Precarious childhood in post-independence Ireland

By Moira Maguire

This fascinating study reveals the desperate plight of the poor, illegitimate, and abused children in an Irish society that claimed to cherish and hold them sacred, but in fact marginalized and ignored them. It examines closely the history of childhood in post-independence Ireland, and breaks new ground in examining the role of the state in caring for its most vulnerable citizens.

Maguire gives voice to those children who formed a significant proportion of the Irish population, but have been ignored in the historical record. More importantly, she uses their experiences as lenses through which to re-evaluate Catholic influence in post-independence Irish society.

An essential and timely work, this book offers a different interpretation of the relationships between the Catholic Church, the political establishment, and Irish people; important for those interested in the history of family and childhood as well as twentieth-century Irish social history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Jul 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781847797599

Moira Maguire

Moira J. Maguire is Associate Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock

Book preview

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Poverty, family dysfunction, and state provision for neglected children

Introduction

The years from the 1920s to the 1950s were characterized by periods of endemic poverty and austerity that had a profound impact on poor families. Children seem to have suffered the most from this poverty: at best they went to bed hungry and lived in home environments that were unhealthy and perhaps even dangerous; at worst, they were removed from homes where parents simply could not care for them out of their meager (and sometimes non-existent) resources. During bouts of particularly high unemployment thousands of men migrated to England in search of work. For some families this strategy literally was their salvation. But many men who went off to England failed to send money home, thereby compounding the misery of their wives and children. This chapter, in an examination of social conditions and social policies, argues that the nationalist vision of frugality and simplicity translated into a lack of initiative on the part of successive Irish governments, and children paid a particularly high price for that lack of initiative.

Standard of living

The kind of Irish society envisioned by Eamon de Valera and other nationalists was frugal and simple, with the majority of people living in the countryside, engaging in agriculture and other rural pursuits. Successive Irish governments, from the 1920s forward, introduced some improvements, such as electrification and water schemes, to build up Ireland’s infrastructure and, by extension, improve the quality of life in rural areas. But into the 1950s Ireland remained primarily unindustrialized, and there were few efforts at economic and industrial development. This meant that a significant proportion of the Irish population endured bouts of unemployment and poverty that inevitably had a negative impact on their quality of life and on their ability to provide and care for their children. This, in turn, contributed to substandard and even dangerous living conditions for poor children, and comparatively high levels of institutionalization or neglected children whose parents simply could not provide for them.

Poverty

A significant proportion of the Irish population lived in poverty at least into the 1950s. Successive governments were unwilling or unable to resolve Ireland’s endemic economic problems, and it was not until the 1960s that the Irish government began to engage in economic planning in a meaningful way.¹ This shortcoming had a significant impact on the lives of the poor, and particularly poor children, many of whom ended up in industrial schools for no other reason than poverty. An article published in 1922 in the Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society outlined the poverty problems that faced the new Irish government. The author, John Dunne, pointed out that much of the widespread poverty that existed in Ireland resulted from seasonal or occasional unemployment, and he called on the new government to strengthen the Irish economy with a view to ensuring full employment for all able-bodied men who wanted to work: The removal of the plague of poverty, which is the fountain-source of much of our national ills, physical and moral, should be, to my mind, the primal work of an Irish administration … I do sincerely believe that, given the good will of all classes, an era may yet arrive when absolute destitution, whether affecting adult or child, shall be unknown, and employment for willing workers will be ever abundant.² Dunne’s optimism proved unfounded, and full employment and economic prosperity continued to be elusive right into the 1960s.

The late 1920s and 1930s were characterized by widespread poverty and poor housing: these were the two factors to which the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) attributed many of the cases of neglect they encountered during those years. In 1925 the Government established the Commission for the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor to … examine the law and administration affecting the relief of the following destitute classes and to make recommendations: a) widows and their children; b) children without parents; c) unmarried mothers and their children; d) deserted children.³ The commission’s report, published in 1927, commented on the inadequacy of home assistance payments, at that time the only source of relief for poor families outside of the county home (formerly workhouse) system. The report concluded that boards of health, whilst perhaps acting with more liberality than their predecessors, still fell short of discharging their full obligations in regard to persons eligible for relief who cannot be sent to institutions, and this applies particularly to the cases of widows and children and able-bodied males with dependent families.⁴ It recommended a scheme of mother’s pension to provide relief for widows and their children.

According to an Evening Herald article, when the Poor Relief (Dublin) Act of 1929, which provided for the outdoor relief of able-bodied men and women in Dublin city and county, came into force in 1930 people began to line up for applications before six o’clock in the morning, and over 2,000 applications were submitted by the end of the day. The article noted that the majority of the applicants were young, healthy, able-bodied men who could not find work: Many of the men to the casual passer-by seemed strangely out of place in that great gathering. Some of them were dressed as neatly as bank clerks, with boots well shined, collars immaculately white, and hats worn at a jaunty angle, and it was hard to believe that they were without work and without money. They were, of course, all able-bodied, most of them pictures of health, and their ages ranged from the twenties to the sixties.⁵ The observation that these men presented the picture of health reinforces the idea that poverty was primarily a function of unemployment (and, by extension, a lack of economic planning on the part of the government) rather than of infirmity or laziness.

Conditions do not appear to have improved in the 1930s. The work of the Society of St Vincent de Paul in the Limerick area reveals the extent of the problem of poverty in Limerick. In 1936 the society provided boots and clothing to nearly 2,000 families, and disbursed nearly £2,000 in assistance. This was in spite of the fact that the society’s resources and donations were so diminished that they were forced to reduce by nearly half the number of people they could assist.⁶ A 1939 Standard article indicated that the unemployment rate throughout the country remained relatively constant at 100,000, with over 83,000 people on home assistance (and further that 34 per cent of those receiving home assistance resided in Dublin city or county). The article suggested that those on home assistance constitute a vast army of men, women, and children, dragging out a miserable and demoralising existence on pittances and doles.⁷ Even those receiving home assistance suffered deprivation, because the amounts were not sufficient to cover rent, much less food, fuel, clothing and other basic necessities.

A number of studies were published in the 1940s that highlighted the extent of poverty and poor housing conditions, especially in Dublin. These studies pointed out both that large families tended to experience more poverty than smaller families, and that poverty and poor housing were more pronounced in urban than in rural areas. A 1945 Studies article noted that a recent survey of 10,500 Dublin families found that 55 per cent of them had an income significantly below what experts at the time suggested was a minimum standard, which ranged from £3 5s 0d to £4 18s 0d depending on family size.⁸ The article further suggested that on the whole … we may take it that there are some 90–100,000 men, women and children in the country who are safeguarded from starvation, but who have not enough – in many cases not nearly enough – money to procure the simple necessities of life.⁹ These findings are borne out in the annual reports of the ISPCC. In their 1944–45 annual report the Dublin branch of the ISPCC reported that the number of cases dealt with by the society had risen steadily, and they attributed this increase to the conditions of squalor and poverty in which many families lived.¹⁰ These conditions, according to the report, were not entirely the fault of parents but could be attributed to the inadequacy of existing public assistance and housing schemes.

The government enacted a series of emergency measures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s during periods of particularly severe economic depression and unemployment, suggesting that they realized the dire conditions in which many working-class families lived. For example, in the early years of the Irish Free State the government observed with alarm and concern the ever growing rate of unemployment; one of the first measures undertaken by the new government was the introduction of a special scheme for the relief of destitution. They allocated £275,000 for public utility schemes that would provide employment for unemployed men, and an additional £100,000 for emergency relief. Some of these funds were earmarked for the southern and western seaboards that had experienced a failure of the fishing industry and potato crops in the early 1920s.¹¹ Another series of emergency measures was introduced in 1944 to try to deal with the conditions of poverty and distress that were by-products of the Second World War. These measures included food allowances, in the form of bread, butter, and milk, to those families who received home assistance and widows’ and orphans’ pensions; special grants to local authorities to provide assistance in kind to recipients of home assistance; and low-cost footwear to the children of parents on low incomes or in receipt of any form of public assistance.¹²

Housing

Poor housing was an aspect of poverty that raised significant concern right into the 1950s. The task of providing a sufficient stock of comfortable, healthy, affordable homes for poor and working-class families was one of the most challenging problems to face successive governments in the first half of the twentieth century. Census, newspaper, and ISPCC data indicate that into the 1950s overcrowding, evictions, and substandard housing were fairly common; social commentators periodically warned that poor housing jeopardized the health and well-being of children and may also have contributed to juvenile delinquency and petty crime. The housing problem was three-fold: a shortage of suitable accommodation for working-class families who could afford reasonable rents; the squalid and overcrowded living conditions of the poorest families, in slums, tenements, and condemned cottages, who could afford no better; and homelessness brought about in part by insecure lease arrangements and evictions. These conditions continued into the 1950s, and they were significant factors in committals to industrial schools.¹³

The problems of overcrowding, squalid housing, and evictions appear frequently enough in a variety of sources to suggest several conclusions: that a significant segment of the population experienced these conditions at some point in their lives; that these conditions were dangerous and even deadly on occasion; that overcrowding and evictions in some cases contributed to the break-up of families; and, finally, that these conditions were not confined only to the poorest or most marginalized families. Working-class families in general, even those that were relatively well off, were affected by the shortage of affordable housing.¹⁴ Newspaper and ISPCC case files are full of accounts of families living in squalid conditions unfit for human habitation. Many families were utterly destitute and incapable of improving their circumstances without the financial assistance of family, friends, or public assistance authorities. Other families spent years waiting for a corporation or council house to become available, and in the meantime had to take whatever accommodation they could get. Other working-class families could afford modest rents but could not find safe and healthy accommodation, or faced discrimination from landlords who did not want to rent to families with children. Being able to afford accommodation was no guarantee that a family would actually be able to secure it.

The housing problem was not an exclusively urban one. The reports of the ISPCC provide insight into the nature and extent of the housing problem throughout the country. Parents often appealed to the ISPCC for help in securing better accommodation for their families, and the ISPCC occasionally intervened with local authorities on behalf of worthy families. Of the roughly four hundred ISPCC case files surveyed, approximately fifty were explicitly concerned with poor housing. But housing conditions were mentioned in many others, even if it was not what brought the family to the notice of the ISPCC in the first place. In 1954 the ISPCC was called to a house in Wexford town where they found a woman living in a single room with her six children who ranged from two months to nine years:

I visited as a result of a complaint. The mother and her six children were present. The father was at his work. This family are living in an upstairs room in the home of a [relative]. The mother is allowed to do the cooking downstairs in the kitchen, but the children are not allowed to use the kitchen except when [relative] is out, which is not very often, otherwise they have to stay in the room or get out on the streets. The twins have never been taken downstairs yet. It is a bad case of overcrowding and is bad for the children’s health. Woman is doing her best under difficult circumstances.¹⁵

This was a clear case in which whatever neglect the children suffered stemmed solely from the family’s difficulty in securing adequate housing, and not from any shortcomings on the part of the parents. With the ISPCC inspector’s help the family moved into their own cottage a month after this initial report was made, and the ISPCC subsequently closed the case as satisfactory.

A much more severe case was documented in an ISPCC case from 1956. In April 1956 an ISPCC inspector visited a family in Wexford town consisting of parents and their five children ranging in age from one to sixteen years. The inspector was shocked by what he discovered:

I called at the request of [mother]. [She] stated, I have asked you to call as I have heard that your Society might help me in getting a house. We have lived here thirteen years. The house is infested with rats. For the last two years it has been terrible. I have killed twenty rats in one day, inside the house. I am afraid the rats will eat one of my children when they are sleeping at night. All the floor boards are eaten away with the rats. There is a partly open sewerage outside the front door. The rats come up from there and eat their way into the house. Advised woman never to leave the baby alone for a moment. Told her I would write to the housing officer.¹⁶

This family had already endured these living conditions for more than two years before appealing to the ISPCC for help. It was another four months before the family’s application for a council cottage was approved. The two cases here had happy endings in the sense that the families involved eventually moved into more sanitary and healthy accommodation. But not all families were so lucky, especially in urban areas like Dublin where accommodation was in short supply and families had to take whatever they could get, even if it meant living in rat-infested