Peter Tyrrell

Peter Tyrrell (16 October 1916 – 26 April 1967) was an Irish tailor, author and activist against child abuse. When he was eight years old, the authorities committed him and his older brothers to St Joseph's Industrial School, Letterfrack, an institution run by the Christian Brothers, because of the family's extreme poverty. He was physically and sexually abused by several of the Christian Brothers, until he was released from the school when he was sixteen. He became a tailor (he had been taught the trade in Letterfrack), emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1935 and in the same year enlisted in the British Army. He was stationed in India for most of his military service, but in 1944 was removed to Geilenkirchen, where he was wounded and captured by the Germans. For four months in early 1945, he was held as a prisoner-of-war in the German camp Stalag XI-B, which he found pleasant compared to Letterfrack.

Back in England, he gained employment at the Ministry of Supply; after being laid off in 1947 he travelled extensively around the country. Upon reuniting with an old friend from Letterfrack, he became obsessed with his experiences at the institution. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, Tyrrell campaigned against corporal punishment and child abuse in industrial schools. He wrote letters to Catholic church leaders, Christian Brothers, newspapers and government officials. In 1958 he met Irish Senator Owen Sheehy-Skeffington and began a correspondence with him, which lasted seven years. At Sheehy-Skeffington's behest he wrote an autobiography between August 1958 and February 1959, which described not only the abuse Tyrrell suffered at Letterfrack but his narratives of the other stages of his life. It was never published within their lifetimes.

Having suffered depression and feeling that his efforts to enact change were unsuccessful, Tyrrell burnt himself alive in 1967, on Hampstead Heath in London. His remains went unidentified until 1968. In 2006, his autobiography was posthumously published, as Founded on Fear, by the Irish Academic Press. Historian Diarmuid Whelan had discovered the manuscript in Sheehy-Skeffington's papers. On 26 April 2019, a candlelight vigil was held on Hampstead Heath in Tyrrell's memory.

Early life

Peter Tyrrell was born on 16 October 1916, the eighth His parents had met at the October Ballinasloe Fair. Despite living on a farm with chickens, ducks, two goats, a horse and a donkey, the family rarely had enough food, because James Tyrrell did not till the farmland.

The Tyrrell children went to school in Ahascragh; Tyrrell recalled that their teacher, Mrs Kennedy, was a pleasant woman who provided lunch for them. However, after running out of clothing, they had to withdraw in 1923. Tyrrell's two younger brothers, who were too young for Letterfrack, were instead put in a Kilkenny industrial school for junior boys but transferred to Letterfrack once they came of age.

Letterfrack

Tyrrell later recounted in Founded on Fear that many of the Christian Brothers who ran the school beat him and the other inmates daily, with the exception of holidays such as Christmas, only for the Brothers' "lustful pleasure". The Christian Brothers usually approached the boys from behind in order to beat them, taking them by surprise, and used, among other implements, sticks, leather and rubber. Boys would be struck up to 20 times during a single beating. Once, Tyrrell was coerced to fabricate to a doctor a story of having broken his arm in a fall down the stairs; in actuality, it had been broken in a beating. In Founded on Fear, however, Tyrrell never explicitly described sexual abuse, leading historian Diarmuid Whelan to speculate that it was probably "isolated...to a handful of occasions". Tyrrell related, though, that some of the Brothers, like the school's superior Brother Kelly, treated the boys well. He described Kelly as "kind to everyone" but oblivious to the extent of the abuse going on in the school, and claimed that Kelly would have intervened had he been informed.

Military career Tyrrell emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1935 because of prejudice by local people against former inmates of industrial schools, which alienated him from Irish society.

In 1944, the battalion was removed to the Netherlands and later to Geilenkirchen in Germany. On the front lines at the German border on 21 January 1945,

In the autumn of 1958, Tyrrell wrote to Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, an Irish Senator who was known for his opposition to corporal punishment, at the behest of the Irish Centre in London. Sheehy-Skeffington, uniquely, believed and became interested in Tyrrell's story. They met in person for the only time at Sheehy-Skeffington's house in Dublin, and kept corresponding until 1965. At Sheehy-Skeffington's encouragement, Tyrrell spent August 1958 to February 1959 writing a memoir, which was published decades posthumously as Founded on Fear. which was published in the June 1963 issue of Hibernia magazine. Rudd introduced Tyrrell into a literary and political group called Tuairim which published pamphlets on Ireland's social issues. Tuairim put Tyrrell on the committee that wrote their 1966 pamphlet (Some of our children. A report on the residential care of the deprived child in Ireland) about living conditions in Irish institutions for children. To his frustration, the pamphlet omitted his recollections; Tuairim thought that abuse in industrial schools had become less severe since Tyrrell had left Letterfrack. While there was no weapon at the scene, the body had possible stab wounds to the abdomen. Investigators initially believed the corpse to have been of a man between 20 and 30 years old. The only clue as to his identity was a torn postcard, addressed to Sheehy-Skeffington, next to the body; the head investigator, Raymond Dagg, stated that written on the postcard was a suicide note.

Scotland Yard opened an inquest into Tyrrell's death and, in 1968, contacted Sheehy-Skeffington inquiring about the postcard. Sheehy-Skeffington sent them a letter from Tyrrell for them to use as comparison, and Scotland Yard positively identified the remains as Tyrrell shortly thereafter. After Founded on Fears publication, the Congregation of Christian Brothers apologised for the abuse in industrial schools and for ignoring Tyrrell's complaints in the 1950s. even though his case was out of the scope of the report (which mainly concerned incidents that occurred after the year 1936). The Commission had been established by the Irish government in 2000 to investigate child abuse in industrial schools in the Republic of Ireland. The Commission included Tyrrell in the report because they thought the Christian Brothers' dismissals of Tyrrell's allegations to be noteworthy. Since the Commission decided that victims and alleged perpetrators needed to be anonymised for legal reasons, Tyrrell was referred to as "Noah Kitterick" in the report. In a column for the Irish Examiner, published three days after the Ryan Report, Whelan identified "Noah Kitterick" as Peter Tyrrell. Because Tyrrell had stated a wish for his efforts to be appreciated under his real name, Whelan condemned the Commission's decision to anonymise him.

2019 vigil at Hampstead Heath On 26 April 2019, a vigil, organised by therapist Nuala Flynn, was held on Hampstead Heath in honour of Tyrrell. It consisted of a walk, lit by candles, across Hampstead Heath, from Parliament Hill to the civic hall of Highgate. At the civic hall, Flynn recited passages from Founded on Fear and from the speeches Tyrrell gave. The vigil commemorated the 52nd anniversary of his death and the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Ryan Report. Many of the attendees were themselves former inmates of industrial schools.