17 OCTOBER

1878 A meeting of the board of guardians at Listowel, County Kerry, today heard allegations by the workhouse chaplain, the Revd Mr Moynihan, that a pregnant inmate named Bessie Flavin had been offered money to conceal the identity of the child's father. Father Moynihan said he had visited Flavin in the workhouse and asked her how she came to be there. She said she was pregnant by a man named Howard. Being suspicious from the doubtful manner of her reply, he had asked her to tell him the truth. She confded that she had recently been taken by the workhouse master into the surgery where the acting medical offcer, Dr Gentleman, awaited her. On being left alone with him, he had offered her £10 to conceal the name of the real father and invent some other. She had consented to this and signed an agreement. The man who had seduced her was, in fact, a local bank clerk named Shanahan. An inquiry by the Local Government Board decided that, due to Flavin's background and the 'discrepancy in her evidence, compared with that of the respectable and well conducted offcers of the workhouse' they could not place much reliance on her allegations.