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 Diarmaid Ferriter and Claims that Children Were Beaten to Death by Irish Religious

Diarmaid Ferriter
Diarmuid Ferriter - Professor of Modern Irish History, UCD

Extract from pages 8 and 9 of the www.politics.ie Thread “Diarmaid Ferriter Professor of Modern History at UCD” – part of the History Forum

23rd February 2010 09:55 PM  No 79
Cogadh
Cogadh is offline
Originally Posted by kesh
Agree completely Cogadh - one important aspect of the "revisionist" mythology was to call all other aspects of Irish history "pro-Republican" i.e "feeding the violence" nonsense. They scared to death all decent scholarship during their agenda led reign and the result was as you say, bad history.

Yes it was a way of stifling debate and stopping free intellectual inquiry. Quite heinous when you think about it. Especially when you consider 'revisionists' were also lecturing in universities and charged with moulding young people's minds.

9th March 2010 01:18 AM  No 80
Kilbarry1
Kilbarry1 is offline
A number of posters have described Ferriter as a "populist" historian. This is true in the sense that he plays to some grotesque myths created by journalists but ignored by more academic historians.

The following is from page 393/94 of the 2005 (paperback) edition of his book The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000. It appears in Chapter 5 which covers the years 1932-1945.

In the 1990s, it was discovered that the most glaring omissions from the archive files of the industrial-school system related to information concerning the deaths of children - it is highly unlikely that those missing or unaccounted for wandered innocently outside the gates of industrial schools and became lost and untraceable. [Note 104]. It is more probable, though difficult to prove conclusively, that a small number of Irish children were beaten to death in state-financed, religious-run institutions.

Note 104: Mary Raftery and Eoin O'Sullivan "Suffer The Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland's Industrial Schools", (Dublin, 1999), page 233-4 and 271-274"

Ferriter's book is 884 pages long and he probably wrote the above shortly after the publication of Raftery's book in 1999. However by 2004, when he originally published "The Transformation of Ireland", it was clear that that ALL allegations of child-killing by the religious orders - and especially the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy - were false. So why didn't Ferriter ommit this passage in 2004 or even in 2005 for the paperback edition? And if he had published similar allegations against JEWISH teachers, what are the chances that UCD would employ him as Professor of Modern Irish History?

9th March 2010 09:04 AM  No 81
LowIQ LowIQ is offlineLowIQ is offline
Originally Posted by Kilbarry1
Ferriter's book is 884 pages long and he probably wrote the above shortly after the publication of Raftery's book in 1999. However by 2004, when he originally published "The Transformation of Ireland", it was clear that that ALL allegations of child-killing by the religious orders - and especially the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy - were false. So why didn't Ferriter ommit this passage in 2004 or even in 2005 for the paperback edition? And if he had published similar allegations against JEWISH teachers, what are the chances that UCD would employ him as Professor of Modern Irish History?

You are asking him to prove a negative.
The Jewish thing is just a red herring. No accusations of that sort have been made against Jewish schools in Ireland (if there are any).
Censorsed and banned temporarily by politics.co.uk (ie this site) so as not to "offend" the Brits during Mrs. Windsor's visit.

 9th March 2010 09:25 AM  No 82
johnfás
johnfás is offline
Originally Posted by LowIQ
You are asking him to prove a negative.
The Jewish thing is just a red herring. No accusations of that sort have been made against Jewish schools in Ireland (if there are any).

There's one - Stratford in Rathgar, which was only founded in the 1950s. In some ways it doesn't entirely cater for the Jewish population as there is a long history of Jews attending a number of Dublin Protestant schools which predate the establishment of Stratford. In any case, this is irrelevant, but seeing as I knew this information I thought I would share it...

 9th March 2010 09:29 AM  No 83
Kilbarry1
Kilbarry1 is offline
Originally Posted by LowIQ
You are asking him to prove a negative.
The Jewish thing is just a red herring. No accusations of that sort have been made against Jewish schools in Ireland (if there are any).

When a historian makes allegations that children were beaten to death in institutions run by a religious group it is up to him to prove it. It is not the responsibility of said religious group to disprove it. In the Nazi publication Der Sturmer, Julius Streicher repeated medieval Blood Libels about Jews i.e. that they had murdered Christian children for ritual purposes. Jews have never "proved" that they didn't do it because as you indicate, it is impossible to "prove" a negative. Does that mean that a Professor of Modern History is entitled to endorse Blood Libel as Ferriter endorses the allegations against Catholic religious?

  9th March 2010 09:30 AM  No 84
John Biffo
John Biffo is offline
I hope Ferritéar ditches that drawling Doob accent.

Drives me bonkers.

  9th March 2010 12:00 PM No 85
Kilbarry1
Kilbarry1 is offline
Originally Posted by Kilbarry1
A number of posters have described Ferriter as a "populist" historian. This is true in the sence that he plays to some grotesque myths created by journalists but ignored by more acemedic historians.

The following is from page 393/94 of the 2005 (paperback) edition of his book The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000. It appears in Chapter 5 which covers the years 1932-1945.

In the 1990s, it was discovered that the most glaring omissions from the archive files of the industrial-school system related to information concerning the deaths of children - it is highly unlikely that those missing or unaccounted for wandered innocently outside the gates of industrial schools and became lost and untraceable. [Note 104]. It is more probable, though difficult to prove conclusively, that a small number of Irish children were beaten to death in state-financed, religious-run institutions.

Note 104: Mary Raftery and Eoin O'Sullivan "Suffer The Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland's Industrial Schools", (Dublin, 1999), page 233-4 and 271-274"

Ferriter's book is 884 pages long and he probably wrote the above shortly after the publication of Raftery's book in 1999. However by 2004, when he originally published "The Transformation of Ireland", it was clear that that ALL allegations of child-killing by the religious orders - and especially the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy - were false. So why didn't Ferriter ommit this passage in 2004 or even in 2005 for the paperback edition? And if he had published similar allegations against JEWISH teachers, what are the chances that UCD would employ him as Professor of Modern Irish History?

Actually it was clear from the beginning that the allegations of child killing made by Mary Raftery and Eoin O'Sullivan in "Suffer the Lttle Children" were false. The book was published in November 1999 as a follow up to Raftery's TV series "States of Fear" earlier that year. Breda O'Brien did a review of the book pointing out obvious discrepencies and there was prolonged corresponance involving herself, Mary Raftery, John Cooney, Fintan O'Toole and others as a result. This went on for several weeks in the Irish Times, Sunday Business Post, Irish Independent etc. It would have been impossible for Ferriter to be unaware of this controversy and how Mary Raftery's allegations were demolished. (I myself saw the controversy mentioned in the USA magazine "America"!)

There is a detailed account of the controversy and the correspondence in the article "Mary Raftery and the Death of Patsy Flanagan".
MARY RAFTERY AND THE DEATH OF PATSY FLANAGAN

9th March 2010 02:09 PM  No 86
Kilbarry1
Kilbarry1 is offline
Originally Posted by Kilbarry1
Actually it was clear from the beginning that the allegations of child killing made by Mary Raftery and Eoin O'Sullivan in "Suffer the Lttle Children" were false. The book was published in November 1999 as a follow up to Raftery's TV series "States of Fear" earlier that year. Breda O'Brien did a review of the book pointing out obvious discrepencies and there was prolonged corresponance involving herself, Mary Raftery, John Cooney, Fintan O'Toole and others as a result. This went on for several weeks in the Irish Times, Sunday Business Post, Irish Independent etc. It would have been impossible for Ferriter to be unaware of this controversy and how Mary Raftery's allegations were demolished. (I myself saw the controversy mentioned in the USA magazine "America"!)

There is a detailed account of the controversy and the correspondence in the article "Mary Raftery and the Death of Patsy Flanagan".
MARY RAFTERY AND THE DEATH OF PATSY FLANAGAN


I am heading out now. The above article "Mary Raftery and the Death of Patsy Flanagan" is rather long and spans several weeks and several different newspapers. There is a shorter one that refers to a related controversy in the Sunday Independent only
THE DEATH OF PATSY FLANAGAN: Blood Libel and the Christian Brothers

This includes corresponence between the Christian Brothers and Mary Raftery's main witness Bernard "Barney" O'Connell. (He features in Raftery's book Suffer The Little Children as well as in her TV series States of Fear.) I will quote from the final letter from Brother M Reynolds of the Christian Brothers leadership team. It is entitled "Three Versions of Boy's Death" and was published on Sunday, 19 December 1999.

I refer to Mr Bernard O'Connell's reply last week in your letters page to my letter relating to the accidental death of a boy in Artane.

Mr O'Connell stands by his story. Which one? He has now presented the public with no fewer than three different versions of this event. In one version the boy fell 40 feet, brushing past Bernard and almost touching him. In the second version the boy was actually thrown over the banister by a Brother and fell a distance of 120 feet. In this account, Mr O'Connell describes external injuries which are totally at variance with the injuries described by the surgeon in the Mater Hospital and by the pathologist. The third version given by Mr O'Connell states that both the boy and a Brother crashed into Bernard, knocking him down several steps.

He finishes his third account by stating that the event took place in the winter of 1956. In fact, the sad accident occurred on February 18, 1951. The factual account of what happened is contained in the Coroner's Report, the contents of which were outlined in my original letter. The Coroner's Report states clearly that no foul play was suspected and that there was adequate supervision in place at the time of the accident.

The records show that no other boy resident of Artane died in the 1950s.


Like Diarmaid Ferriter, Mary Raftery makes vague claims on the lines of "There are a number of accounts from survivors of deaths of children under suspicious or unexplained circumstances." (page 233 of her book Suffer the Little Children - which Ferriter refers to explicitely as the basis for HIS allegations.). However the death of Patsy Flanagan is the only time she gives details of a specific case - and the allegation is clearly nonsence.

9th June 2010 12:09 AM   No 87
Design for Life
Does anyone know Diarmaid's da's name or where his da was a teacher?

etc

http://www.politics.ie/forum/history/31359-diarmaid-ferriter-professor-modern-irish-history-ucd-8.html AND
http://www.politics.ie/forum/history/31359-diarmaid-ferriter-professor-modern-irish-history-ucd-9.html