School Day's over

A NOTE FROM FR. FOGARTY

So, found this the other day too and it made me giggle. It is dated 21st November 1912. My grandfather Ned was in trouble for poaching salmon in Tullow, Co. Carlow. For the record, a national schools monitor is responsible for sweeping floors and attending to the fires in the classrooms. It was my grandfather’s first job. He was 16 years old.

Edward Hutton is a monitor in the national schools here and I am glad to be in the position to say that he is a young fellow of exemplary character - and I am quite satisfied that the trouble into which he has become involved was not caused by malice or a tendency to violate the law, but by downright innocence and simplicity.

Tullow

21. XI. 12

Fr. Fogarty

Ned went on to train and qualify as a national school teacher, settling eventually in Rialto Boys School, Dublin, where he taught from 1922 until he retired in 1960. When he first went to Dublin in 1922 (not an uneventful year), he rented 10 Rutledge Terrace with his sister Peig and his mother, Kate. Sometime in 1925, a 16 year old girl was sent to Ned’s classroom by her mother to complain about her younger brother being chastised. Weeks later a complaint was made to the principle that one of his teachers was seen frequently waving from an upstairs window at a passing girl. Ned was moved to a classroom at the back of the school, but the romance continued. Ned and my Nana, Carmel, were married in 1931. 10 Rutledge Terrace is the house my father was brought up in. The Hutton family rented it for over 70 years.

NB. It is my Uncle Eamonn who tells me all these things, so thanks very much to him!