CONTRIBUTION BY LAWRENCE WHALLEY 1954/1964

I’ve been lucky since I left school. I know I left feeling self-assured, expecting success but mindful of failure. A career as a British clinical academic is a pretty low risk option. Most of us earn very good salaries, have a great deal of control over the work they do and seem easily to find fresh pastures to roam towards the end of their working lives. Long ago, I tired of committees, clinics and teaching. Today, there’s a lot more mentoring of younger medics, intended to improve research and reporting skills and sometimes to explain the rudiments of success before it’s too late.

This memoir was begun when I tired of Los Angeles and opening the inbox there was the editor (J Ward) suggesting I wrote something. What has surprised me most is how little I can remember. Some of the boys – not many – some escapades but nothing delinquent mostly how much I enjoyed reading and sport. I tried to remember something funny, something that had stuck but there wasn’t anything. Then a memory emerged from the sludge. Once there was Mr Walsh, an English Teacher, who walked to school everyday through Stanley Park, enjoying a fine summer’s morning he spotted a boy around 08.00h in SJC uniform rowing slowly out to an island in the lake. Once there, unknowing he was observed, he tied a plastic bag to one of the stakes at the island’s edge and rowed back. His name was something like Durcan or Dirkin. He had angelic blond curls and an elfin physique. Later that morning, the entire homework of one of the junior school classes was reported missing. Walsh made the inspired guess that Durcan’s bizarre behaviour was somehow linked to this. Sure enough, a quick search, the cost of boat hire, and the homework was found. But why? Why not destroy it all? Was he plotting to add his own late homework when he finished? The story was never explained and now 45 years later, I am not even sure it is true.

I was reminded of the Durcan story a few years ago. A 'second opinion' had been sought on a detained patient and I obliged. He told me his story, his lifelong campaign against the “forces” that conspired to sabotage communications between Kinross and Balmoral and how Grampian Police were “in on it too” when they forcibly removed the barricade of wheelie bins he had build on the North Deeside Road (to protect the Queen from the conspirators as he explained quite reasonably). As I listened, he talked very well about his early life and his time at SJC. This got my attention. Never in my past 40 years had I examined an old Josephian. Sadly, his memories and mine for our times at SJC could not be reconciled. He was a professional, skilled in presenting as a lunatic but why pretend to be an old Josephian? No one – even to escape from a POW camp - had ever gone that far.

My first impressions when I joined the Prep School in the winter of ‘54 aged eight were of furniture polish, no women or girls, a warm stove and a really friendly classroom. Two boys I met then are friends to this day and later in senior school others became and remain family fixtures – more to do with my having three beautiful sisters than any charm on my part. Of course, no-one ever regrets having such enduring and rewarding friendships and I am no different.

Years later, by then a former pupil, I met a group of St Joe’s lay teachers in the Number 3 pub. They said they remembered me well enough and recalled very inexactly some minor scrapes that by then somehow I’d managed to forget. Then one of then told a tale about me of which Mr Linskey formerly of the prep school had once reminded them. He said that Br Dolan had brought me into the class on my first day and introduced me. “What are you doing now?” Dolan had asked. “Roman invasion of Britain” said Linskey. “Do you know when the Romans invaded Britain?” Dolan asked me. “For the first or the second time?” I had replied. Somehow, I didn’t ever get over that, the teachers said. They thought I became a notorious smart-aleck from day one – obnoxious to the point of impudence they said. Basically, as explained below, I didn’t know better by then that the not-very-bright wouldn’t ever share my enthusiasm for knowing stuff.

I think like others who’ve added memories on these pages that the school had fulfilled a proud purpose for a few decades in 20th century Blackpool but by 1960 it had become an anachronism, left over from a time when poor Catholic boys of ability weren’t reaching their potential, weren’t getting into senior management or the professions. When in the 1920’s, the Brothers came to Blackpool, their reputations in Ireland were as social snobs, fierce disciplinarians who would get the best out of the best boys but were neglectful of those who needed compassion or even simple charity. By the sixties, when even the motives ('vocations') of the Brothers were being questioned, it was clear to many of the senior pupils that the Brothers’ near total ignorance of rapid social change in England – at least 20 years before Ireland’s – provided a poor preparation for our adult life in late 20th century Britain.

About ten years ago I served for five years as external examiner in Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. TCD hospitality is legendary and my hosts were always looking for common ground. My time with the CB’s did not impress (how much better if I’d been sent to the Presentation Fathers!). They knew the detailed nature of the storm would soon envelop the CB’s, spoke angrily about the Industrial Schools, railed against collusion between Catholic hierarchy and Irish politicians and as for ever in Ireland suspected financial corruption at the highest level. I was deeply shocked and disbelieving.

Ourselves as schoolboys were never as naive as the Brothers and looked to our lay teachers for practical guidance. By age 15 we were confident but cautious that certain teachers might be trusted. We had begun to discuss contemporary issues including nuclear bombs, the death penalty, contraception and sex before marriage. I remember once we were encouraged by the Brothers to discuss the current Vatican Council (II). Its purpose, we were instructed, was that the Church must be brought up to date, must adapt itself to meet the challenged conditions of modern times. Italians appreciate expressive gestures; we were told that Pope John, when asked to reveal his intentions, simply moved to a window and threw it open, to let in a draught of fresh air. So – encouraged and optimistic - many of us watched a TV interview – I think it was by David Frost – with Cardinal Heenan. “What in one word do you feel the Catholic church stands for?” he’d been asked. We all hoped for an answer that would give us hope. “Discipline” Cardinal Heenan replied, his only and last word. We shared our disappointment at school. The Reith lecturer that year had placed “Charity before Chastity” and even as children we all knew that this old Catholicism wouldn’t last. It couldn’t stand up against the intellectual independence of Protestantism. It would even find John Lennon an irresistible force.

Some figures stood out above the rest. Although he taught us for only a year Jeff Preston seemed a revelation, great intellectual energy and fresh ideas. Like Freeborough, he could see no constraints on our ambitions or interests. I remain certain that the drive that took a then record number of our year onto University (including three to Cambridge in 1965) can be traced to the influence of those lay teachers on our eager and impressionable minds. Of course, timing is everything, another cohort of pupils may have been just as, or more stimulated by another cadre of teachers.

The Zoology laboratory was crowded when six of us started in 1962. Seven years later, three were doctors one was a dentist and another an established medical technician. Mr Johns provided me with huge personal encouragement and made us (Mohr, Morgan, Stewart and Whalley) all feel that we could win places at top medical schools and had nothing to fear from any competition. He was candid with us when explaining his confidence: “You lot” he once said “the top ten in your year got more O level passes than the school’s total in 1961”. He expected the best, and I gave him mine. His insistence on scientific rigour served me well when eight years later I began serious doctoral studies in Oxford and Edinburgh Universities. I owe him a great deal and never properly thanked him.

I can remember only patches or incidents from junior school. I don’t know if that’s the same for everyone, but when I scratched my head, no narrative nits squealed, no voice-over tale of youthful enlightenment. I realised my mother was dying – she died on 17th June 1960 – when I was 14, enduring a long and painful illness from which death eventually released her. In her last years, she helped set up (1957-59) the school’s Parents’ Association, serving as committee secretary which she greatly enjoyed. She went to PA meetings, gossiped about old friends (she had been a Layton Hill Girl, 1922-1928) and turned up for junior rugby matches with my dad and other stalwarts like Greg and Barry Smith’s mum and dad. She was disgusted when Brother Carroll, the new Headmaster, disbanded the PA entirely because (she said) a parent wanted to discuss the school’s policy on punishment. She said Carroll was too “insecure” to lead an open discussion. I gathered she didn’t care for “insecure” men. She had an astute, inquiring mind, was a keen theatre goer, gregarious and emotional. I used to wonder how she got on with my father (an engineer) who in 1976 told me (now a psychiatrist) he recognised only ten types of person (“those who understand binomial mathematics and those who don’t”) the first time I’d heard that joke. I remember that, because by age 13 he had tutored me through all of Euclid’s geometry, logarithms from first principles, history of mathematics until I got lost around 1815, some basic physics of light, rules of artistic composition, how to remember nonsense but gave up on music, rugby and ballroom dancing. He knew that very little I might learn in the College would come as surprise. He encouraged me to read Howard Spring, gave me a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus for my 11th birthday, Ingenious Mechanisms and Devices when I was 12, introduced me to Steinbeck and J B Priestly when I was thirteen and Lawrence Durrell and Evelyn Waugh when I was 16. Most of all, he encouraged and rehearsed various ways of speaking in public. He showed me tricks of Rhetoric, how important the last sentences of the Sunday sermon might be (“look straight at them and say it like their lives depended on it”)

His tutelage is a likely foundation of my academic success, perhaps it was his engineer’s approach to puzzle solving, but he was certain that I should never be intimidated by a problem. His example suggested that I should likewise not be intimidated by people. I think he was thinking of public school boys when he said “he got by on presentation” but as a youngster, I preferred to think he meant the teachers at school. I am writing this because it may explain why I remembered one particular incident when I’ve forgotten so many others.

Age 13, I had a new friend called Tom Spencer in 3b and whom I met sometimes after school. I was unpopular but didn’t know why. He seemed intrigued by me, said he wished he was me (I don’t know why) and gave me my first cigarette in a park on Waterloo Road. We later graduated to small cheap cigars of which he seemed to have a steady supply. I still remember this when I light up somewhat flashier brands on one of those occasions out of doors that seem unobserved. Around that time, Mr Charles was taking our Latin class in 3A when a noisy commotion broke out next door. Brother O’Brien was beating Spencer, he was punching and kicking a small boy for what seemed many minutes. Our class was terrified, Charles stopped, he stopped so completely it seemed he was frozen. He did nothing, I could feel the class’s terror and all our eyes were on Charles and he just did nothing.

A door slammed and Spencer ran out of the school. He didn’t stop until he was found as a stowaway (we were told by his big sister) on a ship out of Liverpool. The memory stayed with me, mostly as anger at Charles who was now seen as 'Useless Les' and a hated sadistic figure among the junior school malcontents among whom John MacNulty was an irritating thorn. He was narcissistic, highly intelligent, lazy as the Duchess of Rothesay, grandiose, and even to another 13yr old, a committed sensualist. He should have gone on to greatness, everyone should now know his name. But SJC was not a friendly place for idle mavericks with absent fathers. So he drifted away into pseudoscience, never making the contributions of which he seemed capable. But not before he had loosed (what we thought) was a massive broadside against the CB’s. It was a powerful lamentation on educational failure in 1962 (of which he was a good example) published as a prize winning essay in the Blackpool Gazette and Herald. It got him a trial as a cub reporter (and many jibes about capes and wearing his underpants outside his trousers). He didn’t last at that, auditioned for RADA, got a place, chickened out and became a clerk in the Civil Service. Now, when I think of him, of Tom Spencer and others like them, I think of the thwarted lives. The many boys whose education was sullied not thrilled by the school. What a waste. But how different it could have been.

Now, I read about St Mary’s College, its place among the best UK schools for 'value added'. Now that’s something I can support and a fine replacement for the wastage of talent at SJC.

The cowardice of Les Charles reminds me that over the next year, open discussions were commonplace in 3A then 4A that showed how worried we were about how incompetent the Brothers were as teachers. General Science teaching was well beyond the knowledge requirements of a Brother who seemed to be only a page or two ahead of the class. We were also becoming aware that many of our fathers were teachers, engineers and doctors and that my experience of home tuition wasn’t at all uncommon. The worst derision was ladled on Brother 'His Majesty' O’Keefe. Seeing a pupil convulsing with silent laughter as His Maj struggled to understand a simple Euclidean proof, he would rush to beat vigorously but strangely ineffectively his tormentor. I can remember how funny we found this (or a similar incident) when one of the class said we should stop laughing because we might all be dead by the end of the week. He told us about the ongoing Cuban Missile crisis and I remember feeling very childish.

My daughters once got great encouragement when they found some old SJC exercise books from 3A, 4A and LVSci and noted therein my imperfections. Around this time, I decided on Medicine, set my O Level targets and just focussed on qualifying for University. For two years after mum’s death, my father came home less and was less involved with his family. Home life was pretty bleak, my sisters were not competent housekeepers and he often 'forgot' to leave money for food. Maybe he was depressed. For much of the time we seemed to live on my eldest sister’s wage as a secretary in Empire Pools. I think Freeborough was behind what happened next. First, my father took me to see Stoneyhurst College but nothing came of it. Later, I was told my school hours would be extended to 22.00h and I would only sleep at home. At least I would be fed.

Preparation for O levels went smoothly. The school had very high expectations of the candidates of 1962; everyone seemed determined on success.

Disaster appeared as Bother Carroll. I felt quite inconspicuous, enjoyed school and was now playing rugby not very well but I had friends who weren’t just the dead-end malcontents. Extended school hours were a great help (especially the food) and I was confident that phase one of my exit plan was on course.

St Patrick’s day 1962, and its allied St Joseph’s day holiday gave us three days off. I went home to unexpected insistence that I should go the St P’s Ball. Seriously boring but I did as I was told and escorted my sister whose ploy was an introduction to Butch Myerscough and the Greenhalgh Kid then dump the escort. I left early and walked back to school around 22.00h with an equally underimpressed Paul Ryan. On 22nd March, back at school, in an afterschool club, I was hauled out by Brother Carroll and silently walked to his study. He informed me that I was expelled and must never return to the school. Asked why, he said that Paul Ryan and I had stayed out until 2.00am after the St P’s Ball with two school maids. I can still see his face, twisted in anger and maybe hate, the image has blurred with time.

My father was upset, phoned Brother Carroll and was told that there was evidence provided by the maids of 'notes' written by me. (These proved later to be written by TeePee along the lines 'get off my cornflakes'). A Brother took Paul Ryan home to his father in Drogheda. His dad heard the story, looked at Paul (who had a one foot growth spurt later that year) and suggested they went to see the head of CB’s Order. Paul returned the next day to SJC. I was left at home, expelled and without a plan B to exit Blackpool. This went on for a week until, a sixth former came round to the house and said I could go back. Summoned later the next day to Brother Carroll, he did not mention Paul Ryan, said he was convinced of my wrong doing, that I could remain at school until 1st May 1962, but only between 08.45 and 15.30h, and return only to sit my O levels. I was to remain expelled.

I don’t know what happened next but teachers who seemed supportive made clear that I should ignore the edict. Some insisted on my attending sports practice after hours, picked me (undeservedly) for school teams, met to discuss choice of A levels. Brother X Ryan was the only teacher to make clear that he disapproved of my treatment. We met 30 years later and he wouldn’t be drawn other than to say that there had been disquiet over the incident, how simply Paul’s father had dealt with Brother Carroll and how easily slighted Brother Carroll had been by my refusal to 'confess'.

By September 1962, I had a new plan, a haul of O levels and an interview with Arnold School. Unfortunately, I hadn’t reckoned with their polite insistence on my father being present. He simply phoned SJC to ask when I was expected back (not “if”) and that was the end of it.

Sixth Form seemed to last a couple of months not years. Teaching was generally quite good with the single exception of Brother Dowling’s take on physics. Essentially, he took the dinner lady approach and remains the worst teacher I ever encountered in any situation, including higher education. He was lazy and casually dismissive. Thirty years later I looked up a particular Dowling favourite, Andrew MacKernan in Cambridge. I had remembered with amusement how every day (it seemed) when we responded to the Litany praising the Blessed Virgin he had repeated forty times instead of “Pray for us” the phrase “Red China does not exist”. “I never said that” he said “But you did, I heard you, every day”. But we remembered TW3, Bernard Levin and Millicent Martin better than the Guardian or the Sunday Times colour supplements.

This difference in remembering remains unexplained but it must caution the reader of this memoir that none of my reminiscence is independently corroborated. It is, as Lord Russell remarked, that “We can observe our own pains and pleasures.” “ But not of others, those are an inference not an observation”.

The final memories are pinkish, more flushed. By then, a medical school place was assured (I wouldn’t stand a chance now). My father had remarried and there were readymade reasons for getting on with life; the pity was that there was so much adolescence left to do when I finally got into medicine (but that, they say, is another story). And my fondest memory? We pre-arranged to meet up on A level results day in the Thatched House in Poulton-le-Fylde. I drank four pints of Boddingtons (twice my previous record) and later lay tipsily staring at stars set in a deep blue late summer evening sky. My head was softly cushioned by the loveliest girl I knew, I felt so passionately about Krysia Lindsay that I think my mind remained numbed for at least another two years. (She was bagged in Sheffield by a terribly handsome Aussie I thought was gay – but must now accept that my jealousy was a distorting lens). If only time wasn’t linear and was more like a number 15 bus so if you stayed on it you could get off again at the same stop.

I did try. Once, in 1994, driving back from Liverpool to Edinburgh, I went back to the Thatched House. I ordered fish and chips and said to the young attractive barmaid “You know I haven’t been in here since 1964.” “I know” she said “you’re still banned”.