‘The One Wearing the Collar’: Constructing the Child in Irish Industrial Schools

The Irish industrial and reformatory school system developed in response to the growing issue of poverty and public concerns surrounding the care of pauper children in the post-Famine period. Lasting from 1868 to the early 1980s, these schools were part of an expansive incarcerative welfare system funded by the Irish state and managed by Catholic orders. In 199, RTÉ aired the documentary States of Fear, which exposed the extensive and severe abuse rampant across these institutions. This thesis traces the evolution of how Irish society perceived institutionalized children before and after the discovery of abuse. I interpret the sociocultural factors that influenced these perceptions, which reveals inextricable ties between Irish identity and the publicly-constructed institutionalized child. Ultimately, I argue that institutionalization and the identity of the “institutionalized child” functioned as a moral condition with ties to both Catholic religiosity and class prejudice extending from the period of the Poor Law.