Docherty

Welcome to "Docherty" a podcast that delves into the untold stories of our past, revealing the complex tapestry of human experiences that shape our lives. I'm your host, Jeff Price, and today, we embark on a journey back to 1961, to the hallowed grounds of St Cuthbert's Grammar School.

In this riveting tale, we encounter John Paul Docherty, a formidable force in the school's hierarchy, a modern-day rottweiler enforcing his own rule over the younger boys. Set against the backdrop of post-war Britain, Docherty's reign of terror unfolds in the corridors and playgrounds, where power and pain intertwine.

Join me as we unravel the layers of Docherty's legacy, exploring the complex dynamics of power, pain, and resilience in the crucible of adolescence. This is a story of survival, unexpected alliances, and the enduring impact of a moment that shaped the lives of those involved. Welcome to "Docherty" where the echoes of the past reverberate into the present.

Transcript

Docherty

In 1961, I was eleven and I had managed somehow to pass my eleven plus and joined the other first year pupils at St Cuthbert's Grammar School. The school was ruled over by Father Cassidy. A strict disciplinarian who kept a tight control over the teachers as well as the pupils. 

In the playground we fought the Second World War over and over again, the injustices, the tragedies and the mistakes. In that fermenting soup of seething pre-teenage anxieties came John Paul Docherty, the rottweiler of our year. He was the cruel Prisoner of War camp Commandant, we had all seen in the movies. He strutted around arrogant and confident that all who saw him feared him. His was the power of life and death. He was the same as all the other bullies that had policed the schoolyards of Europe before the War. We first year boys were canon fodder in his grandiose plans.

He rarely attended lessons but was always hanging around, living off the dinner money of the other boys and scrounging cigarettes from the teachers.

Docherty was taller and broader than any other first year pupil. He had hands like shovels and the IQ of a sprout. Despite his size, his grey school uniform hung loosely around his body. It had become worn and shabby long before his elder brother handed it down to him. It was the curse of large poor Catholic families and of being the youngest child. 

Bullying came naturally to Docherty. His older brothers had beaten and teased him and he wanted to pass the hurt and the humiliation on to someone else. His intention that cold winter morning, like most mornings, was to grab someone, put his arm around their neck, choke them for a while, then as they hung limp in the noose of his arm lock, he would remove money, sweets or any other currency of the playground he could find. It was his daily routine. 

He was fairly arbitrary about whom he stole from, the chances were, that you lost your dinner money only once or twice a term. You didn't struggle, in fact if you saw him coming, you could hand over the money and save yourself a choking. Even at eleven I understood how power and pain were mixed together. It is always easier to bend the knee to a bully than to stand up to them. Where is the profit in fighting someone who can knock you down with a flick of their wrist. All my life, people had been beating me up. Docherty was just another on the list. I was the small weedy bespectacled boy, whose nose always dripped and whose face was always covered in spots. I might as well have had the words “Victim” tattooed on my forehead.

"Giss ya money, ya bloody tosser." Docherty spat the words at me. He expected no reply and even if I had given one, he would not be listening. On that fateful morning I should have handed over my money, but his greeting came too late and my reaction too slow. He grabbed me from behind and gripped my throat in the crook of his arm; I should have stood still and not struggled but history was conspiring against me; the November morning of fate had joined forces with the icy pavement of destiny. I felt my right knee buckle and my body move forward as he grabbed my neck. I twisted around causing both of us to lose our balance and as I dropped to one knee, Docherty tumbled over my back and flipped over in mid air. It was one of those moments in life when time suddenly slows and you see an event that lasted only a fraction of a second captured in slow motion. 

He landed awkwardly in front of me and at the same time sustained a glancing blow to the side of his head from the upturned pavement stones that marked the boundary of the schoolyard. I thought at this point that I had moved beyond a simple chocking. I had caused pain to Docherty and I was as good as dead.

"Fight, fight" The cry went up across the yard amongst the runny nosed spectators. The pack saw the fox, wounded before them. Boys came from every corner of the school. Most expected to see Doherty’s next victim lying helpless on the ground. At first they stood in shocked silence. Then someone said,

"Doherty’s down" 

"Doherty’s dead" Another cried.

Two hundred boys jostled around, looking firstly at the limp muscular frame of the Goliath of St Cuthberts, then they looked back at the stick insect in glasses that stood over him. As they tried to work out how this miracle had taken place, Docherty stirred, the first ranks jumped back to be pushed forward again by those behind trying to see what was going on.

Docherty looked up at me, trying to make sense of what had just happened. His expression changed from confusion to rage and then to the bemused face of a small child unable to understand pain. A small trickle of crimson blood ran down the side of his face. He brushed it off with the torn cuff of his shirt spreading the blood into a red smear across his cheek.

The crowd suddenly fell silent as the headmaster pushed his way through. 

"My office now." Shouted Father Cassidy.

Father Cassidy was dressed in the long black robes of a senior Priest. He appeared to glide rather than walk across the playground. His normal grey pallor was spattered with throbbing blue veins that criss crossed his forehead. 

He had seen the fracas from his office window and he saw his moment had arrived. This was a chance to put Docherty in his place in the same way he had older Docherty brothers.

"You two, my office now." He repeated. With a small wave of his hand, he summoned four, sixth form Prefects to pick up Docherty and frog-march him to his study. The Prefects in their distinctive black blazers were the Gestapo in Father Cassidy’s Third Reich and so, the hierarchy of terror was established. 

Father Cassidy knew, because forty years of teaching had told him, that once Docherty had lost face in front of the entire school, especially at the hands of someone half his size and weight, he would not give him any more trouble as long as he quickly asserted his control. A caning for Docherty would seal his fate. The troublemaker would be broken.

I hoped that in the confusion I would slip through the net and merge back into the crowd but then I suddenly felt a sharp pain as Father Cassidy grabbed my ear. He dragged me along behind him as he followed the shabby figure of Docherty.

“Please Sir, It wasn’t me Sir, It was Docherty Sir, he was trying to steal my dinner money.” I protested but I knew that Father Cassidy was not listening. Listening was not a quality he had ever needed in his teaching career. The more I protested the harder he pulled at my ear and when I fell silent the pressure decreased. It was a simple lesson easily learned.

Docherty and I stood together in silence at the foot of the stairs that led to the Headmasters office. The Prefects had left us to consider our fate and Father Cassidy had gone ahead to prepare for our arrival in his office. Even if he was in a hurry he would always make you wait at the foot of the steps. Fear was a much more powerful weapon than pain. We had stood many times and looked up the dimly lit passageway flanked by dark oak panels and a heavy brass handrail. Both of us were resigned to our fate. 

"Want a Ciggy?" Docherty said, taking a packet of five Woodbines from his pocket and offering me one.

I looked around terrified that a Prefect might have seen this small act of kindness and we would be in much deeper trouble. 

"No thanks" I said. " Better put them away. Someone will see you and then we will be more in the shit than we are already" 

"OK" Docherty said. "Sorry. Anyway, I didn’t do anything. Cassidy has always had it in for me. I had four Brothers in the school before me and all of them got it in the neck from Cassidy. He doesn’t like our family. He just picks on us."

Docherty’s brothers were legends in the school. The tales of their fights not just with other pupils but with the teachers were often told by us smaller boys as we huddled like penguins in the corner of the school yard. 

He held his hand out to me and I shook it as firmly as I could. Docherty had no great affection for me but we both knew who the real enemy was and in that silent moment we buried our differences. 

“Come” Father Cassidy commanded in stentorian tones.

Then with our heads bowed, we climbed together the thirteen steps to Father Cassidy’s office. The staircase had taken us into the oldest part of the school. It was an Edwardian House that was home to a number of the priests who taught at St Cuthberts. 

The main lounge that overlooked the schoolyard had been converted into an office. It had a large fireplace over which hung an impressive collection of instruments of torture that every pupil knew and feared. The very sight of them would send a cold shiver through the heart of the toughest of the playground recidivists. 

Father Cassidy was a man who took cruelty to young boys seriously. He was a seasoned professional punisher. He looked both of us in the eye at the same time. We were mesmerised as he turned his head towards the mantelpiece and the collection of canes that were displayed like duelling swords. They ranged in thickness from a stout rigid stick to a thin willow wand. 

He had turned these simple pieces of wood into a series of painful beatings of devastating impact ranging from the uncomfortable sting of a wasp to the equivalent of a branding iron on your bare flesh. He reasoned, if each beating was the same, where was the deterrent factor? Once you had crossed the pain threshold, you would know what to expect and your fear would be diminished. Father Cassidy was not about to let that happen in his school. 

He pointed to the leather chesterfield that stood in front of the fireplace. With heads bowed we shuffled across the floor and stood in front of the settee, unable to keep our eyes from looking up at the canes displayed over the fireplace. My stomach tightened and I could feel the perspiration running down my back. The room had a strange musty stench of a thousand frightened small boys who had stood like me before this Priest of Darkness. His black robes and bucolic expression seemed to us to represent not God but the Devil himself.

Father Cassidy stood in silence for a moment and considered his choices, he could vary the punishment by simply choosing a different cane to the last one he used. He could then change the point of impact. If each stroke was delivered to the same spot each time then the pain was much greater. But the method he saved for special occasions like this was his speciality, the whiplash. 

He told Docherty and I to bend over the back of the Chesterfield together. We both realised at that moment that he was about to do something that was rarely attempted, a tandem whiplash. A tricky manoeuvre only for the extremely skilled. If it was not executed exactly right, then one or both of the victims would get off lightly and that was not the idea. What Father Cassidy wanted, was for us, not only to be punished but to share the humiliation as well.

He drew back his arm lifting the cane brandishing it like a rapier, swirling it above his head. He then brought it down on our backsides with pinpoint accuracy but at the precise moment the cane was a fraction of an inch away from impact, he pulled it back. The thin willow wand cracked and whip lashed back, striking both of us on the return, with a terrifying speed and a searing pain that took our breath away and caused us both to cry out.

As each stroke rained down on us and as our bodies spasmed in fear and pain, I looked across at Docherty and saw the agony written across his face and the terror in his eyes. I reached over and gently squeezed his hand. He looked back up, the tears streaming down his face.

Moments later it was over and we both stood up. 

“Let that be a lesson to you.” Father Cassidy barked “Now get out.” 

As we stumbled down the stairs, pain in every step. Dochery turned and looked at me. “You tell anyone I cried and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”

Docherty never spoke to me again, but never tried to steal my dinner money either and I never told a soul… until now.

© Jeff Price

January 2024