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?’
