Dublin boy who openly dressed as a girl

[Martina]

I was listening to an afternoon radio documentary yesterday about industrial schools in Ireland which existed up to the 70’s and where basically slave labour concentration camps for children who committed “crimes” such as coming from single parent families or poor school attendance etc. They were run by the Catholic Church whose priests, brothers and nuns abused the children in every possible way on a continuous basis and where left to it by the state and society until they were exposed in the 80’s. But there was a lovely account by one inmate who was rescued by his mother and brother in 1968 and smuggled back to his home in Dublin city. His family new the police would be looking for a boy so they disguised him as a girl and he spent the next few years dressed as a girl until the matter was forgotten. He said he had no problem at all dressing as a girl and laughingly described his flowery dress and cardigan. He spent his day out in the streets playing with his friends and everybody accepted it because they knew why he had to dress up. I think it is heart warming on 2 points. One that inner city working class people had no problem with a boy dressing as a girl openly amongst them and two, nobody informed on him. There had been a tradition in Dublin up to the 1950’s where eldest sons wore a petticoat up to puberty to fool the bad fairies. This may have been part of the reason why it was acceptable.

[Susan]

Martina

A lovely story, I live across the Irish Sea from Dublin.