James Darragh, 1919-1994

Abstract

James Darragh, a founder member of the Scottish Catholic Historical Association, died in Pembury Hospital, Tonbridge, Kent on 21 September 1994. One of the early contributors to this journal, his first article appeared in 1953 and his last in 1994. Born on 30 August 1919 in the Lambhill district on Glasgow's northern fringe, he was the third son in a family of five children. His father John Darragh died at the age of twenty-nine a few months before James's birth, a victim of the influenza that swept through Europe at the close of World War I, and one of his two older brothers had died two years before that. James liimself contracted pulmonary tuberculosis at an early age, and id health was to dog him all his life. In 1940 the second brother John, then twenty-nine, died as the result of an accident. This combination of circumstances profoundly affected the course of James's life. As the sole surviving son he devoted himself to the support of his mother and sisters Agnes and Rose.1 He was educated at first in St Agnes's parochial school in Lambhul. Catholic schools had only recently been transferred into the national system, and the religious aura of pre-1918 days was still dominant in them. James's whole life was signally marked by devotion to family, school, parish and church. In 1931 he went on to St Mungo's Academy, a grammar school in the Townhead district of Glasgow managed by the Marist Brothers. As a result of the operation of the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act new educational opportunities were opening up for the Catholic community and academic standards were rising, particularly in the secondary schools. The headmaster of St Mungo's, Brother Germanus, is remembered as one of the great educators of the inter-war period, who in a time of remarkable change