Shown on RTE One at 7 30
Orphans died because nuns didn't want them seen in nightgowns Sunday November 5th 2006 NICOLA TALLANT THIRTY-five orphans who perished in a blaze in Cavan more than 60 years ago were locked into their dormitories as the fire raged because nuns didn't want them seen in their nightgowns. The shocking claims are made in a new TV documentary which investigates the fire at St Joseph's Orphanage in 1943. One of the 50 children who were rescued claims that the children were ordered to say the Rosary as the fire spread from the laundry to the second and third floors of the building. The full truth has never emerged but it is now claimed that all the children could have been saved. Cavan farmer Matt McKiernan lost his two sisters, Mary Elizabeth and Susan, on the night of the fire. They had been sent to St Joseph's six months previously when their mother died. "They were two lovely girls and we never imagined when they went in there that they would never have come out again," he says. On the night of February 23, 1943, while war raged across Europe, a small fire started in the laundry of the old building. Within 45 minutes it gutted the entire school, leaving only smouldering remains. Sarah, who has asked the makers of Scannal not to identify her, was one of the last to escape and has never spoken before about her experience. "I arrived in St Joseph's in the Thirties and I remember going in. I was only five but I remember these huge white marble steps. It is still very clear in my mind today." She remembers how the fire raged. "Someone was looking out the window and saw the smoke but it must have caught quickly because the next thing was that this smoke was coming in." Locals in O'Sullivan's bar were about to finish up for the night. One of them, Sissy Reilly, saw flames coming from the orphanage and sounded the alarm. Local man John McKiernan recalls: "We tried to make our way up the stairs but we were beaten back by the flames. We were overcome with smoke." The documentary claims that one teacher, Miss Harrington, who was looking after Our Lady's dormitory, located in the middle of the building, rescued the children in her care after she was awoken by the smell of smoke. But it was the girls on the top floor, under the control of Bridget O'Reilly, who would perish in the blaze. There was one fire exit on the top floor but O'Reilly left it bolted and moved the children from one dorm to another where she felt there was less smoke. She then went down the stairs and left the building herself as it filled with smoke. Local Michael Holmes says: "I have it from a reliable source that one of the reasons the children weren't taken out was because the nuns didn't want them to be seen in their nightgowns. "It took a long time for locals to gain admittance to the building. But instead of being directed to the top floor where the children were, they were asked to go into the laundry to fight the fire," he explained. "What happened was a scandal. It took 45 minutes for the building to be burned to the ground. They say that there was a good chance of every single person surviving if they had been brought down the stairs and out the door in the first 15 minutes." The Cavan fire brigade arrived in a handcart with a fire hose but it was ill-equipped, with a punctured hose and faulty ladders. "When I came to, I was sitting on the window ledge," Sarah remembers. "There was nobody there with me. People below were shouting at me to jump but I just absolutely froze. I reckoned I was going to die. I could hear the glass cracking and could see the flames getting nearer and nearer. Then someone got hold of my feet and dragged me down the ladder and I was brought to the surgicalhospital." Paddy Doyle was sleeping at the army barracks in Cavan town on the night and was woken to help with the clear-up operation. "We were told to find bodies. There were all these children. We were just picking up bodies and bringing them out to quilts laid out on the square. You wouldn't recognise anything." Workers could only find enough remains to fill eight coffins so the bodies were buried together in a mass grave. Sarah recalls the funerals: "I was going over to the chapel to the mass and there was this big sheet on the playground spread out. Someone kept saying not to look, but of course you look. I didn't even realise it then that they were all bodies there. All in lumps." She explains how it affected her: "When I saw all the coffins - that is when it really hit me. They were all my friends that I used to play with. We used to joke and laugh and play together in the fields and they were all gone." When Local Government Minister Sean McEntee established an 11-day public inquiry into the cause of the fire, the nuns were allowed give their evidence from the comfort of the convent, and hired senior lawyers to represent them. The inquiry report was published that year and concluded that there was no one to blame for the deaths. It found that the locals were unfamiliar with the layout of the building and that there was a lack of leadership on the night. It recommended amending the fire-escape regulations within industrial schools and called on a national fire brigade to be established.It was found that an electrical fault was to blame for the fire. "I don't talk about it now. That fire to me is part of my private life," Sarah confides, "That life is gone. It is bad memories and I don't go back." 'Scannal: The Cavan Fire' will be shown tomorrow evening on RTE One at 7.30pm 06/11/2006
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