DISCIPLINE, INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS AND ORPHANAGES
The British government subsidized the establishment of industrial schools after the 1860s. Religious Orders quickly responded.
Motivations were good – but the Order’s experiences where with regular instruction in day schools of the working class and lower class Catholic youth – poor but from stable family backgrounds. The boys placed in their care in the institutions were often from the lowest level of the working class – a subculture the brothers had little experience with.
Many had suffered acute deprivation – Brothers were, at most, trained as teachers, not as childcare professionals.
The work was tiring, and stressful. Stress leads to violence.
Mannix Flynn, 1960s – Letterfrack Borstal, Co. Galway: ‘The weather was as hard and cold-blooded as the Brothers.’
Roberts Connors, mid-1970s, Mt. Cashel Orphanage, Newfoundland – his brother was kicked and slapped at the age of four for not making his bed properly. Shane Earle – same institution, similar period – ‘brutally beaten’.