Names of boys burned out of Connemara Galway orphanage care home in 1922 now released
Walter Horace Millar below left, aged about 30, in Queensland, Australia. Mr Millar, who died in 1952, was one of the orphans shipped to Sydney in 1922. He was then aged 13.
THE NAMES of Protestant orphan boys burnt out of their Connemara residential care home during the Civil War have been released for the first time. Many of them were believed to have been sent to Australia
After 90 years, a list has emerged containing the names of 21 of the boys who were briefly taken into care by Barnardo’s in London in October 1922. The list was found in the files of the children’s charity following an enquiry from The Irish Times .
The boys’ orphanage at Ballyconree, Clifden, Co Galway, was burnt down by anti-Treaty republican forces in July 1922 for allegedly teaching the boys to be “pro-British”.
The outrage received little coverage at the time. It was overshadowed by other momentous events convulsing a country in the midst of a Civil War sparked by conflicting attitudes to the Anglo-Irish Treaty which led to the creation of the Irish Free State.
The Royal Navy dispatched a gunboat to Galway to evacuate 33 boys and the staff to safety in London.
The boys, aged between five and 16 years, were first given shelter in a Salvation Army hostel in west London and were subsequently moved to a care home in Kensington, run by a Miss D’Arcy, at Nevern Road. Then, in October, 21st of the boys were taken into care – temporarily – by Barnardo’s.
During the summer of 1922, an appeal to assist the orphans was published in the Times of London and an unknown benefactor offered to pay their passage to Australia.
Contemporary media accounts record that 23 Irish boys, accompanied by a matron, Miss White, sailed from England on November 9th aboard the steam-ship Euripides bound for Sydney. Upon arrival in Australia some of the boys were sent to a residential care facility, the Burnside Homes at Parramatta; others were assigned to farming families and fostered.
Last month, an Irish Times reader in Australia, Elaine White (née Elaine Patricia Millar) told the paper that her late father,Walter Horace Millar “was one of the Clifden orphans who were sent to Australia”.
Aged 13, he was assigned to a family who ran a sheep station in Queensland and later joined the Royal Australian air force. He died in 1952. A subsequent search of the Census of Ireland, 1911, revealed that Walter Horace Millar was, in fact, a Dubliner. In 1911, he was recorded as being a “nurse child” living in a one-room tenement in Clarendon Street with Mary Hogan, a Church of Ireland nurse, and her daughter. It is not known how or why he was transferred to the orphanage in Connemara. The fate of the other boys who sailed to Australia with him – and of those who stayed behind in London – remains unknown.
Meanwhile, the fate of the inmates of the Protestant girls’ orphanage at Clifden is also unknown. Although their facility – in a building now housing the luxury Abbeyglen Castle Hotel – was not attacked, the British authorities decided to also evacuate the girls and the staff for their own safety.
According to the transcript of a House of Lords debate in 1922, “On July 6 two of His Majesty’s ships were sent to Clifden by Admiralty instructions to secure the removal of the girl orphans and the staff, and to bring them to Devonport. Accommodation has been secured in that town through the courtesy of the trustees of the Lady Rogers Charity.”
No records have come to light with a list of the 25 girls’ names – nor is there any available information about their subsequent lives in Devonport or elsewhere.
Of the 33 boys, the only list found, to date, is the Barnardo’s list of 21 names. It is likely – though not certain – that all of these ended up in Australia.
’60,000 Irish people’ waiting three months or more for hospital procedures
Minister for Health James Reilly said some hospital waiting lists were always going to get longer because of a focus on dealing with people waiting over a year for treatment.
The number of people waiting for three months or more for day procedures in public hospitals has risen by more than 7,000 in 12 months, new HSE figures show.
In December last there were 19,862 adults and children on national waiting lists for day case procedures for more than three months, up from 12,797 in December 2010.
Patients are only considered to be on national waiting lists three months after they are referred for treatment. Prior to that they are classified separately as new hospital referrals.
The HSE report shows that these new hospital referrals amount to a further 24,000 adults and children, bringing the day case total to 44,079 patients.
In December 2010, there were just over 35,000 on similar waiting lists for day case procedures.
The HSE report also shows that overall there were more than 15,700 adults and children waiting for elective in-patient treatment in public hospitals around the country, up by 1,000 on the same period a year earlier.
It shows that the longest elective in-patient waiting lists were recorded at the Galway University Hospitals group.
Last December there were 2,882 adults and children waiting longer than three months for day case procedures and a further 1,640 patients awaiting elective in-patient procedures in Galway hospitals.
The report says there were 941 adults and children on the waiting list for day case treatment for longer than three months at University Hospital Limerick last December.
At the same time there were 704 adults and patients on the waiting list for elective in-patient procedures for more than three months at the Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore.
The HSE said it was working closely with the special delivery unit, established last year by Minister for Health James Reilly, to ensure that hospitals could meet the Government’s target to reduce waiting time for patients to nine months by the end of this year.
Dr Reilly has said that some hospital waiting lists were always going to get longer because of the focus on dealing with people waiting over a year for treatment, where there had been much success.
He said the fairest thing was to reduce the number of people waiting over a year or more.
Galway University Hospital A&E department descibed as ‘a warzone’
There have been calls for immediate changes at University Hospital Galway, after one patient described the Accident and Emergency Department of the pressured hospital as “a warzone”.
The hospital has been subject to a barrage of criticism in recent times due to lengthy waiting lists and chronic bed shortages and Chairman of the HSE Regional Health Forum Pádraig Conneely has slammed the behaviour as “unacceptable”.
“This is happening on a regular basis in UHG and it is well-known in the Department of Health that UHG is the worst performing hospital in the country. That’s according to their own monthly health stats. It is not acceptable the way the public are treated at UHG, particularly at the A&E,” said Cllr Conneely.
He continued to say that the A&E department could be “total chaos” at times and that there was an average of 50 people on trollies there at present.
“When they do get into the system, there’s no doubt that they are well treated and well looked after, the problem is getting into the system.”
Cllr Conneelly said that the appointment of a new management structure represented a “light at the end of the tunnel” but warned that incoming CEO Bill Maher has just three months to turn the hospital’s A&E department around or he would face “a lot of questions” at the Regional Health Forum.
“As Chairman of the HSE Forum, I’m prepared to give him at least three months in the job but after that, I will expect to see changes. The national average to hold somebody in A&E should be six hours. That’s not happening in Galway; it can be three days sometimes,” said Cllr Conneely.
“I think everybody accepts that it cannot continue the way it is and these horrific stories happen far too often.”
No comments:
Post a Comment