IRELAND
The Argus
By Margaret Roddy
Kathleen McShane feels she is a lone voice speaking in the wilderness. At a time when the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has been hearing harrowing tales of what it was like for children growing up in Industrial Schools around the country, including St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Dundalk, she cherishes her memory of her years spent in the care of the Sisters of Mercy.
Now sixty-one years of age, Kathleen was just four years old when she placed in St. Joseph’s Orphanage in November 1948 after her mother feel ill with TB which was then rampant in Ireland.
“I went in with my two younger sisters when my mother was dying with TB,” she says. The sisters remained in the orphanage after her mother died the following January, while her father cared for their brother.
“I found in my experience that the nuns did their best for us, really and truly,” she says.