartered ‘stolen’ bread, dessert or personal favours (we had no property, toys, books, or anything else to trade) for help with the bead making. Cronies helped children that they had a ‘gra’ for; it paid to be liked in Goldenbridge and if you were not you paid dearly.

Children often got temperamental and turned on each other. On the spot punishment by staff was an everyday event. Children had to stand on a cold landing (sometimes barefoot and wearing only slips) during the night for punishment. They were relentlessly flogged with thick bark from a tree by the nun in charge, if, for example, they had not fulfilled their quota of rosary beads in the factory. A quantity of older children worked on the quota for whole nights, wearing sleeveless nightdresses and no sandals.

Children from the lower echelons of Goldenbridge were always issued an assortment of leftover beads and wire which fallen on the floor during the week. The children had no alternative but to do their mandatory quota with this mish-mash despite the added technical hitches.

We constantly rocked backwards and forwards in our desks as we worked. This had a dual purpose: self-soothing, and hurrying to get the work finished. It always achieved its aim. We could block out everything. We also resorted to this type of behaviour collectively with other children at the same time, as we always had the idea that we would get our work done faster. Rocking, banging heads, sucking thumbs and fingers, also occurred when we decided to give ourselves a break for a few minutes.

Children didn’t have to leave St. Bridget’s all that often to go to the toilet as no liquids were allowed from approximately 8am breakfast time, unless children drank from the toilet cisterns and bowls.

Children as young as six had for hours on end to pick up beads and wire, which unavoidably fell on the floor. The particles of wire that carpeted the floor of the factory always presented a danger. St Bridget’s floor was strewn with beads; it was a job trying to gather them up from the floor. Some children landed up in hospital because they had put beads in their ears. Nutty flat brown beads were habitually chewed and swallowed by them, as a white coconut-like substance therein was very edible. Some children swallowed these beads just for the sheer sensation. The silver wire, employed by children in the making of pearl rosary beads, was continually blocked during the process, because of the stuffed holes on its journey through the bead holes; this caused huge problems. Children prodded or bit at them to release white contents when making these particular beads.

Younger children huddled for hours under benches stringing beads onto the tail end of wire for older girls. They were so bored and exhausted that they fell asleep. This was life in the Goldenbridge secret rosary bead factory.

No one to turn to

There were no empathetic staff in the institution that one could turn to for guidance or help. There was not any person of a sympathetic nature that I could importune with to ask if I could be let off the hook. There were no rules in place for us to exert our human rights. Children apprehensively obeyed without query. Fear continuously permeated all around, it was part and parcel of our lives in Goldenbridge.

There was immeasurable pressure on the children to reach mandatory targets. Children were punished there and then on the spot; they were pinched on the arms, or they got a dig of the pliers if they didn’t produce the prearranged amount on time; beads were flung back at them if there was deemed to be a fault.

The nervous tension haunted every day of our lives. We had not a solitary human being we could unburden our hearts to, we had to keep everything to ourselves; children would go into convulsions to rid themselves of pent-up anger. They inwardly knew there was something wrong with their lives. Children had to remain silent and conduct themselves like miniature nuns, offering up their young lives to a God that was never experienced as real. Children never got sick leave either, which factory workers generally do get.

After Work

At 6pm each evening the Angelus bell rang. Everyone lined up in the corridor to say it, then entered the Dining Hall to repeat more prayers: ‘Bless us O Lord, and these thy gifts which of thy bounty we are about to receive through Christ our Lord, Amen.’ The gifts the children received day in and day out were two slices of smelly mouldy bread and a cup of black sugarless cocoa. Mother Catherine McCauley looked down upon them as they ate their pathetic meal. Little ones were still famished when they got up from the tables.

From noon until 8 the following morning, three slices of bread and one cup of cocoa were the staple diet. This derisory meal was expected to foster and sustain hard-working growing children. Oliver Twist would have felt at home. Having completed evening responsibilities children returned to the sweatshop to finish slaving at the third world job.

Morning at Goldenbridge

The children got up at six o’clock each morning. A staff member who grew up in the institution stormed into the dormitories and switched on the lights and roared ‘Get out of those beds immediately!’ If a child hesitated at all the bed covers were flung across the floor, if a child became even more stubborn, as often happened, the mattress with the child was toppled over onto the floor. We then had to make our beds to hospital standards.

Goldenbridge housed on average two hundred children, which included infants and babies; a good percentage of them were infants, babies and toddlers. I remember clearly, at 6:30 in the mornings, when I was eleven years old or thereabouts having to go to St Joseph’s babies/infants dormitory. I had to dress the toddlers. It was normal for some of them to have slept in their own excrement. When I took them from their destroyed beds, I found it so upsetting as they were always covered from head to toe in excrement. They were shivering and were all colours of the rainbow as they stood there waiting to be cleaned. I had to use the clean corners of the destroyed sheets. The only place to get water was from a very small toilet bowl. I dipped the sheet in the bowl and then cleaned the children. The whole dormitory which was a dark dank cold place stank to high heaven. The head honcho of the Sisters of Mercy at this time of morning was up in the convent saying her prayers. The sheets were placed in a soiled open sheet, and with the help of another child we carried them down to the school laundry. There were other sheets there from the Sacred Heart dormitory.

Children like myself who had no family visitors, or big girls who wet the bed, were given the grotesque taks of handwashing the sheets in cold water in the laundry.

This story, like that of the rosary beads, can be properly told only by those who were hidden in Goldenbridge, the ones who were imprisoned behind the doors, who were the lowest on the rungs of the institutional Goldenbridge ladder. Bernadette Fahy, author of Freedom of Angels, or Christine Buckley who appeared in the documentary ‘Dear Daughter,’ would not have been doing this despicable job, as they were both allowed to go to outside school.

Saturdays

On Saturday morning children worked like slaves doing hard maintenance jobs. The whole institution was scrubbed and polished from top to bottom , all done on bended knees.

Saturday afternoons children went to the factory to do time and a half. This entailed producing ninety decades and fifteen threes. Every week beads had to be equipped and organised for Walsh’s Factory outside Rathfarnham. Older children stayed up until all hours checking and rechecking beads. The beads had to be in perfect arrangement. Sixty decades and twelve threes of concluded decades of rosary beads were looped by the fatigued workers onto a stretch of circular looped or hooked wire approximately twelve inches long. Two decades were then held up parallel to each other and methodically examined, till the whole batch of sixty passed the test; this was repeated till all were examined.

Through years of familiarity, older girls could differentiate instantaneously those decades of beads that were erroneous. If there were mistakes such as inconsistencies in the tension of beads, this resulted in lengths not squaring up with each other or beads not nestling correctly together because they were crooked and out of order. This at once rendered the batch defective. All hell let loose, and the staff were on the warpath. ‘If I get my hands on you, I will leave you black and blue,’ echoed all round. Finally during the course of the night, the children filled brown boxes with batches of decades – the culmination of the hard work of very young people.

Conditions

The government paid capitation grants to the religious for the children’s upkeep, yet they were behind locked institutional doors all their childhood, doing factory work unbeknown to the Inspector Mrs McCabe, their parent or parents, and holy Irish society.

Children did not get any superfluous food from the nuns or staff for all the quadruple over-time that they were busied with. On the contrary, the staff requested children to fill hot water bottles for the nuns in charge. This indeed, was considered an honour. A cruel, cruel system prevailed in Goldenbridge Industrial School, Inchicore, Dublin, Ireland.

No outsiders were aware of all of this or if they were, they too did not care. A local woman, employed by the nuns in the latter part of the sixties, had to oversee the whole rosary beads making process. She was not a very strict woman – thank God. Children dreadfully needed some normality and sanity in their lives.

It is ironic that whilst children were doing this third world drudgery behind closed institution doors, the religious were perpetually collecting money for children in Africa.

In Goldenbridge Industrial School, the children produced rosary beads at a phenomenal rate. This factory work went on for a generation. Walsh’s of Rathfarnham were conspiring with the Sisters of Mercy in this racket. The whole of holy Ireland were buying their pompously labelled ‘Made by Irish Cailini Rosary Beads’ from an assortment of religious outlets and holy places such as Knock Shrine. Did the populace at large ever know that children with abnormalities, severe injuries, orphans, vulnerable children who were wrongfully incarcerated (without their consent), who developed welts and deep cuts which frequently bled – were the ones responsible for their production? Blood sweat and tears and a scant once yearly fee of 2/6d was the recompense children received.

The Sisters of Mercy were in breach of the 1935 Employment Act and that too of the 1908 Children Act (Industrial Schools).

Luxury

An antiquated radio and a 98 record player were perched on a high ledge in St Bridget’s Classroom; they were solely for the pleasure of the nun in charge. John McCormack duly serenaded children with the ‘Last Rose of Aughrim’…a song about consumption and death.

I imagine the holy people of this island of saints and scholars hadn’t a notion as to what was going on inside the bitter austere inhospitable labour camp called Goldenbridge, as children were imprisoned there and visitors weren’t ever allowed past the porch hall. To think of all the rosary beads that went to the graves of people who had no idea of the stories behind them.

December 27, 2006

Marie-Therese O’Loughlin can be reached at mariethereseoloughlin@yahoo.com