Children ‘boarded out’ to farmers

At the age that most children start primary school, Andrew Begley was sent to work on a farm in the North.

He was one of a number of Protestant children from Westbank, a Co Wicklow orphanage, who were “boarded out” to farmers in the North. The orphanage was paid £150 for each child labourer.

A local man, an insurance salesman called Mr Yates, spotted the “thin, frail, and weak” child working in the fields and asked the Robinson family if they would allow the young boy to meet his family.