A Christian Brothers provincial yesterday said it was "admitted" that a 16-year-old boy who died on February 9th, 1958, at St Joseph's industrial school Tralee was beaten beforehand "by a Brother in the kitchen".
Br Séamus Nolan, of the Christian Brothers, St Helen's province, said in evidence to the investigation committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, that the severity of the beating was not known.
He said Joseph Pyke died three days later in hospital as a result of "bilateral pleural effusion" (pneumonia) and "septicaemia".
St Joseph's in Tralee opened in 1871 and closed in 1970. The average numbers of boys there was 110 up to 1940, 155 in 1942, falling to 100 in 1966-67.
Br Nolan also told the committee that Br X had broken a boy's jaw at the industrial school in Glin, Co Limerick, before being moved to Tralee.
Earlier Br X had pulled a boy's hair out at the industrial school in Clonmel, where he had been from 1956 to 1961 before "he caused further mayhem" at Tralee, as counsel for the committee Brian McGovern SC put it.
In 1962 X was removed from the classroom situation. Gardaí were not informed about the incidents.
Brother Nolan told the committee that a 1940 visitation report accused Br L of "immoderate corporal punishment". Br L was removed to another school and "didn't lapse again, apparently".
Reports in 1961 and 1966 described Br M as "too exacting" and a "constant source of anxiety" to his superior, he said.
Br M "ended up out of the classroom".
Br Nolan said he accepted that some Brothers at St Joseph's had been too severe and harsh. He couldn't give any excuse for it.
He said he was aware of sex abuse allegations against Brothers at St Joseph's but that these were still at the level of allegations.
In conclusion he told the committee that "at all times the effort and generosity of the Brothers lasted the 100 years" of St Joseph's existence.
Sister Anne Marie McQuaid, provincial of the Sisters of Mercy northern province, told the committee there had been three complaints from girls who had been resident at St Joseph's industrial school in Dundalk.
The school had operated from 1881 to 1983. A sister of Clogher diocese who had spent most of her life in Enniskillen, she had not worked at St Joseph's, she said.
They initially become aware of complaints from former residents there following publication of the book Suffer the Little Children in October 1999, and it had come as "a grave shock", she said.
Up to then they had been totally unaware that some children had painful memories of St Joseph's, she said.
