FROM THE ARCHIVES:In "A Social Sort of Column", Eileen O'Brien explained why the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had a long list of proposed reforms in 1969 - JOE JOYCE.
ONE OF their case workers, Mr. Christopher Morris, told me the story of 24-year-old Mrs. X who, he said, is representative of a huge social problem in Ireland.
“She lives on a Dublin Corporation housing estate, and we were called in by the local doctor who found marks of beating on her body.
“She was also suffering from nerves as a result of continual beatings. She had two boys aged three and two and her husband, who was married before, had a son of 12.
“We interviewed her husband and this finished the assaults, but soon afterwards he left for work one morning and did not return. The only word she had from him since then was a note saying: ‘Tell the children I am dead’.
“Financially she was broke. She was in debt as a result of his not paying the rent when he was supposed to have paid it. She has been granted £5 home assistance. She gets £1 a week from the St. Vincent de Paul Society and pays £1 a week rent.
“Her husband had a good job, and suddenly she was plunged to the very depths. They are literally hungry. They never see meat and live on bread and margarine and tea.
“Her children are so young she cannot leave them to go to work. There is no nursery or creche near her. There are three in the city, but none in the big housing estates where they are needed. I know of 24 cases of the same kind in my area alone.
“Some of these women take men to live with them, or get money in whatever way they can. It would cost three times as much to take the children into care, but because the mothers keep them at home they are obliged to live as paupers.
“There should be a creche in every housing estate. It would help the economy because there is a demand for women workers.
“The women could be independent and would not have to beg for home assistance. I suppose they will build the creches in ten years’ time when all the children on the present estates are grown up.”
Mr. Morris returned to the story of Mrs. X. Before her husband left, he seemed to reject the older boy and the boy became a little disturbed.
Mrs. X remembers her husband stripping the boy naked and beating him with a belt until blood came, and then putting him to lie on the floor naked.
“The boy used to run away from home and became more and more disturbed. He is now in an industrial school. I doubt if he would get any psychiatric attention there. There are not the facilities.”
Married women in the lower income group, said Mr. Morris, had few rights.
“The father has custody of the children. The mother bears them and rears them, but even if he deserted them for ten years he could then come home and take them.”
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