Thirty-six years ago, a schoolboy at St Malachy’s College in Belfast brought into class a small, battered leather-bound notebook, presenting it to his history teacher who he believed would find the family heirloom of some interest.
It soon became clear that the teacher held in his hands a valuable window to a past long-since gone, and so began a journey that ended this month with the publication of The Diary of Edward Keys - a fascinating glimpse into the life of a Belfast teenager in a year that changed the world forever.
That notebook was itself Edward Keys’ diary from 1914, and its precocious author was the pupil’s great-granduncle.
Like his descendent, Edward was a pupil at St Malachy’s in north Belfast, and in a world without social media, the teenager instead jotted down his daily doings in his diary, describing meeting friends, visiting the cinema, watching his beloved Belfast Celtic play soccer, crushes on girls, and getting “flippered” (corporal punishment) by teachers.
However, his schoolboy exploits take place against a backdrop of a world plunging into the bloodiest conflict it had ever known, and the innocence of Edward’s life contrasts sharply with the creeping horror of war, which is noticeable in many of his entries.
The diary has now been published thanks to editor, historian and St Malachy’s alumni Hugh O’Neill, who developed the project alongside St Malachy’s archivist and former teacher at the college Gerry McNamee.
Hugh describes Edward, who was from the New Lodge area, as a pupil “by turns arrogant, fiery, opinionated, humble, troublesome, unassumingly devout, pious, combative, touchy”.
Its publication for a modern audience is also a tribute to the late eminent and distinguished historian Dr Eamon Phoenix, who was then a teacher at the college.
Unsurprisingly was fascinated by the diary, he carried out a deep-dive into its author, and the nuggets of information it offered on early 20th century Belfast.
Hugh said Dr Phoenix, who wrote of the diary in a lengthy 1989 article for the school’s Collegian magazine, was “essential in bringing it to life”.
Explaining his own interest in the diary, Hugh said: “I’m a northsider, and I was reared 500 metres from where Edward Keys was reared, and I’m familiar with all the places he mentions.
“This is a very small-scale book; it’s five months of the writings of a boy who was 14-15 going on 45. His handwriting is incredibly mature. You can read into that handwriting a great deal about the boy himself.”
The diary begins in August 1914, ahead of the new school term, with a frustrated Edward returning to the city after a summer stay in the Co Antrim countryside at Aldergrove.
A couple of weeks of meeting friends, visiting the library and the “pictures” - still a relatively new phenomenon at the time - and suffering what he called “dull days” culminates in a return to St Malachy’s, where Edward thrives among his fellow pupils.
Most of the diary presents what Dr Phoenix called the “daily rhythms of college life”, including run-ins with teachers such as the formidable ‘Kruger’ Conway, who taught maths, and who at one stage was humiliated thanks to “strike action” led by Edward and his classmates.
“We have conquered him,” Edward wrote of the clash with authority, but the teacher later struck back at Edward, as he outlined in his diary how he was sent a batch of sums by a fellow pupil during a spell when he was off sick at home and thought he had escaped the rigours of schoolwork.
“The cheek of the man is something awful,” complains Edward, who was actually gifted in mathematics.
The contrasting sides of the diarist are something that fascinated Hugh as he worked on the new publication.
“This was a boy who quoted Shakespeare, Milton and Thackeray at the end of his entries,” the historian explained.
“His French was impeccable.
“Then we had the other Edward Keys - a troublemaker. And he was one serious troublemaker. Edward was a leader, and he was pugnacious.”
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Meanwhile, in-between the japes and larks of school life, Edward describes how the shadow of war slowly falls across Belfast, as it had throughout the rest of Europe in 1914.
In his Collegiate article, Dr Phoenix, who died in 2022, notes how the diary entries “become noticeably more sombre”. One entry recounts how four of his relatives from the countryside visited his home before reporting for duty as members of the Irish Brigade.
He recalls how this left his mother “in a bad state”. An earlier entry in August describes Edward watching reserve soldiers marching through Belfast on their way to war, which he wrote was a “terrible sight”.
Although the diary ends in December of 1914, research by Dr Phoenix reveals Edward died at the age of just 22 in 1921 as a result of tuberculosis, after having graduated from Queen’s University and returned to teach at his old stomping ground of St Malachy’s, where he even took over from his old nemesis Kruger Conway as head of maths.
Hugh admits he feared “getting lost in the detail” while researching Edward and his writings, but proud of what he has produced, he added of the eponymous diarist: “We let his voice be heard across a century.”
Meanwhile, attending the recent launch of the book at St Malachy’s was the former pupil who first brought the diary to the school’s attention, Niall Meighan.
“I was in first year in 1988, and my mum gave me the diary and said ‘bring that into school, that’s your great great uncle’s diary, he was a pupil there’,” he explained.
“I didn’t really read it, but gave it to my history teacher, who passed it on to Eamon Phoenix. Some time passed and he eventually called me to go see him, and he spoke to me about what the diary meant and its importance as a piece of history. You could tell from the pages that he had really been fascinated with it and went through it in great detail.”
He added: “I’m quite proud now to see the diary recreated as a new book. I have to get a few copies as I have aunts and uncles who are all now keen to read it and learn more about this ancestor who we never met and his life at school.”
Edward would no doubt be proud to see his family still a feature of St Malachy’s life 110 years later, with Niall’s son Caolán Meighan a pupil about to finish his fifth and final year at the school before leaving to study his A-Levels elsewhere.
Caolán said: “It’s fascinating to learn through the diary that although so much time has passed, and so many things have changed, many aspects of school life remain the same.”
♦ Contact correspondent@stmalachys.belfast.ni.sch.uk for details of how to purchase The Diary of Edward Keys.
