BROTHERS INCREASING SEVERITY
In fact, there was a shift in the Brother’s attitudes to corporal punishment following Rice’s death (1844). The normal discipline standards in British education drew the Brothers away from their founder’s ideals. The order grew rapidly in post-famine Ireland.
Rice’s early followers tended to be middle-class mature men. After 1850, large numbers entered the order as teenagers fleeing poverty.
The Bishops and the people wanted more schools – and so numbers had to increase to man them.
Training suffered.
1832: ‘The Brothers shall be ever watchful that they but rarely correct the Scholars by corporal punishments; and that in whatever punishment they inflict, they be never prompted by an emotion of passion or impatience.’
1851: ‘The Brothers shall be ever watchful that in whatever punishment they inflict, they be never prompted by an emotion of passion or impatience.’ – a reference to using corporal punishment rarely had been removed.