ST JOSEPH'S - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Fellow

It was in either Form 3 or Form 4 when Steve Houghton and Billy Wrigley seemed to spend any and all breaks between lessons playing three card brag, at which, as I was to learn, they were quite skilful. Steve was a member of an aspiring rock group, although I don't think I ever knew its name. I admired him for this. If I was like other boys, and I dare say girls, of the 1960s much of our time was preoccupied by following the success and comparing the merits of various pop/rock groups. Who from that era doesn't remember first hearing a particular recording and knowing instantly that it was destined for No. 1 in the charts? For me it was the Animals House of the Rising Sun. More to the point, does anyone know whatever became of Steve's musical ambitions? Three card brag was not the only card game I remember from my schooldays. It was probably when I was in Lower Fifth, and in the dog days of some term. Mr. Cartmell was our Physics teacher, but on this this day he was not reviewing the Laws of Thermodynamics. Instead, he was providing instruction to a small group of boys at the back of the classroom on quite a different game. I presumed it to be bridge. I never quite managed to grasp Physics although I gave it a reasonable shot. I suspect that outcome was the same for many boys. But on that day in the Lower Fifth a small group of boys was learning not just a simple card game but a social skill that they could carry forward into the rest of their lives. Well done Mr. Cartmell.

I am not surprised at what I read about the Irish Christian Brothers but judging by some of these contributions it wasn't only them, was it? I must say at this point that never once did I experience any improper behaviour to me nor did I hear of any such behaviour to to anyone else in all the time I was there. I have heard such observations since leaving. I do not in the slightest doubt others' reports. I am just heartily glad that I was never a victim myself. I am also heartily grateful that Paddy O'Brien seemed to take a shine to me. He bawled at me but never raised a finger to me. Strapped a few times but in that madhouse that was normal. I found him to be a wonderful history teacher. Bro Liddane, I now realise, must also have been an unexpectedly good teacher. I'm surprised to find myself writing that but I can still remember all that maths he stuffed into us so he must've been good. I really liked Josh O'Leary. Brilliant teacher. I have loved Latin and all languages all my life because of him. I had no idea he was so violent to others. Strapping as a routine, of course. Shit, it hurt. But there seemed to be no malice in his actions. "We take a vow of Poverty. D'you know what that means? Through in the house, if I'm in the lounge reading the paper and the Bro Superior comes in and asks for it, I have to give it to him because I own nothing. Yet I can go down to London and visit the most expensive tailors in Saville Row and order up a dozen suits of the finest cloth and say "Charge it up to St Joseph's College". Now THAT's poverty!". He seemed such a wonderful man. And yet, I now learn from other contributions, another sadistic maniac. Not many mentions of ‘Gandy' in these contributions. Bro. Dolan, the last Holy Joe's Headmaster who didn't thoroughly disgrace himself. Clearly named for Mahatma Gandhi to whom he bore a more than passing facial resemblance. But his height was about twice the little Mahatma's.

Jim ‘Maggie' McGrahan. Is there anything worse than a bitchy bloke? Ritually, heavy-handedly, he would try and humiliate his charges for their haircuts, high or low voices, size, weight, spots, being on medication or simply for living the wrong side of the River Wyre. He thought he was God's gift. I'm just not sure to what. Whoever said about sarcasm being the lowest form of wit must have known McGrahan. However, despite Maggie's sledgehammer humour we all sailed through the 11 plus, so he must have been doing something right. Either that or threat of failure meant you were off to Cardinal Allan's. Not the school as such, just the fact it was in Fleetwood. Mind you, had I known what lay in store I may have given our rough, fishy neighbour the benefit of the doubt. Personal Enemy Number One was the History/P.E. bod, Kevin Hickey. He was a thick-set, muscular, pink-faced and ginger-headed boxing coach and he and I took an instant dislike to each other. He started on me with a heavy, ominous one-on-one wigging simply for not writing in paragraphs. But if he thought that would galvanise me into action - well, it had the opposite effect. I didn't see why I should attempt to learn from this brute and he made no attempt to engage with me, and so on twenty-six occasions - yes, I counted them - I would receive 'four' or 'six', depending on his mood, for non-existent homework. That's around 130 'strappings' off a single teacher in a single school year (1966-7) and this didn't include P.E. where he would have me hanging off the climbing bars or bent over the gym 'horse' for more beatings with a plimsoll. I wasn't alone; he always picked on the weak or less adept, deliberately mispronouncing their names or pretending to have let them off before suddenly rounding upon them with an unanswerable question. On the rugby pitch, his favourite ploy was to whack boys right between the shoulder blades for not putting their heads far enough down in the scrum. Then, when the scrum collapsed, he'd whack them again. Hickey may have been a bully, but it was Biology teacher Johns who had the look and demeanour of a true psychopath. Take time out to locate him on the 1966 school photo. Insane, 1000-yard stare, cold cruel mouth. One wonders what happened in his childhood. One day he plonked a vial of brown liquid on his desk. "This," he announced in dark tones, "..is bromine. If I were to leave the top off, you (sic) would all be dead." Then he slowly unscrewed the cap, and just scowled at our agitated expressions as wisps of acrid brown smoke curled out of the bottle. I was just waiting for him to keel over before legging it, but alas he replaced the cap before that happened. Johns was another hardline, strap'n'sarcasm merchant, and though a lay teacher, would always flounce about in full gowned attire like a wannabe Christian Brother. Prep School had largely insulated us from the Brothers, but not any more. For Maths we had Bro. Liddane, known as 'Noddy' since he always seemed about to nod off. When he strapped you, he would do a little jump, just to get a bit more purchase. I wouldn't mind, but the guy was 81, and it still stung! He would start the lesson with: "Now, look at the board while I go through it", which usually raised a giggle, then he'd draw a few squiggles and intone, drearily: "Dis goes into dat, and dat goes into dis, and dis here goes over here....zzzzzz. But should he catch us napping, a well-aimed blackboard eraser would bounce off your head, followed by his war cry: "Get out, get out, you lazy lout!" Why the powers-that-be entrusted such an important subject to a crazed fossil is anyone's guess. I don't recall being taught by Bro. Devitt, he was just a school-dinner supervisor and general nuisance whose party piece was to pull our hair upward at the temples until we were on tip toes and wincing in agony. Then there was 'Joe Crow' Cronin with his catchphrase: "O.K." Except for reasons best known to himself he would draw it out, forever: "Ohhhh Kaaayyy, what's going on?" He became so fed up of us over-enunciating sonorously up and down the corridors, he changed it to 'Very Well'. Though these two both taught Religious Instruction, Spike's sudden departure in '68 appeared to downgrade R.I., and the Brothers' presence, for a more secular approach, which meant more 'lay' teachers.. But in truth, they weren't that much better. One such was Albert Priestley, who gave us elocution. How quaint, you may think. But his weapon of choice was the plimsoll, and his little saying (before you got it) was: "I have the solution! The rubber solution!" Laugh, we nearly did. Worse, we had to recite 'verse' from that celebrated wordsmith, Albert Priestley, the man who would make William McGonagall sound like William Shakespeare.

Job Titles:

• Webmaster
• Editor, of This Web Site, Asked Me to Contribute a Few Words. Actually He Wanted a Piece Built Around One Single Word

The Reunion Dinner took place on Saturday 1st April 2023 at the Imperial Hotel, Blackpool. Here are some photographs of the event. Thanks to Malcolm Crane for these great group photos! We are always looking for more so if anybody has taken any photographs, please email me copies. Before I heard John's request, my original thought was to contribute a few paragraphs on how I wasted my formative years in two pursuits: doing insane acts that were bound to bring terrible retribution on my head and then somehow managing to elude retribution and the evil b******s who policed the Jailhouse. I spent my last three years at Joes in the artful pursuit of causing mayhem and then ‘ducking and diving' my way out of punishment, usually by becoming the invisible man. On one occasion, I successfully managed to elude the school's arch monster, Rev V. O'Brien and a team of prefects for a whole week. My crime was getting an audience of over a hundred for the History Society as against the average of six. Why I undertook this ludicrous exercise, I don't recall - but it seemed a good idea at the time which could be a good epitaph for me. O'Brien didn't see the benefits of attracting a huge audience and had plans for an ‘average of six' in my direction with a strap. John Ward, the editor, of this web site, asked me to contribute a few words. Actually he wanted a piece built around one single word: wrath (extreme anger) - a subject that John, I and our contempories learned a great deal about at Joe's in the 1960s. My thanks to Peter Ellwood, who has solved the mystery of the ‘unfortunate episode', where Jailhouse Rock, was requested and played by Radio Luxembourg. Details can be found at the ‘unfortunate episode' page. My next problem concerns headmaster Spike Mulligan, who left Joe's behind, and deserted the Christian Brothers, all for the sake of a woman! Does anyone know of the circumstances of his elopement, or any details of his lady companion, as for instance, what was her name and what lunatic asylum had she escaped from?

Kenneth "Wez" Waring was a walking, fusty, Old Spice-wearing anachronism in full robe and gown, and hopelessly out of his depth. It may seem tame now, but at the time, stink bombs in his desk, paper planes aimed at his head, lighted matches kicked across the floor and a general ignorance of the fact he was in the room, were all seen as quite audacious, and poor Wez got the lot. I once wrote 'We Hate Wez' in big letters on the blackboard, and as expected he just studiously ignored it. In actual fact we didn't hate him, we were just glad of a bit of respite. So one day he simply sighed, and asked who wanted to learn French and who didn't? Ten boys put their hands up. The other 21 of us could literally do what we liked - brilliant! I got 25% and came 11th. The boy next to me studied all year and came 10th, with 28%. I never had one decent History teacher. I do recall the lovely Miss Hooley, but sadly she lasted about 10 minutes. This lumbered us with Mr. Charles, who fancied himself as a stand-up comic but was about as funny as Gordon Brown, only without the charisma. By contrast 'Mucka' McKenna (Latin) and 'Carrots' Carrington (French) were funny, the latter even used to swear at us, though. Sometimes a teacher can be so laid-back it's life-endangering, and this brings back a painful memory from English tutor 'Sutch' Turner's class. Like Billy Bunter, I had bought some 'gob stoppers' from the 'tuck shop', but in a gross departure from that cosy fiction, accidentally swallowed one whole and proceeded to choke to death. I was gasping, eyes bulging, trying to cough and flailing about, while the other boys laughed and 'Sutch' just droned on, eyes glued to the blackboard, totally oblivious to the fact that one of his class was about to expire. No one thought to pat me on the back, either. After what seemed like hours of purple, retching agony as to whether to try enticing the thing up or pushing it down, it went down by itself. I could breathe again. 'Sutch' never even blinked. Mind you, I never ate in class after that. Talk of food brings us, depressingly, to school dinners. Wednesday's menu still resonates: Stew'n'Mash'n'Jelly'n'Cream. Except the 'stew' was tasteless watery scouse, the mash was lumpy and made with Stork. (Jamie Oliver's verdict? It would have contained many 'f's, and I don't mean 'fluffy'.) The jelly came in industrial-sized chunks and the cream - wasn't. You would have gained more nutrition from eating the plate. Thursday's 'Shepherds pie' was just left-over 'stew' with added gristle, more Stork mash (yuk!), and damp overcooked cabbage standing in for veg. A bit of real shepherd might have improved it. The suet pudding had a most apt sobriquet: 'Concrete', while custard came in bright yellow, or brown if accompanied by a square of dry cake. Dinner lady Old Ma Coackley had a strange way with the boys, too. If you had fashionable long hair, over the ears, she'd put her head on one side and coo fetchingly. If you had a bristle cut or like me, shorn back and sides, she took it personally and slopped your food onto the plate with a scowl. Actually I preferred the latter reaction. Meanwhile the Christian Brothers' tenure was reaching a close, helped along no doubt by the performance of Bro. Beattie. He was known as 'Panhead' on account of his unfeasibly flat bald head. But rumours soon spread about an unnatural fondness for young boys and actions thereto, and he was removed before there was time to change his nickname to 'Spanker'. However in the light of recent revelations about Catholic Colleges, we got off virtually scot-free, this being the only known case of (relatively minor) abuse in all my 8 years there. The only other Brother around at this time was 'WXR' Ryan, who set the standard for non-entity to the rest of the staff. I do recall Maths lessons, and a wiry little garden gnome called Mr Hassett whose favourite insult was to call you a 'Yahoo'. Maybe the only master of note in my latter years was a Liverpudlian called Mr. Duke, who spoke in a queer, strangulated accent halfway between Scouse and Loyd Grossman, as if he'd given up after half the elocution course. So we didn't do 'Physics', we did 'Fuzzucks'. But he had a ruthlessness about him, worked us into the ground, and even the 'thickies' were getting 50%+ in that year's finals. Pressed also to take Religion, he turned those lessons into a debating society and made us think very hard. We didn't like Mr. Duke at the time, but we sure as hell respected him. Which was more than could be said for our next Physics teacher, Mr. Thornley. Thornley was from 'Burry', so he never stopped reminding us. Eventually we deciphered his East Lancs twang only to realise he had no control and was teaching us stuff we learned in the 1st year! This being O-Level year, we complained to WXR that he wasn't good enough. Naturally nothing came of it, and it wasn't just the thickies who failed Physics that year. And on that suitably downbeat and premature note, my St Joe's story ends. I say premature, because I had been promised 6th Form if I got 5 O-Levels. I got 6 and a lesson in life about trust, and I was forced to leave. A long and unspectacular civil service career still endures to this day. However, outweighing this on the plus side, I met my wife there and have been happily married since 1981. So were St. Joe's School-days the 'best in your life' of popular myth? In a word, bollocks. Pain, cruelty and boredom sum it up for me. But hold on - at least we old boys are able to add up without a calculator, articulate reasonably well, spell properly and write a grammatical sentence! When you see how educational standards, respect, discipline and social cohesion have gone belly-up in recent years, you have to conclude that, notwithstanding the whole of this piece, maybe the School didn't do too bad a job after all. If nothing else, it set standards. So well done St Joseph's College - for it turned me into the rounded and well adjusted individual I am today. (Fnarr fnarr, twitch, snort...)

Les Charles was a teacher who many of us feared and hated. He once gave me ‘six of the best' for spelling Louisbourg in the French way, rather than Louisburg which was the English spelling.He just announced arbitrarily that everyone who had made a spelling mistake would get a good hiding.It wasn't planned, with Charles it never was. He just came in one morning and decided to dispense a little wrath. With him, it was a way of life. Six of the strap from Charles was something to fear. He used the long strap which was 24 inches long, three inches wide and rigid from layers of leather. The pain was excruciating and clung to your hands for 15 minutes. The pain of one blow to the hand was agony but ‘six of the strap' was indescribable.The worst experience was in winter when you were strapped with numb hands. The pain defies description as the heat of the strapping stung against the freezing flesh. The (not so) Rev O'Brien was an unpredictable sadist. He is dead now and hopefully roasting in hell along with some of his colleagues. He gave me innumerable strappings for any and every reason.

Six of the strap from Mr Charles was something to fear. He used the long strap which was 24 inches long, three inches wide and rigid from layers of leather. The pain was excruciating and clung to your hands for 15 minutes. I read A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzenitzin which was about life in a Siberian Gulag. I found parallels in Ivan Denisovitch to my wasted years at Joe's. Denisovitch was a prisoner in a gulag run by sadistic monsters. He learnt he could win small battles which got him through the day. It was the same at Joes.

Mike Beaumont, Peter McDonald and myself (all boarders) discovered the Brothers secret stash of alcohol, in the basement of the residence, beside the music room. Mike, Peter and I recognised the value of our discovery, and proceeded for several weeks to sample the wares. ( We are not talking rubbish here, we're talking Remy Martin, Courvoisier, etc, - quality stuff!). Sadly, all good things come to an end. The stash, albeit significantly depleted , had mysteriously disappeared. We had been rumbled!!

Abuse is something which has been hinted at by others, but usually in a ‘but nothing happened to me' sort of context. It is admittedly also a very loose term. In an environment where you permanently deny female company to perfectly healthy males, they don't have to be homosexual to seek alternatives. My own experience involved unwanted and unpleasant proximity - forehead to forehead, arms around shoulders, groins pressed together, his in the, how can I put this delicately, ‘enlarged' condition - under the pretext of offering personal advice and individual encouragement. Years later when I told my wife (the only person I have told till now) her shock and indignation far exceeded anything I felt then. Of course, in today's more socially enlightened times, I would be in therapy and he would be in Wormwood Scrubs, back then you just handled it. It was unpleasant but hardly life-threatening. I simply took pains to prevent any opportunity for recurrence, more or less successfully.