Ellen Bridget (Eileen) Martin (b. Oct 1901, d. 15 May 1997)
Eileen Martin
Ellen Bridget (Eileen) Martin (daughter of William Martin and Bridget McSheffrey) was born Oct 1901 in Derry City, Northern Ireland, and died 15 May 1997 in London. She married James Patrick Boyle on 19 Jan 1931 in Church of St Columba, Long Tower, Derry City, Northern Ireland120, son of James Boyle.
Notes for Ellen Bridget (Eileen) Martin: Billy's Boys
Liam Martin
St Malachy's College was a bleak red brick building on the Antrim Road in Belfast. It was operated by the priests of the Down and Connor Diocese and served as a "junior seminary", providing a secondary education for Catholic boys in Belfast and the surrounding areas. Of the approximately 800 pupils, about 150 were full-time boarders. They slept in cubicles in large dormitories, ate in a single refectory, worked for three hours every night in a large study hall and used two brick-hard football pitches and a gymnasium as recreation areas.
I joined my two brothers (Barney and Dickie), there as a boarder in 1948 to participate in the delights of further education in Northern Ireland. Instruction was provided with the customary and liberal assistance of the cane, the buildings were provided with minimal heating in winter but the most unique aspect of the whole operation was the food fed to the students.
Each morning, two nuns would arrive through a connecting door to the adjacent Mater Hospital to supervise the kitchen ladies in the preparation of the student's fodder. This band of dedicated workers had the unique ability to transform perfectly good Northern Ireland horticultural produce into pig-swill and serve it to the students in the refectory three times a day, seven days a week. One of their specialties was the morning porridge. If it had been prepared in the morning it might have tasted fine but this procedure would have interfered with the nun's morning Mass and prayer sessions. The solution to this problem was simple - prepare the porridge the evening before and leave it to simmer all night over a gas ring. The result was a gooey mass of gruel infused with the odour of burnt grain that tasted awful. The choice for the students was pretty stark, eat the mess for breakfast or starve for the rest of the day.
Every year there was a student strike to protest against the quality of the food. Some senior boys would organise the event and on a particular day the whole student body refused to eat the food supplied. This occasion provided the college President with an opportunity to earn his managerial spurs by the manner in which he handled the subsequent fallout. There would be a meeting between the prefects and the President and the food would improve until the end of term. When the students returned at the beginning of the next term it was noticeable that the strike leaders were no longer at the College. Their parents had been informed, in the interval, that their son's presence at St Malachy's was no longer desirable. We usually never saw them again and the food returned to its usual inedible standards.
The Martin boys had a secret weapon that enabled them to survive the Antrim Road Gulag - they had an Aunt who lived in the Falls Road, whose son, Jim Boyle, also attended the college as a "Day Boy". Every Friday an invitation was extended and the three boys obtained a "pass out" from the Dean of Discipline to visit Auntie Eileen. They traveled the three miles up the Falls Road by bus and decamped at Andersontown. They had a cracking feed in the Boyle household with a real family and returned several hours later to the College, ready to face another week of nun's fodder. Eileen Boyle was a sister of the boy's father, Billy Martin and one of seven children born to William Martin (Senior) and Bridget (McSheffrey) of Derry City. When the boys lost their mother to tuberculosis in 1940 at the ages of 5, 7 and 9 and their father went to live in England the boys took up residence with their maternal grandmother in Ballymena (a great Christian Irishwomen). Aunt Eileen developed an active interest in the welfare of the "orphans" at St Malachy's College. The three Martin locusts ensured that the Boyle siblings ate sparingly on Sundays, so the Andersontown children queried their Mother's behaviour. Her reply was simply
"They're Billy's boys"
Apparently Aunt Eileen had been providing a Sunday meal for my brothers, Barney and Dickie, in the three years before I had arrived to join them. As a consequence they were much more familiar with the Boyle household than I was. They had been benefiting from Aunt Eileen's cooking and attitude to "family" over their entire four-year stay in Belfast.
At the end of my first year my brothers both left the college and went on to a senior seminary. In the following year, major changes were made to the food provided for the students at the college. The Government built a kitchen and dining room in the school grounds and provided the 800 dayboys and boarders with a gorgeous free dinner, five days per week. (Previous to this I had thought that the problem with the refectory food was associated with the large numbers being catered for. It appears that, what the President of the college should have done was to kick the backsides of these daft nuns back into their convent go out into the street and hire the first person he met who could boil and egg).
I transferred from St Malachy's College to Garron Tower a year later and Aunt Eileen and most of her family went to live in London. As is usual with siblings, who have had an unpleasant childhood, the Martin boys took off to the furthermost corners of the planet at the first opportunity. Brothers Barney and Dickie went to work in the Philippines and later in South America; I went to work for 20 years in Africa. Barney and Dickie managed to visit Aunt Eileen every three years or so during their home leave periods. Their religious order had a house in London which facilitated visiting and they were single. My forays from and to Africa through London were always complicated by an accompanying family and I never saw Aunt Eileen again.
She died on May 15 1997 and by a strange coincidence Father Barney was home on leave from Chile and Father Dick was home from Brazil. I was living in Manchester at this time and traveled up to London to join them and the family for the funeral at St Bernard's, Northolt. We gathered with the others around the graveside - a final tribute to a kind and wonderful woman from Billy's Boys.
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More About Ellen Bridget (Eileen) Martin: Burial 1: 23 May 1997, Service at St Bernard's Northolt.121 Burial 2: 23 May 1997, Mass at St Bernard's Northolt.
More About Ellen Bridget (Eileen) Martin and James Patrick Boyle: Marriage: 19 Jan 1931, Church of St Columba, Long Tower, Derry City, Northern Ireland.122
Children of Ellen Bridget (Eileen) Martin and James Patrick Boyle are:
Ellen Bridget (Eileen) Martin (b. Oct 1901, d. 15 May 1997)
Notes for Ellen Bridget (Eileen) Martin: