It’s not just the fair sex who suffered unfairly

SOME repeal the Eighth supporters viewed the referendum as the latest struggle in a long history of female oppression in this country. But in some ways injustice was ironically more equal in the not so good old days.

For while the wretched treatment of women has been brought to light, there is much less mention of the brutality inflicted on the poor boys and men who had the misfortune to also be incarcerated in Ireland’s County Homes.

“I remember going to school with some of the boys, and they used to wear what was known as County Home shirts; no necks on them and real rough,” says Noel, a local in his 80s. “And a big old pair of boots.”

His great friendship with one of the boys, Tommy Webster, was savagely cut short when Tommy was 14, for that was when the County Home would give the boys out to the farmers “for nothing”. “Some did all right but others were little more than slaves. They’d be up in the loft, with no room or bed, sleeping in the hay.”

For most farm labourers were men from County Homes, “men who had nothing. Sometimes they would come into the town and have a drink and back a few horses. But then they got rowdy and would be locked up in a sort of cell. They’d get a fair few clatters and other abuse before they were let out again in the morning.”

This was going on long before Noel was born.

“When my father was young, he told me about the time he called to a farm, where he heard there was a vacancy for work. He was waiting in the yard and saw a man over 70 years of age working in the hayloft. He was slowing down — he was all pains and everywhere — but the owner of the farm roared up to him: ‘If you don’t get that done in 10 minutes, I’ll put you in the County Home!’ My father got on his bike and went straight home again.”

But there was no escape for those without means, especially from the master who ran the County Home.

“He had total power over everything — including access to the young girls. He signed for all the provisions and did all the buying in of the food. The cheaper he could get it, the more he would have for himself.”

And the master did a mercilessly good job of ensuring he made a tidy profit. “They had a cauldron and put a beef head in it. It was only coloured water. That would do 100 people.”

It sounds farcical, though it must have been tragic for those famished souls who depended on it, but the home had to go through a board of guardians, made up of big farmers and other pillars of society, to get permission to put in a few carrots or parsnips.

“Imagine a beef head in the cauldron,” Noel shakes his head, “and having to apply to the authorities to add an onion.”

They got two slices of bread and a bit of butter to go with a bowl of that broth. “And skimmed milk — they wouldn’t get the cream. That was the staple diet of those old farm labourers.”

Making them victims, as much as those unfortunate members of the fair sex, of a most unfair era.