The Homeless Professor. It was the early 1950s/1960s when I first came across a small elderly man who lived on a waste bank next to Rutland Street School surrounded by rusty galvanised sheeting. My memories of him

were, he wore a long somewhat shaggy overcoat. On his head of silver hair, he wore a black beret which sat slightly to one side. His face was red, like a man who spent a lot of time outdoors. That

day I met him. I was mitching (truancy) from school. I had jumped over the school wall at playtime in the schoolyard after receiving a lashing with the bamboo cane from my master over not knowing my Irish language questions. I

had made up my mind I wasn't going back up to the classroom after playtime. Once over the school wall, I made my way to the old Pillar abandoned tenement houses on Sean MacDermott Street. It was around 2 pm when I left there to go back out onto Rutland Street to hang around

the school till 3 pm. When school would finish so I could walk home with the other children. Making it look like I'd been in school. At this time most of my pals had been sent off to industrial schools. I happened to look behind me. There I spotted

the school inspector Daddy Ryan on his bike çoming fast towards me. I ran like the hammers of hell across Rutland Street over to the waste bank, up and over the galvanised sheeting. Looking around the wasteground. I saw in the

middle a rusty corrugated shed. Smoke coming out of a long pipe at the top. Over I went peeping into one of the many nails holes in the corrugated sheeting to see what was inside. Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turning quickly, there he stood

the man I would come to be known as "The Professor." I ran as fast as I could towards the galvanised sheeting to get back over. Halfway up he shouted, " I won't hurt you, you'll be caught by the school inspector come on back down." Down I came,

walking towards him, he said, "Would you like some tea?" Unlocking the padlock on the door. "Come in." He said. Inside was amazing. In the corner stood an old cast iron bed near to a potbelly stove. In the middle was a large wooden table, around it,

long planks of wood sat resting on small oil drums. This was the seating for the table. Bookshelves were full of books lined up around the top half of the shed. Books he found when he went around the streets searching for rubbish bins. "Some

of your school friends come here and I help them with their homework. Why are you not going to school." He said. I told him about the terrible beatings & we were called 'no-hoppers by our schoolmaster. "You are not no-hopers, you are good children."

I went back to school and got the usual lashing with a bamboo cane. I brought my homework to him. Inside his hut were some children from the school. We sat at the table doing our homework. When the homework help was finished. He would read us a story

from one of his books. I remember the story was "Treasure Island. "Now children it's getting late you better be going home." He would say. Then one day I was playing around Corporation Buildings when we received word that the Dublin Corporation was Bulldozing down the Professors

home. A few of us ran up to see what was happening. There he stood looking on at the Bulldozer mangling his home. Pages from his books were blowing around the waste bank. Some of us ran to pick up his books. "Leave them, children, it's ok." He

said. We gathered around him as he stood looking on at his shed flattened to the ground. He said, "Children I want you to promise me you will keep going to school. He gave me a little religious medal from his pocket. "You keep going to school." He

said. I'm going now children, good-bye."He was crying as he walked away down along Summerhill. We called after him, "Professor come back." He just kept on walking, never looking back. We kept on shouting after him to come back.

(Who was the Professor) (What happened to him). According to a woman I interviewed who knew him, she said, "he came from the Southside of the city, he was a school teacher, and the rumour was his wife left him and he had a nervous breakdown. Also,

he came from a "very well to do family." According to a local man, John Kelly, said, "He was a bugler in the Army in World War Two. He had the nickname of the "Bugler Dunn". John went on to say, he was a very well educated man.

He also said the Professor / Bugler found happiness with a woman named, "Hannah" who lived in a tenement house on Mountjoy Square. I was never again to meet the Professor, but the memories of this little man never left me. It was said afterwards, the teachers from Rutland

Street School got the Dublin Corporation to evict him from the waste bank to stop him from helping children. He was a kind gentleman with a mission to help children with their education without using a bamboo cane to beat education into them. Photos of where the

Professor had his galvanized shed /home on upper Rutland Street next to the school.