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.

Chapter 10: ‘If the last payment on your grandmother’s plot isn’t paid in seven days, up she comes’

Neither the Bickerstaffs nor the McQuoids boasted a comedian in their ranks.

The nearest they would have come to ‘entertaining’ would have been at the dances which were held in the kitchen of Joseph Bickerstaff’s home in Upper Ballinderry or the occasional concert which the McQuoids may have attended at the McQuiston Memorial church hall on the Castlereagh Road in Belfast.

Humour when it came to it was usually of the home-made variety and built around the comings and goings of family life.

Often it would be tinged by the hard-edged or taciturn industrial mood of the workplace or have a wry or self-deprecating style of expression which reflected the nature of their occupations in the country fields or in the urban landscape.

Dorothy (Doris) Duffield was twice married (in each case to a Yorkshire man) and lived for most of her life in Huddersfield where she made many friends. Hers was a ‘home away’ for her siblings when they became rich enough to travel ‘across the water’ and more so for niece, Christine, during her time at university, and her nephew, Peter, when he worked as an IT consultant in Great Britain.

She was lonely, however, at many times and some of her correspondence home mirrored this in the occasional appendages to letters such as the following bitter-sweet addenda: -

A mother’s letter

Dear son

Just a few lines to let you know that I am still alive. I am writing this slowly because I know that you can’t read fast.

You won’t know the house when you come home; we’ve moved.

About your father, he has got a lovely new job. He has five hundred men under him: he cuts grass at the cemetery.

Your sister, Mary, had a baby this morning but I haven’t found out yet whether it’s a boy or a girl so I don’t know if you’re an aunt or an uncle.

I went to the doctor’s on Thursday and your father came with me. The doctor put a small tube in my mouth and told me not to talk for ten minutes. Your father offered to buy it from him.

Your uncle Patrick drowned last week in a vat of Irish whiskey at the Dublin brewery. Some of his workmates tried to save him but he fought them off bravely. They cremated him and it took three days to put the fire out.

It only rained twice this week, the first time for three days, then for four.

We had a letter from the undertaker. He said that if the last payment on your grandmother’s plot wasn’t paid in seven days, up she comes.

Your loving mother

PS I was going to send you five pounds, but I have already sealed the envelope.

What is a senior citizen?

A ‘senior citizen’ is one who was here before the pill, television, frozen food, credit cards and ball point pens.

For us, ‘time sharing’ was togetherness, not computers, and a ‘chip’ meant a piece of wood. ‘Hardware’ meant hard wear and soft wear was not even a word. Teenagers never wore slacks or jeans. We were before panty-hose, drip-dry clothes, dishwashers, clothes dryers and electric blankets.

We got married first, and then lived together and thought ‘cleavage’ was something butchers did. We were before a batman, disposable diapers, jeeps, pizzas, instant coffee and ‘Kentucky Fried’ wasn’t even thought of.

In our day cigarette-smoking was fashionable; grass’ was for mowing, ‘pot was something you cooked in. A ‘gay’ person was the life of the party, whilst ‘aids’ meant beauty lotions or help for someone in trouble.

We are today’s ‘senior citizens’ – a hardy bunch when you think of how the world has changed and the adjustments we’ve had to make.

Doris was married to ‘Tony Firth’ in the first instance and to ‘Brian Chatterton’, a friend of the first husband in the second.

Chapter 9: ‘Breaking ranks and blending cultures’

A wedding celebration which took place in the Campania Room of Delta, Regina, Saskatchewan, on August 9 2003 recognised the coming together of Theresa-Marie Coxen and Brian L Grocholski.

In a gentle epilogue to what is humourously described as ‘a one night performance’ the pair tell their celebrant guests, ‘As of yet we do not know where our heroes will end up in life, or what life will bring to them. As they travel down that road, they hope that every person they invited here today will be part of creating the story of their lives together.’

Neither Theresa-Marie nor Brian, a descendent of a Polish count, is well known to other than a few of the Bickerstaff connection on this side of the ‘pond’ but they are part of an ever-increasing and world-wide family whose diversity of lifestyles and beliefs reflects today’s multi-culturalism.

When John Joseph Bickerstaff the youngest member of the Bickerstaff family emigrated to Boston he joined the Church of Christian Science, exponents of a healing and educational system, for whom he became a publications editor.

He became one of the first of a staunchly Protestant clan to ‘break rank’ when he met, courted and married Deborah, a Roman Catholic.

Both he and his elder brother, Andrew, who had left earlier for Montana, never to return, helped pioneer the Bickerstaff name in the North American continent.
Community relations

Neither the early Bickerstaffs nor McQuoids would have had much thought of cross-community relations.

Theirs was a society built upon a cultural protectionism thought to be necessary to protect their seed, their jobs and their prospects in the society that surrounded them.

Later members would learn to visit, work with and embrace in marriage other cultures, enriching each tribe as they did so.

In Canada, for example, one Bickerstaff was appointed to look after an Indian reservation.


‘Hail to the king’

Among the McQuoids, Leslie Bell, who spent many years in the English constabulary, is married to Eirene Quita, a native of the Channel Islands.

They have a son living in California as well as two daughters. Jenny was born in 1971 but died in 1985.

The second daughter, Sylvia, married Barry Witham whose family roots were in South London

Granddaughter Jennie came first and Angie who was born in 1973 married ‘TJ’ in the summer of 2000: his parents came from Nigeria and moved to London in the 60's.

Angie’s married name is Obasa which means ‘Hail to the King’ as ‘Oba’ means ‘King’.

They now have two boys; Remi born 2001 and Tayo born 2004.

Angie and TJ live in Walton on Thames, near enough to ‘loving grandparents’ to see them regularly.

Japanese connection

Nigel Duffield’s Japanese wife, Ayumi, and the Singaporean children of his cousin, Alastair, and wife, Pamela, have been mentioned in an earlier chapter.

The grandmother of Brian L Grocholski whose name is in the first paragraph of the present chapter is cousin to Alice Leslie, the joint author of these pages who still lives in Crumlin, a short distance from the Bickerstaff family home at Upper Ballinderry.

She was delighted when Theresa-Marie and Brian came to visit her shortly after their marriage in Regina and were travelling down that road of life to which the epilogue referred.

And the Royal ‘connection’ – again!

Both the Bickerstaff and the McQuoid connections were represented in a photograph of Andrew Duffield which graced the screen of UTV during the recent celebration of Her Majesty the Queen’s eightieth birthday.

He was seen being presented to her when as Princess Elizabeth she came to Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard in 1946 to launch the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle.

But now we’re into the rewards of a ‘work culture’ dear to the heart of both clans and that’s another story!

Chapter 8: From poteen, to coffee and green tea - ‘scattering the seed’

The early Bickerstaffs being crofters would have known well the phrase ‘the scattering of seed’.

The McQuoids of Scotland and those who later moved to Ireland in search of work and religious freedom would also have been aware of the act as they tilled the earth along the East coast of their new-found land.

The word diaspora is unlikely ever to have entered their everyday speech.

They would not have known that the ancient Greek διασπορά was then, and now, used to refer to any people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional homelands; being dispersed throughout other parts of the world, and the ensuing developments in their dispersal and culture.

It would not be too long before new generations would demonstrate their early participation in this particular act. Among the first was one of the two sons of Joseph Bickerstaff.

In 1870, at the age of 18, Andrew emigrated to Montana, USA, where he died in his eighties, never returning to his homeland.

John Joseph (1881 – 1949) the youngest member of the family followed his example and emigrated to Boston where he joined the Mormons in Salt Lake City becoming an editor of one of its journals for which they were becoming famous. He later married Deborah, a Roman Catholic.

The McQuoid clan also made their mark in this early exodus. Thomas McQuoid was born in Ireland and joined the British Army.

In a book by D M Campbell, ‘Java past and present’, he is described as one of the first Europeans to take office when Java was annexed by the British in l811.

He became president of the committee for the sale of lands at Buitenzong, Java, and is mentioned in connection with Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles, whose international recognition is still intact in the famous Raffles hotel.

Thomas had been in the army in Batavia where he had been helpful to Raffles and in turn was promised a piece of land when the empire builder was founding Singapore.


Raffles appointed Thomas superintendent of the coffee culture over the whole island.

An able businessman, Thomas married Elizabeth Frances Kirwan and had a daughter, also Elizabeth Frances, who was born on 2 March l822 in Krawang and christened in Batavia on 3 August of that year.

Thomas’ seal was three towers with a cross in between the towers. He came to England in 1827 but returned to Batavia in 1830 where he remained until his death.

The link with Singapore continues to this day.

Alistair Duffield, the only son of Cecil and Phyllis Duffield, achieved distinction when he graduated from Campbell College to Leeds University where he read law.

His early career was in London but he graduated through an international law firm to his present post in Singapore. He married Pamela, with whom he had two daughters Olivia and Isabella.

Pamela, a native of Singapore, is also a solicitor.

The aboriginals of Australia were the subject of a BBC documentary when Aislinn Duffield, the daughter of Norma and Gordon, travelled there.

Aislinn is married to Peter Somersett, currently an assistant editor in the Corporation. They have two children – Elisha and Oisin.

The East also captured the attention of Nigel, her brother, who after winning an exhibition from Campbell College to Cambridge University, read modern and medieval languages.

After his PhD at the University of Southern California, he subsequently became a professor of linguistics at McGill University and married another linguist, Ayumi Matsuo from Kobe, Japan (the land of the green tea).

Nigel is now professor of linguistics at Sheffield University and his wife, now Dr. Matsuo, is a lecturer in the same department. They have two sons, Sean and Julian.

Their publications include a joint one on ‘ellipsis and anaphora in first language acquisition.’

Not a subject that would have been much talked about in the fields of East
Ulster.

Chapter 7: “Dinnae despise the migrants, laddie – we were there onct werselves.”

Although the McQuoids were to play an honourable part in the history of the North of Ireland they were once strangers to the land.

The family originated from the shire of Argyle in the North of Scotland, a sept of the Mackay clan.

It was in the late 1600's that there was an exodus from Scotland of men and women seeking freedom and a better life in Ireland.

The landlords (many of them ‘absentee’) were finding sheep more profitable than peasants.

Not only was work denied them but the peasants had a resentment that the Episcopalian way of worship that was being foisted upon them was too akin to Roman Catholicism to be endured.

So they gathered their goods and chattels and trudged the long road across the mountainous countryside to Portpatrick about twenty miles across the sea to Donaghadee, a sea trip that would be undertaken in an open boat.

In this minor footnote to the history of the migration it is estimated about 800 families came to Ulster, about half to Donaghadee and the remainder to Carnlough and Glenarm.

The graveyards along that coast of County Down until about fifteen miles inland give testimony to the McQuoid men, women and children who died from 1720 onwards.

Gilnahirk Presbyterian churchyard in the East of Belfast is where Samuel and Sarah McQuoid of Willowfield Street lie. David (Samuel's father) and his wife are also buried there, one in 1902 and the other in 1907.

James McQuoid who died on 18 October l901 aged 72 years and may have been an uncle of Samuel is buried at Castlereagh. There was also cousin, Samuel, who lived in the same area (Moneyrea) in the 1930's.

There was for many years, a metal rail incorporating an engraved plaque which marked the McQuoid family burying place.

Gordon remembers that at a young age with a reputation for ‘being good with his hands’ he was asked by his Grandmother McQuoid to ‘freshen up’ the headstone of his grandfather’s headstone who died in 1939, the year that saw the outbreak of the Second World War

For many in Northern Ireland, ‘migrants’ and ‘travellers’ have come to represent the face of the ‘needy in society.

One wonders what the native population thought of those early itinerant Scots when they arrived, bundled in rough clothes, even strange-looking tartans, when they came looking for work.

The gap between poverty and (by the standards of the time) comfortable urban existence was quickly jumped by the hard-working McQuoid clan and continues to this day.

But remember, anytime there’s a move to toughen up the laws against the immigrants, that we were there once, ourselves.

Chapter 6: Ossie, Cecil and the ‘University of East Belfast’

It wasn’t called that, of course, but for generations of working-class children of Castlereagh and Woodstock, Euston Street Public Elementary School was the beginning and end of education before being ejected into the unfriendly arms of the labour market.

Uncaught it could mean years on the ‘brew’ (the bureau of unemployment) or night school at the ‘tech’ to gain the necessary certificates that would give them entry into the print, textile and other trades and the first step on the ladder to a commercial livelihood.

The school had in its vicinity a cooperage, a major printer company, the East End’s largest laundry and the Belfast rope works plus, of course, the easily accessed shipyard. Each in its turn would soak up the energy, enthusiasms and aspirations of many of the post-education young of the area.

The Bells – sons and daughters of William, the grocer, and Minnie, his second wife – were key players in the life of the area, particularly in the church (McQuiston Memorial Presbyterian Church, whose huge bulk shared the high ground of the Castlereagh Road with the Castle Cinema) and in education. Ossie and Cecil were key players in the latter.

Although the Bell children attended the nearby Mountpottinger Public Elementary School, all but the youngest of the Duffield’s were inducted into learning process through the ‘baby’ or ‘wee’ school of Euston Street or its main body which was opened in 1926 and whose design was a tribute to the planning talents of the time.

At nearby Cregagh was a physically loftier Harding Memorial Public Elementary School readily accessed across Daddy Winker’s Lane from Ormonde Gardens where Andy Duffield, much to the disapproval of his father-in-law, had bought a £300 ‘subsidy’ home to remove his offsprings from the claustrophobic surrounds of Cherryville Street adjacent to Bell’s grocery shop.

Like many others remembering their childhood, Gordon has poignant recall of being ‘deserted’ by his mother when she left him at the door of the ‘baby’ school to be treated to a Christ on the Cross and his crown of thorns tirade by an enthusiastic teacher eager to instill the basic precepts of Christian living into her captive young minds.

Shortly after his ‘transfer’ to the main school he was entered as a pupil to Harding Memorial.
Whether this was due to the ‘upwardly mobile’ aspirations of the family or the proximity of Daddy Winker’s Lane he does not know.

More likely it was because of the proclivity of the mistress of the third form, Mrs J Corken, to hurl heavy wooden-backed blackboard ‘dusters at unruly pupils in a frantic effort to control her flock. Her lethal projectiles could strike the body, if not the head, of the unfortunate target with the impact of a direct hit by one of Hitler’s bombs on the flimsily built ‘shelters’ of the day.
Perhaps Andy and Sadie felt that the brains of one of their younger sons deserved better protection.

A more likely reason for change is that Cecil Bell, the first of his cousins to achieve academic success, after gaining a Queen’s University degree, had become deputy head of Harding Memorial, winning the respect of pupils and staff for his exceptional talent (he was later to author a book on mathematics) and the fairness of his authority.

He was to teach Gordon when his younger cousin attained the higher reaches of the school and although no family favours were given, undoubtedly contributed to his winning a scholarship to the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (Inst) which Cecil Bell had attended before proceeding to third level education.

More importantly, in the first year of peace after the Second World War, Cecil Bell was appointed headmaster of Euston Street School, a post which he held until 1969 and which allowed him for almost a quarter to a century to direct the ethos of one of East Belfast’s significant educational institutions.

He was helped by the appointment of his brother, Oswald (Ossie), member of a successful printing firm active in educational publishing, as a governor of the school. Gordon visited the school in March 2006 and was so impressed he wrote to the principal:

‘Visiting your school was a mind-bending experience!

‘In a world of supposed black-board jungle education I expected to find a rowdy, ill-disciplined bunch of children training (at least secretly) to become flick-knife members of society.

‘Instead I found a centre of idyllic calm in the middle of East Belfast populated by the most delightful youngsters whose manners, attentiveness to the teachers and courtesy to visitors was both exemplary and extraordinary!’

Ossie and Cecil enabled Euston Street to travel light years in a period of unrivalled change and social conflict.

Chapter 5: McQuoids, the Duffields and Hitler

The Second World War was not an easy time for the Bickerstaff connection.

While day-to-day life for the McQuoids and Duffields of East Belfast and their country cousins in County Antrim was dominated by the frustrations of rationing and blackout suffered by the remainder of the United Kingdom there were special moments when the war broke through.

Andy Duffield and his eldest son, Cecil, served in the shipyard and his two daughters, Dorothy (Doris) and Lavinia (Lily), exchanged their jobs in retailing (Adlestones and Sinclair’s of Royal Avenue) to aid the war effort in Heaton Tabb’s and Shorts.


On the evening of Easter Tuesday, 15 April 1941, 180 German bombers attacked Belfast and continued for several hours, dropping a total of 203 metric tons of bombs and 800 firebomb canisters on the city.

It was thought that the ship and aircraft yards were the target.

Over a thousand people across the City were killed.

No city, save London, suffered more loss of life in one night's raid on the United Kingdom. The Germans returned on the night of 4-5 May and inflicted devastating damage on the city's industries, but the loss of life was less than before since so many citizens had fled to the countryside. (Sir Wilfred Spender estimated that 100,000 people had left the city before the second raid, and this figure rose to 220,000 by the end of May 1941.)

The Belfast raid did not kill any of the two families but it increased the fear of working in the area and individual members remember clearly the sight of the City ablaze and the tens of thousands fleeing to the countryside along Castlereagh Road. The Duffields could not join them because it was essential for the wage-earners to get to work in the ‘yard’ the following and subsequent mornings.

Younger members, like Samuel (Gordon), remember how his father – a consummate craftsman – led the building of an underground air aid shelter in the back garden. So solid and deep was it in its construction that no subsequent owners were able to demolish it and it exists to this day.

It was others of the McQuoid family who suffered more grievously. Minnie’s youngest stepson, Maurice, had joined up early in the war and was serving in Italy when the battle of Cassino took place. It, was according to one observer. ‘The most gruelling, the most harrowing, and tragic, of any phase of the war in Italy.’ It would take four assaults of the mountaintop monastery and cost 100,000 lives to finish the task of demolition which bombers had begun. Maurice was one of them.

Hitler took its toll in other ways.

Because of the burden of long hours and hard work Andy saw little of his younger children during the wartime years and even at week-ends was occupied at working in growing vegetables and ‘building the shelter.’

His health suffered abominably from a range of diseases and conditions including stomach ulcers, hypertension (for which he underwent an early and experimental cutting of the sympathetic nerve in his back) and emphysema. He died of a tumour of the brain at the age of 59.

One of the saddest features of his later life was the death of his mother, Lavinia, one of the early Bickerstaff sisters. She had remarried after an early divorce and upon the death of her second husband, had returned from Scotland to Northern Ireland as ‘Grandma Shaw’.

The visits of this tall, elegant matriarch to Ormonde Gardens were frequent during which at mealtimes she would often ‘tell the leaves’ from spent tea cups. In one session she told how she would die from being overtaken by a ‘dark, silent shape’ for which no explanation was given.

During her evening visits when she would keep Sadie company she always would await the return of her son from the shipyard to accompany her across the blacked out Castlereagh Road to the number 22 trolley bus. On this occasion, because of the obvious tiredness of Andy she insisted on walking from the house alone. Crossing the main road she failed to notice the ‘dark, silent shape’ which overtook her.

Chapter 4: Town and Country Living

What would you do for twenty-five pence?

Andy Duffield may have been awarded only half a crown when he became the Musgrave Yard’s ‘apprentice of the year’ at the age of thirteen but an indication of its worth can be better understood by a recognition of the average wage of the time.

When he married Sarah (Sadie) McQuoid seven year’s later in 1920 in Sinclair Seamen’s Church she was earning the same two-and-sixpence a week as a stitcher of ladies blouses with the firm of Watson, Malcolmson & Co of Templemore Avenue where she had worked ‘as an obliging girl’ for seven and a half years.

Sadie was one of seven siblings of Samuel and Sarah Donaldson McQuoid of 81 Willowfield Street, Castlereagh Road whose lives typified a work ethic and working class strength that determined the betterment – sometimes the survival, of a generation.

Samuel (an assistant pawnbroker and sometime a member of the distribution staff in the Belfast office of the Daily Express) was a genial and gentle grandfather to the many sons and daughter of his hardworking family.

Mary (Minnie), the eldest, at 27 married a widower, William Bell, an energetic owner of a family grocery shop at the corner of Cherryville Street and Woodstock Road and gave him Leslie and Muriel to add to his existing family of Florrie, Cecil, Stanley, Ossie, and Maurice, who was killed in Italy in 1944 serving with the Royal
Inniskilling Fusiliers, on the way to Monticasino

It was to be the largest family of this generation of the family.

David, an insurance company representative, married Agnes (Aggie) and lived at Ballyregan Road, Dundonald, where sons Lindsay (who became a Methodist minister) and Noel (who followed in his father’s footsteps into the financial services industry and, now retired, lives in Holywood with his wife, Joan.)

Ben, a very handsome son, joined the army and, unusual for a working class boy, became a captain later serving in the Palestine Police. He married Lily during a colourful career and later settled with her in Oakland Avenue, Upper Newtownards Road with their daughter Pearl.

Sadie, as we know, married Andy and had a family of five comprising Dorothy (Doris), Cecil, Lavinia (Lily), Samuel (Gordon) and Ronald.

Meg (also known as Peggy), a beautiful girl, met Jim Lemon, an engineer, who joined the early brain drain to the USA and gained high office in Detroit’s motor industry. Peggy followed and upon marriage, was mother to three children, Sarah, Emily and Jim.

Sam entered the drapery trade and he and his wife, Vi, were undoubtedly the most fashion conscious members of the family with a family of three, Vera, Ian, and Maureen.

John, the youngest of the family was its business success operating, with the support of his wife, Lily, a small estate agency in an upper floor of Royal Avenue, opposite the Belfast Telegraph, which because one of the largest family-run residential agencies in the City.

The business passed down to the two younger sons, John and Alastair, while the eldest, Denis, who had been short listed for training as a RAF pilot, trained as a commercial pilot and joined British Airways and became a flight captain before becoming a trainer.

Life in Willowfield Street must have been as crowded for the McQuoid family as it was for that of the eight siblings of Bickerstaffs in Ballinderry.

The Belfast home enjoyed the proximity of shops and the camaraderie of the street as well as gas-lighting in the thoroughfares and inside the home.

Can this have made up for a family of nine living in a terrace house with three cramped bedrooms and an outside ‘loo’ in a whitewashed yard?

One wonders how much Belfast gas could be bought for half-a-crown in those days.

Would the wood-stove fire of the countryside have been preferable?

Chapter 3: The cost of working in The Yard

The cost of building the greatest shipyard in the world (a description that once applied to Harland and Wolff) was great.

Andy Duffield would tell how when a steel hawser snapped it cut in half the body of one of the Musgrave Yard workers.

On another occasion a man was trapped under the water when he became entangled with submerged metal debris. He saved himself only by cutting his arm off with his own knife.

The workforce was not richly rewarded and there was much poverty about especially in the hungry thirties.

The extent of individual poverty was often hidden because of shame.

Andy described how one worker would be seen tossing a sandwich from his ‘piece’ (lunch package) into the furnace with a contemptuous ‘not cheese again’.

On one occasion, in hungry despair, another worker rescued the sandwich from the flames.

It turned out that it was filled not with cheese but with a slice of turnip – the worker did not want it to be known that his family could not afford to feed the breadwinner with such a luxury.

Andy was born in January 1900 in the district of Aghalee, Lurgan, County Antrim, the son of Thomas Henry Duffield of England and Lavinia Duffield (formerly Bickerstaff(e)) of Feurmore Lower Ballinderry.

The fact that his domicile is given as ‘England’ and that he is described as a ‘clerk’ rather than a soldier suggests that the marriage was short lived after Thomas Henry ‘wrecked the home through drink’ in the words of Andy.

His mother would have gone to Scotland after the divorce (a shameful act to live with in the rural Irish society of the early 1900’s) but later returned to Belfast as ‘Grandma Shaw’ after the death of her second husband.

In the event young Andrew was brought up by two of his mother’s sisters who ran a guest house in Castlereagh Street, adjacent to the prosperous Mount terrace.

His early schooling must have taken place in Lower Ballinderry however because when in my twenties I acquired my first car I drove him to a one-roomed schoolhouse adjacent to the Pigeonstown Road at nearby Glenavy.

In 1913 – a year after the sinking of the Titanic – he joined Harland and Wolff as an apprentice plater (whose work was putting the steel plates of a ship in place).

The impact of this iron world of noise, heat and sweat upon a boy of 13 whose early upbringing would have been among the loughside green fields of County Antrim can only be imagined.

He must have triumphed over his new environment because in his first twelve months he became the yard’s ‘apprentice of the year’ for which he was awarded half a crown (25 pence) and granted the privilege of carrying the coat of Lord Pirrie when the chairman visited his workforce.

Andy went on to become senior assistant manager of the Musgrave Yard (the largest of four in the shipyard) employing more than 8,000 workers out of a total of 28,000.

During 46 years as a shipyard worker was involved in the building of countess well-known ships and in 1947 at the launch of the HMS Centaur was presented to The Duchess of Kent in recognition of his services.

Earlier he had been made a Justice of the Peace a title which allowed him (like a ship’s captain) to ‘join two individuals in wedlock’.

He was never required to conduct such a ceremony – much to his relief!

Chapter 2: The Duffields and the jack of nine tails

Gordon writes

When I was growing up I remember that in our living room at 22 Ormonde Gardens there hung a jack‘o’nine tails- a reminder to me that with it I could be punished by my father in the event of disobedience...

I never was, although I believe it may have been on my elder brother, Cecil, who was the wild member of the family given, with his red hair, to riding off on the occasional donkey if it strayed into the Castlereagh area (unlikely even then in such an urban area).

Andrew Henry Duffield (Andy) could never have been a stern (let alone a cruel) father.

The only time I remember him losing his temper was when in a moment of tension after some kind of argument with Sarah (Sadie), when he was fixing a window in the kitchen passageway and slammed it shut in a fit of pique.

It broke into smithereens.

It was a noteworthy occasion for me – a moment when I realised that a figure of respect could also be hurt: and human.

Chapter 1: The Bickerstaff family 1843 – Present

Joseph Bickerstaff, a crofter, and his wife, Alice (nee Frazer), lived and died in the townland of Upper Ballinderry, County Antrim.

The family tree that follows is the work of Alice Leslie, the last-remaining granddaughter of the couple, and Gordon Duffield, a great grandson whose father, Andrew, a cousin of Alice, bonded with her in a sibling-like relationship because of the circumstances of the family at the time.

It is hoped that other descendants of the pair will add their comments on, or extension to, the story of a family which continues to grow.

The Bickerstaffs as crofters had a small holding on the edge of Lough Neagh rearing a few cattle, pigs and goats as well as ducks and hens, in addition to growing vegetables: ‘they were more market-gardeners than farmers’, in the view of Alice Leslie. The Lough, the largest in Ireland, is rich in eels and Joseph in the company of brother and friends would also fish for these either to add a valuable food to the family table or to sell in the local market.

Joseph’s sister Frances (?) married into the local Farr family who lived in the Jockey House and eventually inherited the croft and expanded its output as market gardeners.

The original Bickerstaff home, a long low cottage was divided into two, the smaller part being occupied by Joseph’s brother Andrew, and his family (Elizabeth and William). The home is still in existence. Alice remembers Joseph as a tall, elegant man, with long white hair, who wore a Beagle hat and dressed well in a frock coat ‘like a minister for which he was often mistaken.’ He was an energetic man who played ice hockey when the Lough was frozen over and loved dancing often in the family home where the large kitchen was used for the entertainment of friends and relatives.

Joseph’s wife, Alice, who was the daughter of George & Sara Fraser, also of Ballinderry, was generous to those in need. Alice Leslie remembers meeting a stranger on the bus who recognised her as a Bickerstaff and told her of her grandmother’s generosity. ‘Many’s a time I would have gone to school hungry had it not been for calling into her home where I shared breakfast before going on to my classes,’ he said.

Every month the grandmother would to be taken by horse-driven cart to Glenavy to do her shopping in a local store which stocked everything ‘from foodstuffs and bales of cloth to coffins ‘.
‘In spring and autumn grandmother would have bought webs of cloth for the dresses of the daughters and suits for the sons, with the help of a local dressmaker, Ms Patterson of Lodge Corner.

‘I can remember my mother, many years later, unrolling a web of the satinised cotton material to make curtains for our home, then in Glenavy,’ said Alice. The shop in Glenavy which Alice remembers, and where as much as a ton of coal might be bought for winter warmth, still stands in Glenavy’s main street. This monthly shop would have been supplemented by weekly calls of traders with top-up suppliers of items such as flour and paraffin.

The Bickerstaff family consisted of two sons and six daughters who were, in order of birth: - Andrew, Mary, Sarah, Anne, Lavinia, Harriet, Ellen and Joseph.

• Andrew (1851 - ?) was a favourite of a local gentleman Church of Ireland cleric, the Reverend Smith, and his mother encouraged him to train as a butler and follow him to Dublin when he was appointed to a new parish in that City. Alice Leslie suggests that his decision not to go may have been prompted by the jealousy of the clergyman’s housekeeper anxious to protect her own position. In 1870 the age of 18 Andrew immigrated to Montana, USA, where he died in his eighties never returning to his homeland.
  

• Mary Elizabeth (1868 – 1918) married John Frazer who had a connection from with the Isle of Mull in Scotland and they had a family of four – Sarah (Sadie) Scott, Tom and John.

• Sarah (1871 - ?) married Scott McNeilly from Glenavy, a schoolteacher with financial acumen who became a stockbroker and ‘bought a whole street’ in Belfast. They had a family of three, Alice, Gordon and May (who died as a child when the parents were on the way home from American- her body was embalmed at sea and brought home for burial.) Alice went on to marry a German with the surname Meithmaeser, who designed and manufactured artificial limbs. The couple took up residence in Boston. (A daughter, Doris, lives in New Jersey).
  

• Ann Rebecca (1873 - ?) married William Lavery from Glenavy, a tram driver with a great love of gardening. They had a family of three, Violet, John and William. John and wife May lived in Millar Street, Belfast, and had a son Raymond and daughter, Gwen. William joined the shipyard firm of Harland and Wolff and served in it until he travelled to New Zealand before returning to marry Florence (Flossie) who died in 1949.
  

• Lavinia (1875 - ?) married Thomas Henry Duffield, a soldier serving with the Army and stationed at Holywood, County Down. Colour Sergeant Duffield, of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers came from Queen’s County (now Leix) in the South of Ireland. He had a sister in Roland Place, Holywood and served the regiment for 12 years until 1894. A first marriage to Isabella Scott in 1887 saw the birth of a daughter, Violet, the following year. His second marriage to Lavinia was of short duration due to Thomas’ problem with drink although there was a son, Andrew Henry Duffield, who was brought up by Lavinia and her sister Harriet, who set up a guest house at 19 Castlereagh Place, Belfast. After her divorce from Thomas Henry Duffield, Lavinia met and married a Scot, John Shaw, and lived for most of the remainder of her life in Scotland before returning to (now) Northern Ireland to live with her sister at the topmost end of Castlereagh Road with a niece, Alice Leslie (see later). John was a cousin of Joe Abernethy, brother of photographer David of Lawrence Street, Belfast, whose photographers of various members of the Bickerstaff connection adorn the family album.
  

• Harriet (1877) married Henry Ross McCluggage – they had no family.

• Eleanor (Ellen) Ann (1879 – 1960) married William Leslie and had one daughter, Alice, who moved from Pigeonstown to Belfast and worked as an assistant in a shoe shop owned by a Mr Flemming and based at the bottom end of Castlereagh Road. Alice remembers the big occasion of her childhood being a train trip from Glenavy to Belfast especially prior to Christmas and the excitement of seeing the Donegall Square stores and others, such as Riddell’s, lit up for the season. ‘It was like fairyland to me,’ she said. In the summer time she and her mother would accompany her father to his favourite resort, Warrenpoint. ‘There were no restaurants in the town in those days but there were a few houses where one could buy a meal and we came to know one.' Alice was later to live with Aunt Harriet at her home at Castlereagh before retiring to Crumlin, where she continues to live, following the death of Harriet. (Alice is the true chronicler of the Bickerstaff family, a descendant whose considerable memory and knowledge of events is vital to the compilation of this essay.)
  

• John Joseph (1881 – 1949), the youngest member of the Bickerstaff family emigrated to Boston where he joined the Church of Christian Science and later married Deborah, a Roman Catholic.

Religion

The original Bickerstaff family belonged to the St Aidan’s parish, Church of Ireland, Glenavy. Ellen, William and Alice worshipped in the Tunney church, attached to St Aidan’s, and some thirty years ago Scott Frazer, a grandson of Joseph and Alice, donated a communion table to the church in memory of the Bickerstaffs and Frazer families.

Later, Alice Leslie attended the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Crumlin while continuing to be a member of St Aidan’s parish. Alice believes the Evangelical Presbyterians like those who belong to the Church of Ireland are more tolerant and more cross-community minded
than Presbyterians generally.

George Bickerstaff of Salt Lake City became an editor of a Mormon journal and invited Alice to join him following active correspondence between the two of them. Alice declined the offer in order to look after her mother and later, aunts, in Ireland.