# Transcript

INTERVIEWER:

So what kind of punishments were carried out when you were working there? What made it so bad in terms of – you’re saying you were institutionalised. But what made it so bad?

SUBJECT:

You had no freedom. And if you had done anything wrong – there was one particular nun, and she would catch you by the top of the head, and she would pull your hair so much down, she would go down to your toes with your head. You were just punished severely – locked in rooms or whatever if you had done something wrong. But you still had to do your work. You might get no tea that evening.

INTERVIEWER:

Did anyone ever ask to leave?

SUBJECT:

I did, on a few occasions – wanted to know why I was there.

INTERVIEWER:

And?

SUBJECT:

And I was told my mother put me in there.

INTERVIEWER:

But when you asked to leave, did they let you leave?

SUBJECT:

I wasn’t educated enough to be out in the world, I was taught.

INTERVIEWER:

Did anyone ever die in there?

SUBJECT:

Oh, die – I was at so many funerals. They were buried on the grounds of the Hyde Park. There was nothing religious in the ground where they were buried. It was just like a green playground, really.

INTERVIEWER:

What do you mean? Sorry.

SUBJECT:

It was just a green patch at the side of the laundry where the old women were buried. But the nuns had a graveyard up at the convent for themselves. But the women that died in Hyde Park – because when somebody was dying, we all had to go up and go round the bed and kneel there and pray and pray and pray – but they were buried in this big green patch.

There was no cross. There was nothing to say that it was holy ground.