Memories: Catholic schools

Julian Clary, probably best known as Britain’s first successful out gay comedian, and writer hated his schooldays in the 1970s. He attended a St Benedict’s a Catholic school in Ealing, West London. The school became notorious some years after he left for reasons that need not detain us here.

In his autobiography, typically for the Queen of Inuendo, titled A Young Man’s Passage (Ebury Press, 2005) Julian recounts a day when he and three other boys forgot their trunks for a swimming lesson.

‘We heard Father G approaching and the door opened. He looked furious and his face was beetroot-red.

‘“What are you doing here?” he asked us coldly.

‘We whimpered our various excuses.

‘“Get upstairs to my office,’ he spat.

When we arrived in the carpeted office, all bookshelves and easy chairs with a stately desk by the window, we stood and waited in silence for a minute before he followed us in.

He arched to his desk, opened a drawer and, with something of a flourish, pulled out a leather strap. It was about a foot long, half an inch thick, studied with brass round the perimeter. It wasn’t adapted – it was clearly manufactured with the express purpose of inflicting pain. As each year master had a different variety of this weapon, must we suppose that, at some point in the academic year, various disciples of Christ sat around a catalogue and hummed and hahed about the various merits of the cane or the strap?

‘“Three whacks each. You first, Mercieca,” said Father G.

‘Mercieca stepped forward with the nonchalance of a veteran, leant across the seat of a worn armchair and placed each hand on the wings attached to the back. Father G approached, lifted the flap caused by the two vents at the back of Mercieca’s jacket and swiftly, in one movement, lifted the front panel of his cassock and tossed it over his right shoulder. With the strap in his right hand, his face distorted, eyes bulging and lips thrust forward, primate-like, he grunted as each swipe of the strap hit its target.

‘There was no pause between the three strokes, it was a brief, frenzied attack, then he stood back, inhaling noisily.’

Julian doesn’t take his own strapping well and he reflects, ‘It wasn’t just the stinging pain or the humiliation of having my backside flogged for a mere matter of forgetfulness, it was the terrifying transformation of Father G from paternal, holy priest who fed me the body of Christ at mass to furious strap-wielding monster. It was a lesson in life that I would never forget.’

Maybe it was something about Catholic schoolmasters. By coincidence at the same time Julian was at St Benedict’s Paul Merton, a some-time collaborator of Julian’s, was enduring his own Catholic school.

Paul who is best known for his appearances on BBC TV’s Have I Got News For You, was at Wimbledon College, a Catholic grammar school in South London. In his memoire Only When I Laugh (Ebury Press, 2014) he recalls,

‘Corporal punishment was alive and kicking at Wimbledon College. The weapon of choice was called a ferule. It was made of hard leather and depending on the severity of the crime you might receive four, six or eight ferule strokes across the palms of your hands, administered by one of the teachers. Everyday somebody or other was getting the ferule. Either at lunchtime or directly after school.’

Paul says it happened to him once. He had forgotten his maths homework.

‘“Hand in your homework, boys,” Father Spring instructs.

‘“Sir,” I say, with my hand up, “I’ve left my homework at home.”

‘“Four ferules.”

‘I was stunned by the ice-cold ruthlessness of this holy man. I started to protest.

‘“But Sir...’

‘“EIGHT ferules.”

‘Tears formed in my eyes at the sheer injustice of it all. I stopped any protest right there. I was later whacked across both palms of the hand four times. I was unlucky to get one of the vicious teachers. The first couple of blows to each palm stung like crazy but after that so did all the others.’

What was it about Catholic schools and corporal punishment that left such indelible memories on their pupils?

John D. Vose, a local writer in the north-west of England, recalls the ‘torture chambers’ at St Helens Catholic Grammar School. He remembered some of the ‘eccentric’ clerical-black-gowned staff when he was interviewed by the St Helens Star in 2005 when he was 72 years old.

Big Alphonse was one who rejected the cane – eagerly swished with gay abandon by many of the teachers. ‘He preferred the mediaeval torture of  ‘the press’. A huge man with massive hands (yet noted for his delicate etchings) Brother Alphonse... ‘simply sat on an unruly pupil until he shouted for mercy!’

Others preferred the regular exercise of inflicting canings. ‘Six of the best was an excruciating experience,’ says John. ‘We were not muggers or thieves, simply boys who couldn’t do algebra or were late for lessons.’

Spare the rod and spoil the child was the maxim by which the brothers and lay staff justified it all. ‘It was for our own good.’

There are comical memories filtering back from his grammar school days. Like the time when John’s pal, Peter, stuffed three thick exercise books down his trousers before being commanded to bend over. ‘Lucky for him, he got away with it.’

The most offbeat was Brother James (nicknamed Jammy). ‘He thrived on chaos and an unruly class, loving nothing better than a good chase round Lower 3.’ When his prey was barricaded by desks, the strap attack began.

He would then let the kid escape, so he could chase him again. After a good spanking, Jammy would declare: ‘Rub it tonight with Sloans.’ This was a popular, fiery liniment, much of which was splashed on trembling young skin.

The class walls had several imprints of the strap where it had missed its target.

The school was only 10 miles away from Liverpool, partly razed by the wartime Luftwaffe. The odd German plane, lost and flying around, finally deposited their bombs on St Helens and neighbouring towns. This turned Jammy almost Dervish-like as he danced around, waving his strap and letting Hitler and Goering know, in no uncertain terms, what he would do if he ever caught them.

One mighty explosion was not the fault of the Nazis. ‘Dolly’ Delan had let off a double cap-bomb. Brother Isidore, the head, rushed into the class during the caning. ‘Brother James! What on earth...’ he exclaimed.

‘Are, ’tis nothing headmaster. Just one of these clowns striking a match.’ For a week, poor Dolly was rubbing his backside with Sloans.

More terrifying than James was tall, thin Brother Mark, his hook-nose defiantly balancing pince-nez spectacles. ‘He would have put the fear of God into the Devil himself.’

He taught such horrible subjects as geometry and trigonometry. There were two canes in his gown – Timber Maggie No.1 and Timber Maggie No.2. The caning victim was afforded one concession. He could choose which of the canes he preferred to be lashed with.

Young Freddy Tickle annoyed him. He was lifted from his seat and partly pushed through an open window – but not before asking which one he wanted to be shoved out of. ‘You always got a choice with Brother Marky.’ But even he eventually drew the line, hauling Freddy back in again.

Being kept in after school was frequent. Every boy quaked, for a pupil would be selected to solve a geometry puzzle which was have even challenged Einstein. Each wrong move would be rewarded with a pelting from pieces of chalk.

The two succeeding heads – big-hearted Isidore and Patrick, an inquisitorial iceman – were poles apart. Paddy ruled by the cane, and the linoleum outside his study must have been worn to a thread by the feet of pupils waiting to be punished.

‘I was terrified of him,’ says John, ‘but I was in for a surprise when I found him to be a most sympathetic man.’ He discovered that John had a stammer and so made it clear that he would never be asked to read out aloud again.

Caning was an accepted part of education back then. ‘Alright, we don't want a return to the bad old days,’ says John, ‘but I often think that a dose of Brother Mark’s Timber Maggie No.1 (or No.2) would do no harm in today's society!’

Picture credits: Unknown

 

 

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