First among the people

Artist Séamus Nolan proposes that a boy who died in state care be made president for a day, writes Richard Fitzpatrick

WILLIAM Delaney was aged 13 when he died, in 1970. He was the son of a tinsmith of no fixed abode, and was sentenced to six years in the notorious St Joseph’s industrial school, Letterfrack, in Galway, in 1967.

In June, 1970, he was knocked unconscious by a blow to the head from an irate Christian Brother wielding a broomstick handle. Delaney spent a few days in the school’s infirmary, before being sent home early for the summer holidays. He had piercing headaches and died two days later. There was no inquest. The doctor said the cause of his death was encephalitis.