Abused, beaten and betrayed

THE bleak house rose from the windswept peninsula like a tombstone to the dying innocence of each new arrival.

Childhood here was an endless ache of loneliness, fear and deprivation, deepened by the cruel consciousness that no one on the outside cared what went on within.

The boys placed in Baltimore Fisheries School were not wayward just orphaned, illegitimate or unlucky. The "offenders" among them had usually committed no greater crime than truancy.