THE REFORMATORY SYSTEM IN IRELAND.—QUESTION. (Hansard, 17 May 1860)

§ LORD CLAUD HAMILTON

said, he rose to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland if his attention has been called to the case of William Hawthorne, who was recently confined in the St. Kevin's Reformatory; and whether any inquiry has been made as to the authors of certain Letters, written from that establishment, which were represented to have been written by William Hawthorne. He was happy to be able to say that in asking this question and making a few remarks on the subject to which it referred, he had no intention in any way to arraign the conduct of any Member of Her Majesty's Government. On the contrary, the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cardwell) had, as he was informed, acted in the matter with great firmness, propriety, and efficiency. The circumstances of the case, however, had excited a good deal of interest in some parts of Ireland, and his object was to elicit a statement of the facts as they had actually occurred. It was well known that the formation of reformatories in Ireland had been viewed with great jealousy and distrust; and, after a good deal of discussion and consideration, separate reformatories were established for the youths of the several religious persuasions. This being the state of things as regarded the institutions themselves, a Protestant lad, residing at Belfast, having got into bad company, was arrested on the charge of theft, of which offence he was convicted before the resident magistrate. He was sentenced to a month's imprisonment in the county gaol, and five years' detention in a reformatory. The moment the lad heard the sentence he announced that he 1389 was a Roman Catholic. His companions in guilt were of that persuasion, and his motive in making that statement no doubt was to induce the magistrate to send him to the same reformatory with them. His parents, who were Protestants, informed the Court he was no such thing, having been born, baptized, and brought up as a Protestant. The magistrate decided, however, on taking the boy's statement, and sending him to a Roman Catholic reformatory. The mother of the lad was in a state of extreme grief at the thought that her son was about to be incarcerated for five years in a Roman Catholic establishment, She immediately proceeded to the place where he had been baptized, and got a legal certificate of his baptism as a Protestant. However, the magistrate—for what reason he (Lord C. Hamilton) could not say—had taken the evidence of the lad himself, and in due time he was sent to a Roman Catholic reformatory in the county of Wicklow. The case created great excitement in Belfast, and it was right to mention that Mr. Lavery, the sanitary inspector of the Belfast Town Council, a very respectable gentleman, himself a Roman Catholic, had got up a memorial, praying that the sentence, so far as it directed the detention in the Roman Catholic reformatory, might not be carried out. To that memorial a large number of signatures were attached; nevertheless the magistrate adhered to his decision, and notice was sent to the Roman Catholic reformatory that the boy was to be sent there. He (Lord C. Hamilton) was happy to be able to say that another Roman Catholic of great respectability interfered at this stage of the proceedings. Mr. Murray, the hon. Secretary of the Wicklow Roman Catholic Reformatory, at once protested against the proceeding. He wrote a letter, in which he stated that he considered the sending of the boy to the Roman Catholic reformatory was a breach of the Irish Reformatory Act; and he wished to enter his protest against it. He received no reply to his letter, and, two or three days after, on going through the establishment, he was greatly surprised and much vexed at seeing the lad there. In spite of the efforts made by Roman Catholic gentlemen—in spite of the appeal of the boys' parents—in spite of the memorial stating that the father and mother of the boy were Protestants, and that be had been brought up a Protestant—and in spite of the production of the baptismal certificate—he was sent to the Wicklow Roman Catholic Re- 1390 formatory. The first portion of his (Lord C. Hamilton's) question, therefore, was, whether any inquiry had been made into the circumstances of this extraordinary deviation from the Irish Reformatory Act. The second portion of it related to what had taken place after the lad arrived there, and which he thought the House would say was of a most extraordinary character. The lad was not a very good scholar, he was barely able to scrawl, and was not capable of expressing himself in any but very common language. The House might judge of the astonishment of his parents when, on the third day of his residence in the reformatory, they received from him a letter commencing thus:— My dear Mother,—" I seize the earliest opportunity of addressing a few lines to you in order to inform you of my whereabouts, and of the kind of place I am in, and the privileges and many advantages which are held out to boys who are well-disposed to be good. He then went on to describe the place and said— Now to begin, we have 100 boys, exclusive of all the staff and officers. We have a capital school, a beautiful chapel, and hear mass every day; also a fine band for our amusement, and recreation. The letter proceeded:— Everything that can possibly be done both for our temporal and spiritual welfare and well-being in after life is most strictly attended to. This is nothing short of home for us; we have everything granted to us which may be necessary, and plenty of open air exercise and recreation. He (Lord C. Hamilton) asked the attention of the House to what followed:— I have heard of what you have been doing [this referred to the efforts of his parents to get him out, which could have been communicated to him only by some functionary within the establishment], but I can only say, in the midst of my grief, that the day I leave here will go nigh breaking my heart, for I should be sent to a Protestant reformatory in Dublin, which is totally against my wish and inclination. Every one must admit that the boy had made great progress in three days. The mother, who knew the state of her son's scholastic acquirements when he left his home, must have thought that if the letter had been written by her son, St. Kevin's Reformatory must be an establishment in which miracles were performed. In a few days after the father got a letter, in which the boy said— When I last wrote to you I was positively assured that a representation had been made to the Lord Lieutenant, to the effect that you had objected to my being sent to a Catholic reformatory, and 1391 that, consequently, I was to be transferred to the Protestant reformatory in Dublin. Now, my dear Father, you know that I am not a Protestant; and if I were sent to an institution where I could not practise the duties of my own religion I should be broken-hearted. As for my being sent home to you, there is not the slightest chance of such a thing, for the Lord Lieutenant would never do it. Now, my dear Father, if you wish to do me good, as I know you do, write a few lines to Mr. Tracy, the magistrate, and tell him that you are quite willing (if I must be in a reformatory) to have me left where I am. There was more to a similar effect, and then came a repetition of the observation— But if I am taken away, and sent to a Protestant Reformatory, I shall be broken-hearted. Owing to the prompt intervention of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the lad was very properly sent home to his parents. On his arrival, he expressed the greatest satisfaction at returning home, and assured his parents he had never written any letter home, requesting to be allowed to remain at the reformatory; all he knew was that one of the gentlemen connected with the Reformatory read something to him which he did not understand; but he neither wrote himself, nor did he express any of the wishes which those letters contained. This alone showed that something was going on within the walls of that reformatory which called for the most searching inquiry. He knew nothing of the author of these documents; but, on authority which he believed to be correct, the schoolmaster of the reformatory was supposed to be the writer of them. When an establishment for the reformation of young criminals was maintained at the public expense, what was to be thought of the tuition given in it when it was in the hands of a schoolmaster who could deliberately forge the letters purporting to come from that boy, for the double object of deceiving his parents as to his wishes, and also of carrying on a system of proselytism. He hoped the Attorney General for Ireland would, therefore, state whether an inquiry had been instituted into how it happened that the magistrate, in violation of the statute, came to send a lad, being a Protestant, to a Roman Catholic reformatory. Also, whether any investigation had taken place into the authorship of the letters, a portion of which he had just read, with the view of making the writer responsible for his conduct. The case had created great disgust in Ireland, and, unless effective steps were taken to check such practices, the suspicions which existed when 1392 reformatories were originally established would be greatly strengthened and increased.