Wednesday, 12 November 2008

Chapter 17: Ernest Lavery (iii)

Memories of roses in Glenavy, the Belfast blitz, unexploded bombs and another that blew the park ducks to -

‘Duck heaven’


William Leslie, Alice’s father built two joined cottages on the Pigeonstown Road beside the railway bridge, which were covered in roses, planted and nurtured by Alice’s mother, Ellen. The scent of these could be smelled 25 yards away, on approaching the house. William, Ellen and their daughter Alice lived in one of the cottages and William’s brother Robert, lived in the other.

William vowed that Robert would live there unmolested until he died, regardless of what social changes came about. As a child I was fascinated by Robert – looking or rather trying to look into his windows that were internally obscured by cobwebbed bottles and jars filled with fungal, atrophied and unspeakable excretions. I was totally convinced he was a witch or a Shaman, making up spells! At the back of his cottage was an agglomeration of riddles cutting and measuring devices and old rusting devices which defied description as recognisable tools.

I was always wary of him for he appeared a dour insular man, with little affection for folk in general but certainly none for children. He always told me to ‘clear off!’ My father told me when asked about Robert that he was quite a bit in demand by local farmers and those further afield. He was an herbalist and effected many cures for ailing animals. He was also an authority on diseases of fruit trees and bushes. Alice told he offered remedies to some of the country folk for warts, boils, rashes verrukas and bunions.

He was a stalwart of the Black Preceptory and during one of their outings on a very hot day the Lodge was taking refreshments in a country pub. Robert came out hot and sweating and sat on the road with his back against the back of the bus, the driver came out and started the bus to turn it around and reversed over Robert.

A black day for The Black you could say!


Contemplative haven


I loved Glenavy for me it was a quiet contemplative haven, away from Belfast streets. The loudest noises were the gurgle of the river and the incessant hum of insects – bumble bees in particular. I used to watch the fish jumping to catch flies. My father introduced me to The Dells which we would approach by climbing the embankment beside the Leslie cottage and walk along the railway lines eating dog vetches (small wild peas which grew along the railway tracks in abundance.) The Dells was a place of wonder to me that I never lost. There were little hillocks covered in primroses, an area of sweet smelling bluebells, a marshy area filled with wide-leafed blue irises and the river flowing through it at the bottom.

Alice told me she and Willie Lavery used to go there in the morning on the way to school, to watch the kingfishers diving into the small river to catch fish. She used to go and read books there and on one of these occasions, fell asleep and when she awoke there were a lot of newts resting on her skirt.

She said she ‘screamed the Dells down’ (her words).

In my teens I would visit Glenavy often, taking pals with me and on one trip I found embedded in the soft mud a cylindrical object about a foot long with small fins on the non-pointed end – what a prize! When we boarded the bus for the homeward journey the sharp-eyed conductor spotted my prize and said ‘What have you got there lad?’ He asked to see it, examined it, jumped off the bus with it and threw it into the river. “Sorry son but that was an incendiary bomb and it might still be active.”

A night in the air raid shelter

I can still recall the blitz in Belfast. I remember one particular night of many bangs and the vibration making my mother’s cabinet jump about and resettle. I remember spending a night in the air-raid shelter across the street belonging the Millar’s jam factory and watching cartoons projected on to one of the shelter’s walls and someone playing a ukulele and some of the people singing. As I was carried up to bed one other night I recall a bright light (like a fallen star). I remember my parents’ anxiety because it was a flare, dropped to illuminate a target for bombers.

Yet another day, one Saturday morning, my father was in the garden around 10 am and come running in to panic us all by saying we have to leave NOW! At the door he pointed out what looked like a parachutist coming down high up above the street. “That’s a German landmine. One came down in ‘the Yard’ (shipyard) last week and a bunch of men rushed along the dock thinking it was a German pilot and intending to seize him, saw at the last moment what looked to be an oxygen cylinder and turned to run: when it exploded it blew a bunch of them into the Lagan.”

My father alerted the street and everyone got out, but a strong wind blew the parachute away from our area where about 2 pm it landed in the duck pond in the Ormeau Park and blew the ducks to ‘duck heaven’. Looking at the crater the following day with my sister Helen there was this tremendous hole around which whole trees were scattered like leeks that were pulled up by the roots.

Shrapnel souvenirs

My brother Raymond loved it all, such excitement after rural Donegal. All the boys of his age group were collecting shrapnel as souvenirs and he had a box of it. He used to trade things for others that held more of a current interest for him. He traded the shrapnel and old tracer bullet shells to a boy up the street for a set of cigarette cards. However, among this was a live shotgun shell. Up the street the boy’s mother was rushing to go out to the cinema and having done a quick tidy-up, came across the shotgun shell, and threw it on the banked-up fire. In comes the father and while he was reading the paper, ‘bang’. Half the fire blew across the room setting the curtains on fire. Luckily he was unhurt.

All my cousins (from my mother’s side) who were in the forces the ATS, WRAF, the army and the navy would call for tea at our house. Their tales of their experiences would make me restless and anxious to be in the thick of it. We collected books for the war effort and took them to Harding school while girls like my sister Helen made toys to sell to make money for the troops. But an unexploded bomb embedded in the school playground a couple of weeks before the school holidays so there was an extended holiday.

On odd Sundays my father and I would take the bus from Smithfield out to filter beds and walk along the road to Rose Lane Ends to the sighing sough of Lough Neagh. I wrote these few lines as a remembrance of those days.

Sunday walks


The Sunday bells that gathered ears to God
Outdid each other in cacophonies of sound
The Catholic vying with the Protestant
Reverberating round and round the town.

Sounding like tongues, impatient to be heard
each and every one had, had their say
all around Belfast, every Sunday morning
Taking turn, like a rooster’s roundelay.

The single-decker, green and yellow bus
Climbing the rising bends reliable and slow
A petrol-driven-asthmatic, wheezing to the top
With churches and people diminished far below.

At Filterbeds, we shuddered to a halt
Carrying our jackets, my dad and I got down
Into a world of scolding rooks and melting tar
To walk the sticky narrow road to Pigeonstown.

Me with a stick in the hawthorn hedges
Slashing at puffballs, thistles and docks,
Which silenced all the grasshoppers and crickets
Ticking in the grasses like a barrage of clocks.

Dad with his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat
Hat pushed back and slightly to one side
Swaggering like a man who owned the country
His shadow and I behind him, aping his stride.

The roads have all been widened since
And that old ancient bus no longer climbs
Gasping up the hills to Filterbeds
And Dad’s been dead since nineteen sixty nine.

Everything is changing for the best – we’re told.
Old outmoded ways are past and dead.
But Dad and I still walk that narrow road to Pigeonstown
Untouched by so-called progress ……..in my head.

Ernest Lavery.

Chapter 16: Ernest Lavery (ii)

Ernest Lavery continues his description of his days at Harding Memorial elementary school when the intervention of angry mothers led to: -

Dick’s downfall


There were two great days at Harding of which I still relish the thought. There was a woman teacher, an ogre or the female equivalent, who took the first standard.

Miss Griffin or ‘the Griffin’ as we called her (out of earshot I can tell you). She was six foot if an inch, had teeth like mill stones and an old dog’s breath. She was the most masculine woman I’d ever seen and she seemed to despise boys. She would pad along the aisles between the desks and while we were writing one would smell her foul dragon breath and she’d suddenly hiss in your ear “that’s appalling writing” and she’d knuckle you behind the ear with a large signet ring and then when your school pen went scrawling across the page she’d slap you on the back of the head and make you write it over.

One day a woman, a Mrs Potter, a burly overweight lady, came to complain. The Griffin not seeing the danger signs talked down to her in a superior fashion as she was wont to do. It appeared the Griffin had kicked one of her sons in front of the school assembly. Mrs Potter a heroine of the Proles grabbed the Griffin by her hair and trailed her around the room saying, “if you ever put your feet or your hands on my boys again I’ll swing for you – you bitch!”

In high glee to see one of my enemies felled thus – ‘Thank you God! Thank you God! ‘

She went upstairs to Dick Taylor’s office to take the matter up with him. Unfortunately for him he struck the same attitude as the Griffin and was felled by Mrs Potter’s bag of groceries. The zip on the leather bag cut Dick above the eye and brought blood – alas blood was Mrs Potter’s Achilles heel and she fainted and crashed to the floor like a stricken, fatted ox.

Dick was running around assembling a group of teachers and the like to resuscitate the fallen warrior. What a glorious day that was!!

The second day was even better. One afternoon when all the classes were assembled in the playground in straight lines facing the steps of the assembly upon which Dick strutted like Mussolini lecturing and threatening. He suddenly espied two boys talking in the ranks, calling them out by name to join him on the steps, saying I will later teach you not to talk when I am speaking.

He droned on while we shuffled our feet. Then suddenly he whirled round upon the two boys on the steps who were whispering and laughing.

He started slapping this thin undernourished looking boy called Morrow up and down the steps punching him on the shoulder and upper arm. Mrs Morrow, the boy’s mother, was cleaning her windows. Their house beside the rear of the school looked right into the playground. Through the side gate sped Mrs Morrow, up the steps behind Dick, who was so engrossed in battering her son, he failed to see the avenging mother who paused to take off a shoe and proceeded to whack Dick on his bald dome up and down the steps several times.

Dick’s head and face was bleeding and cried out, “Madam, I beseech you”. Mrs Morrow sent the two boys back to the by now convulsed ranks and warned Dick that if he thought he had been punished then just wait till her husband came home. Off she went and Dick, scarlet and bleeding in about five places, screamed silence! To quell our laughter he made us stand still and silent till he returned adorned with sticking plasters and continued to lecture us amid sniggers from the older boys who had been punched and caned by Dick.

Chapter 15: Ernest Lavery (i)

From country vicarage through the ‘hungry thirties’ to being ‘educated’ at the hands of a psychotic headmaster


Ernest Lavery, a great grandson of Joseph Bickerstaff contributes the following to The Connection:-

‘My grandfather, William Lavery, was born in Lurgan, married Ann Bickerstaff, one of four sisters, and worked as a metal moulder for a foundry in Glasgow. He had three offsprings. My father, John, being the first, was born in Scotland, where he lived until he was six when his parents returned to Ireland.

They went to live in Glenavy where Willie, his brother, was born 12 or 13 years later I do not know how my grandfather William was employed at this period. A few years later Violet was born and when a young girl was bitten by a tsetse fly from a bunch of bananas and contracted ‘the sleeping sickness’. Sadly there was no cure available at the time and she died at the age of 31.

Grandfather William died from pneumonia in his 40’s.

The family, needing income, moved into the Glenavy vicarage where my grandmother, Ann, became caretaker. My father John was attending college in Belfast, but had to leave and look for work to help support the family as his brother and sister were only youngsters.

I remember my father telling me one of his duties in the vicarage was to light fires in all the rooms to prevent damp ruining the décor. Alice Leslie said whenever anyone turned up to visit, my father would cook them large breakfasts and Alice and Willie would play in the huge garden around the pampas grass plants.

During the thirties depression my father, John desperate to find work, would ride from Glenavy to Belfast to sign on the dole and scan the job ads then ride back to Glenavy. On one of these trips a tube on one of the wheels split and he filled it with straw, tying it with string in several places to ride shakily and slowly back to Glenavy.

He subsequently took a job as a conductor on a tram in Belfast. I remember that he lived in Maymount Street off the Woodstock Road, but I don’t know if all the family lived there. It was on the tram he met my mother, May Ewing, from Stranorlar, Donegal. She was working in Belfast and each working day caught my father’s tram to the city centre.

They married and went to live for a while with his family. The depression increased and the work ceased. My father put an ad in the Belfast Telegraph which read – any position or type of work considered for £1 per week.

Upon receiving no offers my parents went to live in Stranorlar, Donegal, with the mother’s mother (also widowed). It was there my brother, Raymond, was born.

Almost two years later they returned to visit my father’s mother in the vicarage in Glenavy where my sister Helen was born. They then moved back to Donegal as the work was still scarce.

Sometime in the mid thirties my father, having obtained a job as a plate maker (or plater) in Harland and Wolff: they came to live in 46 Titania Street, Cregagh Road.

I was born there in 1936. In 1939 we were living in 4 Millar Street where, four years later, my younger sister Gwen was born.

My father’s brother Willie married Florence (Flossie) Johnson and had two boys, Kenneth and Norman. I know they married and had children but have no real knowledge of their wives or children.

My brother Raymond went to Harding Memorial School and won a scholarship to the Belfast Technical College. He left it to commence a seven year apprenticeship at William Cleland, a printing firm, where he finished as a lithographer and joined Short & Harland’s.

Raymond met and married Margaret (Peggy) Chittock and had three children – Gwen, Christine and John. Gwen worked as a medical secretary and married David McAteer. They have two girls Jill and Lynn and live in the upper Cregagh area.

Christine married Trevor McMillen: they have two girls Paula and Nicola and they live in Newtownabbey. John married Jackie (?) and they have two children Mathew and Lois. They live in Bangor, Co Down.

My father John died in 1969 at the onset of the ‘troubles’ in Belfast. My mother survived him for another 19 years and died at the age of 83. Raymond died nine years ago this month having bought 4 Millar Street. Raymond’s wife Peggy still lives there.

My sister Helen spent quite a few years in the WRNS – stationed mainly in Arbroath in Scotland - and come home to marry a teenage boyfriend with whom she used to go hostelling with in a group. He (James Maxwell) was killed in a motorbike accident a month later.

She emigrated to Canada where she met and married a Dane – Ernest Madsen. They have two daughters Lynn and Sharon who so far are unmarried.

My sister Gwen, who worked for British Oxygen met and married Peter Jackson from the Braniel who was selling many things, including JCB diggers, to up and coming farmers at the time, but now has his own business in the shoe trade.

They have two boys Paul and Mark. Paul lives in London and Mark with his parents in Belfast.

I worked as a sample maker with William Liddell’s (linen merchants) in Queen Street, Belfast. I emigrated to Canada in 1957 to work in a gold mine called Kerr-Addison in Northern Ontario. Then to Toronto to work for the Canadian National Railway for three years.

I then came to live in England in 1961 in various types of work, taught English in the Marigold Institute in Madrid for year and married Gloria Pisani of Austrian mother and Italian father.

We have one daughter Ciara, 23.

Grandfather William (during his metal moulding days) showed an artistic flair in an unusual form. He made a house out of cast iron with hinged doors and Victorian chairs and divans of the period with their curved legs. Sections of it were still in evidence in 4 Millar Street. I remember the chairs. Also a mantelpiece into which slotted a range, such as you’d see in a country farmhouse.

The range was a non-movable mould but complete in every feature. It was too big and heavy and it got moved around and finally rusted. It should have been looked after – it would reside today in one of the museums pleased to have it for the expression of the period.

We were all educated, if that is the word, at Harding Memorial School, including my father, at some point.

During my ‘sojourn’ there, the headmaster was Richard ‘Dick’ Taylor, a psychotic, sadistic bastard. He was hated by a generation of boys whom he had maltreated, psychologically and hand-on-cruelty.

I was quite friendly with Ronald Duffield and his death, so young, saddened me.

I am still in touch with his sister, Lily. My father often spoke of their father, Andy whom he liked a lot. He would say, ‘Poor Andy has such trouble with his stomach. It must be why he is such a nice man!’

They all had stomach problems Andy, Willie and my father. Inner stress perhaps?’

Chapter 14: For king and country – and all that (3)

3. Meanwhile back at home

While members of the McQuoid family served in the armed services during the Second World War others served their county on the home front, helping ensure supplies to those at the front and maintain an economy capable of welcoming those members of the forces that might return.

John McQuoid was born in Willowfield Street in East Belfast in 1905 and was educated at Montpottinger Boys School, Renshaws and the Belfast ‘Tech’.

He served a five-year apprenticeship in Agnew and Brownlee, estate agents, Chichester Street.

Some fifteen years later he was appointed manager of A. E. McFarlane for a period of three years during which the principal became blind.

A promise of a partnership was never fulfilled.

In 1938, the year before war was declared, and with the help of his wife, Lily (Nee Mary Elizabeth Stewart) he opened his own estate agency on the first floor of 143 Royal Avenue, Belfast.

He was 32 years of age.

Business move

In 1960 the business moved to 45 Donegall Street with ground floor and upstairs offices and continued to grow. Sons Alastair and John joined their father and a second office, 432 Ormeau Road, was opened.

Subsequentlym there were moves from Donegall Street to Chichester Street and to Donegall Square South but during the severe recession of 1989 to 1993 the City Centre office was closed and the business concentrated South of the City where it continued to prosper and the premises to enlarge.

John Snr. retired in 1975 having built, with the help of his family, one of the best-known and trusted family estate agencies in Belfast.

The reward for his labours would allow him with Lily to visit friends in far-flung places in Australia, Canada, the USA, New Zealand and South Africa.

The years 1988 to 1993, when he died, were spent quietly and happily in Holywood, County Down.

Twins Alastair and John worked together harmoniously to continue his legacy and the business survives to the present date although Alastair separated in more recent years to develop an independent career as a chartered surveyor working from Donaghadee.

Their elder brother Denis Morley, trained as a pilot, and had a successful career with British Airways. Married to an air hostess, Muriel Hayes, and now retired he lives in Horsham, West Sussex.

Keeping life normal

Two of John’s brothers, Samuel, and David, were also to help ensure that life continued as normal as possible during the course of the war.

Sam, who married Vi Donaldson, joined a well-known drapery concern of James Ireland and became one of its best-known and popular agents throughout Northern Ireland before moving out on his own.

While he ensured that his customers were well-dressed, David saw to it that they were well fed driving a horse-drawn bakery cart through the hungry streets of Belfast (an act remembered by his son, Noel, when he was a passenger) before he graduated to the financial services becoming an agent for the Tower Cheque company.

He and his wife, Agnes (nee Mary Carson), settled in Dundonald, outside Belfast where they brought up two children: Samuel Lindsay, who became a Methodist minister and (in 1990, supernumerary), and Noel Caruth who, like his father, entered the financial services field.

Lindsay lives in England and Noel and wife, Joan, also adopted Holywood as their home.

Sam and Vi had two daughters and one son.

Vera Elizabeth was born in 1933 and lives in Lisburn and her sister Maureen Anne who was born in 1944 also lives in the same City.

Ian Donaldson, who became a chartered accountant, was born in 1938, and died at the early age of 62 from cancer.

Chapter 13: The Bickerstaff Connection in Canada

Sharon Grocholski, whose grandfather came from Glenavy, reflects on the contribution which a North of Ireland family has made to education in North America.

(The Bickerstaff connection....My grandfather , James Leslie, was a brother-in-law of Ellen Bickerstaff, who married his oldest brother Andrew.)

‘My grandfather, James Leslie, was the youngest brother of Alice Leslie’s father. He was the seventh son of a seventh son.....so there must be many more Leslies than we know about. Grandpa was a teacher, having studied at Trinity for four years. He married Mary Jane Boyd (b. Galway) of Belfast in January of 1913 and they immediately immigrated to Canada . I somehow think that my grandmother met him through her brother who was also away at school. I do know that granny was engaged when she met him......but obviously she broke off her engagement to marry Grandpa.

Granny was a dressmaker and had her own shop on the third floor of her parents’ home located at Balmoral in Belfast. Apparently, it was a successful business, as she would have a staff of up to six employed during her busy season. She paid her her parents 1.000 pounds per year in rent, which was a lot of money in those days. She was also a good artist, and fortunately, I am lucky enough to have one of her paintings from 1911. ‘

My grandparents' home was burned down just before the birth of Uncle Willie in 1917 and they lost everything. She retrieved four paintings from her sister, who was living in Winnipeg, some years later so she would have one for each of her children...

Grandpa the schoolmaster

‘Grandpa's first school was in Biggar, Saskatchewan (west central Saskatchewan). This is where my mother, Eileen, was born on October 31, 1913. Apparently they didn't care for the area, so grandpa taught in several rural schools until they finally settled in the Campbelltown school district, where they also farmed. They called the farm Knockcairn, after grandpa's home near Glenavy. Campbelltown is just northeast of the village of Kelliher.

They had four children: Eileen- b.1913,-D. 2001. Elizabeth-b.1915 -William-b.1917,-D.1991 and Andrew- b.1919.-D.1991 Only Elizabeth is still alive, living in Oliver, British Columbia with her husband Wilf Hidlebaugh.

‘My mother, Eileen, married Joseph Campbell Dunlop on November 19, 1936. They had six children, five surviving. These are Elizabeth (Betty) Hart – b.1938 -lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Robert (Bob) Andrew – b.1940- farms eight miles from Regina, Margaret Ellen Lyell (Pegie) -b.1943- lives in Saskatoon. Pegie is a widow. Her husband, Stan Lyell, was a nephew of ‘Mr Hockey’- Gordie Howe. Stan passed away in 1997. Gordon James – b.1944 – lives in Redwater, Alberta, Sharon Mae Grocholski- b.1946 – lives in Regina, Saskatchewan and Patricia Jean – Dec.16-Feb.11, 1952– who died of meningitis at six weeks of age.

University training

‘We lived on a farm in the same district as granny and granda until I was nine, when we moved to the village of Kelliher. I left in 1964 to attend university in both Regina and Saskatoon and trained as a teacher. My sister Pegie and brother Bob also trained as teachers, though Bob ended up farming near Regina.

‘Betty is a home economics graduate as well as having her MBA. Gordon knew university wasn't for him and has had a successful career with a railcar company.

‘I have three children....Bradley – b.1976 - employed by Sasktel (internet support) and is the father of our only grandchild, Alexander. Brian – b.1977- is featured in an earlier Bickerstaff Connection chapter with details of his wedding programme. He is a teacher with a theatre major....hence their wedding programme was done (tongue in cheek) in theatrical style. He and his wife, also a fine arts teacher, will be living in Hinton Alberta. this year. They had been teaching on a First Nations Reserve in northern Saskatchewan for the past two years and will be happy to get back to civilisation. Geoffrey-b.1980 - is living at home and going back to university...and also hopes to become a teacher ‘He has spent four and a half years working in a rehabilitation centre for adults with intellectual and physical disabilities.

I am also married to a former teacher! I met Bob in Kindersley, my first teaching location, in 1966. I convinced him to go to university and we were married in Aug. of 1969. He retired after 30 years of service in 2001.

‘In 1984, in celebration of Saskatchewan's 75th anniversary, a grant was extended by the Province for all communities to compile a history book of their area. Both mom and dad worked on the Kelliher area book. This book contains a much more detailed history of James and Minnie Leslie and their family.'

Chapter 12: For king and country — Women at War

2. Women at War

In 1909, in a remarkable act of anticipatory thinking, the British Government decided to form Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) to provide medical assistance in time of war.

By the summer of 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, there were over 2,500 Voluntary Aid Detachments in Britain.

Of the 74,000 VAD recruits two-thirds were women and girls.

Katharine Furse took two VADs to France soon after the outbreak of the First World War. After establishing a hospital at Boulogne, she returned to London where she became Commander-in-Chief of the organisation.

During the next four years 38,000 VADs worked as assistant nurses, ambulance drivers and cooks. VAD hospitals were also opened in most large towns in Britain.

At first, the military authorities were unwilling to accept VADs on the front-line.

However, this restriction was removed in 1915 and women volunteers over the age of twenty-three and with more than three months’ experience were allowed to go to the Western Front, Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. Later VADs were sent to the Eastern Front.

Some women went to the Western Front as letter writers for soldiers who were either too ill or too illiterate to write their own letters. May Bradford, the wife of John Rose Bradford, physician to the British Expeditionary Force, later recalled how she educated men on the treatment of women: "To one man I said, 'Shall I begin the letter with my dear wife?’

He quietly answered: 'That sounds fine, but she'll be wondering I never said that before.'

Enter the Bells



The McQuoid family became part of this national outpouring of support for the serving soldiers when Minnie Bell was sent to Caernarvon Castle as a VAD nurse for the period during the war.

Muriel Dickson, her daughter, speculates that she joined up because her fiancé Joe Maybury, then in the army, had persuaded her – or that it was after he had been killed on active duty.

Mother imbued daughter with the same sense of service to a nation in need.

In 1941 – two years into the Second World War - after winning a Government’s Snow Bursary from Victoria College to train students in electronics and radar to assist the war effort she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and after eight weeks’ training was commissioned.

During the following year she was trained at different RAF stations around the south of England in radar before she was posted to the Telecommunications Research Centre at Malvern

Following the end of hostilities she switched to Education Service but decided after meeting with John Dickson, a scientist at the same location, that the only way out of the service was to marry!

John was moved to the controversial Atomic Energy Establishment at Harwell and was given a prefab and it was there in 1946 following her ‘demob’ that she hung up uniform and hat.

John worked both at Harwell and the attached Rutherford Laboratory for 41 years until he retired in 1987.

The have been together for 60 years in Abingdon (originally in Berkshire but since 1974 in Oxfordshire.) where all the family have been born.

The Bell family was typical of many in Northern Ireland who severed – and suffered – on behalf of king and country during the two world conflicts of the twentieth century.

The Home Front was not without its hardships- and deprivations.

The war effort was supported not only by Andy Duffield and his eldest son Cecil who worked in the Belfast shipyard but by his daughters Dorothy (Doris) who contributed to the output of Heaton Tabb and company as ships’ outfitters and Lavinia (Lily) who was recruited by the Ministry of Food to implement its rationing programme for a hungry population.

Other members of an ever widening Bickerstaff clan played their part by keeping the wheels of the economy turning as future chapters will reveal.

Chapter 11: For king and country – Men at War

1. Men at War

Service to the crown was a feature of the Bickerstaff family and its offshoots down different generations – with changeable outcomes.

William Slater Bickerstaff (a cousin of Joseph Bickerstaff) was a soldier in the Indian Army who became a Mormon and a conscientious objector.

In the past century, the McQuoid family contributed directly to the First and Second World Wars.

One significant figure who served in both was Ben McQuoid. In the First World War he joined the North Irish Horse, originally a yeomanry unit of the British Territorial Army, which was raised in the northern counties of Ireland in the aftermath of the Second Boer War.

Northern Irish soldiers – including those in the NIH – played a significant part in the European campaign and especially in the third battle of Ypres, Passchendaele, July 1917, when the 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster) Divisions were transferred to General Gough's fifth army.

On 31 July, the 36th (Ulster) Division took part in the opening attack on the strong German positions to the east of Ypres. The heavy rain, which continued for a month, made conditions for an attack impossible. Nevertheless, both Irish divisions moved forward at Langemarck on August 16th.

Sixty percent of the leading units were lost before the attack due to heavy German shelling. The 36th (Ulster) had 3,585 casualties and the 16th (Irish) 4,231.

The 16th (Irish) Division was in action near Arras and the 36th (Ulster) Division near Cambrai in November.

Service in Egypt

The 10th (Irish) Division of which Ben McQuoid was part was transferred to Egypt in September.

In the aftermath of the War, Ben went on to join the Palestine Police created in 1920 with the formation of a Civil Government for that country.

The first Police Commander had the title of Director of Public Security and with the rank of Commandant of Police and Prisons. The police establishment at this time was 18 British officers supported by 55 Palestinian officers and 1,144 rank and file. The duties of the Police were described as:-
‘Besides fulfilling the ordinary duties of a constabulary, such as the preservation of law and order and the prevention and detection of crime, act as their numbers will allow as escorts for the protection of tax collectors, serve summonses issued by the judicial authorities, distribute Government notices and escort Government treasure throughout the country.’

The Iraq of its day

A foretaste of what was to come occurred in 1920 during the feast of Nebi Musa when Jewish youths, nearly all recent arrivals from Europe, paraded in Jerusalem professing the wish for a Jewish defence arm.

The demonstration was organised by Vladimir Jabotinsky, an immigrant, and his friends.
Reaction by Arab religious leaders and their inflammatory speeches resulted in an attack on Jews by Arabs in the Old City of Jerusalem resulting in a number of fatalities and numerous casualties. As the police were heavily outnumbered, the military was called in to restore law and order.

It seems that it was at about this time that the foundations of the Haganna, a Jewish defence organisation, were laid. In the spring of 1921 the police had a further serious clash with the public when two opposing political parties of Jews arranged demonstration marches on 1st. May near the seashore between Tel Aviv and neighbouring Jaffa.

On meeting, the two parties began fighting with each other. This was at first observed with some amusement by Arab onlookers but on the arrival of mob leaders, the Arabs were incited to join in the fighting and a number of people were killed and injured before order was restored on the following day.

It was but a small beginning to the years of trouble which were to follow and which are still with us.

Little was seen of Ben McQuoid during the wartime conflict or his period with the Palestine Police but his occasional visits to Ormonde Gardens, the home of the Duffield family, were welcome as were his gifts of ivory craftsmanship (before they became an illegal export from North Africa!)

Ben died at his home in Oakland Avenue in 1952 on a date appropriate any such soldier – November 11.


The Bells and the armed services



Two members of the Bell family enlisted in the RAF.

Leslie McAteer Bell was born in 1922 and upon leaving Mountpottinger Public Elementary School went to Mercantile College and then joined the Northern Ireland Road Transport Board (the precursor of Translink) as a clerk until 1941 when he joined the RAF volunteer reserve on general duties

When he failed to be accepted for air crew he was stationed in several air stations in England, before being sent to North Africa in 1943.on to Italy where he spent a year.

He was then posted to Malta and home where he met Q (otherwise Eirene) in military hospital at Bishopstortford. The pair was married in Jersey, Eirene’s home. Leslie joined London’s Metropolitan Police Service in 1947 retiring in 1972.

He has two children, Maurice and Sylvia. Maurice is married with no children and
lives in the USA. Sylvia and Barry had two girls, sadly Jennifer tragically died before her 14th birthday. Angela is married with two boys.

Maurice, step-brother to Muriel and Leslie joined the Army and paid the ultimate sacrifice when he was killed in Italy in 1944 serving with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, on the way to Montecasino.

Muriel’s contribution to the war is part of Women at War in the next chapter.