On April 17, 1915 Brother Walfrid passed away.
The Marist Brothers reported his passing with these words,
“Frère Walfrid est mort. Je perds en lui un vrai père !
Que de services il m’a rendus et avec quelle affectueuse charité !’’ (Avril 25, 1915).
“Brother Walfrid is dead.
In losing him, I lost a true father.
How many things he did for me… and with what loving kindness!”
A Father figure then and an inspirational father figure now, 100 years after his death.
Walfrid’s role in the founding of the Celtic was key. Not only did he achieve his aim of funding the Poor Children’s Dinner tables to feed the hungry of the East End, he also brought together visionaries who ensured that Celtic would have a lasting impact on football and society in Glasgow and far beyond.
Poverty and hunger are still in evidence in both the East End of Glasgow and beyond. To mark the 100th anniversary of Walfrid’s passing Celtic, its charitable arm, Celtic FC Foundation, and Celtic supporters groups will pay their own tribute to Brother Walfrid on April 15.
To support the principles upon which Walfrid founded the club, Celtic supporters will be having a food collection to support the work of Foodbanks in and around the West of Scotland.
On Wednesday April 15 when Celtic play at home to Kilmarnock in the Scottish Premiership, Celtic supporters are invited to bring items requested by the Foodbanks.
As well as being supported by Celtic FC, the collection is backed by the following Celtic fans groups and forums:
Affiliation Of Registered Celtic Supporters Clubs, AICSC, Celtic Graves Society, CelticMinded, Celtic Quick News, Celtic Supporters Association, Celtic Trust, Celtic Underground, Etims, Hail Hail Media, Green Brigade, Huddleboard, The Kano Foundation and Kerrydale Street,.
Under the banner of Walfrid’s Legacy, the supporters groups and forums have released the following statement: “100 years after the passing of Brother Walfrid there is still hunger and need in our communities.
“Walfrid’s vision was the formation of a successful football club based on the core principle of the alleviation of poverty in our society.”
“Walfrid’s legacy is a thriving Celtic Football Club with a support fundamentally committed to his ideals of supporting those in need locally, nationally and far beyond national borders. “
“To honour Walfrid and his ideals we would urge all Celtic supporters able to attend the match against Kilmarnock on April 15 to bring a donation for the foodbanks we are supporting.”
In addition to the food collection on April 15, on April 17 Celtic FC and Celtic FC Foundation will mark the 100th anniversary of Walfrid’s passing by hosting a lunch for 500 individuals from the city’s homeless community in the Number 7 restaurant in Celtic Park.
Peter Lawwell, Celtic FC Chief Executive, said: “We are delighted to be working with our supporters on this magnificent initiative. So many years after our formation, Celtic continues to be very well aware of its continued social responsibility and the club does more charitable work now than ever before. “We are proud that Brother Walfrid’s spirit remains so strong at Celtic and through such initiatives we will continue to honour the ambitions of the club’s founders and make a positive difference to the lives of people in need.”
Tony Hamilton, CEO of Celtic FC Foundation, added: “The phrase ‘more than a football club’ rings true with this joint approach from the Club, its supporters and its charitable arm. The story of Celtic, as seen by our Founding Father, is alive and well today more than 125 years after our formation and I hope that both of these events will be supported.”
We would urge fans to brings donations of the following items.
- Sugar (500g)
- Fruit juice (carton)
- Soup , Pasta sauces, Tomatoes (tinned)
- Cereals
- Tea Bags/instant coffee
- Rice/pasta
- Tinned meat/fish, Tinned fruit
- Jam, Biscuits or snack bars
Donations will be collected on The Celtic Way by volunteers from the Celtic support.
The aim of the collection is specifically for food items as detailed above.
The collection will benefit a number of Foodbanks including, Loaves and Fishes, Coatbridge Foodbank and Hamilton Food Drop among others.
Any cash donations will be passed to Celtic FC Foundation lunch for our homeless citizens on April 17 and the charities they are supporting. Details here http://www.celticfc.net/news/7921
November 1887
“Many cases of sheer poverty are left unaided through lack of means. It is therefore with this principle object that we have set afloat the “Celtic”
@walfridslegacy
189 Comments- Pages:
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Auldheid,
If I had not left Parkhead in ’68, I too should be dead. Mind you, my Dad, who has lived in the East End all his life (much of it in Parkhead, of course), apart from his years in the Army, is still alive at the age of 92. I sometimes wonder if he is the oldest supporter still alive who was in Lisbon on the day itself. All those he was with, apart from 1, are dead.
Prolong your life expectancy
Squire Danaher
Bobby Lennox was indeed Celtic’s top scorer by a mile in 1967/68. Scored 41 competitive goals including 32 in the league. Source: The Celtic Football Companion.
TheGlasgowStory: IRA Incident, 1921 http://www.theglasgowstory.com/image/?inum=TGSA05246 The cartoon reflects the outrage felt by many Glaswegians at a violent attempt to free an IRA prisoner from police custody. Frank Carty, a senior Irish Republican …
The exiled tim
Thanks mate.. i have only briefly looked at it..just flew back from work at tea time yday.only had limited mobile internet at work..and today been spent applying for jobs mostly.
I will get proper look at it in the nxt few days and get back to you.. thanks for taking time to reply to me. Chat soon
Bedtime this side of the world.
Hopefully see the celts at some stage tomorrow.
♪♪ Faith of our fathers holy faith
We will be buried in Dalbeth ♪♪
EastEnders CSC
bsr,
magnificent, i vote for that
BIG-CUP-WINNERS
16:31 on 8 April, 2015
‘ernie lynch
Where’s East Dumbartonshire ?’
###
It doesn’t matter where it is, so long as it’s not in the east end of Glasgow.
Pretty poor post by your standards Ernie, no help no compassion, just ship them out somewhere else, somebody elses problem. Tell me I picked you up wrong Ernie. Hail Hail Hebcelt
ernie lynch
But how will they find it ?
SD-Agree re Kayal, never to be trusted after that game for me.
From the DR
Battle of rottenrow
THE Black Maria spluttered and spat as it neared the top of the hill. The driver changed down a gear and revved harder, but the weary motor was going to be the least of his worries.
It was Wednesday May 4 1921. The cop wagon with the worn-out engine was ferrying prisoners from Glasgow’s old Central Police Court in St Andrew’s Square to Duke Street Prison, like cop wagons did five days a week.
No one paid any heed. Well, almost no one.
The back of the van was split into what they called dog boxes. They still do. Small metal compartments, a yard square stretching from the floor to the roof.
Each one housed a prisoner, separated from all the others. Too cramped to get up to much badness – that was the theory.
Cramped as he was, Frank J Carty might well have been pleased that he was separated from the only other con being transported that day. The bloke was a small time low-life facing charges of indecent assault – not the kind of company a Commandant of the Sligo Branch of semi-automatic shooters than you could count.
In 1921, there were three cops in the front of the van, squeezed in beside the driver. Each of the escorts had a handgun. That was top security back then.
It wasn’t much and the cops knew it. They were nervous, tense, tight-lipped. But they were almost there when they turned off the High Street and started along the prison walls.
The cops were beginning to relax. That’s when the bullets started flying.
Scores of attackers came streaming at them from three sides, out of Cathedral Street, Rottenrow and a nearby lane. Bullets smashed into the van and the windscreen was shattered.
Early on, one slug hit Detective Superintendent Robert Johnstone, ripping off a chunk of his skull. The officer fell from the open door of the van, tried desperately to get up, then collapsed there on the street.
Johnston’s colleagues, Detective Sergeant George Stirton and DC Murdoch McDonald, were out after their gaffer in a flash, guns in hand. Standing over Johnston’s blood-spattered body, they traded shots with the IRA.
The ambush had been planned perfectly. The cop wagon was stuck the Irish Republican Army chose to keep.
Also known sometimes as Frank Somers, Carty had played an active part in the IRA’s battle to free Ireland from British rule.
It was only five years after the Easter Rising, which saw the IRA take over the main post office in Dublin in a bloody shoot-out with the British Army.
These were dangerous days and Frank Carty was a dangerous man. A man the Irish authorities couldn’t hold – he had escaped from two of their jails in the previous two years.
Now he had fallen into the Glasgow cops’ hands on minor charges. That morning he had appeared at court and been bound over until the next weekend.
Enough time to ship him back to Ireland. But would they be able to?
The Scottish cops had been warned that there was going to be an attempt to free Carty during the journeys to and from the court.
These days there would be helicopters hovering above, a convoy of cop cars, an armoured and bulletproof wagon for the prisoner, motorcycle outriders and more between the walls of Duke Street Prison and a water pumping station. All walls, no windows, no witnesses.
Gunmen surrounded the cops, pinning them down with heavy fire at the front of the Black Maria, then moved in.
Stirton was wounded in the wrist but kept firing. Even the unarmed police driver, Thomas Ross, did his best, fighting hand to hand with the gun-toting attackers
As all that action happened at the front of the van, the IRA ambushers tried to free their comrade at the rear.
But the doors wouldn’t budge. One man shoved the barrel of his heavy-duty pistol right at the lock, and blasted.
In the movies, the metal doors would have just swung open. But this was the streets of Glasgow. The door stayed shut.
Swearing loudly, the gunman fired again, and again. Inside the van, the bullets pinged off one wall to another and ricocheted again, almost blasting the head off Carty. Still the doors wouldn’t budge.
In fury, the ambushers yanked at the doors, booted the locks – with no result.
Realising what was happening, Sergeant Stirton, bloodied and with his gun arm wounded, headed towards the ambush party, pointing his pistol at them.
The IRA group turned to deal with him and he stood there face-to-face, only feet away. He lifted his gun, his arm shaking with pain and promptly dropped it.
Stirton’s arm was too badly injured even to pull the trigger. Now he was a sitting duck, a dead man for sure.
But suddenly, one of the gang gave a signal and they were off. Attack over.
The IRA team knew what they were doing. They broke up into small groups and headed away in many different directions, down different lanes and closes. Again, they had chosen the location well.
Three minutes and it was all over. Or was it?
DS Stirton had given chase but soon wearied, due to the loss of blood from his wounds. As other cops arrived, and medics tried to save Detective Superintendent Johnstone, Ross managed to get the bullet-riddled Black Maria started and finally drove it into Duke Street Prison.
There, prison staff found that the back doors of the old wagon had stuck. That was why the IRA gang couldn’t open the doors.
In fact, it took several hours, and specialist equipment, to free Carty and the other prisoner, now weeping hysterically.
Back at the scene of the ambush cops were questioning bystanders.
The IRA team had disappeared. But the police knew where to start looking.
By night time, cops had raided numerous houses in Abercrombie Street in the Gallowgate where they believed Republican sympathisers lived.
But word of the ambush had spread fast through the city, and crowds were congregating at the ambush scene and all through the east end.
Bad blood, on a religious divide, was rife in the city. In the few decades before, thousands of Irish immigrants had been forced to move to Glasgow to escape famine back home.
The Irish believed, with some justification, that the authorities were biased against them. Massive gangs had been formed, such as the mainly Protestant Billy Boys and Roman Catholic Norman Conks, and they took their sectarian violence to the street with razors and coshes.
The IRA ambush was just one step further down that line, and the police were desperate to stamp their authority and nab the culprits. In doing so, they arrested as many people as they could, until the mob sussed them out.
The arrest of a priest is thought to have triggered the violence. When the cops came out of a house in the Gallowgate they were met by a screaming mob, looking for blood.
Later that day, an even larger crowd chased a team of police who tried to arrest five well – known young men.
By evening, an estimated 2000 rioters milled around the Gallowgate, making it a no go area for the police. The mob chanted, threw stones, smashed up shops and attacked trams.
That night, they lit bonfires and continued the rampage, looting and robbing. They assaulted everyone in a uniform, and anyone they suspected to be on the side of the police.
Glasgow had turned in to a lawless city. Detective Superintendent Johnstone had died and DS Stirton was in a critical state.
The police were armed and moved through the streets in convoy, determined to get the suspects. The Army moved to a central location in the city and waited for orders to act.
In the houses the cops hit, they didn’t just find suspects. They found more than 50 handguns, dozens of rifles, boxes of ammo, gelignite and blades.
At the time, the weapons finds were the biggest ever in Scotland. Glasgow was a sectarian tinderbox.
The riot raged all that night and rumbled on for days after.
Only 12 people were arrested for rioting – a mark of how the mob, and not the cops, ruled the streets. But 34 suspects were arrested in connection with the ambush.
All the suspects faced possible charges of murdering Detective Superintendent Johnstone, and attempting to murder DS Stirton and Constables Ross and McDonald. These were hanging offences.
Days after the ambush, Carty was secretly and quietly transported to Dublin.
A short while later, Detective Superintendent Johnstone was buried, after one of the biggest funeral processions Glasgow had ever seen.
Now it was the turn of citizens to mourn a cop they thought of as a hero.
Eventually, 13 men appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh in August 1921, charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiring to free a prisoner.
DS Stirton, not yet fully recovered, had positively identified nine of the accused. All the men pled not guilty, and their skilled defence counsel produced alibis for every one of them.
It was down to the jury to decide who to believe – the police officer who had almost died in the line of duty, or the accused, their friends and relatives.
On August 61921, the jury was out and Scotland held its breath. Would anyone be punished for the biggest street battle Glasgow had seen in those troubled times?
Six of the accused were found not guilty, the other seven not proven. The jury had chosen to believe the accused, not Stirton the police hero.
Someone had murdered a policeman in Glasgow and walked away free. Someone had tried to murder another cop and would never be brought to justice.
No one else was ever tried over the Battle of Rottenrow. But 85 years on, there are still bullet holes high up on the old prison walls – a sad reminder of the day Glasgow’s streets ran red with blood.
The cop was a dead man for sure. Then one of the gang gave a signal and the attack was over
Faithful Through And Through The Tommy Burns Story
Paul67.
I’d love to donate to the food bank but at 75 I struggle to bring myself to the game let alone carrying a shopping bag with messages in it. As I say I’d love to donate.
Would it be possible to get the likes of Asda or Tesco to deliver to the Celtic Way, I wouldn’t mind spending £25 (minimum Delivery) to get some shopping delivered, in fact if others would like to do likewise we could have a collection and get a big Van delivery on the day.
GM-I cleaned up that day, CM 1st goal,-2,-3,-4 ,ht/ft…..:) , fae last thread, it wisnae me, not my turn. :))
“It was down to the jury to decide who to believe – the police officer who had almost died in the line of duty, or the accused, their friends and relatives”.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm
i.e alibis & witnesses .
Till later all game time
bearsden bob
16:35 on 8 April, 2015
Good man, cheers
Celtic 3 Rangers 1 1988
kitalba
16:22 on 8 April, 2015
‘But salad is not conducive to the cold nights of Scotland.’
####
When in Rome.
‘The impact on eating habits of temporary translocation from a Mediterranean to a Northern European environment’
http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/n5/full/1601337a.html
It’s not just as simple as improving the diet though. There seems to be some sort of epigenetic factor involved that visits the dietary sins of the father on the child.
So much easier just to blame it all on the English.
Ohhhhh before I go
In Auldheid and others I trust :))))))))))
On plane to the States….just wanted to say how thrilled I am with this collective initiative. It is what we’re all about.
Well done to all involved and it will be great to support it.
Has anything happened regarding Guidetti’s wee singsong?
hebcelt
16:41 on 8 April, 2015
‘Pretty poor post by your standards Ernie,’
###
The word ‘even’ seems to be missing.
And yes you’ve picked me up wrong.
rangers 1 celtic 2 1988
Bada,
No way?? Kerching csc
The musta been a different ‘bing’ ;)
ernie lynch:
If you’re a man you’ll no have a need to race to blame your father for his failings.
If the failings were ever his. Maybe he was just doing the best as by he knew it.
EDUCATION.
Ern there you go on your Derren Brown trip again , if i wanted to insert “even” it would have been there. Can,t help yourself can you? H H Hebcelt
I wonder how many people who read this blog know what Epigenetic means…I dont…dont have a clue…I mean not a Clue….
Embdae remember the tv advert from a few years back, when guy slammed the boot shut, and smashed the back window?Tried googling it but nothing.
I lived in Edinburgh in the early 70s for a time, and I recall during the festival, they used to ship out the homeless, from the Grassmarket lodging houses for the duration of the festival, where to I have no idea, this happened for the 3 festivals I was in Edinburgh for, my mate who worked in one of them got a 3 week paid holiday every year.
HH
BGX
Google is wonderful. Lost hours looking at some word, phrase or place mentioned on here.
Educational.
Big Cup Winners…Thanks…
McIlroy’s yankee accent = Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins….
THE EXILED TIM
17:01 on
8 April, 2015
I lived in Edinburgh in the early 70s for a time, and I recall during the festival, they used to ship out the homeless, from the Grassmarket lodging houses for the duration of the festival, where to I have no idea, this happened for the 3 festivals I was in Edinburgh for, my mate who worked in one of them got a 3 week paid holiday every year.
HH
——————
on perpetual orange walks ?
does anyone know which part of boston that mcilroy guy is from
Celtic Research tweeting Road works Springfield rd @London Rd …Possible Traffic Probs Tonight…
herbo
15:59 on 8 April, 2015
Killie away 3-3 game.
Although the players pulled it out the hat in the second half, a mention has to be made about the support who were magnificent that day.
——-
I’ve posted on here previously that probably more than at any time I can remember it was a day when the Celtic support hauled a team from its knees.
Leftclicktic:
I’ll be back in Glasgow in a few weeks time. On paper it’ll be my last visit home to my Scotland for a while to come. If you’re about for a beer that’d be grand.