The nuns didn’t like family visiting for some reason. Then I ggot a call sayingyg Francis was in hospital

Francis McColl, 13

died auguSt 12, 1961

EDDIE MCCOLL, 73, has one word to describe his time staying at Smyllum – hell.

Along with four brothers, John, William, Eddie, Stephen and Francis were taken to Smyllum after a family breakdown in the late ’40s.

He said: “I was probably six or seven when I moved to Smyllum. My dad John died from pneumonia and my mum couldn’t cope. “Smyllum was a hell. “You got punished all the time for the slightest thing.

“At the time we were in there we thought it was normal but it wasn’t. It had an effect on my life for years after I left.”

By 1961, all the brothers had left Smyllum apart from youngest brother Francis.

Eddie, who left the home at the age of 15, said: “I used to visit him but usually had to be sneaked in to see him.

“The nuns didn’t like family

visiting for some reason. One day I got a phone call from the nuns saying, ‘Francis is in hospital after an accident.’

“But they wouldn’t give me any more information or even where he was. After a month I went back to visit him and was told he’d passed away but no-one told me. It made me sick to my stomach.”

Tragic Francis passed away at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary in August in 1961 after battling a “left extra plural haemorrhage” for seven days. He was just 13.

Oldest brother John, who later emigrated to Australia, had been informed and had registered his death at Lanark.

But he never told Eddie – and died before he could ask why he withheld the information.

Eddie has since heard Francis was killed in a bizarre accident after the teenager, who was partially deaf, was hit in the head by a golf club.

He said: “I’ve heard from kids who were at Smyllum at the time someone was showing them how to hit a golf club and asked them to step back.

“But Francis didn’t hear it and got struck on the head. That’s what killed him.”

He says he can forgive tragic accidents but not that the Daughters of Charity have never been able to tell him where his brother is buried.

He said: “I have no idea where he is buried and have asked the Daughters of Charity repeatedly. Not knowing has been a form of torture.”