Marriott
Louis Marriott, Contributor
This is the 34th in a series of articles reliving the years up to Independence by a journalist/broadcaster whose childhood and maturation coincided with Jamaica's.
WITHIN a couple of days of my arrival at Jamaica College (JC), my housemaster, Roy Sparkes, in one of his more engaging moods, when he would not smile, told us about a village distinguished by a railway halt near his native Welsh home. The village bore the longest place name in the world, comprising 58 letters. The name was Llanfair-pwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Mr. Sparkes pronounced it Llan-vire-pooll-guin-gill-go-ger-u-gueern-drob-ooll-llandus- ilio-gogo-goch in his lilting Welsh brogue distinct from the Standard English he normally spoke. Our code name for the railway halt was Lanfire. If Mr. Sparkes entered the dormitory with a stern countenance, we would ask him to recite the name and he would oblige us two or three times. But if he entered wearing a smile, we knew - most of us - that we should make no request and hope that he would go away quickly. For a smile on his face invariably signalled that he was in a nasty mood and would pounce on the most trivial excuse to put us to stand for half an hour under the light at the top of the banister, or give us an "imposition" to write a hundred lines with alternate words in pen and pencil, or even administer four or six strokes of his cane.
The rule book specified most modes of punishment, but there were some that were peculiar to boarding and some improvisations by creative masters. The standard modes were imposition, detention, and, of course, caning. Caning naturally stood tall in the hierarchy of punishment. One could go straight to the cane, depending on the gravity of the offence, the mood of the master or his relationship with his victim. But a caning could also be earned cumulatively - for example, by collecting three detentions in a week or three "stripes" for work or conduct demerits, or failing to deliver an imposition originally and on doubling and redoubling of the number of lines demanded.
After Mama brought all her children together to pray that I would not get myself expelled from JC, I pledged to myself that I would be a good boy and would continue to make the family proud as I had done by winning the scholarship. I did walk the straight and narrow at JC, but somehow always managed to be in trouble for some petty reason. Interestingly, I escaped scot-free for what might be considered the most serious offence I committed. It happened in my first term.
I very early perfected mimicking the voices and mannerisms of a number of masters and entertained my peers with that pastime. I also practised copying the teachers' signatures with deadly accuracy. A young master named Harvey Ennevor, a recent graduate of JC, inspected an exercise book full of the signatures, with which I amused my form mates. His own signature was included. Mr. Ennevor rebuked me sternly, warned me about the seriousness of forgery, and confiscated the book after extracting a promise from me never again to sign any name other than my own.
CHIEF
One Sunday afternoon, early in my first term at JC, I was playing a noisy illegal game of cricket on a lawn behind the Assembly Hall near St. Dunstan's Chapel. Suddenly, a voice said in a hushed shout, like a stage aside, "Chief!" Chief was our behind-his-back name for the Headmaster, Hugo Chambers. The players scattered. I saw Mr. Chambers "out of a corner of my eye" walking from the direction of the chapel. I figured it would be safe to run to Simms House and get lost, for surely he wouldn't remember me from our interview months before, and there was a strict code at JC against tale-bearing, which the Headmaster and his staff fully supported.
I decided to go the whole way. I took out a change of clothes, ran to the detached bathroom behind the Simms building and started showering. I hardly had time to apply soap when a small boy announced outside the door: "Marriott, the Headmaster says you're to report to his office immediately."
"Bend over," said the Chief later, indicating a chair that I had to rest my hands on. "I'm going to give you four of the best." Strokes were always "of the best". They also came only in even numbers - four, six, or eight. No one ever got three, five, seven or nine strokes. "HC" (another name for Hugo Chambers) told me that my offence really warranted six of the best, but he was letting me off with four because it was my first offence.
He put the lid on the incident with a self-satisfied little headmasterly smirk on his face and the parting words: "You thought I wouldn't recognise you, didn't you?"
I could live with the occasional caning from the Headmaster or even my housemaster, but I deeply resented being caned by prefects, and that happened often. I could never understand the system allowing 17- and 18-year-olds to cane other boys. The four senior prefects administered strokes in rotation, starting with the head boy and going in order of seniority. Therefore, all four delivered one stroke each for "four of the best", the head boy and his deputy did second strokes for six, and all four repeated for "eight of the best". They clearly competed among themselves for the most painful strokes. There was no doubt in my mind that they targeted me. The Sunday afternoon caning by the Chief was the only one I got from the Headmaster. I was rarely caned by my housemaster. Yet I was one of the two most caned boys in the school.
The other frequent victim was a boy named "Ducks" White, who was born in Panama of Jamaican parents. "Ducks" was in his second year at JC and was the bell boy. I thought it a paradox that a boy deemed to deserve so many canings was considered responsible enough to regulate our lives every day from early morning to our going to roost.
"Ducks" and I shared reminiscences about canings. He also taught me how to pad my posterior properly to avoid detection.
BULLYING
It was ironic that although officially the school was against bullying it allowed such gross institutional bullying as practised by the prefects with their cane. I enjoyed some protection against ordinary bullying. After news of my scholarship, I got messages to visit the offices of two prominent PNP members. William Seivwright, owner of Huntington's Bakery in Cross Roads and Wills Isaacs, who ran a commission agency at the corner of Temple Lane and Harbour Street, both gave me money to help me on my way. Isaacs further told me that he had instructed his son Voonie to protect me from bullying. I never relied on that promise, but one day when a bigger boy was taking advantage of me Voonie gave him a sound thrashing.
According to our rule book, three sports were compulsory for all boys. In the Hillary (Easter) term, we did track and field athletics. In the Trinity term between, between Easter and the long mid-year holidays, cricket held sway and in the Michaelmas term, ending with the Christmas holidays, football was the game.
JC had a proud sporting tradition and was especially strong in track and field athletics and football. On sports day, featuring the elite athletes of the various houses, the entire school was involved in a house competition based on the achievements of all the boys. The popular competition was called "Standards and Specials". Standards were set for all the events, according to age classification. Each boy achieving the basic standard for an event, earned one point for his house. He could earn a second point for the event, a Special, by attaining a higher level. The aggregate of all points earned by all boys in all events then determined which house won the Standards and Specials competition.
There was also a Cross-Country competition involving all boys. The junior boys did a two-mile trip via a watercourse that ran through the back of the school premises, east through Hope Gardens, then onto Gordon Town Road to the Kintyre "Red Bridge" and return. The seniors ran a four-mile circuit that took them through the watercourse into Hope Gardens, then south by the Water Commission filter plant to Old Hope Road, across the road into the Mona estate where cattle grazed under Bombay mango trees, down to Mona Road, then west to Bonner Pen Lane, north to Old Hope Road, across the road, north along Ravinia Road, reconnecting with the watercourse and running east to the point of exit from the school, re-entering at that point and closing with a westward sprint to the finish. As with Standards and Specials, all of us had to run Cross-Country and all figured in the tally to determine the winning house.
Louis Marriott is a journalist and broadcaster, a former BBC producer/presenter and Press Secretary to the Prime Minister of Jamaica.
