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.

Andrew visited the Yates’s home on a few occasions getting on well with them.

But when Mr Yates spotted an increasingly unhealthy looking Andrew walking along a country road barefoot, he was extremely concerned and immediately brought him for something to eat.

When Mr Yates returned the young boy to the farm that night, he was met by the woman who ran Westbank, Adeline Mathers. Ms Mathers then decided to remove Andrew from the Robinsons’ farm and take him back to the orphanage.

But Mr Yates couldn’t get the malnourished little boy out of his mind and forcibly removed him from the orphanage. He then approached family friends, a judge, and a solicitor, to help him to adopt Andrew. Two years later, he succeeded.

When he was 18, Andrew returned to Westbank looking for answers about his family but couldn’t get any. Twenty years later he found out his mother was still alive. And two years later again, he met his brother — having found out he had also been at Westbank. A policy of denying sibling relationships existed at the orphanage.

Andrew’s story is one of a number that have been sent to the Department of Children by the Bethany Survivors’ group who want the story of Protestant orphans to be told.

They were left out of the Ryan Report and its redress scheme. They were also judged as outside the remit of the Magdalene Survivors’ scheme.

Former residents from Westbank, along with residents from other Protestant Dublin orphanages are asking that these institutions be included in the upcoming mother and baby homes’ commission of investigation.

Survivors are due to meet with Charlie Flanagan, the children’s minister today.