Kilkishen National School: Group photograph c.1945
Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 3:37 am
This is a photo of the children attending Kilkishen National School, taken in about 1945.
They include my father, Patrick Cahill (third row from the front, first left) and his younger brother, John (front row, seventh from the left).
The gentleman standing ominously just behind my father is Mr Pat O’Connor, the School's headmaster.
Dad has a number of stories about Mr O'Connor. He says he was a generous man: if one of the pupils was too poor to buy shoes he would buy them a pair. But he was pretty hard with the strap, which prompted an unflattering poem about him:
“Kilkishen school is a fine old school
It’s made from bricks and plaster.
The only one we do not like
Is O’Connor, the grey-haired master.”
I remember when Dad received a letter from Home in the early 1980s saying that O'Connor had passed away. Although he'd been on the receiving end of O'Connor wrath occasionally, he was sad to hear the man that taught him to read and write had passed.
Generally, I would not post photographs of people who are still living (the youngest person shown would be in their late 60s by now).
But, in my experience, photos from this time and place have generally not survived and so I thought it best to circulate it now as there must be many Kilkishen people who'd find it interesting. I'll leave it to the site's Administrators to determine.
I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who can identify the other people in the photo and am happy to send anyone who wants it a higher resolution copy.
Regards, JPC
They include my father, Patrick Cahill (third row from the front, first left) and his younger brother, John (front row, seventh from the left).
The gentleman standing ominously just behind my father is Mr Pat O’Connor, the School's headmaster.
Dad has a number of stories about Mr O'Connor. He says he was a generous man: if one of the pupils was too poor to buy shoes he would buy them a pair. But he was pretty hard with the strap, which prompted an unflattering poem about him:
“Kilkishen school is a fine old school
It’s made from bricks and plaster.
The only one we do not like
Is O’Connor, the grey-haired master.”
I remember when Dad received a letter from Home in the early 1980s saying that O'Connor had passed away. Although he'd been on the receiving end of O'Connor wrath occasionally, he was sad to hear the man that taught him to read and write had passed.
Generally, I would not post photographs of people who are still living (the youngest person shown would be in their late 60s by now).
But, in my experience, photos from this time and place have generally not survived and so I thought it best to circulate it now as there must be many Kilkishen people who'd find it interesting. I'll leave it to the site's Administrators to determine.
I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who can identify the other people in the photo and am happy to send anyone who wants it a higher resolution copy.
Regards, JPC