First days in Prison
“Memories of my first days in Prison”
First a little tale but a true story.
An immigrant's son returned to visit the home of his mother.
He himself had chosen to become a priest
His first day in Ireland was a Sunday. After mass on that day his relative back in the homestead introduced him to an old school friend of his mothers, as they shook hands the old friend said to the young priest “I was in Prison with your mother”.
Needless to say, the cousin later relieved the priest of his understanding of Prison.
My own experience of being in Prison.
School days are always reminisced about more than any other topic as we meet up with friends from another time, those dear school friends that we played with, fought with and basically grew up with.
Past generations indeed spoke on many of their memories of school in the olden days as I used to refer to it when extracting memories from my own parents and aunts. ... the olden
days, I’m sure this was amusing to them to be classified as a significant part of history...
funny these things have a habit of repeating themselves as now my own children have my school days parked in the same historical vault ... and I convinced I am still only 20!!!
As my starting date for school quickly approached talk and chat at home about their school days became part of the daily conversation with father and mother relating stories of their school days in response to my persistent questioning. As my father was the parent in my home who attended prison school also, I tended to ask him more about school than my mother as I wanted to know as much as I could about prison school before starting.
Happenings inside and outside of the classroom he would relate with great detail, humour and patience… always painting the canvas of school in the brightest of colours for my benefit but adding in the odd duller shade to prepare me for the life in the playground. I will always remember fondly his quoting of poetry at dinner time so well learned and never forgotten.
“Irish, Irish - we learned all through Irish” he would say and so he had a fondness and confidence with the language. He would freely use it with the gaeilgeoir’s who sometimes frequented our home. Many years later I married a fluent Irish speaker ... he and my father would always greet each other as gaeilge ... always a benefit to have a helping hand to make a potential future son in law feel welcome.
Enough of my father’s experiences of his days in prison where he and his siblings all attended and spoke of funny happenings as well as some serious. My childhood best friend and neighbour Marie Maloney grew up in what I now look back on as an idyllic setting. My birthday was the 9-9-xx and hers the 10-10-xx (I’ll leave you guessing the year, easy to work out as we are still only 20!!! remember).
With just the month between us we were very close, always up and down to each other as we lived next door and the roads were quite safe at the time. She had no sisters and I had no siblings at all... it was perfect, and we had great times. As I grew older (striving towards 4 years at this stage) and accompanied by my mother I was allowed to be more adventurous and travelled the long journey down to Richie and Maureen Murphy’s house to play with their daughters Sharon and Philomena (who was in my class in prison and today Philomena is the youngest of the past pupils to have attended prison school ... I just could not claim that one even though I tried to make the slipper fit... don’t know what age that leaves Philomena but not 20 anyway).
All of this building of friendships proved to be a great help on attending national school (as we called it in those olden days) for the first time … I may have had no older sibling, but I had good friends to help step into the world of education.
On this note this centre of education was to close the following year after we started - and we were well aware of this prior to our starting. Decisions about starting us in Balla National School instead were topics discussed by mothers whose children were inevitably going to be transferred there in the following school year anyway. However most of the parents themselves had attended the school and were proud of it ... they wanted us to attend there for the remaining time left for this building ‘s educational function... later to become a social centre for people in the surrounding areas .... where my mother and I attended frequently on summer Sunday evenings where we would meet up with some of the original families and friends that I had started my schooling with. It is here in what was once my school that I gained a love for dancing, music and singing... later Mrs. Redmond came to this now a social centre to teach us the hop and a hop and a one, two three ... I can still hear it... sung to the tune of a reel... no music... just her singing. Thanks to the committee at the time for continuing to provide us with another type of education when its academic function had ceased - indeed it was a life skill that this music and dance provided us with.
Oh dear, I have rambled on but as I sat down to put my memories of prison school together ... so many of my early childhood memories came flooding back - it seemed that a lot of that era of my life was connected with the getting ready and starting of school, down to the school bag or indeed brown case with push in clips to close … we were very academic looking indeed ... however by today’s standards we would have been very “uncool”. Finally, I have arrived at my first day in Prison, Prison School that is in case confusion maybe setting in with the considerable journey I have taken you on to get me in the door of the said prison.
Lesson 1: The seating & classroom arrangements:
A two-classroom school - one redundant at this point in time and ours, the second catering for pupils (as we were referred to in those days... not students as seems to be the more commonly used term today) aged 4-12 years.
Requested to pick a seat, huddled together of course, Marie and I made our way to the available desks in the front row of the classroom as there were no other choices available to us. Of course, the older pupils had the experience to have grabbed their seats in rows further from the front to be positioned further away from the teacher.
However, we were so unfamiliar with such seating and too shy and somewhat afraid to ask for help and of course did not realise that the seat of our desk had been folded up when the previous occupants vacated it. So now puzzled as to what to sit on we could only come to the conclusion that we must have to sit on the table part of the desk and rest our feet on the flipped-up seat part of the desk. This choice of course left us sitting with our backs to the teacher and us facing all other pupils seated in the rows behind our row. Needless to say, as I remember what I would now describe as a tsunami of sniggering engulfed the room, I looked at Marie now bright red as I am sure I also was as the heat of the embarrassing situation was felt through my body. Just when we felt stuck to our desk top unable to move for fear of making another mistake Mrs. Duggan (our teacher) came to our rescue, kindly asked us to come down off the desk top, showed us the folding down and up movements of the seat of the desk. She insisted on a hush in the room in relation to the sniggering which quickly stopped as she assigned class work for the older pupils and then focused her attention on us. Quite a skill to be able to cater for so many different ages at once — however the pupils and parents themselves in those days I feel had a respect and understanding for the situation which existed in such a classroom setting and made sure not to interrupt teaching or learning for others.
Break times & lunchtimes
Sometimes on cold wet winter evenings when things are somewhat sorted in our house, I sit and flick through the TV channels hoping to tune out of reality for an hour or so, a programme from my past appears - “Little House on the Prairie” - do you remember it or maybe it was not your thing? Set in the US in 1 think the early l9th century - not quite sure. Children are making their way across the prairie in carts or sometimes walking accompanied by a parent or by older siblings who have been passed on the responsibility of delivering their younger family members to and from school safely. Into the school house they go — again children of a variety of ages gathered together seated at desks with a sunken inkwell, a bevelled groove across the top of the sloping desktop to place pencils etc... In order to prevent such objects rolling down the sloped desktop.
A shelf underneath this desktop for books and copies to be stored throughout the day. Not sure about the folding seats, feel they must not have as I may have been more prepared for my first lesson in school. Outside at the break time children playing with their apples. Why you might be asking yourself have I gone off on this tangent of “Little House on the Prairie” and playing with apples. Well apart from the similarities of the classroom arrangements and furniture our break times in Prison School consisted of much the same type of play also. Each day we would bring an apple to school tucked away in our lovely new lunch boxes. At the back of the school there was what we believed to be a large river and a high hill sloping down towards this large river (today the hill has amazingly shrunk in size and the river has reduced to stream size... such were the interpretations we as young children had of our surroundings). Every break time as weather permitted — (I can only remember fine, warm sunny school mornings, break times and schooldays... we did attend Prison in the latter end of that last school year which would have meant summer was approaching ... so my memory of weather is probably accurate) we would run to the back of the school, take out our apples and spend the first half of the break rolling the apples down the hill/ slope and would always make sure to get to the bottom of the hill before the apple rolled into the river/ stream.
We had great fun.... No phones, iPod etc...
Break time meant toilet time also - wooden seats, plastered walls I believe, a type of mass concrete (I think — dull, grey). No running water I think, vague memories really. However, on one of our last lunchtimes a group of the older boys decided to brighten up the interior of the toilets by painting them a bright pink ... as we younger ones with all the rest of the pupils in the school quietly looked on... I don’t know what the outcome was for those boys when the teacher discovered their handy work... anyway it could be argued that it was only an improvement to the existing dull unpainted walls.
Travelling to school and home:
One of my favourite memories was the walk to and from the school across what we called the bog road which was a botharin (small road) which joined the Prison road to our road the Tavanagh/Tawnagh road. My mother, Bridie Murphy RIP only in 2012 thank goodness, walked Marie Maloney and myself to and from school along this road. I thought it was a
real adventure as in those early childhood days we were not allowed go onto this road unaccompanied by an adult as there was a river - a real river along this route and our parents would have been fearful of us stopping to play at it or its bridge. I would pick a selection of wild flowers and enjoy arranging them when we got home and use them to play house as we often did.
After a little time, we were allowed to walk home with the bigger pupils who would be travelling our way, for example John Murphy (son of Bill and Annie, Tavanagh RIP), Nuala and Ger Jennings (daughter and son respectively of Mattie and Delia, Ballinagran RIP).
We had great fun on those few occasions which ended as abruptly as it all began as the school closed its gates and doors to school life at the end of that year (1973) I think.
Post its closure an auction of the school furniture took place and my father (John Murphy RIP Tavanagh 1998), he himself a past pupil as already stated at the outset, went to the auction and arrived home with one of the desks with the fold up seats — he claimed he himself sat at it as he recognised a marking on it.
I then used that desk for most of my primary years and was very proud of my desk with the folding seat.
I hope that my memories may have evoked some memories for you to think about. I have certainly enjoyed thinking back to a different Ireland with pressures of a different kind for people and one where children were allowed to be children for longer. We may have moved on in many ways and indeed in many good ways.
Schools however remain a vital ingredient to this day in community living and in making links with the past.
Right down to the last few years I have had to bring some Irish Americans to view this school of their grandmother, they were so thrilled to have the chance to roll back to that time and see what school conditions were like back then.
Such links are important and no matter how far we move on we should always cast an eye back to times spent in places of our childhood and education like Prison School. This reunion has allowed for me to do just that and I would like to take the opportunity to thank the organisers for affording me the chance to share my memories attached to this school and to congratulate them on their efforts at refreshing past links.
Therese (Murphy) Moran
A two classroom school - one redundant at this point in time and ours, the second catering for pupils (as we were referred to in those days... not students as seems to be the more commonly used term today) aged 4-12 years. By Therese (Murphy) Moran