Anyone born before 1977 won’t have had experience of being beaten by teachers in Ireland’s schools when corporal punishment was still part of a child's education. It took 60 years after we gained our independence before a patently barbaric practice inflicted on the children of our nation was outlawed, but such punishment was finally banned in 1982. It was four years later before state schools in Britain followed our lead, though it wasn’t until 1998 that the same prohibition was applied to English private schools. And teachers in Northern Ireland could use sticks and leathers on their pupils right up to 2003. Even if the Irish Republic was somewhat ahead of our neighbouring jurisdictions in getting rid of the practice, it remains a shameful stain, among several others, on our nation's character.
We had corporal punishment in Kilcullen when I was a child. I don’t recall any while we boys shared the early classes in the Girls National School run by the Cross and Passion sisters, but when we transferred to the Boys School after our time with the nuns, things were different. There were two teachers in the Boys School, Miss Griffin and Mr Byrne. Both had been there since long before I arrived. Miss Griffin was in charge of Second and Third classes, while Mr Byrne took the Fourth to Sixth classes in the school’s second room. Miss Griffin wasn’t a nice person. As were so many of her peers in education at the time, she was an enthusiastic proponent of corporal punishment. By the time I came under her influence, she had developed this to a particularly fine degree.
Her weapons of choice were sally sticks. Willow rods cut to length and kept for ‘seasoning’ in the teachers’ outside toilet at the back of the school. She would use them regularly for punishing incorrect answers and wrong or absent homework. Occasionally she would break one on the hands of her victim, and would then send him out to the toilet to get a fresh one before completing the punishment.
Very little of that happened to me. The same Miss Griffin was a class snob. My parents were in business in the village, which gave me a certain level of immunity while the more frequent victims of her thrashings were from less well-off families. It’s not surprising that when she was eventually laid to rest in her native Kerry, long after her retirement, that a former pupil offered to deliver a load of concrete for her grave ‘to make sure the b———— didn’t come back up’.
I switched to Newbridge College as a Day Boy in 1956, after a misguided attempt by my parents to send me as a boarder to Clongowes Wood College quickly failed — for which I have always been eternally thankful. As a by the by, the Jesuits had their own leather instruments for punishment, as had the Patrician Brothers primary school which I attended for a year before going to the Dominican College.
My six years in Newbridge were generally pleasant. Largely because I was a Day Boy, one of some 50 in a school of 300 or so — the rest were boarders. But the college had its own punishment terrors. The system used ‘lists’ made each day by individual teachers of boys earmarked for punishment, usually for not knowing stuff when asked in class. The lists were delivered to ‘The Biffer’, one Fr Henry Flanagan.
Fr Flanagan is still remembered for his cultural activities in Newbridge College, teaching music and art and earning a wider national reputation as a highly respected sculptor. But for my generation the apparent enthusiasm he showed for his ‘biffer’ role is probably what sticks most in mind. His 'biffing' sessions were after lunch and at the end of classes in the afternoon, and any boy on a list had to report to his office upstairs for punishment. Some could be on a couple of lists if their day hadn’t gone well. Junior House students would receive two slaps on the hand of a thin whippy bamboo cane for each list mention. Senior House boys earned three wallops per nomination. There were add-ons. If any boy tried to minimise the slap by letting his hand drop at the moment of impact, a quick flip of the cane would sting the back of the hand. Then an extra full slap to make up for the thwarted one. Raw striped fingers and stifled teary sobs were all too common on that landing. But it wasn't only the agony at the time of punishment itself, there was also the anxiety of anticipation suffered by those who knew their mid-day or afternoon break would include the Biffer treatment.
For anyone deemed to be causing trouble in class there was another twist. The miscreant would be told to stand in the corridor outside. Fr Flanagan would regularly patrol the corridors, and anyone found not in their class would receive a summary on the spot biffing. Sometimes we’d hear it delivered as we continued with our class work inside, a succession of muffled 'swish-slap' sounds that was all too familiar.
Teachers had different attitudes to punishment. Some didn’t send lists at all, depending on their skills as educators to help us learn. Others ordered punishments only for egregious behaviour. But one whom I remember vividly added his own twist. Fr O’Halloran taught Maths and Latin. Not particularly tall, he had the blocky stance of a boxer, and his manner was brusque and intimidatory. He liked to leave the blackboard and stalk between the desks as he asked questions. Wrong answers would often bring a thump on the arm. Painful thumps — he knew the most sensitive areas — and the assault would usually be accompanied by a derogatory comment. He’d also like as not add the victim’s name to a list for subsequent biffs.
One day I got something wrong, and received an immediate crunch of knuckles to my left arm. Something snapped and I punched back, hitting him in the chest. It wouldn’t have been a hard hit, I was just a young lad and far from aggressive. But sheer surprise stopped him in his tracks. He stepped back, his eyes slitted in an evident fury. It took some moments before he found a voice. “Byrne,” he hissed. “Byrne, you just hit me. You just hit ... a priest!” I was scared, but somewhere found a voice of my own. “You hit me first,” I said. “You ... you shouldn’t be hitting us.”
He coloured, his temper made worse by my answer back. He took another step backwards and swung his hand towards the door. “Get out of my class, Byrne. Get out now. And when Fr Flanagan comes along, tell him. Tell him exactly what you’ve done.” Shaking, with anger as much as fear, I did as told. I was then left outside wondering what would be Fr Flanagan’s reaction. I waited, in a gathering sort of numb terror.
It was some time before I heard the slow slap of leather coming down the stairs at the end of the corridor. I saw the black shoes first through the banister uprights, then the white Dominican habit with the long black hanging Rosary. But when the wearer’s head came into view it wasn’t Fr Flanagan’s bald pate. It was the college headmaster, Fr O’Beirne. His office was at the top of the tower that enclosed the staircase, one floor further up from the Biffer's feared office.
Fr O'Beirne's style had always been more gentle than most of his colleagues, and my apprehension eased. A little. He saw me standing in the corridor and looked mildly concerned, even a little surprised. He knew me, both by family and by name.
“So, Brian, what’s happening?”
“I ... I’ve been put outside by Fr O’Halloran,” I answered.
“And why did he do that?”
I blurted out the truth. “Because I hit him, Fr O’Beirne.”
That got his full attention. “And why did you ... hit him, Brian?” His mid-sentence hesitation suggested that mild concern was escalating to a worry. On the other hand, if it had been Fr Flanagan quizzing me, I knew he would have already been pulling his cane from the folds of his habit.
“Because he hit me first, Father.”
The headmaster considered this. “Let’s go up to my office,” he said after a few moments, turning away and striding down the corridor. As we climbed the several flights of stairs, I tried to avoid thinking about what might happen next. I was only too well aware of the enormity of a boy hitting a teacher, let alone a priest.
“Sit down, Brian,” Fr O'Beirne said when we got to his office, which overlooked the wide space across to the the Senior House, and the Liffey flowing alongside. “Now, tell me, what exactly happened?”
I detailed the incident, including that Fr O’Halloran had similarly hit a couple of other boys before he got to me. "He’s always doing it,” I finished, to establish that this hadn't been a one-off thing.
He sat there quietly, digesting what I’d said. I was expecting some level of anger, but instead he sighed. “I’m sorry, Brian. I've heard something like this before.” He went silent for a while again, then raised an eyebrow, his eyes on mine. “I suppose there’s no chance that you’d apologise?” This wasn’t a chastisement in any way. Quite the opposite. I was surprised, but I shook my head. “No Father, no. It wouldn’t be right.”
He nodded, and absently looked out the window for a few more moments. Then he stood up. I did too. “Go downstairs and find an empty classroom," he said quietly. "Wait there until your next class, and if anyone asks what you’re doing, just say you've been to see me. I’ll deal with it.” I was both confused and relieved as I made my way down the stairs. But I was happy in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to have to deal with the Biffer, that day anyhow.
It was a couple of days later before I had another class with Fr O’Halloran. He came in with his usual brusque demeanour, looked briefly at me, then got down to the class work. For the whole class, and for the rest of the term, which was the last and shortest of the year, he never spoke to me. Never acknowledged my presence in his class. But he also stopped hitting the pupils in that class. In my Inter Cert at the end of term I did manage a pass in Latin, a subject which I actually liked, but I dropped it for my subsequent Leaving Cert programme. A programme that was also two years during which I never had to interact with Fr O’Halloran again.
Leopards don't change their spots, though. I heard subsequently that he had resumed his classroom hitting habits. Many decades afterwards I was told that, without knowing about my previous encounter, another young student had taken him on in a similar way some few years later. That this boy was also from Kilcullen, and is still today one of my long-time friends, is one of those strange coincidences of life. And proof that people will eventually take a stand against bullies, even if it is only a token rebellion. Enough rebellions will eventually force change.
