Patrick - Fear of the Collar (2007)

       

Continuous labour, never-ending hunger, malicious cruelty and sexual assault — this was not a normal childhood. 

Sent to an industrial school in Dublin at the age of seven, Patrick Touher was forced into a tough regime of education and training, prayer and punishment, strict discipline and fearful nights. No allowances were made for emotion, sentiment or boyhood worries, and anyone who disturbed the routine was severely punished. Artane demanded absolute obedience, absolute submission; Patrick’s was an education in cruelty and fear. 

Patrick spent eight long years in Artane Industrial School. Run by the Christian Brothers, the school has become synonymous with the systematic and widespread abuse of children in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s which is currently the subject of a formal inquiry. 

There were plenty of fights in the refectory and they often had to do with the cutting of the loaf of yang. Each loaf had to be cut into four pieces. To cut the bread a boy would spin the knife in front of the lads and whoever the knife pointed at when it stopped spinning, that boy would cut the loaf in four and take his share and he would have first pick of the jam or margarine. Boys would often fight over the size of the piece of loaf they got.
A fight would start if a boy’s bread was stolen. Sometimes a boy would distract another boy by pushing his knife on to the floor, and while the latter was picking it up someone would steal his bread or margarine and a fight would develop because more often than not he’d pick on the wrong lad for taking it. The tricks were plentiful. One favourite one was telling a boy at supper that the lad behind him wanted to talk to him and when the boy looked around again, there would be nothing left on his plate.
Fighting in the refectory was a most serious offence and The Bucko would just not tolerate anyone taking sides.
After breakfast the 900 boys filed out and marched to the playground. Boys from the age of fourteen to sixteen went to attend to their trades. Boys from twelve to fourteen had jobs to do like cleaning, dusting and polishing floors in the dormitories. Those who worked on the farms were up at 5am every morning.
School started at 9.15am. I dreaded Hellfire. I found it very hard to learn from him. Sometimes he would make you stand out at the wall in the classroom with your hands held straight up above your head and if and when you dropped them he would take you over his knee and beat the bottom off you. Sometimes he’d pull your trousers down or just pull up the trousers over your bum (we all wore baggy shorts), and beat the arse off you. Other times he would make you sit on your hunkers, without your bottom touching the floor, with your hands out straight in front of you. Hellfire would roast the arse off you for damn all.
Morning class would end at 11.30 and we marched up to the refectory for a slice of yang and jam and back to the parade ground to play. There were names for everything and the boys reported by the monitors for stepping out of line were put on charge, meaning they were forbidden to play for about a week and were put standing guard in different locations. Sometimes it was at West Gate, which led into the playing fields and out into Whitehall. Another charge was ‘the six counties’ which was the North Gate beside the toilets. A third charge was called Glacamarra at the back of the handball alleys. There were over two dozen charges a boy could be posted to for being in trouble.
The games we played really went according to age. When I was eight and nine I played ring-a-ring-a-rosie, tip and tag and relieve-e-i-o. Other games played were spinning top, tinnies (flattened bottle tops, which we threw to a line to see who would get closest), marbles, hopscotch, hide and seek. There were about five huge handball alleys and we played handball with a cocker (a small hard ball). There was Gaelic football and hurling. Soccer was strictly forbidden and anyone caught heading a ball was reported, given a hiding and put on charge for a month. It was a real crime!
At one o’clock we had dinner and afterwards, boys under the age of fourteen returned to their classrooms for a short while. Boys from the age of fourteen to sixteen went back to work, in the workshops, at their various trades. Under the age of fourteen you attended school three times a day, morning, afternoon and evening. Evening class was called night school and boys from the age of fourteen to sixteen, who were called traders, attended night school too. This began at 5pm and ended at 6.45pm.
And so the routine went on, each day the same as the previous one, a rigid system of discipline and order. In Artane the rules were made to be enforced, and fear was the key to keeping strict order. At the first sign of disorder The Dude moved in swiftly, with fist and boot, on the older boys who wanted to fight it out with him. He was known for his trademark phrases. Raising his fist, he would say, ‘Would you like to see tomorrow? … Beat it or I’ll knock you into Gloccamorra …