'A good beating never hurt anyone': the punishment and abuse of children in twentieth century Ireland.

Introduction

In recent years serious allegations have been made against the male and female religious orders that ran children's homes, including industrial schools, in twentieth-century Ireland. (1) These allegations range from sexual abuse to neglect of educational, training, and employment opportunities to malnutrition and starvation. One of the most common allegations relates to physical abuse and extreme or excessive corporal punishment. Those who administered the industrial school system could respond to these allegations by suggesting both that corporal punishment in the industrial schools was consistent with prevailing practice in homes and schools across the country, and that institutions that catered for such large numbers of neglected, and in some cases delinquent, children could not function without a stringent corporal punishment regime.

Media and popular accounts of these allegations have tended to highlight the most salacious and lurid details while silencing alternative memories or accounts and ignoring the historical context. In order to assess these allegations, it is necessary to examine prevailing policy and practice in homes and schools, to see what was regarded as acceptable and legitimate corporal punishment there. It is also necessary to consider public discussions of corporal punishment and of the need to protect children from abuse at the hands of parents and school teachers. As will be shown, the government and the courts consistently refused to limit the use, by parents and teachers, of corporal punishment, or to differentiate legitimate punishment from cruelty or abuse. (2) The physical chastisement of children was widely tolerated for much of the twentieth century, even to extremes that by today's standards would be regarded as abuse. This article examines corporal punishment in Ireland, in policy and practice, from the 1930s to the 1980s, drawing on a wide variety of sources including Department of Education files and circulars, Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) case files, Dail (Irish parliament) debates, letters to newspapers, newspaper coverage of court cases, and biographical and autobiographical accounts of twentieth century Irish childhood.

The corporal punishment of children in the home and in national schools (i.e. public schools for children aged 4 to 13) was still accepted practice in Ireland into the early 1980s, although arguments against it had been advanced as early as the 1950s. Historically there was little understanding that corporal punishment was potentially harmful or that it could have lasting negative effects on children; indeed, the view prevailed that "a good beating never hurt anyone," and that some corporal punishment was necessary to instil respect for authority, to maintain discipline, and to rear "good citizens". The right of parents to use corporal punishment, in their own homes and against their own children, was scarcely questioned, and the laws that in theory protected children from what would today be classified as abuse, in particular the Children Act 1908, specifically upheld a parent's right to punish his or her child. "Nothing in the Part of this Act shall be construed to take away or affect the right of any parent, teacher, or other person having the lawful control or charge of a child or young person to administer punishment to such child or young person." (3) Similarly, there were regulations for the use of corporal punishment in schools, and for lodging complaints against teachers who violated the regulations. However, it is clear from an examination of Department of Education complaint files that the rules were often broken, and that the Department of Education usually turned a blind eye. The Department consistently refused to hold teachers or school managers accountable for even the most blatant violations of the rules.

I. Discipline and punishment in the home

Public discussion of the right of parents to punish their children was rare in mid-twentieth century Ireland, but the available evidence indicates that corporal punishment was widely used by parents, and generally accepted as necessary to discipline children at home. Children were, at least in theory, protected from assaults and ill treatment in the home by the Children Act of 1908 (amended by the Children Act, 1957), and the various Offences Against the Person Acts:

   If any person over the age of sixteen years [amended to 17 years in
   1957], who has the custody, charge or care of any child or young
   person, wilfully assaults, ill-treats, neglects, abandons, or exposes
   such child or young person or causes or procures such child or young
   person to be assaulted, ill-treated, neglected, abandoned, or exposed
   in a manner likely to cause such child or young person unnecessary
   suffering or injury to his health (including injury to or loss of
   sight or hearing, or limb, or organ of the body, and any mental
   derangement), that person shall be guilty of a misdemeanour ... (4)

The penalties for conviction under this section of the Children Act ranged from a [pounds sterling]25 fine or six months' imprisonment for a summary conviction, to a [pounds sterling]100 fine or two years' imprisonment on indictment. (These penalties were not increased under the 1957 legislation.) However, the theoretical legal protection afforded to children under the Children Acts was diluted by the provision about parental punishment quoted above, which in practice gave parents an almost unfettered right to punish their children however they saw fit, even if that meant that children were treated in a manner that would be regarded as abusive by today's standards. There were few prosecutions for assault or ill treatment under the Children Act and parents were more likely to be prosecuted under this Act for failing to support their children than for ill-treating or assaulting them. (5)

The right, and indeed the duty, of parents to discipline their children, with corporal punishment if necessary, was often re-affirmed in the courts, where district justices were known to exhort parents to "beat" or "thrash" errant children. In a 1930 case before the Roscommon District Court, the district justice advised the father of two boys, who were charged with housebreaking, to punish them more severely:

   Justice: "What this boy wants is a good thrashing."
   [Boy's father]: "I gave him the rod severely". (6)

The district justice adjourned the case against the older boy and had the younger boy committed to an industrial school where he would receive the punishment he was lacking at home. In another case from 1930 the district justice suggested to a woman that her son might attend school more regularly if she beat him occasionally. The mother replied that she did beat her son, which typically caused him to run away from home for two or three days at a time. (7)

In the Children's Court in Birr in 1953 a 12-year-old girl was charged with the larceny of a pocket watch. The girl's father told the district justice that when he heard about the theft he gave her "a few right beatings". The district justice was "satisfied the father was the type of man who would look after [the girl]" and he adjourned the case for six months, warning the father that "whether or not the girl would be sent away rested entirely on ... the control he would exercise over [the girl] during that period." (8) In another case from 1953 a father told the district justice that he had given his sons "a good beating" after they were caught stealing. The justice replied that "he was satisfied that it was not the father's fault that the boys had done what they did. He gave them a good hiding and it was no less than what they deserved." (9) In the Dublin Children's Court in 1957 District Justice O'Nunain advised a mother that "a few whacks of a stick" would bring her delinquent son "to his senses". (10)

Not only did the courts reaffirm a parent's right and responsibility to use corporal punishment, but the Summary Jurisdiction over Children (Ireland) Act of 1884 also gave courts the authority to hand down corporal punishment sentences on delinquent children: "When the child is a male the court may, instead of any other punishment, adjudge the child to be, as soon as practicable, privately whipped with not more than six strokes of a birch rod by a constable, in the presence of an inspector or other office of police of higher rank than a constable, and also in the presence, if he desires to be present, of the parent or guardian of the child." (11) In 1949 seven boys were convicted in the Bray Children's Court of malicious damage; four of the boys' parents were ordered to pay restitution while the remaining three parents were ordered to beat their children in the presence of the guards. One parent refused to carry out the sentence and the district justice insisted that if the boy's parents" ... were determined to spoil him," he had no choice but to send the boy to Marlborough House for one month. (12) In the aftermath of this ruling a question was raised in the Dail about the wisdom of allowing district justices to pass corporal punishment sentences, but the Minister for Justice stated that he did not plan to alter the law. (13) The 1997 Criminal Law Act finally abolished the right of courts to impose corporal punishment sentences.

A case that clearly illustrated the judicial affirmation of a parent's right to administer corporal punishment arose in 1967 when a six-year-old boarded-out child, Mary Josephine Stephenson, died following a severe beating by her foster father, Vincent Dunphy. Based on newspaper accounts it is clear that the beating inflicted on Mary Josephine could not in any way be classified as moderate or acceptable even by the standards of the day, and in fact it appears to have been a brutal, unprovoked assault. Dunphy wakened Mary Josephine at nearly midnight so that he could be punish her:

   He [Dunphy] asked her why she had left her face cloth in the basin
   and not put it away. She got out of bed to do this. He took a towel
   off the bed and held it in a ball in his right hand. He struck her on
   the face. It was more a push than a blow. She staggered back and
   fell. Then she got up again and came towards him. He asked her why
   she pretended to be asleep and she said she had been asleep. Then he
   hit her again with the towel. This went on four or five times. About
   the fourth or fifth time she looked a bit groggy and she slumped to
   the ground. (14)

Dunphy justified the assault by claiming that Mary Josephine was "difficult" and told lies. He stated that during the three weeks prior to the above assault she had become particularly difficult and every day he "... had to hit her with the palm of my hand across the face." Neighbours testified that they had not seen Mary Josephine in the week or so immediately before her death but that prior to that they often saw her with bruises, scratches, and black eyes, suggesting a sustained pattern of beatings.

The judge's charge to the jury reveals an ambivalent attitude toward Mr. Dunphy's actions. He cautioned the jury that they must

   ... approach this case on the basis that the accused is a man who
   sincerely believes that physical punishment was the proper way to
   deal with any offences this child committed. Even if you hold the
   view that excessive punishment was used that, by itself, does not
   mean that he intended to do serious injury to the child. It does not
   follow from the fact that there was regular punishment that it was
   necessarily given with the intention of causing serious injury or
   what was done on this evening was something dangerous. (emphasis
   added) It's a matter for you to decide but I think it is probable
   that when the child fell she struck her head, setting in motion a
   chain of events that resulted in her death. (15)

In effect the judge seemed willing to absolve Vincent Dunphy of responsibility for Mary Josephine's death, suggesting that Dunphy was justified in inflicting corporal punishment under the circumstances and that he could not have foreseen, when he beat her, that she would fall back and bang her head. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter and Dunphy was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. Dunphy's solicitor argued that this sentence was too harsh given a parent's legal right to punish his or her child.

Official data, while limited, points clearly to the conclusion that parents were free to use corporal punishment in the home, without interference from the ISPCC and the courts. Indeed, district justices often expressed the view that parental corporal punishment would compel errant children to attend school regularly or prevent some petty crimes. The law that protected children from assault and ill treatment also upheld the right of parents to punish their children. It seems that no one, even district justices, wanted to attempt to define the boundaries between legitimate parental punishment, on the one hand, and assault and ill-treatment on the other. Even the ISPCC, whose founding mission was to protect children from cruelty and abuse, spent more time chasing down parents who failed to maintain their children financially than they did investigating allegations of cruelty and abuse. (16) And in cases where evidence of "cruelty" or ill-treatment existed, the ISPCC often brushed it off as insignificant or justified given the child's behaviour.

II. Corporal punishment in national schools

The Department of Education was responsible for regulating the use of corporal punishment in national schools, and regulations changed very little from the 1930s to the early 1980s, when corporal punishment was finally abolished. The regulations notwithstanding, however, corporal punishment was widely used to maintain discipline in schools, and violations of the regulations were common-place and, for the most part, ignored by the Department of Education. Even as public opinion began to turn against the use of corporal punishment in national schools from the 1950s, successive Ministers for Education consistently refused even to consider abolishing corporal punishment in schools.

The following are the rules in relation to corporal punishment in operation for most of the period under review (modifications from time to time are indicated):

   1) Corporal punishment should be administered only for grave
   transgression--[never for failure in lessons (this last phrase was
   deleted in 1931 and added again in 1946)].
   2) The Principal Teacher only should inflict the corporal punishment.
   An interval of at least ten minutes should elapse between the offence
   and the punishment.
   3) Only a light cane or rod may be used for the purpose of inflicting
   the corporal punishment. The boxing of children's ears, the pulling
   of their hair, and similar ill treatment are absolutely forbidden,
   and will be visited with severe penalties.
   4) No teacher should carry about a cane or other instrument of
   punishment.
   5) Frequent recourse to corporal punishment will be considered by the
   Department as indicating bad tone and ineffective discipline.

It is clear from all the available evidence that corporal punishment was commonplace and that parents themselves generally supported a teacher's right to punish their children. (17) This view is reinforced by the memoirs and autobiographical accounts of Irish childhood in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In a 1969 newspaper article setting out the argument in favour of abolishing corporal punishment in national schools, Lawrence Murphy recalled his own school days and the fear instilled in himself and his classmates by some of the teachers. He recalled that "... the slower students--in my class of which I was a member--would be lined up by the teacher's desk each to receive one strap across the hand. This was the corrective measure used to give us more of an incentive to work." (18) Murphy believed that his experiences were not unique:

   In some schools we have to admit that the pupils are not instilled
   with the concepts of human rights and dignity for the individual.
   Unfortunately, the Irish student in many cases has no individual
   rights once he enters the classroom. His dignity is stripped away
   from him like bark from a tree ... That is how he learns, not through
   love of his subjects or his striving for knowledge, but rather
   through terror of the consequences if he can't come up with the right
   answer when the questions come around to his side of the room. To say
   that this is characteristic of all modern Irish schools would be
   ridiculous, but there are still schools, usually outside the main
   centres, where the law of the strap still prevails. (19)

Biographical and autobiographical accounts of Irish childhood contain numerous references to corporal punishment in schools; often such references are made in passing, as if being hit in school was part of the ordinary fabric of childhood. Patrick Boland, who grew up in the Liberties, one of Dublin's poorer neighborhoods, in the 1940s, recalled that "we children accepted the beatings as being just part of a normal school day." (20) Angeline Kearns Blain remembered, growing up in Dublin's Irishtown in the 1940s and 1950s, that the only adult who ever hit with a stick or cane was the teacher at the local national school. (21) The writers Frank O'Connor and Patrick Galvin, whose childhoods spanned the 1910s and the 1930s respectively, recalled the canes used by their teachers to punish children, and both remembered that it was not unusual for the canes to break in the course of the punishment, suggesting that the punishment was inflicted with a degree of severity. (22)

The anecdotal evidence provided in personal histories, such as that cited above, is supported by evidence from Department of Education files, which indicates that the Department was reluctant to entertain complaints lodged by parents and guardians, and often condoned or ignored even blatant violations of the corporal punishment regulations. (23) As a rule the Department of Education dismissed parents' complaints, even when a teacher admitted inflicting corporal punishment in a manner or for a reason that violated Departmental regulations. When the Department of Education received a complaint from a parent or guardian, the first step was to inform the parent that complaints should be raised with the school manager. This was usually done with a form letter along the following lines:

   With reference to your recent letter regarding the treatment of your
   son, a pupil of the above-named school, by Mr. __________, principal
   teacher of the school, you are informed that complaints of this
   nature should, in the first instance, be brought before the Manager,
   who is the person charged with the direct government of the school,
   and I am to request you to be so good as to state whether this has
   been done. (24)

In many cases parents/guardians bypassed the school manager in favour of direct communications with the Department of Education. It is possible, as some complainants alleged in their letters, that they feared they would not be given a fair hearing from the teachers or school managers. There is also evidence that parents/guardians complained directly to the Department of Education in cases where animosity or overt hostility existed between parents and school managers, principals, and teachers.

On receipt of a complaint a Department of Education official wrote to the school manager informing him of the complaint and requesting a statement from himself and the teacher in question, along the following lines:

   I am to enclose for your information a copy of a letter which has
   been received from Mr. __________, regarding his son, a pupil of the
   above-named school, and I am to request you to be so good as to
   obtain a written statement on the matter from the teacher concerned
   and to forward it to the Department together with your own
   observations. I am also to inquire whether the boy in question is at
   present attending this school. (25)

If there seemed to be some merit to a complaint, or if it was of a serious nature, the Department also asked a Divisional Inspector to investigate and report on the matter.

Although the Department went through the motions of investigating complaints, its commitment to enforcing the corporal punishment regulations was half-hearted at best. One case in particular testifies to the Department's utter unwillingness or inability to deal with serious and legitimate complaints. In February 1929 a group of parents from Currane in County Mayo wrote to the Department of Education with a litany of complaints against the principal and two assistant teachers (one of whom was the principal's wife) of the local national school, including allegations of frequent violations of corporal punishment regulations. The parents threatened to withdraw their children unless the Department addressed their concerns, and three weeks later 120 of the school's 133 pupils were withdrawn. The police initiated proceedings against the parents under the School Attendance Act, but the district justice adjourned the cases and called on the Department of Education to conduct an inquiry. The parents of seventeen children lodged formal complaints that their children had been beaten, while other parents complained in general terms about the way the school was run. After a thorough investigation the Department's Divisional Inspector found that most of the complaints in relation to the running of the school were unfounded. However, he also concluded "that the children were punished excessively and irregularly by [the principal, his wife, and another teacher], that the corporal punishment regulations were flagrantly violated, that [the principal] burned the copy book which was stained with blood from the hand of [a pupil] and that [the teacher] did not restrain her tongue." (26)

The Divisional Inspector recommended the removal of all three teachers; the Deputy Chief Inspector, however, recommended that the teachers be "admonished" and fined amounts ranging from [pounds sterling]5 to [pounds sterling]25 for "non-observance of the rules regarding the infliction of corporal punishment." The Deputy Chief Inspector also recommended that the school manager "be informed that the inquiry reveals that he has not discharged his duty to the Department, the teachers and the parents of the pupils." In August 1932, eighteen months after the complaints were first made, the Department of Education followed the recommendations of the Deputy Chief Inspector and fined rather than removed the teachers. In spite of the Divisional Inspector's findings the Department concluded that "the failure of the teachers to observe the corporal punishment regulations in spirit and in fact was probably a temporary lapse on their part." (27)

Three years later additional complaints were lodged against the principal teacher. The case was initially dismissed in the Achill District Court, but upheld on appeal to Castlebar Circuit Court, and the teacher was fined [pounds sterling]5 plus costs. Following on from the court case the Department wrote to the principal and his wife advising them to seek an exchange with teachers from another school. The couple ignored this and subsequent directives, and in 1936 it seems that the Department gave up trying to compel the teachers to leave; they issued the teachers with a warning, the same warning that was issued to them in 1932, that "if it should be proved to the satisfaction of the Department, now or at any time in the future that ... any member of the staff of the school had administered excessive or irregular punishment to children in attendance, the matter would be regarded in a very grave light and the Department, in taking appropriate action, would not refrain from inflicting the maximum penalty of withdrawal of recognition as teacher should such actions be deemed necessary in the circumstances." (28) In short, after a period of seven years of complaints, inquiries, court cases, and warnings involving the same teachers, the Department was unable to remove the teachers or compel them to abide by corporal punishment regulations, and ultimately stopped trying. The above case may be unusual in terms of its seriousness and duration, but is a reflection of the Department's ambivalence and ineffectiveness when it came to addressing complaints about corporal punishment. In at least three cases teachers were fined and warned after serious violations of corporal punishment regulations, but subsequent complaints against the same teachers were ignored.

One teacher was fined twice by the Department in 1932, and again in 1934, for inappropriately punishing a child. In the 1932 case he was accused of beating a child severely on the legs for failing in his school lessons. The teacher denied it, but the Divisional Inspector concluded that although the teacher was "a respectable man and a hardworking teacher", "the boy got two or three slaps on the hands and about six blows of the cane on the legs and that his legs were marked for a few days afterwards." (29) In relation to the 1934 complaint the Inspector found that "[the teacher] occasionally beat [the child] and his sister on the back ...; that he used an unsuitable rod when administering corporal punishment; that he is in the habit of punishing pupils for failure at lessons." (30) The teacher admitted punishing the child, although he denied that the punishment was inappropriate, and he suggested that "these children are very pettish in manner, and I have no doubt that they sometimes tell stories at home." (31) The Department fined the teacher [pounds sterling]10 and warned him once again of the dire consequences of further incidents. Yet another complaint was brought against this teacher in 1935. The teacher admitted slapping the child for poor performance in his Irish lessons, and several other boys gave evidence that they had been punished in similar fashion. The teacher denied giving the boy a black eye, as alleged by the mother. In spite of the teacher's own admission, the evidence of three other boys, and the teacher's track record, the Inspector recommended that no action be taken in this instance. One gets the sense that, short of removing the teacher (which the Department was not inclined to do), there was little more they were willing or able to impose to force the teacher's compliance to Departmental regulations.

Four additional cases illustrate the Department's tendency either to ignore complaints or to do the absolute minimum required to address them. In these cases (from Kildare in 1930, Donegal in 1931, Galway in 1935 and 1943), the parents sought transfers to other schools for their children, and once the Department sanctioned the transfers no further action was taken. The Department appears to have held the view that the transfers essentially solved the problem even when the parent's complaints were upheld. (32) The case from 1935 was particularly interesting because in the course of the investigation both the Divisional Inspector and the Irish National Teachers Organization (INTO) complained to the Department that they took too much notice of parental complaints, the overwhelming majority of which they believed were frivolous. (33) In a fifth case, from Mayo in 1941, a parent sought a transfer for his child on the grounds that his son was excessively punished, on a regular basis, by his teacher. The Department proposed to sanction the transfer, without investigating the complaint, assuming that the transfer would solve the problem. However the school manager, while acknowledging that the parent had a genuine grievance, refused to sanction the transfer because the school to which the parent proposed to send his child was Protestant. (34) Ultimately the Department did not grant the transfer, and no further action appears to have been taken in the matter.

It is clear from the way the Department of Education, school managers, and teachers responded to complaints that teachers frequently and knowingly violated Department of Education regulations and that the Department of Education often overlooked blatant violations rather than take action that might undermine the authority of teachers, principals, or school managers. Only rarely were a parent's concerns addressed by the Department of Education; in most cases the Department took months, or even years, to respond to complaints, and even when a teacher was reminded, warned, or reprimanded, the Department rarely informed parents about the outcome of their investigation but simply stated that "appropriate action" had been taken. The overall conclusion to be drawn from the available complaint files is that the Department was, by and large, unresponsive to complaints and reluctant to hold themselves or schoolteachers accountable for breaches of corporal punishment regulations. In effect they tolerated the extensive use of corporal punishment, even very severe corporal punishment, in breach of their own formal regulations, and provided little if any defence of children against abuse by teachers.

III. The End of Corporal Punishment

Although most teachers, and perhaps even most parents, supported the use of corporal punishment to maintain order and discipline in schools, a critical voice on the subject began to emerge in the late 1940s. A small but ever-growing and increasingly vocal number of parents began to complain, through the pages of a Dublin evening newspaper, about both the extent of violations of corporal punishment regulations in the country's national schools, and the Department's seemingly lackadaisical attitude to the problem. In 1955, following a sustained letter-writing campaign to the Evening Mail, a Dublin evening newspaper, a group of concerned parents formed the Schoolchildren's Protection Organisation with the exclusive aim of lobbying the Minister for Education to abolish corporal punishment in national schools. The hundreds of letters received by the Evening Mail in late 1954 and 1955 gave voice to parents' concerns that violations of corporal punishment regulations were not only commonplace in the country's national schools, but were also largely ignored by the Department of Education:

   Examination of the extracts from the Rules and Regulations for
   National Schools laid down by the Department of Education might
   Appear to satisfy any reasonable parent that protection of their
   children is amply provided for. That this view is now open to grave
   doubt must be obvious to any honest and serious thinking person, in
   view of the apparently widespread failure to observe the regulations.
   That such a chaotic condition should exist surely justifies the
   making of a more conscientious and careful approach to this problem
   by the authorities concerned, and either the enforcement of the
   Regulations or the abolition of Compulsory Education. (35)

According to the Organisation, children were punished in national schools for a variety of "offences", contrary to Regulation 1, including: failure at lessons; tardiness; not having copy books or other supplies; being absent; and neglect of homework. Contrary to Regulation 3, the punishments meted out for these offences included canings on various parts of the body; beatings with straps or pointers; hair pulling; and beatings with hands or fists. (36)

The letters published in the Evening Mail, seventy of which were reproduced in a pamphlet called Punishment in our schools, illustrated alleged abuses of the corporal punishment regulations and showed that corporal punishment was a regular feature of life in many schools (in spite of the stipulation that "frequent recourse to corporal punishment will be considered by the Department as indicating bad tone and ineffective discipline"). The Schoolchildren's Protection Organisation suggested that the protections theoretically afforded to children by the Rules and Regulations were effectively negated by the Department of Education's reluctance to address complaints:

   To administer in this unhappy situation we have thousands of
   teachers, school managers and attendance inspectors, numerous
   officials, inspectors and high executives of the Department of
   Education and a Minister for Education. We soon learned that all
   these bodies appeared in the most part to have one thing in common
   and in which they always presented a united front by an antagonistic
   approach to any voice raised in criticism. This unfortunate attitude
   practically nullifies the merits of the Rules and Regulations laid
   down by the Department and from comments in some of the letters
   published in this booklet, it would appear that in many cases where a
   conscientious parent attempts to seek an investigation of any
   incident relating to one of his or her children they are quickly
   discouraged from pursuing the matter further and very often in a most
   humiliating manner. (37)

The kind of punishment (and the reasons for the use of corporal punishment) described in these letters was not new: what was noteworthy was the depth of public feeling on the matter.

The Minister for Education unequivocally rejected the validity of the allegations made in the Evening Mail letters and Corporal punishment in our schools: "... I want to say that as far as that publication is concerned it shows on its face to be an attack by people reared in an alien and in a completely un-Irish atmosphere and it is carried on here with the help of our Irish newspapers. It is an attack on the whole spirit of our educational system and it is an endeavour to attack our educational roots." (38) The Minister also asserted that although the Department received complaints "from time to time", they never received more than one or two such complaints per month, and that complaints were dealt with swiftly and efficiently. Our own analysis of Department of Education files would suggest otherwise.

The public debate that emerged in the mid-1950s marked the beginning of the campaign to ban corporal punishment in schools, although it would take nearly 30 years to accomplish this goal. Ironically, in 1956, just at the time when opponents of corporal punishment were becoming most vocal, the Minister for Education proposed an amendment to the corporal punishment regulations, and specifically rule 96(3), which stipulated that only a light cane or rod could be used on the open hand, that opponents of corporal punishment viewed rather ominously. The new regulations permitted the use of a strap, in addition to a light cane or rod, on the hand. The move was widely condemned, not least by the Schoolchildren's Protection Organisation: "We strongly criticise the action of the Minister for Education in authorising the use of a leather strap in order to facilitate those teachers whose tradition of correction with the leather strap (in defiance of the regulations) is now such an integral part of their nature that they are unable to teach without it." The Evening Mail article from which the above is quoted was accompanied by a cartoon depicting two children lying in hospital beds covered in bandages. One child asked the other: "Was it the cane or the strap?" (39) The decision to allow the use of the strap elicited such a storm of protest that the Minister was forced to revert to the old regulations, and the Irish Housewives Association joined the Schoolchildren's Protection Organisation in welcoming the Minister's decision: "The Association congratulates the Minister on his courage and foresight in withdrawing permission for the use of the strap and hope that this is the first step towards the abolition of corporal punishment in schools." (40)

In June of 1957 the Minister for Education again proposed amendments to rule 96 (3). The new regulations omitted all reference to the implements that could be used to punish children, leaving it to the teacher's discretion to decide how to inflict corporal punishment. The Minister for Education assured the Dail, however, that "... any improper or unreasonable punishment will be regarded as conduct unbefitting a teacher and will be visited with very severe sanction." (41) In effect the Minister was able to accomplish what he was forced to backtrack on in October of 1956, which was his Department's tacit sanction of the use of the strap in administering corporal punishment.

Efforts to effect the abolition of corporal punishment in national schools continued unabated into the 1960s and 1970s. During question time in the Dail on 4 May 1961 several TDs cited recent court cases in which parents successfully sued teachers who had excessively or inappropriately punished their children, and they asked the Minister for his views on the various cases. (42) The Minister's response was equivocal:

   My responsibility in the matter is twofold. On the one hand it is for
   me to see to it that the children are not ill treated and on the
   other that they receive efficient instruction. The teacher holds for
   the time being the place of the parent and so for the time being
   carries in this matter the right of the parent. In these
   circumstances it would be unreasonable for me to forbid the teacher
   to adopt any deterrent that might be adopted by a just and wise
   parent, and a just and wise parent might on occasion deem it
   necessary to inflict an adequate amount of corporal punishment in
   order to control the child and bring him up in the way he should
   go. (43)

The Minister re-affirmed the teacher's right to use corporal punishment without addressing the TD's specific concern--that violations of corporal punishment regulations were all too prevalent.

The rules governing the use of corporal punishment in schools were revised again in 1965. It is not clear what prompted these changes, particularly as the Department of Education's fundamental views on the matter had not changed. The gist of the 1965 rules is as follows:

   Teachers should have a lively regard for the improvement and general
   welfare of their pupils, treat them with kindness combined with
   firmness and should aim at governing them through their affections
   and reason and not by harshness and severity. Ridicule, sarcasm or
   remarks likely to undermine a pupil's self-confidence should be
   avoided.

   Corporal punishment should be administered only in cases of
   misbehaviour and should not be administered for mere failure at
   lessons.

   Any teacher who inflicts improper or excessive punishment will be
   regarded as guilty of conduct unbefitting a teacher and will be
   subject to severe disciplinary action. (44)

It is instructive to compare the 1965 language that warned that corporal punishment "... should not be administered for mere failure at lessons" (emphasis added) with the 1946 rule that explicitly warned that "under no circumstances should corporal punishment be administered for mere failure at lessons." (emphasis added) The new regulations appear to have been more ambiguous, and perhaps more open to abuse, than previous rules, and did little to ease the concerns of opponents of corporal punishment.

The anti-corporal punishment debate was re-ignited in 1967 when a 9-year-old Dublin schoolboy was awarded 1/- in damages following what the court deemed to be an excessive punishment administered by his teacher. (45) Although the court was convinced that the teacher in question had violated Department of Education regulations, the paltry damages awarded perhaps suggests that the court did not take the matter all that seriously. Following on from that judgment a group called Reform was founded to lobby against corporal punishment in schools. In 1970 Reform was joined by the Irish Union of School Students (IUSS) in their campaign to end corporal punishment. In 1974 The IUSS published a brochure entitled Corporal punishment: the brutal facts, in which they attempted to quantify the use of corporal punishment in the nation's primary, secondary, and vocational schools. According to the IUSS 84% of the schools surveyed used corporal punishment of some form; the majority of these (92%) were boys' schools, while only 8% were girls' schools. The survey revealed the variety of implements, including leather straps, t-squares, sticks, hurleys, and tree branches, that were used to administer corporal punishment, all in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of existing Department of Education regulations. This report concluded that "[w]hile it would seem that many teachers regard corporal punishment as a normal and useful method of class control, it would seem that there are some sadists and other sexual perverts in charge of classes in Irish schools." (46)

Following the publication of this report individual TDs (members of the Irish parliament) again put pressure on the Minister for Education to re-consider his Department's position on the use of corporal punishment. The Minister agreed to survey the various teaching organisations for their views on the matter. In May of 1978, when the issue was raised again in the Dail, the Minister claimed he was still waiting for responses from some of those groups; in reality it is likely that, true to form, the Minister for Education was reluctant to take decisive action on the matter. In December of 1978 the Minister was finally able to report to the Dail on the views of the various teachers' and managers' associations. Of the eight groups surveyed, three opposed all forms of corporal punishment while five expressed the view that the existing rule was adequate (although two of these groups recommended the elimination of the term "corporal"). (47)

Those organisations that supported the use of some form of corporal punishment argued that it was necessary both to instil in children a sense of responsibility and accountability for their actions, and to counteract the bad influences and "anti-social behaviour" that children acquired in their homes and neighbourhoods. At the same time, there was general agreement that parents should have a voice, along with teachers and school managers, in formulating corporal punishment policy and practice. In December 1978 the Minister for Education endorsed this view:

   A high standard of discipline and good behaviour is absolutely
   necessary in schools if they are to fulfil their educational purpose.
   How this is to be achieved is a matter for each individual school and
   each school must develop its own policy, taking into account the
   general directives of the Department of Education as well as the
   circumstances obtaining in different areas and even in individual
   classes. The school policy on discipline should be the result of
   discussion not only between the teachers and the Board of Management
   but it should also take into account the attitude of the
   parents. (48)

The Minister also pointed out that, even if corporal punishment in limited form remained part of Departmental policy, it was a "non-issue" in practice because it was no longer used in the majority of schools. In short, the Minister seemed to be moving away from a rigid or centralised policy of corporal punishment.

But the Minister still refused to commit himself to abolishing corporal punishment altogether. After a long and drawn out statement on the matter in the Dail the Minister ran out of time and the issue was raised again during the adjournment debate, but without the Minister for Education present. During the adjournment debate several deputies voiced their outrage with the way the Minister dealt with the question, as illustrated by the following statement from Deputy Collins:

   I am looking for a clear statement from the Minister in regard to his
   intentions on corporal punishment and in relation to the rules for
   national schools, when he will revise those rules and if he will
   allow corporal punishment to form part of those rules and
   regulations. The Minister obviously tried to evade the whole question
   today in the manner in which he treated the House and in the grossly
   unsatisfactory reply he gave. (49)

The Minister of State at the Department of Education expressed what appears to have been the Department's view on the matter: "... a code of regulation is necessary. Such a code must provide for the imposition of sanctions in the event of a deliberate, serious and repeated transgression ... Deputies know as well as I do that there are forms of punishment worse than physical punishment which can be imposed on any child. Are we to pursue the elimination of those?" (50) Although the Department of Education was increasingly moving towards a more flexible code of school punishment, they were not yet prepared to eliminate corporal punishment as one tool for maintaining school discipline.

The question of the abolition of corporal punishment surfaced again on several occasions from the time of the 1978 debate until late January 1982, when corporal punishment was finally abolished with effect from 1 February 1982. Department of Education circular 9/82 set out the new regulations relating to corporal punishment:

   The Minister for Education in pursuance of Government commitment to
   the abolition of corporal punishment in schools, has, following
   consultations with representatives of Teacher and Managerial
   Organisations, amended Rule 130 of the Rules for National Schools to
   read as follows:

      130(1) Teachers should have a lively regard for the improvement
      and general welfare of their pupils, treat them with kindness
      combined with firmness and should aim at governing them through
      their affections and reason and not by harshness and severity.
      Ridicule, sarcasm or remarks likely to undermine a pupil's self
      -confidence should not be used in any circumstances.
      130(2) The use of Corporal punishment is forbidden.
      130(3) Any teacher who contravenes section (1) or (2) of this rule
      will be regarded as guilty of conduct unbefitting a teacher and
      will be subject to severe disciplinary action. (51)

In October of 1982 the new Minister for Education, Prof. Martin O'Donoghue, appointed a committee to report on how schools were maintaining discipline in the post-corporal punishment era. The committee reported in 1985 that suspension and expulsion had replaced corporal punishment as the preferred methods of dealing with serious transgressions of school rules and that, for the most part, such sanctions were effective (although a dissenting memo argued that these sanctions were counter-productive because they denied the children who most needed it of education and special attention). (52) In a footnote to the school punishment debate, the 1997 Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act criminalised the use of corporal punishment by teachers, and formally ended the traditional immunity that teachers enjoyed from prosecution under the Offences Against the Person Act.

Conclusion

This article has drawn on a wide variety of sources to examine policy and practice related to corporal punishment in the home and in national schools. While rules existed to govern how and why children were punished in national schools, the available evidence points undeniably to the conclusion that violations of the regulations were commonplace, and that the Department of Education was not eager either to validate complaints about excessive corporal punishment or to challenge the authority of teachers and school managers. If the teacher's right to use corporal punishment on the children in his or her care was explicitly and implicitly upheld in a variety of ways, a parent's right to punish his or her own children appears to have been taken for granted and thus did not require or elicit the same kind of explicit public validation. Like teachers, parents had an implicit right, as well as a responsibility, to discipline their children in order to control them, and to raise them to be good and productive citizens. Laws existed to protect children from excessive punishments at the hands of parents and guardians, but the same laws also safeguarded a parent's right to punish his or her children. Furthermore, parents were rarely prosecuted for ill-treating their children, and when they were prosecuted their children were more likely to be sent to industrial schools than the parents were likely to be punished for their actions. The death of Mary Josephine Stephenson in 1967, and the court's ruling on it, suggest that a spirit of non-interference prevailed in relation to parental punishment, and neither the courts nor the government wanted to take responsibility for distinguishing between appropriate and legitimate parental punishment, on the one hand, and assault or abuse on the other.

The complaints that have been made by former industrial school residents thus must be evaluated within the context of the prevalence of corporal punishment in homes and schools generally, as presented here. It is clear that throughout Irish society a certain level of violence against children was accepted as both normal and necessary. Without commenting on the validity of recent allegations, or appearing to condone the kinds of behaviour described in these allegations, it must be acknowledged and accepted that the same attitudes, policies, and practices that former industrial school residents complain about underpinned the treatment of children in their own homes and in national schools. Industrial school resident managers acted in loco parentis and thus would have enjoyed both the same rights as parents to discipline the children in their care, and the same non-interference that parents enjoyed in exercising those rights. Even in cases where severe or excessive punishment was used, it is unlikely that Department of Education inspectors would have even commented on it, much less tried to stop it, when courts and the Department of Education explicitly and tacitly upheld the right of parents and teachers to inflict similar punishments on the children in their care.

Little has been written, in a historical or global context, about corporal punishment in the home or school, so it is virtually impossible to know if Ireland's experience of corporal punishment policy and practice was in line with what existed elsewhere in Europe and the West. It does appear that Ireland lagged, by at least 50 years, behind most European countries (and indeed many non-Western countries) in banning corporal punishment in public schools. However, a more interesting comparison can be made between Ireland, which banned corporal punishment in 1982, and Great Britain, which banned it in 1986. Historically, Ireland tended to follow or copy Great Britain in matters of social policy, especially as they related to children. (53) So it is noteworthy that Great Britain should have lagged behind Ireland on this particular issue. In July of 1986 a law banning corporal punishment passed the British House of Commons by a mere I vote. The legislation was introduced somewhat under duress: earlier in 1986 the European Court of Human Rights had ruled that corporal punishment contravened the 1950 European Human Rights Convention, and the British legislation was a response to this ruling. At the same time, a significant segment of the British population supported the use of corporal punishment in schools, and even today it still has its proponents. Meanwhile, in Ireland popular opinion had begun to coalesce against corporal punishment as early as the late 1940s, and by the 1970s parents and experts alike were calling for its prohibition; successive Ministers for Education resisted popular pressure and upheld the teacher's right to resort to corporal punishment. So, although Ireland may have seemed more "progressive" than Great Britain on the issue of corporal punishment, it should be remembered that corporal punishment was only banned in Ireland after 30 years of sustained public pressure.

ENDNOTES

1. Industrial schools were introduced into Ireland by the Industrial Schools (Ireland) Act of 1868. Originally the schools were intended by prevent juvenile delinquency by removing children, on court order, from "bad" home environments. By the 20th century, however, the schools came to house mainly poor and neglected children whose parents were unable or unwilling to care for them.

2. The term "abuse" was not in use before the 1980s and is used here to describe behaviours that by contemporary standards would be regarded as excessive, extreme, or inappropriate.

3. A Report on Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person (Dublin).

4. Children Act 1908, Section 12.

5. This conclusion is based on a survey of circuit court and district court records, which revealed only 13 prosecutions in the period 1922 to 1960. It is possible that such cases were prosecuted in district courts for which records have not survived.

6. Connacht Tribune, 25 January 1930, p. 5.

7. Connacht Tribune, 1 March 1930, p. 3. See also Offaly Chronicle, 16 April 1942, p. 1; Offaly Chronicle, 19 May 1954, p. 1; Evening Mail, 2 May 1956, p. 5.

8. Offaly Chronicle, 18 March 1953, p. 1.

9. Offaly Chronicle, 2 December 1953, p. 4.

10. Evening Mail, 10 July 1957, p. 5. See also Evening Mail, 31 December 1947, p. 6 for another example of a district justice advocating the use of corporal punishment to correct delinquent children.

11. A Report on the Law and Proceedings Regarding the Prosecution and Disposal of Young Offenders, p. 45-46.

12. Evening Mail, 20 May 1949, p. 5. Marlborough House was a short-term residential centre administered by the Department of Education.

13. Evening Mail, 7 June 1949, p. 2.

14. Irish Times, 2 July 1968, p. 11.

15. Irish Times, 11 July 1968, p. 11.

16. This conclusion is based on a survey of more than 400 ISPCC case files for the period 1920s to 1960s.

17. In at least 10 of the Department of Education complaint files examined by the researchers, parents specifically stated that they supported a teacher's right to use corporal punishment on their child, but objected to either the severity of the punishment or to the reason that it was inflicted.

18. Irish Independent, 20 March 1969, p. 3.

19. Irish Independent, 20 March 1969, p. 3.

20. Patrick Boland, Tales from a City Farmyard (Dublin, 1995), p. 63.

21. Angeline Kearns Blain, Stealing sunlight: Growing up in Irishtown (Dublin, 2000), p. 38.

22. Frank O'Connor, An only child (Belfast, 1993), p. 139; Patrick Galvin, Song for a poor boy: a Cork childhood (Dublin, 1990), p. 60. See also Christy Kenneally, Maura's boy: a Cork childhood (Cork, 1996), p. 124; Sean Maher, The road to God knows where: a memoir of travelling boyhood (Dublin, 1998), p 125; Peter Sheridan, 44: a Dublin memoir (London, 2000), p. 58-59.

23. The Department of Education has released only a fraction of their Departmental files to the National Archives, and the majority of these date from the late 1920s and early 1930s. As a result, the we have had access to more complaint files from the late 1920s and early 1930s than for later periods, but this does not mean that complaints were more common in the earlier than in the later periods. This analysis is confined to 92 post-1930 files.

24. Department of Education, File 11898. The "manager" of a local national school was in almost all cases the parish priest, and it was he who hired teachers. At a time when Catholic lay people were subservient to the clergy a complaint about a school could be seen as an interference in the domain of influence of the church.

25. Department of Education, File 16921.

26. Department of Education, File 20412.

27. Department of Education, File 20412.

28. Department of Education, File 20412.

29. Department of Education, File 28229.

30. Department of Education, File 28229.

31. Department of Education, File 28229.

32. See Department of Education, Files 26305, 28565 and 28623.

33. Department of Education, File 28623.

34. Department of Education, File 29330.

35. Punishment in our schools (Dublin, 1955), p. 3.

36. Punishment in our schools, p. 4.

37. Punishment in our schools, p. 5.

38. Dail Eireann, vol. 152 (8 July 1955), col. 470.

39. Evening Mail, 1 October 1956, p. 1.

40. Evening Mail, 11 October 1956, p. 5.

41. Dail Eireann, vol. 162 (5 June 1957) col. 308.

42. TD = Teachta Dala, member of the Irish parliament.

43. Dail Eireann, vol. 188, (4 May 1961), col. 1776.

44. Dail Eireann, vol. 218 (28 October 1965), col. 761.

45. Irish Times, 13 July 1968, p. 6.

46. Irish Union of School Students, Corporal Punishment; The Brutal Facts (Dublin, 1974), p. 10.

47. The groups surveyed by the Minister for Education included: Irish National Teacher's Organisation; Association of Secondary Teachers; Teacher's Union of Ireland; Association of Principals of Community and Comprehensive Schools; Catholic Primary Manager's Association; Conference of Convent Primary Schools; and National School Boards of Management.

48. Dail Eireann, vol. 310 (6 December 1978), col. 815.

49. ibid.

50. ibid.

51. INTO, Discipline in National Schools (Dublin, 1983), p. 38-39.

52. Report of the Committee on Discipline in Schools (Dublin, 1985).

53. Some examples of this trend would be legislation related to widow's and orphan's pensions, children's allowances, and adoption, and social policy related to children in care. In all cases Ireland lagged by 10 years or more in these areas, and in almost all cases Irish policy was almost identical to British policy.

By Moira J. Maguire

University of Arkansas, Little Rock

Seamus O Cinneide

National University of Ireland, Maynooth

History Department

Little Rock, AR 72204-1099

Maynooth

Co. Kildare, Ireland