Message Board

The Photo
The photo was taken at the Christmas Concert, 1960, organised by a most talentless, unkind and possibly evil nun, Mother Theresa, who had taken over the school some 18 months beforehand. Our lives, or at least my life, of scholars in the making with Mother Joseph, reading of Icarus, painting his Fall and discussing "Pride" was replaced by rote repetition from the a Catholic Catechism. Lives of trying to invent ways of doing sums and doing the hardest sums we could, discussing what sums could be used for was replaced by 13, 14, up to 19 times tables being learned by rote. The madness was reinforced by a Reign of Terror and fear which would have done justice to Robespierre, save that it seemingly had no point - there was nothing that we could understand that was to be achieved. To Anne Souster's left hung one of the canes which were so often and so senselessly used: above her head, the line of numbers was used in our "times-table" training. In the picture above, the horizontal lower arms and the joined hands, which we were drilled to do, has always been the reminder that the apparent happiness of this picture was quite shallow.

Paul Green - cex389@coventry.ac.uk
I attended the convent from 1961 to its closure in 1965, then aged 9.  I attended with my brothers, Maurice Green (age 10 in 1965) and Robert Green (age 8). We walked to school from Malvern Street in Stapenhill, and later from St Peters St where my mother ran a shop. I recall a frighteningly strict regime at the convent of basic tuition within a narrow curriculum. I took solace in being able to remember my multiplication tables, learnt by rote, but then struggling with my reading having never had any structured or directed assistance in how to improve it. Most of the days seemed long, with little variation in format. Maths, English, religion, history and sometimes geography. Never art or PE. Unusual events punctuated this tedium; using seeds from rose hips in the rose garden as itching ‘powder’, being allowed on the front lawn on dry summer days, tobogganing down the drive on a tea tray in icy weather, never daring to use the outside toilets, the smell of the canteen at lunch, being asked to go and pick apples from the orchard in summer and  later the resulting toffee apples (1d each), pretending to read (even though I couldn’t) because raising your eyes from the book resulted in a strike on the palm of the hand from the cane.. I continued saying my prayers up to the age of about 20 as I remained frightened of the consequences of not doing so. This was not the result of a rational education.

On leaving the convent I went to the Holy Rosary Catholic School in Winshill. This seemed like a summer holiday camp in comparison. However, in the next two years I relaxed, learnt very little and crashed my 11+. Maybe Carmichael and Theresa had their motives. My brother Maurice is living in Stapenhill and working as a psychiatric nurse. Robert tragically died in a road accident in early 1988. I now work as  an academic at Coventry University. I married Ann and have two kids, Charlotte 16 and Jackson 15. I live in Clifton Campville, 10 miles south of Burton, and I’d delighted to hear from anyone who remembers me in those ‘halcyon’ days.

Moira Johnson -
Moira is alive and assumedly well and living under the nom de plume of Moira Gibson and not as ?????, as I had incorrectly cast her in the Christmas Concert photo. She has taken on the role of the President of the Mother Theresa Appreciation Society - in exchange for ceasing to be just a collection of question marks. But, no doubt, she still remains an enigma to all who know and love her.

Juliet Stonier  JULIET1658@aol.com
I would appreciate a high resolution scan of the photo from 1960 as I am in the process of making a scrapbook for my kids and future grandkids!!   I appreciated hearing from you!  That photo and your remarks brought back memories.  I remember the cane, however, I think I only got it once!   I was rather a ‘goody goody’ back then!!  I remember Mother Joseph and Sister Gerard very fondly and thought Sr. (was she a Mother?) Theresa to be very strict.  Wasn’t there a nun called Sr. Anthony too? I went to a Presentation Convent boarding school in Matlock for a while, till O levels, then went to Burton High for a year before deciding A levels were not for me!  I went to Burton Tech for a year and then emigrated to Australia in 1969 where I lived for 3 years.  Met my husband, Bruce, there.  He is American so we ended up here in California.  We have two “children” -21 and 19, both currently at university.

I come back to England pretty frequently as my whole family is still there, and I work in the travel business.  My parents just made the big move from Tatenhill (where they had lived for 50 years) to Barton.  My younger brother, Nick, still lives in Tatenhill and my younger sister, Rowena, lives on the Wirral, near Liverpool.    Juliet Schaefer (nee Stonier)

Rachael O'Hare  rachael@kenelmscottage.freeserve.co.uk
I too was a pupil at the Stapenhill Convent run by the Presentation Order of Nuns. I was six and half years of age when I first attended school. My mother was at pains to remind me daily that she drove 40 miles a day to achieve that, as we lived in Melbourne some ten miles away in the southern tip of Derbyshire. As well as a blind faith my mother placed in the Irish nuns, there was another reason entirely for this pilgrimage, which related to my father, this only dawned on me several years later. In the meantime a zealot-like determination propelled us on, through many villages strewn with cow muck, to Stapenhill daily, by-passing doubtless several suitable primary schools, on the way.  I was to be one of the lucky ones at a private school costing £6 a year.  My father told me that he was paying twice for me since the income tax system did not permit opt outs, if you educated your child privately. Then he inspected the rot on the sills of the A40 advancing rapidly, and attributed to the village of Milton, particularly, and always referred to as Cow Town.

In 1962 I  should  have been in the kindergarten class.  Instead I arrived in Sister Carmichael’s class in 1963, to tables. In some ways, I was fortunate because I was good at them.  Recognising numerical patterns was a game I had an insatiable thirst for.  The posters that festooned the room were for me an interesting diversion, although never as attractive as the kindergarten next to our classroom, where they drew and painted,  I longed to be there.

Instead, I was shifted prematurely to the cabin that was Mother Theresa’s eleven plus class.  The stovepipe at the back of your photograph was to be my station for a year.  This was not a promotion. I could not read.  As such the dilemma I posed for them was answered, with a lectern and a large Bible full of tiny print, a pencil, and paper. Take these things add one ‘fat head’ pupil and leave to copy out page by page for the remaining year.  While I did not learn to read this way, I do remember the break-through day when, I managed to copy a huge piece of the text, perfectly.  Letter for meaningless letter of it, for neither had I grasped the alphabet.   (Phonetics remains an unexcavated site.)    I remember the writing was beautiful and I was so proud of this achievement despite not having an idea about its meaning.   You see it was beautifully, PRESENTED. Now I could follow the line of a sentence with my eye,  even though I was quite determined not to follow the party one.

Mother Theresa did live up to her fearsome reputation.   She ignored me, in this regime it was merciful blessing.   Standing at my lectern, copying out, I was always careful to be busy.  I was delighted to miss out the Catholic equivalent of Mao’s Little Red Book, the Catechism, which I knew instinctively to be propaganda.  I could therefore revert to animal like behaviour, myself at anytime. Punching a little boy, called Malachi full in the nose, one playtime, I was instant with the tomato soup for lunch joke, when I saw the bright red blood gushing out.  Remorse and malice were not emotions well known to me then, however high spirits were always my downfall.

Back in Sister Carmichael’s class, children were young and naive, and could be easily baited to provide a good laugh for her and us, her stooges.  We were freely encouraged to laugh at fellow pupils.  I’ll always remember the uneasy reluctance, of that class to laugh at a new child, who returned from the loo, and unwisely choose to confide in Sister Carmichael, that she had a sore bottom. In hushed tones in her ear, naturally. I remember her horrified anger and the way the stiff wimple dug into her forehead, seeming to heighten her anger, and then something of a smirk on her bloomed on her ruddy cheeks, as she realised the snare she could set by demanded over and over in an ever-louder voice:

“What did you say, louder please,  I want the whole class to hear  what you say.” ...... I caught it,  but Carmichael was not satisfied.  Announcing in a booming voice, at the crescendo of our embarrassment and her pent up theatrical frustration:   “This child says she has a sore bottom.”  Silence ensued - “Well go on all of you laugh.”

My memories are not seasoned by any pain, save for that of spending seemingly ages waiting at the end of each day, on the footpath outside the school, peering down the hill waiting for the black roof of the green A40, (rusting sills) to appear. Someone else owned an identical car but with a white roof. They would play a cheap trick of being there on time as I came out.

Greater importance was placed on the uniform than any other matter, in summer we wore a lovely straw panama, green blazer, fawn socks, and green and white striped dresses, in winter the boater changed for a green beret a gym slip of inverted box pleats and yellow shirt and striped tie.   PRESENTATION was much more important always than content.

I remember the day when J F Kennedy died there. I remember the nuns all smelt of pepper which knowing to be hot, I fancied they took plenty of it in their food, to keep their tempers flaring like furnaces.  However in all my school days we never saw them eat, because our food was dire,  and their’s … well we will never know.   At least I could eat when you returned home. This option, was soon to be removed from me, for the school closed, and after a year at the state primary, my mother discovered that the Presentation Order also had a school in Matlock, 36 miles away, so despite their recent move to Burton, off I went to board with them. This was when eight years of pain began.