Inside RTÉ: A Memoir

Betty Purcell

• Publisher: New Island
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781848403215
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Biografie nell'ambito delle scienze sociali

For 33 years Betty Purcell worked behind the scenes as an award-winning producer in RTÉ Radio and Television, with presenters such as Marian Finucane, John Bowman, Pat Kenny and John Kelly. She found battles with the government, RTÉ management and the infamous Workers Party, taking a landmark case against Section 31 to Europe in 1991. She represented staff on the RTÉ Authority and on the Union executive.In this book she tells the real story of life in the challenging, fraught and creative world of Irish broadcasting.

1

Grand Canal Street Roots

‘A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but most certainly without freedom the press will never be anything but bad.’

– Albert Camus1

St Joseph’s Orphanage in Tivoli Road, Dun Laoghaire, was a grey Victorian stone building with grounds and a chapel. It was run by a French order of nuns, and later became a set of Health Board offices.

It was 1958, and I have one very clear memory of this time. I was two and a half when I awoke on my first night there, put my feet on the cold stone floor, and went in search of my older sister, Mary. Earlier that day, our mother had brought us there, ‘for a while’, until she could organise her life, just after separating from my father. I was put in the downstairs dormitory with the under-fives. I know now there were about forty children in the dormitory, but to me it seemed like hundreds. Mary, I was sure, was in the room upstairs, with children of her age-group. She was three years older than me. If I could find her, I would be all right. I padded down the length of the dormitory and slipped out onto the landing, then quickly up the grey stairs. I picked my way along the row of sleeping girls until eventually, and almost miraculously, there was Mary. I told her I couldn’t sleep, and she let me slip into bed beside her. It was just what I needed. I went back to sleep and rested peacefully.

The next day, I woke up to pandemonium. It seems it was the practice to dress and feed the smaller children first. When the nuns came to wake me, they found my bed empty. A search of the grounds had ensued, and the gardaí were about to be called, when I emerged, unharmed and rubbing my eyes, from the upstairs dormitory. There was a lot of shouting followed by huge relief from the nuns on duty that morning.

Later that day I was escorted to the office of Miss Murray, the orphanage principal. (Although she and the other staff were nuns, they were known by the title of Miss, and dressed in ordinary clothes, which was distinctly progressive in the pre-Vatican II era.) On the way to the principal’s office I was told that it was rare for a child to be brought there, but my misdemeanour was so grave that only the headmistress could handle it. I shuddered as I was brought into the large and gloomy room lined with dark wood, but I was lucky. Miss Murray was kind. She put me sitting up on her knee, and explained quietly and seriously that I had caused huge alarm and worry with my ‘disappearance’ that morning. She understood that I had wanted to be with my sister, and that I was very little and frightened. But, she explained, I could have fallen on the stairs in the dark. I could have got lost in the building. She herself would be in great trouble if that had happened. I had to promise that I would never climb out of my dormitory bed and go wandering again. I could feel that the situation was extremely grave, and I gave my word earnestly.

Looking back on this small incident in my life, I am aware of the implications that my rambling might have had for the school. But I remember the almost adult conversation that Miss Murray had with me that day. She handled the incident brilliantly, and from then on I always kept to my bed at night. My former colleague, Mary Raftery, who did such groundbreaking work on religious institutions and the abuse of children in care, told me, many years later, that St Joseph’s was among the best of Dublin’s orphanages at the time. My mother had innocently thought of placing us in Goldenbridge, but had been warned off by her younger sister, my aunt Anna. Anna spent her evenings at the time doing voluntary work with the homeless for Catholic Social Services organisations. She had heard disturbing things about Goldenbridge, and, after enquiries, suggested St Joseph’s as an alternative.

It all started with what would now be a not unusual family situation. My parents had separated, and my mother needed some time to readjust. She and my father were both in the drapery trade, working as shop assistants in the early 1950s. They had managed, through their joint savings and with help from both families, to buy a house in Booterstown in County Dublin. My mother was very happy there, but problems emerged in the relationship. My father was a gambler, and was unable to hold on to money. He frequently came home on a Friday with nothing to show for his week’s work, having lost his wages in the bookie’s. Strain was showing in the marriage, and with three children to be supported, my mother was worried. He blamed her family for voicing their concerns and, as he saw it, ‘interfering’. They decided to go to London for a time, to see if they could work things out between them. We children – my brother Tony aged eight, sister Mary aged five and myself aged two and a half – were left with our maternal grandparents in Merrion for two months.

Things did not improve in England. My father was now drinking as well as gambling. My mother got a letter from her friend and neighbour in Booterstown, Mrs Gillick, to say that she had seen that our house was up for sale. She rushed home to Ireland, but the house had been sold ‘over her head’ by my father’s mother. Her mother-in-law believed that Mam would be forced to stay in London with no home to return to here. Instead, the house sale ended any attempts to save the marriage. Mam was devastated and alone. This was the context of her decision to place Mary and me in St Joseph’s Orphanage. My brother was kept at home and sent to the Christian Brothers in Westland Row. My mother found a two-roomed flat in Lower Mount Street at this time, and proceeded to get work in Clerys in O’Connell Street. Eventually, she organised a half-house to take us home to, in Grand Canal Street in Ringsend. This took two and a half years for her to accomplish. In the meantime we were in the care of the nuns, where she was confident that we would be well fed and schooled.

In the event, she was right. The nuns did their best. We were often cold, but I do not remember ever being hungry. The stone walls and floors were not easy to heat, and we moved quickly in the mornings. Downstairs was a bit better. We learned to grow things in the orphanage’s garden. The first flowers I managed to grow were tiny white alyssums. I remember the excitement of seeing them peep their heads above the ground, and of knowing that they were the result of my planting and watering. Miss Doyle, a severe-looking nun with glasses, was in charge of the garden. She enthused about my flowers as if they were small miracles. I played the baby Jesus in the Christmas play, despite having measles. Some of the nuns were very strict, but they were never cruel. My mother came to visit every Sunday, which I loved. For my sister, it was a mixed blessing. The girls in Mary’s age-group, being older and more aware of being orphans, took out their upset on her, and would beat her up for the sweets Mam brought. Mary begged Mam not to bring us anything more.

On Sundays, we had special tea. This was the day when prospective adoptive parents came to visit. We would be down in the big dining room, and they would stand at the top of the stairs and point to children to whom they had taken a liking. We were, of course, ruled out for adoption, which led to tension with the other girls. It was an unholy beauty contest, and I watched as the pretty little blonde girls found homes, while the less presentable children were repeatedly disappointed.

We finally left St Joseph’s in 1961, after two and a half years, and returned to the comfort of a loving home in Grand Canal Street. Mam employed a local woman, Mrs O’Rourke, to be there when we came in from the Holy Faith School in Haddington Road, and she gave us cheese or jam sandwiches and supervised our homework. My mother was fortunate to have found a decent employer in Mrs Guiney of Clerys. She received a letter of recommendation from a Fianna Fáil Dáil deputy, through her old friend and Booterstown neighbour Mrs Gillick, and began work in the knitwear department. The wages were not high, but Mam had special permission to come in at 9.15 each morning, which allowed her time to get us to school. She cycled down to O’Connell Street, and came home every lunchtime to cook us a proper meal. I remember stews and steaks at one o’clock in the day, while listening to the daily soap, The Kennedys of Castlerosse, on the radio. At six o’clock she would be home for the night, washing clothes and cooking dinners in the small scullery off the kitchen, and then she would sit down and promptly fall asleep.

We had no television, on my mother’s insistence, and were encouraged to read or play the piano in the evening. If Mam managed to stay awake, she would recite to us passages from The Merchant of Venice, in particular the Borrowing Scene, and Portia’s speech. I remember going to sleep with the lines of ‘The quality of mercy is not strained’ turning over in my head. Her other favourites, at Christmas, when she would indulge in a glass or two of sherry with her three sisters, were from Robert Service: The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew. She would always precede these recitations by saying, ‘This is a man’s piece really, but I’ll give it a try.’ Although we rarely went to the theatre as children, every Christmas my mother would bring us, with my cousins, to whatever Gilbert and Sullivan operetta was on. She loved The Mikado and The Gondoliers. Her favourite operatic song was ‘Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes’, which my father had sung to her on bended knee when he proposed to her back in 1947.

My mother was highly theatrical, and if her circumstances had been different she would have loved to have been on the stage. As it was, she turned the stories of her life in Clerys into small vignettes, to which we would listen, spellbound. She was in charge of the Aran jumpers counter, and would tell the American customers elaborate stories of how the cabling on the sweaters each had a distinctive family motif so that when fishermen would drown, they could be identified by their jumpers. She would also go into detailed descriptions as to where leprechauns could best be found (early in the morning in long, damp grass), which seemed to make the Americans very happy. She loved her work, and it gave her a stage on which to perform.

As a small child, I was always amazed that when we went to visit Santa in Clerys (the real Santa was always in Clerys, other shops just had his helpers!), my mother seemed to be on friendly terms with him. One year I remember seeing her leaning over and handing Santa a Baby Powers whiskey. ‘You must be freezing sitting there’, she said. Santa smiled his appreciation.

Religion was a central part of her life. Every night before we went to bed, we would all have to kneel down to say the family rosary, with the ‘trimmings’ at the end: extra prayers for special intentions. The final prayer was always a Hail Mary for ‘the conversion of Russia and the defeat of Communism’. This was odd, since my mother was always politically radical, but it was a tradition handed down from her own parents. (They had been big Fine Gael supporters in Offaly in the 1930s, when the Blueshirts were touring the country shouting fascist slogans.) Tony would manage to read his Beano or Dandy comics during the rosary, giving a cough each time he needed to turn a page. Mam never noticed.

I was impressed by religious people I had met, who seemed kindly and good. But I was spooked by a picture that hung over the kitchen table that declared, in ancient script: ‘Christ is the Head of This House, the unseen guest at every meal, and the silent listener to every conversation.’ I would repeat the lines over and over in my head.

Although my mother had a small income, she refused to allow it to limit us, always managing to pay for school trips and for piano lessons. We benefited hugely from her optimistic view of the world. She was also very active in the ITGWU trade union in Clerys, and the shop steward, Christy Walsh, would ask her opinion before contemplating a strike ballot. She always had her ear to the ground.

One day, Mam was queuing at the sweet counter in Clerys to get our Easter eggs, when she heard a Poor Clare nun trying to buy thirty Easter eggs for an orphanage of which she was in charge. The nun hadn’t enough money. Mam intervened and said to the assistant, ‘Wrap up the eggs, and I’ll pay for them.’ From that day on, she organised an annual Easter egg appeal among Clerys staff, and the delivery men brought boxes of Easter eggs to various orphanages around Dublin.

Growing up in the full gaze of our mother’s love and dedication, we were pretty much thriving. Our flat in Grand Canal Street was in one of those big draughty Victorian houses, with a substantial hall and sizeable rooms. Our rented half consisted of three main rooms. There was a front room, where visitors were brought, and it contained the piano. This was also where Tony slept. Mary and I shared the back bedroom with Mam, and then down three little stairs were the toilet and kitchen. It was always cold in the flat, except in the evening when an oil heater and a fire in the grate kept the kitchen toasty warm. We had our lunches made, and tea and jam in the afternoon from Mrs O’Rourke.

The house, which was owned by the International Meat Company across the street, also had an upstairs flat, which was let to their night watchman and his family. When our flat needed to be painted, three painters would arrive over from the meat company, and would contrive to stay for months on end. Mam would leave them cigarettes, and they would teach us card games and regale us with funny stories in the afternoon when Mrs O’Rourke had gone. One painter, Joe, was a gentle giant of a man. He used to do the ironing for my mother, in thanks for the cigarettes, and leave the ironed clothes in a neat pile on the kitchen table on a Friday.

When we first moved into Grand Canal Street, we did not have a bathroom. Saturday night was bath night, and my mother would spend an hour heating saucepans and kettles of water to fill the tin bath in front of the fire. I was the first to have a bath, followed by Mary, and last of all Tony. Then he pulled the bath out the back and the water sloshed down the shore. We were now clean and ready for Mass on Sunday. When we finally got a bathroom put in, it always seemed to me to be a cold and damp room, after the luxury of being first into the fireside bath, but I am sure it must have been a great relief for my mother to have hot running water and a proper water outlet.

Saturday night was also the night when we wrote to our father, who was still living in London. Each of us would sit down and write a page, with our news of the week. Mam felt it was important for us to maintain contact with him, and never encouraged us to be bitter about his absence. When we received his replies, including newspaper clippings of the comic strip ‘Andy Capp’, who seemed to spend his life in the pub or the bookie’s, we would count the number of kisses on the end of each letter. Tony often got one or two extra.

On Sunday afternoons we would go to the house in Booterstown, which was shared by two of my mother’s sisters, Tess and Anna. They served delicious Sunday lunches of either roast beef or lamb, followed by apple tart and thick cream. My aunt Tess was a talented cook. I remember those Sunday meals being accompanied by spirited debates about politics and religion: the abandonment of Michael Collins in the Treaty negotiations; the status of limbo in theology; should the Church sell its property and art to help the poor; would the Soviet Union remain Communist? The conversations rang around my ears until I was old enough to participate and shout as loud as anyone else!

Our summer holidays consisted of two weeks in a caravan by the seaside, in either Portmarnock or Skerries. Mam prepared for these trips ten miles up the road as for an expedition. She would pack jam, tea and cornflakes, as though there were no shops at the seaside, and we would each have large bags to take care of. At the end of week one, her annual expectation of sun invariably gave way to reality, and Tony was sent home to Grand Canal Street to ‘collect the wellingtons’. Each subsequent year brought the hope that they would not be needed this time.

In the main, things were developing in a good way, although our poor circumstances always meant that we were in danger as a family. Tony, who was spirited and bright, was consistently beaten by some of the Christian Brothers in Westland Row. The main culprit was a Brother Long, who was notorious among the boys as a bully and a sadist. My mother went to the school to complain many times. She was told that Tony tended to be a bit wild, but that things would improve. They never did. I always suspected that Tony was particularly vulnerable in not having a dad at home to speak up for him. Many of the other fathers paid angry visits to the school, and their sons were treated less cruelly as a result. Some years later, when Mam, Mary and I were sitting on the beach on holiday in Skerries, three Christian Brothers walked by, also on their holidays. One broke away from the others to come over and say to my mother: ‘It was terrible what happened to Tony. He was beaten mercilessly, and we knew the Brother concerned was a complete thug. He has now been taken out of teaching and forcibly retired.’ To my mother, this honest revelation, while welcome, made only a small difference. It confirmed her worst suspicions, and demonstrated that all Tony had alleged had been true, but it was too late for him. He refused to go back to school after his Inter Cert, even though an uncle of ours offered to pay for him to go to Belvedere to be taught by the softer Jesuits. Although Tony made a life for himself, and is a huge reader of books of biography and modern history, his ambition was thwarted by his school experience, and he never completed his education.

When I was about eight (Mary was eleven), a busybody neighbour tried to deliver us into the control of Social Services. Mary and I were home sick from school. Mrs O’Rourke, who normally only came in the afternoon, was with us in the morning, but had left ...