Michael McLaverty - My Old School Teacher

By Joe Graham

(From "Belfast Born Bred And Buttered" by Joe Graham)

I was five years old, when I began to attend St. John’s and spent the first year in Mrs McCarthy’s ‘Infant Class’, looking back she seemed an older lady, but she must have been quite a young woman at the time for I understand she was still teaching up to just a few years ago. I have little memories of this class, the fact that I have no bad ones says a lot for Mrs McCarthy.

Then I went into the big boys world of “First Class”, today’s kids I believe call it ‘Primary 0ne’, and that’s where Mr. Michael McLaverty came into my life. This man stamped patterns, values, views and memories into the minds of two generations of Belfast boys and I have yet to meet one ex-pupil who would ever have a bad word to say about ‘Mickey’. he was my ‘Master‘ throughout my schooldays, a ‘Master’ was a male teacher those days, Michael McLaverty was no mere teacher, as far back as 1936 he had many of his now famous short stories published and now much of his works can be read in many languages throughout the world. Michael was an artist with a pen; he could paint a picture in words that could equal any masterpiece of even the great Michael Angelo. In one of his short stories, “The Sea”, one of his characters, an old man, “Peter”, following the death of his wife poised the question to his adopted son, “ What is the nearest thing to death about a house”, he then answers himself, “Well. I’ll tell ye.. A hearth without a fire and a house without a woman.” Show me the man who would not agree with Peter, indeed Michael, who after all penned the sentiment. Very little is recorded of Michael’s background, and sadly it lead to a foreign writer recently suggesting, so wrongly, that Michael was reared with a silver spoon in his mouth, was somewhat aloof from those he taught and lived among. The reality is that Michael came from a very working class background.

Michael McLaverty was born in 1904 at Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan, in 1911 his family moved to Beechmount, Belfast, where his father took up employment as a waiter at the Queen’s Hotel, Queen’s Arcade. Michael began attending St Gall’s School at Clonard, he had three brothers and four sisters. He later went to “Strawberry Hill” the Catholic teachers’ College in London and soon after, in 1928, took up his first position as a teacher at St John’s Primary School, Colinward Street. In 1933 he married Molly Giles, whose brother later became a well known Springfield Road G.P, the couple went to live at Knock (Belfast) for a few years and later moved to Deramore Drive at Malone, they had four children, two boys and two girls, Shelia, Kevin, Colm and Moira. It was in the early 1930’s that Michael McLaverty’s published works began to appear and in was in the short story field that he became known. His book, “Call My Brother Back”, which he wrote in 1939, is a graphic insight into working class Belfast life in the 1920’s. Some say it was based, true or not I do not know, around a real life event, the murder of Sean Gaynor in his home just around the corner from the school, and to lend more poignancy, Sean’s brother Liam had been a teacher at St. John’s School,

It is rumoured Bill Harvey, an ardent Nationalist and Gaelic Scholar, lover of all things Irish, and Head Master, (Principal) at St. John’s, resented Michael’s use of such a background on which to base his story. Bill, you see, would have known Sean and Liam Gaynor very well, for like Sean Gaynor, Bill was a great G.A.A man. Apparently Bill and Mickey never spoke on friendly terms after the publication of the book, of course, if true, this would have went over the heads of us kids, both being too professional to show any signs of a rift to their pupils. Michael left us a treasure trove of writings, stories such as, “Stone”, “Lost Fields”, The Sea”, “The White Mare”, The Wild Duck’s Nest”, etc, some are based on Rathlin Island, where he was a frequent visitor, and others around Portaferry where he spent much of his leisure time, we all have our heavens on earth, I think Portaferry was Michael’s, and when he died that is where he was buried. Michael was very kind to us pupils, for remember those were not so affluent days and often enough parents found it hard to supply the kids with money for pens or catechism’s and this is where Michael stepped in. Every day he ran a penny ballot and the winner won a beautiful fountain pen or on another occasion, a pencil box or catechism.. But... looking back it is very interesting to note that no one child ever won the pen , pencil box or catechism twice, this was obviously Michael’s way of helping us kids obtain these little luxuries, indeed necessities, and of course our pennies would never have covered his expense of purchasing the things. Mickey, as we pupils all knew too well, had a tougher side to him, if he found two boys fighting he would drag them up in front of the class, take two pairs of boxing gloves out of his desk and make both boys put them on and he would say, “Right, now fight ”. Ninety nine out of a hundred times the boys sheepishly stood with their hands by their sides, the odd time they would ’leather’ into each other, whilst Mickey refereed. Most pupils will have their own stories of Michael, but one aspect they will all mention, his afternoon story-telling session, usually about 3 o’clock every afternoon, he would open a book and read a chapter, and a pin could be heard if dropped, such was the interest we had in his stories, a wonderfully decent man was Michael.

Eddie Tansay, the ‘Music Master’ was however a different ball game, cruel and intolerant, he tried to beat music into us, and somehow he got to like the beating above the music. This six foot man, with long yellow teeth and grey thick hair, would come alongside a boy, who had perhaps giggled and grip him by the side lock just by the ear, bringing him up on tip toes, march him up to the front of the class. I witnessed many a boy wet his pants as Tansay flailed into him with ‘six of the best’ , six slaps on the hand with his short thick cane.

“Hat and Coat” was the nickname we kids had for Bill Harvey, the headmaster, due to him being extremely thin, we joked as he walked down the street all one could see was a hat and coat moving because he was so thin. Bill was also known as ‘Dead Eye Dick’ because of his accuracy of catching boys on the fingertips when caning them with his long thin cane. This finger tip caning was perhaps the most painful of all caning, and Bill perfected it., but do you know...? I do not ever remember a boy getting caned for nothing.

“Milk Time” was also a favourite part of the day at old St. John’s, free half pints of milk were given to the children and we all made sure we had saved a Lozenger which we had bought earlier at Charlie Williamson’s chemist shop at the top of Colinpark Street, these gave a special flavour to the milk. We maybe even would have saved a broken biscuit or two from our ‘Penny worth of broken biscuits’ which we could have bought from the ‘broken biscuit tin’ in Parke’s Bakery at the corner of Elswick Street. This block between these two streets, Elswick and Colinpark, was burned down in a loyalist attack on the 27^th of June 1970, during the Orange ‘mini 12^th parade’. There was an incident in the early 1950’s when a boy pupil was crushed to death beneath the lorry delivering the milk, I say ‘boy pupil’ because St. John’s was a boys and girls school, boys on the upper floor and girls on the ground floor, their playgrounds divided by a seven foot wall.

The school ‘free dinners’ were available at St Paul’s Parish hall in Hawthorne Street, and the daily race at dinner time by children down the Springfield Road to the hall was like the Grand National, the boys clapping their back sides as though riding on a galloping horse.

Usually a teacher from St. Paul’s or St. John’s would supervise the behaviour of the kids during meals. But at times a priest, Fr. Madden, a strict disciplinarian was present. This man was any kids worse night mare, without warning he would clip a child, boy or girl, round the back of the head with the umbrella he always carried, for the slightest ‘offence’, like talking while eating. The dinner ladies themselves, Mrs Devlin and Mrs Orr, were second mothers to all the kids, and indeed to any unfortunate men who would drop in hoping for a bite to eat, it was not unusual to se the women ‘slip’ a dinner to the men as they sat in the hallway. Interestingly in later years it would be hard to get any one to admit they were ever in receipt of a green ticket for a free dinner, and yet, the hall was always bunged to the door and with a queue half way up Hawthorne Street.

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