Peter Tyrrell | |
|---|---|
 The only known photograph of Tyrrell[1]: 183 | |
| Born | 1916 (1916) NearBallinasloe inCounty Galway, Ireland |
| Died | 26 April 1967(1967-04-26) (aged 50–51) Hampstead Heath, London |
| Occupation | Tailor |
| Language | English |
| Notable works | Founded on Fear (published 2006) |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom |
| Branch | British Army |
| Years of service | 1935-1945 |
| Rank | Sergeant |
| Unit | King's Own Scottish Borderers |
| Battles / wars | World War II |
Peter Tyrrell (1916 – 26 April 1967) was an Irish author and activist againstchild abuse. When he was eight years old, the authorities sent him toSt Joseph's Industrial School, Letterfrack, an institution run by theChristian Brothers. He suffered extreme physical and sexual abuse at the Christian Brothers' hands until he was released from the school when he was sixteen.[1]
He became a tailor by trade, emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1935 and in the same year enlisted in the British Army. For four months in 1944, he was held as a prisoner-of-war in the German campStalag XI-B. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, Tyrrell campaigned against corporal punishment and child abuse inindustrial schools.
In 1967, feeling that his efforts to enact change were unsuccessful, heburnt himself alive onHampstead Heath inLondon. His remains went unidentified until 1968.
In 2006, his autobiographyFounded on Fear, which he had written between 1958 and 1959, was published posthumously by theIrish Academic Press after historianDiarmuid Whelan discovered the manuscript in the papers of politicianOwen Sheehy-Skeffington, with whom Tyrrell had conducted a correspondence lasting seven years.[2]
Peter Tyrrell was born in 1916 to poor parents nearBallinasloe inCounty Galway, Ireland. He had nine siblings.[3] Because of his father James Tyrrell's refusal to work regularly, his mother resorted to begging to support the family while the children stole potatoes, turnips and other crops from their neighbours' fields.[4] The family lived in a two-room house on a farm. James Tyrrell neglected to make repairs or renovations to the house, which had a cobblestone floor and no windows (it was originally a stable).[3][2]
In 1924, when Peter was eight years old, the authorities removed him and his three older brothers toSt Joseph's Industrial School in Letterfrack, anindustrial school operated and staffed by theCongregation of Christian Brothers, because of the family's poverty.[5][2] Tyrrell's two younger brothers, who were too young for Letterfrack, were instead sent to live with nuns at a convent inKilkenny.[1]: 65
Tyrrell later recounted inFounded on Fear that many of the Christian Brothers who ran the school beat him and the other inmates daily and for no reason but the Brothers' "lustful pleasure".[4] The beatings typically came from behind the boys, taking them by surprise, and were implemented with various objects, including sticks, leather and rubber. Boys would often be struck up to 20 times during a single beating. Tyrrell's arm was once broken during a beating; he was forced to tell the doctor that he had broken it by falling down a flight of stairs.[6][2]
Sexual abuse also occurred; the children were often stripped naked before being beaten, and Tyrrell reported that he had been "sodomised by one of the Brothers".[7]
Students, including Tyrrell, who came from poor families were both bullied by their peers and singled out for abuse by the Christian Brothers.[2]
He related, though, that there were some Brothers who treated the boys kindly. One, Brother Kelly, was the superior of Letterfrack while Tyrrell was there. Tyrrell believed that Kelly did not know that abuse was happening, and that, had he known, he would have intervened.[4]
The boys wereforced to create goods and perform repairs for customers outside of Letterfrack in order to fund the school. Tyrrell was among several inmates assigned to the tailor shop, where he learned how to tailor. He sewed a double seat into his trousers to make the beatings less painful.[2]
The food, sanitation and living conditions were poor: the boys, who were underfed, were malnourished and always cold, and many suffered fromchilblains andperiodontal disease. Their school uniforms and linens were washed infrequently, and head lice was commonplace.[1]: 13
In 1932, at the age of sixteen, Tyrrell was discharged from St Joseph's and returned home. James Tyrrell had renovated the house since his sons' departures (a concrete floor had replaced the cobblestone one, and windows had been added); however, Peter's eldest brother Mick built a new house into which the family moved sometime thereafter. Immediately after his return, Peter was hired as a tailor inBallinasloe, where he sewed garments for a local mental hospital.[1]: 208-218
Tyrrell's seven years at Letterfrack traumatised him. He reported that, for several years after his release, he startled easily, preferred to sit with his back against a wall out of fear of being beaten, avoided communicating with most people except for his mother and fell ill frequently. He remarked that he had a tendency to agree, out of fear that he may be harmed otherwise, with everything other people said. Because the people who mistreated him were men, Tyrrell preferred the company of women, writing that, "I have never met a bad woman. I have not known many good men. I dislike and fear men".[1]: 216-228
Tyrrell continued working in Ballinasloe until he emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1935. He cited attitudes by local people against former inmates of industrial schools, and his resultant inability to reintegrate into Irish society, as reasons for the move. He primarily lived inLondon.[2]
Tyrrell joined theBritish Army in 1935 and was first posted to Scotland in theKing's Own Scottish Borderers regiment. According to himself, he was posted several times thereafter to various places, includingPalestine in August of 1936, where the regiment defended Jewish settlements during theArab revolt, andTiberias, where he contractedmalaria and spent two weeks in a hospital inEgypt. In September of 1937 they took a ship toIndia.[1]: 237-249
He wrote that in 1941, he and his battalion were attached to an Australian unit at Bombay with the task of escorting Italian prisoners of war, who had been transported to India, to Bangalore. He claimed to have been promoted to the rank of sergeant in June of the same year.[1]: 261-262
In 1942, he began a romantic relationship with a woman named Angela Dennison, whom he met in India, but they ultimately broke up because of Tyrrell's hesitance to marry her. He also sometimes acted cruelly toward her, a fact that he regretted.[1]: 268-269 [5] He realised he was treating Indians badly, as well. In writing, he likened his own behaviours to those of the Christian Brothers and remarked that he had become, in some respects, like them.[5]
In 1944, the battalion was removed to the Netherlands and later toGeilenkirchen in Germany. In Geilenkirchen, Tyrrell was wounded, captured by the Germans and sent to theprisoner-of-war campStalag XI-B near Fallingbostel. He was detained for four months and compared his experience at the camp, where he and other Western prisoners were treated humanely whereas Soviet prisoners were starved, favourably to his childhood in Letterfrack. He felt that there was civility between the Germans and the Western prisoners in the camp, and he attributed the meagre food to wartime scarcity, which he did not fault Germany for, rather than to deliberate withholdment.[1]: 289-305 [5]
He and other prisoners were liberated in April of 1945. He was demobilised from the military in December and officially discharged six months later.[1]: 309-311 His service had helped him overcome much of his trauma and gain a sense of confidence; while in theHimalayas he had taken up mountaineering, and he wrote that after the war, "I was beginning to really enjoy life. I was no longer afraid of people. I had learned to cast aside that terrible inferiority complex... Yes I had beaten most of my fears".[1]: 313
When he returned to England he facedanti-Irish racism, but was also rejected by the Irish community there because of his outspoken views and his disillusionment with Irish identity.[2] On multiple occasions, he was threatened and assaulted while holding speeches condemning the Irish people for the faults of Ireland.[1]: 31-32 [5] He resented the Irish for what he saw as their undying loyalty to religious institutions including the Christian Brothers,[2] and for giving all Irish people reputations in the United Kingdom as "irresponsible liars and drunkards".[1]: 329
In 1945, he obtained a job inspecting clothing at theMinistry of Supply. When the job was made redundant in 1947, he returned to tailoring and began to travel extensively around the United Kingdom.[2]
After encountering one of his old friends from Letterfrack, he became preoccupied with his experience at the institution. He frequented pubs, met many fellow former inmates of industrial schools and attempted, with varying success, to get them to tell him about their experiences.[1]: 28-29
He wrote many letters to government officials, Catholic Church leaders and Christian Brothers confronting them about the abuses that were still going on in industrial schools, but his correspondence usually went unreplied to.[1]: 53 In 1953 he wrote to the Provincial of the Order of Letterfrack to accuse three members of the order ("Brother Piperel", "Brother Perrin" and "Brother Corvax") of physical and sexual abuse.[8] He wrote two letters to the Superior in the same year, neither of which received a response.[8] He met with the Superior General in 1957, and then with the Provincial of the Congregation, though the latter dismissed his allegations as blackmail.[8]
In the autumn of 1958, at the behest of the Irish Centre in London, Tyrrell contactedOwen Sheehy-Skeffington, aSenator who was known for his stances on socialism and pacifism, and for his opposition to corporal punishment. Sheehy-Skeffington invited Tyrrell to his home inDublin, Ireland; while that was the only time they met in person, they continued to correspond until 1965.[2]
Sometime in the early 1960s Tyrrell, due to worsening eyesight, quit tailoring and obtained a job assistingunderground train passengers in London.[2]
In 1964 Sheehy-Skeffington introduced Tyrrell to Joy Rudd, with whom Tyrrell then co-authored an article titled "Early Days in Letterfrack",[9] which was published inHibernia magazine.[10] Rudd introduced Tyrrell into a literary and political group called Tuairim which published pamphlets on various issues, including corporal punishment in institutions. Tuairim accepted Tyrrell's account of his abuse and put him on the committee that wrote Tuairim's pamphlet about child abuse in Irish institutions, but, to Tyrrell's frustration, did not incorporate his specific details into their publications; they thought that abuse in industrial schools had become less severe since Tyrrell had left Letterfrack.[2]
On 26 April, 1967, Tyrrell, disgruntled by the failure of his attempts to bring the issue of child abuse to the public eye, went toHampstead Heath in London, poured petrol over his body[11] andlit himself on fire.[2] He was fifty or fifty-one years old. He suffered from psychological issues, includingdepression and possiblybipolar disorder, as a consequence of the abuse he endured and had previouslycontemplated suicide in 1939.[1]: 39-40
His corpse, charred beyond recognition, was discovered, still smouldering, on 28 April by Robert Forsdyke, a member of the park staff.[12] The body had abdominal wounds that may have come from a knife, though no weapon was found at the scene. Investigators initially believed Tyrrell to have been between 20 and 30 years old.[11] The only clue as to his identity was a torn postcard, addressed to Sheehy-Skeffington, next to the body.[11][13]
In 1968, Scotland Yard contacted Sheehy-Skeffington inquiring about the postcard. Sheehy-Skeffington sent them a letter from Tyrrell for them to use as comparison,[1]: 184 and Scotland Yard positively identified the remains as Tyrrell shortly thereafter.[13]
Founded on Fear is anautobiography written by Peter Tyrrell in 1959 and published posthumously in 2006 by theIrish Academic Press.
Founded on Fear begins with an introduction by Irish historianDiarmuid Whelan, in which he summarised Tyrrell's life and provided additional information from Tyrrell's notes and letters to Sheehy-Skeffington. Following that is aforeword, written by Tyrrell, in which he explained his campaign against child abuse and his reasons for writing the book. The book has fifteen chapters; the first chapter relates Tyrrell's living situation and family life before he was sent to Letterfrack, and nine chapters that follow detail his life in Letterfrack, including the physical and sexual abuse he suffered and witnessed. The five chapters after those recount, in order, Tyrrell's departure from Letterfrack, his return home, his military career, his stint as a prisoner of war and his return to civilian life.[1]
Shortly after meeting Tyrrell in 1958, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, believing that Tyrrell's story of his time at Letterfrack would be a perfect denunciation of corporal punishment, encouraged him to write an autobiography.[2]
Tyrrell began to draft his memoirs on weekends, and on evenings after returning home from work. He wrote as his thoughts flowed and made few revisions. When a chapter was complete, Tyrrell would send it to Sheehy-Skeffington alongside a letter. The process of writing caused Tyrrell to become lonesome and depressed, and his family and friends advised him to stop for the sake of his mental health, but his impulsion to effect change in industrial schools motivated him to continue; he finished writing the book five months after he started. The completed manuscript was approximately 70,000 words long, or 300 pages.[2] Tyrrell informed Sheehy-Skeffington that, while everything he did write into the book was factual, there were many incidents from Letterfrack that he found so upsetting to relive he omitted them.[1]: 34
In 2005, 38 years after Tyrrell's death, Diarmuid Whelan, while archiving Owen Sheehy-Skeffington's papers, came across the manuscript of Tyrrell's autobiography. He edited it to fix Tyrrell's idiosyncratic grammar (Tyrrell started random words with capital letters and used commas incorrectly),[3] wrote an introduction to it and had the book published asFounded on Fear: Letterfrack Industrial School, war and exile by theIrish Academic Press in 2006.[13][2]
Founded on Fear received positive reviews from several authors and critics. In a review forThe Irish Times,Mary Raftery, who produced a documentary series titledStates of Fear about abuse in industrial schools,[14] compared Tyrrell toPrimo Levi, aHolocaust survivor whose attempts to expose theAuschwitz concentration camp were dismissed. She called Tyrrell a "rare phenomenon of post-Independence Ireland ... a genuine hero" andFounded on Fear a "document of enormous historical significance".[6]Daire Keogh, also forThe Irish Times, wrote that it was a pity thatFounded on Fear had not been published during Tyrrell's lifetime.[4]
The Congregation of Christian Brothers laudedFounded on Fear and apologised for both the abuse their congregation had inflicted upon boys in industrial schools and their dismissal of Tyrrell's complaints in the 1950s.[6]
Tyrrell's correspondence and meetings with the Christian Brothers were documented in 2009 by theCommission to Inquire into Child Abuse in the Ryan Report, a report of the Commission's findings about child abuse inindustrial schools in theRepublic of Ireland, even though his case was out of the scope of the report (which mainly concerned incidents that occurred after the year 1936).[15] The Commission included Tyrrell in the report because they thought the Christian Brothers' dismissive response to the allegations was noteworthy.[8]
Since the Commission decided that victims and alleged perpetrators needed to be anonymised for legal reasons, Tyrrell was referred to as "Noah Kitterick" in the report.[16][3] In a column for theIrish Examiner Whelan condemned this decision, stating that Tyrrell explicitly wanted for his efforts to be appreciated under his real name.[17]
On 26 April, 2019, a vigil, organised by therapist Nuala Flynn, was held on Hampstead Heath in honour of Tyrrell. It consisted of a walk, lit by candles, across Hampstead Heath, fromParliament Hill to the civic hall ofHighgate. The vigil commemorated the 52nd anniversary of his death and the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Ryan Report.[18] Many of the attendees were themselves survivors of industrial schools.[19]
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