I started school at Easter 1945. My first teacher in the Wee Public was Miss Gottersen. Later, we had Miss Waller and Mrs. Dunlop. I had my arm broken when we were playing at trains in the lane beside the school. David Thomas was in front and I was second. David fell and everyone behind piled on top of me. My father had to take me to the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. In Forrest Road, we met a delivery boy. He said, “Hey, Jimmy, where’s the Infirmary.” For many years after I wondered how he knew the boy’s name was Jimmy. The winter of 1946-47 was particularly brutal and the school closed for a week in February 1947.
At the age of seven we were put through a selection process. Twelve members of my class would go Bathgate Academy while the rest would go to the Big Public. I came thirteenth in the class but someone in the top twelve withdrew so I was allowed to go to the Academy. Our primary teachers were Miss Somerville, another Miss Somerville, Miss Shaw, Miss Webster, and Miss Nicholson. Miss Shaw and Miss Nicholson must have been there for a long time because they had both taught my father. Miss Somerville in Primary 1 gave us the story of Peter Pan. I believed every word because I remember telling my father that new-born babies could fly. In primary, when the girls went to the sewing class, run by Miss McIntyre, the boys were given a subject call ‘Handwork’. The handwork given to us by Miss Somerville was knitting. Things went well through Primary 2 but then we came in contact with the dreaded Toaster Shaw. As in every class, we were given spellings to learn for homework and then we were tested on them in class. Each pupil corrected his neighbour’s spelling. My neighbour was Kerr Doig and he spelt mountain and fountain as mountian and fountian. I did not not correct the errors so he got four of the belt for getting his spellings wrong and I got four of the belt for not correcting them. On another occasion, Billy Christie asked to leave the room. Toaster refused to let him leave. Billy kept on asking and she kept on refusing. At length, she made Billy stand on the floor as a punishment. The unfortunate Billy wet himself and a large pee puddle spread across the floor. That was the kindly Toaster Shaw for you. Every class had to learn the poem The Sands of Dee by Charles Kingsley:
“O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee”;
The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
And all alone went she.
The western tide crept up along the sand,
And o’er and o’er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see.
The rolling mist came down and hid the land:
And never home came she.
Our Primary 4 (the Pre-quali) teacher was Miss Webster. She was a real gem. If I remember correctly in that year I was belted only ten times. You have to remember that in those days you were belted for speaking in class.
Miss Nicholson had us in Primary 5. This was the Qualifying Class so she had to get us trained up to sit the Qualifying Exam. In primary, the day was divided into arithmetic till the morning interval, then English till dinner time. In the afternoon we had mostly geography and history. I discovered later that Miss Nicholson’s history came straight out of Tales of a Grandfather by Walter Scott. The old £.s.d. monetary system did give us some nasty pieces of arithmetic such as: multiply £89 17 shillings and 11¾ pence by 27; and divide £256 13 shillings and 5½ by 37. We also had a daily dose of mental arithmetic with questions such as: one dozen articles at 3½ each and we had I.Q. tests. With the approach of the Qualifying Exam, when the girls went for sewing, the boys were given arithmetic and English. The top grade awarded in the qualifying exam was a 5L2; this stood for ‘Five years literary with two foreign languages’. This grade gave you access to the A Class in the secondary department of Bathgate Academy. In English terminology, Bathgate Academy would have been called a ‘Grammar School’. There were no classes in technical, domestic science or commercial subjects; for those, pupils went to the Lindsay High School or to the Big Public Junior Secondary School in Torphichen Street.
At the end of the War people did not have much money. My first Academy blazer was made for me by Mrs. McCann a seamstress who lived in Mid Street. She took an old black woman’s coat, cut the bottom off, and put braid on the top half. There was very little traffic on the roads in those days so we played football in Marjoribanks Street on our way to and from school. But I do remember a little girl being killed at the school gate when she slid under the back wheels of a lorry. I remember that the driver picked her up and he put her on the back of the lorry where he was trying to comfort her.
In secondary I moved into class 1A where our first form teacher was Mr. Nelson, the History teacher. Mr. Nelson’s father was the School Attendance Officer; having been through World War 1, Mr. Nelson senior lived in Veterans Cottages. Pupils came from a wide area of West Lothian to Bathgate Academy. My class included pupils from Fauldhouse, Westfield, Stoneyburn, Blackburn, Armadale, Blackridge, Whitburn, and East Whitburn.
Some of our teachers were less than kindly. In first year, for English, we had Dr. Goldie. He asked us, for homework, to find out about Leda. In my house there was no dictionary, never mind The Encyclopaedia Britannica so there was no way that I, or anybody else in the class, could find out anything about a woman from Greek mythology. So in class, Goldie said to Charlie Johnson from Armadale, “Did you try to find out about Leda?” Charlie said, “No, sir.” Charlie was then taken out and given such a severe belting that he was traumatised; he left the Academy and went to the Lindsay High School. Since Charlie was thoroughly belted all the rest of us said that we had tried but failed to find out about Leda. We had to get Mrs. Glennie, our Latin teacher, to find out for us. Anyway, the story about Leda is that she was raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. According to Dr. Smith’s Classical Dictionary ‘she brought forth two eggs, from the one of which issued Helena, and from the other Castor and Pollux.’ I still wonder what being raped by a swan has to do with First Year English. Charlie was a good friend of mine and he did well at the Lindsay. The last time I came across him he was working as an engineer for Scottish Hydro Electric. I was told that he had a big part to play in building Peterhead Power Station. Luckily, Goldie was promoted so he went away. Then we had Mr. Gillespie. He lived near Edinburgh Zoo and some of our senior pupils took the school stuffed lion and put it in his garden. On seeing it in the morning Mr. Gillespie called the police. I don’t know if they shot our lion or not. When I was in 5th year, Mr. Martin came from Galashiels and saved us. He reckoned that Mr. Gillespie had not trained us properly to sit the Higher English exam. He would read out parts of Mr. Gillespie’s Record of Work where the entries were things such as ‘Julius Caesar read and discussed.’ Mr. Martin did not think that such a thing would do so he made us write copious notes on all aspects of the Higher syllabus. He also said, “You will have ten passages from Shakespeare, poetry, or other works which you can quote in the Higher exam.” I can still remember a verse from “Ruth” by Wordsworth:
The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food
For him, a Youth to whom was given
So much of earth–so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.
Mr Martin said that Wordsworth was often considered to be America’s greatest philosopher. Mr. Martin’s wife had been a District Nurse and he told us that he had been an enthusiastic undertaker’s assistant. He was also great walker. On one occasion he took the Literary and Debating Society to Grangemouth and after the debate he walked back to Bathgate.
I was very unfortunate in that I had to study Latin. It is true what Lord Cockburn said, “Latin was only invented to torture boys.” Hugh Miller also suffered from Latin:
The schoolmaster was in the habit of advising the parents or relations of those he deemed his clever lads, to give them a classical education; and meeting one day with Uncle James, he urged that I should be put to Latin. I was transferred from the English to the Latin form, and, with four other boys entered on the “Rudiments.” I laboured with tolerable diligence for a day or two; but there was no one to tell me what the rules meant, or whether they really meant anything; and when I got on as far as penna, a pen, and saw how the changes were rung on one poor word, I began miserably to flag. The Rudiments was by far the dullest book I had ever seen.
I know that James Young Simpson had to write his degree thesis in Latin but that was before my granny was born. When it came to Latin and French all the girls in the class were ahead of me, which wasn’t difficult. (I remember Elsa Young from Armadale reciting the Greek alphabet to Mr. Glennie. I guess she must have learned ir in primary school.) In 1st year we had Mrs. Glennie and for a few lessons we had a male teacher we called ‘Tiny’. I remember that he gave Ian Donaldson a terrible belting. Ian was a very small boy and tiny was six-feet and six inches tall. The belt must have descended from a height of about ten feet and lacking a bit in accuracy it left the marks of the tawse on Ian’s wrists for a long time afterwards. In 2nd year we had Mr. Glennie. He could be a bit strict. When we were in primary we had to pass his class-room door on our way to class. One day we must had been making a bit of a noise and he gave Bobby Wallace a good hard slap across the face. I got 28% in my Latin exam and when Mr. Glennie gave me back my paper he said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.” Mr. Glennie left to be rector of Linlithgow Academy and in 3rd year we had Mr. Scougall. He was a very nice man but my Latin continued to deimprove. At the end of 3rd year we had the choice of taking Latin or Science so the blessed day arrived when Latin could get rid of me. It is a pity that I spent many pointless hours ‘studying’ Latin. I could have learned to do something more useful such as how to drive a cow or milk a tractor.
French was also something of a mystery to me. At the end of 3rd year Miss Wilson kicked me, and some other boys, into the Lower French class where we were taught by Miss Burnett. Some girls from the B class passed us on their way into the Higher class. Neither Miss Wilson nor Miss Burnett (known as ‘Beaky’) ever used the belt.
Mr. McCombie was our geography teacher. When I was in Primary 5 I was told by older pupils to get a seat against the wall so he could not reach me to slap me. He used the belt freely and he had a sliding scale: one of the belt in 1st year, two of the belt in 2nd year and three of the belt in 3rd year. We were belted for ignorance. I remember pupils being belted because they could not name three exports of southern China. In 4th year he did not use the belt on us. At the end of 3rd year we had to choose between taking Geography or History. Mr. McCombie admitted to me in later years that he was hard on the 3rd year girls in an effort to drive them upstairs to History.
Our Art teacher was Mr. Paris. His claim to fame was that he had played cricket for Scotland and that he had clean-bowled Don Bradman in a match against the Australians. Mr. Paris went in for mass beltings. On the first day that Class 1B went to Art he belted them all. When we were in 3rd year he belted all the girls, then he said, “Boys don’t talk.”
Our 1st year Science teacher was Mr. Carnegie. He was a bit eccentric and we were not sorry when he retired to be replaced by Mr. Liston from St. Mary’s. He was a very good teacher. For a short time in 3rd Year we had Mr. Shields for Physics. On one occasion he asked the boy nearest him the define the angle of incidence. The boy said, “It’s the angle between the horizontal and the incident ray.” For getting it wrong that boy earned three of the belt. The next few boys all suffered the same fate but I was lucky because John Nimmo got it right before Mr. Shields got to me.
Our 1st Year Maths teacher was Mr. Ramage. He was not overly strict but I do remember that when our exam papers were handed back David Gavin thought that he might have had an extra mark for an answer. There was no discussion with Papa Ramage. All David got was a hard slap across the face. In 2nd Year were were ‘taught’ by Mr. Connell. He was the worst teacher I ever came across. I was the only one in the class who was ever asked a question. So from 2nd Year well into 5th Year I was roasted, grilled and toasted for six periods a week. I soon came to hate Connell and his Maths. No one in the class was ever given individual help. I never complained about him but someone else in the 5th Year class did, so Dr. Somerville, the rector, kindly asked Connell if he could possibly ask someone else a question. Connell left at the end of my 5th year to be replaced by Miss Nicol from the Lindsay. One of my friends who failed Higher Maths in 5th Year said that, in his 6th year he found Higher Maths to be very simple. He said, this was because Miss Nicol explained things which is something Connell never did.
Our music teacher was Mr. Kinniburgh Robertson. I remember that one day he wanted to classify us into tenors, baritones, sopranos and contraltos so while we were singing he came round and put his ear to our mouths. When he got to David Gavin, he said, “That’s tragic!” Mr Robertson then separated us into different groups. But David said to him, “Please, sir, where does ‘tragic’ go?” It was a common practice on April 1st to sent someone up to the Science Department for a long stand. Mr. Liston would let the culprit stand for a while then he would say, “Is that long enough?” before letting him or her go. Mr. Robertson tried this trick on with Nigel Shepherd so Nigel brought a netball stand in from the playground and asked Mr Robertson if this stand was long enough. (Nigel became captain of the Australian National Football Team.)
For Physical Education in Primary we had Miss Robertson. You can always recognise a P.E. teacher because they always put the verb at the end of the sentence as in “To the wallbars – go!” and “Running on the spot – begin!” (Hopefully, this habit did not carry on into their life outside school as in “In the toilet – pee!” and “Filling your nappy – begin!”)
The boys in secondary had Mr Markie (Big Dan) and the girls had Miss Smart. Mr Markie had been s heavyweight boxer and one day when he gave us boxing we were paired off in terms of height. My friend who was big and soft was paired with a boy who was big and tough so my friend took a bit of a pasting. Luckily, I was paired with the tough boy’s pal so I gave him a pasting just to even things up. Big Dan did have a bad habit called hitting you over the arse with a guttie. One day, all the boys had this and I can promise that it is very painful. Dan left to go to St. Mary’s at the end of 1st Year and he was replaced by Mr. Kelly. I am glad to say that Mr Kelly was a very good teacher.
And some other things:
Quite a few people in Bathgate sent their sons and daughters to private schools in Edinburgh to be properly educated. Among others were the doctors; Mr. Aitken, the water engineer; Mr. Brash the Science teacher in the Lindsay High School; Mrs Dunlop, the teacher in the Wee Public; and Mr. and Mrs. Carlaw, owners of the bakery. Mr. Taylor, the Director of Education sent his son to Bathgate Academy. An odd thing was that we were given grants to stay at school after the age of fifteen. It was something like £30 in 4th year, £40 in 5th year and £50 in 6th year. I can only assume that so soon after the War, the country wanted to rebuilt a highly educated workforce.
Pupils of Bathgate Academy were always classified as ‘snobs’. When we went to the E.U. Church for end-of-term services, the children in the Wee Public would line their railings and shout at us, “Academy snobs! Academy snobs!” I was in Addiewell one day when I heard a woman say to her neighbour, “Ah widnae let ma wean go tae Bathgate Academy. They’re a’ snobs there, ye ken.” Of course, it was not possible to be a snob in Bathgate, Armadale, Blackridge, Fauldhouse, Stoneyburn, Blackburn, Westfield, Dechmont, Longridge, Whitburn, East Whitburn or in any other part of the catchment area. Most of us were working-class living in council houses. My father was a painter, and in our housing scheme the fathers were mostly foundry workers and miners. There was also a gardener whose son became a professor of biochemistry. I guess that some people were proud of having gone to Bathgate Academy. I once met a woman from East Whitburn who early in our conversation, said, “I went to Bathgate Academy.”
Our Rector was Mr. MacCallum. I well remember that on the 6th of February, 1952, he came into our class to tell us that the King had died.
In those days before television, I went to the pictures quite a lot and on that day I had planned to see a film called The Golden Hordes. But, with the death of the King, the picture houses were all closed and, to this day, I have never seen that film. Mr. MacCallum died on the stage of a school concert when I was in 2nd year. Soon after, the whole school was lined up along Marjoribanks Street as his funeral cortege drove past. Mr. MacCallum was replaced as Rector by Dr. Somerville.
Teaching, then as now, was not a highly paid profession. Mr. Nelson, Dr. Bain, Mr Paris, and Mr. Martin all lived in council houses in Bathgate. Initially, Mr. Connell was the only teacher who had a car though latterly Miss Wilson also had one. Mr. McCombie travelled every day by bus from Trinity in Edinburgh.
Here is part of a letter from The Times May 24th, 2025, written by Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle: Our society is generating high levels of poor mental health: from the childhood experience of a third of young people in poverty, and schools forced to become exam factories, teaching not preparation for life but data to be regurgitated in exams…
The poor Baroness would be horrified if she saw what went on in Bathgate Academy during the 1950s. I suppose it was an exam factory. When I look at my photograph of Class 3A I can see that eleven pupils went to university. Two of the brightest pupils went straight into the Civil Service, while others went into various professions such as pharmacy, physiotherapy, primary school teaching, quantity surveying, and others of which I can say nothing. There was no such thing as Guidance or preparation for life and if you had mental health problems you just got the belt. Getting to university was not as easy then as it is now. In 1956 Dorothy Slater wrote in the Bathgate Academy Chronicle that she was one of the 6,000 students in the University of Edinburgh. Now, this university has about 50,000 students. At this time, Heriot-Watt, Napier and Queen Margaret were not universities. I can’t say that most of us were living in poverty though I once saw a boy pay his way into the pictures with a 2lb jam jar. My mother’s uncle lived in Pittsburg and he would send us parcels of clothes and food. Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my older cousin, Richard. I do remember my father talking to Mr. Ferguson, the janitor, as we were leaving school. He said, “Aye, they’re better dressed than we were.”
Despite the fact that John Newland has been disowned, the Bathgate Procession and Community Festival use Bathgate Academy as their logo and the pageant is held in front of the Academy. But it has to be said that the Procession is a wonderful thing. In 2025, it took bout 30 minutes to go past me.
Bathgate Old Times 