Child Abuse
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OF THE many sad stories contained in Peter Tyrrell's book, two have haunt-ed me particularly. The first is of John Coyne, who arrived in Peter's third year and was two years younger. He is not mentioned until the author's sixth and final year.
John Coyne's father murdered his mother, and John was sent to Letterfrack, a shy and timid boy. Peter describes him as "a really handsome boy with a lovely round face, dark hair and brown eyes.
"There was that searching look in his face. He seemed to be asking: 'Do you really know the dreadful experience I have had? Do you really mind very much? Do you condemn me for what has happened? Will you hold it against me?'"
Peter befriended him, shared with him what his mother sent him from home and never questioned him. "I was extremely fond of this little lad."
Peter witnessed the first beating the "little lad" had at the school. Then John Coyne fell under the cruel punishments of Brother Vale, who flogged boys without mercy, using the rim of a motor car tyre, reinforced with steel.
"Vale has beaten this unfortunate boy terribly during the last year. His lovely face seems to have changed an awful lot, that roundness has vanished, instead his face is long, his cheek bones stick out, his eyes just glare and there are dark shadows underneath. His cheeks were once rosy but now they are chalk white, with several spots."
We learn nothing more.
The image is just one of the many cameos of mental and physical destruction that are calmly and clearly delivered in Peter Tyrrell's essentially restrained narrative about a truly terrible place.
The second image is not of an inmate, nor of a brother, but of Mr Griffin - always so described - a schoolteacher at Letterfrack who was present in the yard every day and "was good to the children, he would read and write their letters for them."
When Tyrrell arrived in 1924, Mr Griffin had been in Letterfrack since 1882, at first on a wage of eight shillings a week. He was dutiful and polite towards the Brothers, always lifting his torn cap to them, addressing them correctly, but they treated him with disdain.
Peter Tyrrell helped make a suit in the Letterfrack tailors' shop for Mr Griffin and then witnessed the man's weekly wage, which had by then risen to £1, being reduced by four shillings as part of school "economies".
Griffin could not afford a shirt or socks. He worked from six in the morning until nine at night, never took a holiday and never missed a day. He even looked after the boys during holidays, taking them to the sea.
Peter came from Ahascragh, Co Galway. His parents and eight children lived in a hovel without windows. In due course the family were notified that four of the children, including Peter, would be committed to a home. They were all sent to Letterfrack.
The book is crowded with images, most of them truly terrible. The savagery of Brother Vale has an insane fury behind it, with indiscriminate floggings and no logic or reason behind them.
"I have now been beaten [by Vale] several times daily for weeks," Peter writes, "and when I go to the refectory for meals my hands are sweating. My sight is getting blurred and I am unsteady on my feet.
"I feel hungry, but when I eat the food it will not stay down. I am now weak and, as I walk along, find it difficult to keep my balance."
Vale was eventually committed to a mental institution,where he died.
One of Peter's worst beatings was at the hands of Brother Walsh. Walsh one day lined up a group of 12 of the boys, made them take off their trousers and beat each in turn with a heavy stick.
Peter Tyrrell was last; after six blows he ran away but was chased by Walsh who beat him on the head, face and back. He hit him so hard on the arm that he broke it - but told the child to tell the doctor that he fell down the stairs.
He was two weeks in the infirmary. The new doctor was called Lavelle, a man who wore plus-fours and was always smoking. Inspecting Peter in the presence of the Superior, Brother Keegan, he saw the bruises all over his body. Yet nothing was done.
There is a compulsion in the way Peter Tyrrell tells his story. His memory is remarkable. His treatment of each episode is calm and measured. One never doubts the facts he tells, it is all too realistic.
He demolishes absolutely the whole representation before Judge Sean Ryan of what was happening in Christian Brothers industrial schools during the period of their operation. There were not just "bad times", or "bad people"; the savage, unrelenting cruelty was systematic, constant and comprehensive.
There was no attention paid to their health. Those with eye defects simply became more blind; those with teeth problems became chronically diseased. There is a pitiful description of one boy with blood and pus coming from his mouth. Other children had septic discharges from their ears. Their chilblains, which were chronic, also went septic.
I first heard of Peter Tyrrell from his article about Letterfrack in Hibernia in 1968. I still have the cutting, and it reminds me of Owen Sheehy Skeffington's campaign against corporal punishment in Irish schools.
Attempts have been made to lessen what happened in Letterfrack - and in Artane, and elsewhere - by claiming that they did not differ much from ordinary schools, and that the poverty was a common distress shared by the population.
Founded on Fear demolishes that argument. It has the compelling strength of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - only, for Tyrrell, one day stretched out into years.
He was caught up in a system where his incarceration was really not much different from the Stalinist gulags. Lost, fearful, in despair, physically and mentally neglected, he came to hate his own home, to throw away letters unread and unanswered. In the end, Peter Tyrrell took his own life and his body remained unidentified for a year.
He has articulated the grief and fear of something like 30,000 men and women who will never forget the experiences they had. They have badly needed this unforgettable testimony. But we should all welcome it, and read it.