Cabra History.Com

John Burke with his sister Anne

I was repeating sixth class for the second time when some of the lads came in one day with a brazier that they had found on the railway embankment and they started throwing it around the class and it got caught up on the kind of the wire struts that went across the class feeding the electricity cables into the lights. Our teacher that year was Mister Drummond. He came into the class, seen the brazier hanging out of the thing and nearly had a seizure. He rounded up the usual suspects, along with myself of course and wanted to slap us for it. I was one of the ones who he obviously didn’t like and the thing that was wrong there was that I had no hand, act or part in the brazier. I wouldn’t even touch it, I was afraid I’d get a disease from it. I didn’t know where it had been and I wouldn’t let him slap me. So we all went out of the class and we sat up in front of the gates of Dalymount and we refused to go back into school unless he accepted that I wasn’t responsible and a few others that he was blaming. We wouldn’t tell who done it but we were willing to give an undertaken that we hadn’t touched it. So eventually there was some kind of a deal worked out with Mister O’Brien the principle that we would go into another class for the rest of the time. But then we were let back into the class eventually. I think they found out who the real perpetrators were. But we got no apology.