"Brother Gibson was then rebutting claims by the Joseph Pyke Memorial Trust that Joseph Pyke died in 1958 after a beating by a Brother in Tralee industrial school. Having stated that he was quoting from the boy's death certificate he said last Monday that on February 9th, 1958 Joseph Pyke had died of "bilateral pleural effusion". This he understood to mean pneumonia. However, a copy of the death certificate of 16-year-old Joseph Pyke "apprentice bootmaker", since seen by The Irish Times, gives the cause of death as "Bilateral Pleural Effusion. Septicaemia. Certified". Mr Pyke is recorded as having died in St Joseph's Industrial School, Tralee, on the date given, February 9th, 1958. Brother Gibson did say, however, that the death certificate had been officially changed from the original which, he said, gave "senility" as a cause of the boy's death. That, he said, was changed later to "septicaemia".
