BishopAccountability.org
	Daingean's Horrific History Must Never Be Forgotten By Bruce Arnold Irish Independent April 28, 2006 http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3? ca=36&si=1605200&issue_id=13974 THE public will get a chance to see inside the infamous St Conleth's Reformatory, in Daingean, Co Offaly, during an open day there tomorrow. The Junior Minister responsible for the Office of Public Works, Tom Parlon, is organising the event. The property is in his constituency and is one of the buildings for which the OPW is seeking a future. Since it closed as a reformatory 30 years ago it has been used as a storehouse for items in public ownership that should be in museums, but for which there is no space. They are housed in the rambling dormitories and refectory, rarely seen, cut off from the small town that has had the mixed blessing of this forbidding complex of buildings on its outskirts. Somewhere close to a thousand people are expected, many of them locals who over the years have heard stories, most of them dismal, about Daingean. Among the visitors will be former inmates. I have already visited Daingean in their company, watching with compassion and wonder as they re-lived experiences that have shocked people over the past 20 years as revelations came out about the regime that prevailed there. Whatever else may be decided, they want a national memorial to the survivors, preferably for all survivors of reformatory or industrial school life. Daingean, for all the sad and horrific stories that derive from it, seems an ideal site for this. Many of those who suffered in the 125 establishments that held child prisoners in the period from the 1930s to the 1990s have seen industrial schools take on a new existence in joint community endeavours. Quite often the earlier history is quietly forgotten. This has happened, for example, in Letterfrack. Daingean was different. It was one of two reformatories run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The other reformatory, St Kevin's in Glencree, was closed in the 1960s and its inmates moved to Daingean. Reformatories catered for older boys than the industrial schools. Some were as old as 18 and this meant that a tougher regime was used to control them. The General was an inmate, so too was Sean Bourke who helped George Blake escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison in London. Others, including former Oblates, have described the terrible floggings that went on, the starvation rations, the almost complete lack of education and the ill-health that derived from poor diet and virtually no proper health care. Yet the story of survival in the reformatory and industrial school system has its heroes, and the spirit of those I have met is at times inspiring. It would be a further betrayal of them if any attempt to conceal the past became part of the programme which Tom Parlon is attempting to put in place for this institution. For its first 100 years, when Daingean was a British army barracks and the town was named Philipstown - ironically after Philip II of Spain - it brought employment and a measure of excitement to this remote area of north Offaly. Things improved with the coming of the Grand Canal in 1797. Like the industrial school and reformatories, that is now history. But this history should be part of any reconstruction of this strange group of enclosed and secret buildings which many will visit tomorrow. * Bruce Arnold will deliver a number of talks during tomorrow's open day. There will also be guided tours of the grounds and buildings. The event begins at 10am.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.