Courtney McGrailThe committal of two Mallow children to an Industrial school in 1893
by Martin McCarthy
(Four Courts Press, €9.95)
Tom Morrissey SJ
This is one of five short books published in the Maynooth Studies in Local History series. It is a well-researched and readable account of two children, Elizabeth and Bridget McCarthy, aged respectively 11 and 4 years of age, their committal to an Industrial school, and the social background of their native Mallow in the 1890s, and the nature and work of the Industrial schools in the 19th Century.
The girls were committed, at the petty sessions in Mallow, in October 1893. The grounds for doing so were that they were found begging and receiving alms in Mallow.
Their mother had died that year. Their father, a labourer, was said to be unable to look after them properly.
Risk
Technically, they were not entitled to a place in an Industrial school under the Industrial Schools Act, 1868, because they were not abandoned or at risk of falling into a life of crime, though they lived in severe poverty.
Their committal to the Sisters of Mercy convent, Kinsale, was due largely to the efforts of two middle-class women, Mrs Tucker and Mrs Anderson, who took an interest in the girls.
Mrs Tucker, indeed, had promised the girls’ mother, on her death bed, that she would get the girls into a convent. It is important to keep in mind that Industrial schools in the 19th Century had a positive image in society, particularly among the poorer classes.
Many poorer parents sought opportunities to have their children sent to Industrial schools, which would provide them with a sound basic education and industrial skills which would give them an opportunity in life and also provide the children with bed and board.
The Mercy convents had a good reputation in the field of education and appropriate industrial training long before the Industrial Schools Act of 1868, and among the convents the one in Kinsale was held in particularly high repute.
It was praised by successive inspectors for its teaching and the industrial skills, especially in lace work, that it imparted to its pupils.
The Kinsale convent was founded and led in the 1840s by the very able Mother Mary Frances Bridgeman, who subsequently led the Mercy nursing sisters during the Crimean War and more than held her own against that domineering “Angel of the Lamp” Miss Florence Nightingale.
The story of the two girls provides the author with an archway through which he examines the nature of society in Mallow, and the condition of the labouring classes in the second half of the 19th Century.
He carefully explores the social geography of Mallow, and also the education provided in convent-run industrial schools.
It turns out that it was a labour of love for Mr McCarthy, as the two girls were his great-grand- aunts.
They had a number of brothers about whom little is known, except that some of them died young of tuberculosis.
Marriage
Elizabeth, the older girl, left the Industrial school aged 16, lived with her father for a while, then went to London where she married a Charlie Green. They emigrated to Boston, where they spent the rest of their lives.
Bridget left Kinsale in 1906 and that year emigrated to the US. She entered St Bridget’s Convent of Mercy, Meriden, Connecticut. As Sister Mary Dympna, she worked in Connecticut as a teacher for the rest of her life. Both sisters remained in close contact.
Bridget never returned to Ireland and died in 1945. Elizabeth returned for a visit in 1950 and met some of her nieces and nephews. She died in 1966. Such are the ways in which the generations connect across time.