Fear of the Collar: The True Story of the Boy They Couldn't Break - Softcover

Touher, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0091917662 ISBN 13: 9780091917661

Publisher: Ebury Press, 2007

Synopsis

Sent to an industrial school in Dublin at the age of seven, Patrick Touher was forced into a tough regime of education and training, prayer and punishment, strict discipline, and fearful nights. No allowances were made for emotion, sentiment, or boyhood worries, and anyone who disturbed the routine was severely punished. Artane Industrial School demanded absolute obedience and absolute submission; Patrick's eight-year stint there was an education in cruelty and fear. Run by the Christian Brothers, the school has become synonymous with the widespread abuse of children in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s which is currently the subject of an official inquiry. This is the story of a childhood lived in the most horrific of circumstances, a moving and powerful account that bears testament to the courage and determination of the children that society forgot.

About this title

About the Author:

Patrick Touher is a baker.

Review:

"Touher's story powerfully discloses the pain of being without secure moorings in life ... his account of the regime of the Irish Christian Brothers is an important one" * Irish Times * "It is a book of survival, of hardship, but also of friendships and solidarity despite the oppressive regime all the Artane Boys suffered in a society not willing or able to see its own faults" * Fingal Independent * "A story ... which must be neither hidden nor forgotten" * Leinster Leader * "Gripping in its honest and no-holds-barred account of one boy's sometimes tortuous trek through the grey underworld of Dublin's industrial school life during the 1950s" * Northside People *

About this edition

• Publisher: Ebury Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0091917662
• ISBN 13: 9780091917661
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272