The Rosary

From the middle 1950s to the late 60s, after ‘school’ at 4pm, children from the age of six were issued one slice of bread and margarine and then sent into St. Bridget’s classroom to make rosary beads. The classroom did duty as a mini-factory for the manufacture of rosary beads.
On the spot punishment by staff was an everyday event. Children had to stand on a cold landing (sometimes barefoot and wearing only slips) during the night for punishment. They were relentlessly flogged with thick bark from a tree by the nun in charge, if, for example, they had not fulfilled their quota of rosary beads in the factory. 
Goldenbridge housed on average two hundred children, which included infants and babies; a good percentage of them were infants, babies and toddlers. It was normal for some of them to have slept in their own excrement. imagine the holy people of this island of saints and scholars hadn’t a notion as to what was going on inside the bitter austere inhospitable labour camp called Goldenbridge, as children were imprisoned there and visitors weren’t ever allowed past the porch hall.