Frank McCourt’s family moves into Laman Griffin’s house

The McCourt family’s move into Laman Griffin’s house is an improvised escape from eviction: Grandma offers them a place to stay, and Angela relocates her children and their belongings after midnight. The house provides shelter, but its crowded loft, lack of stairs, neglected rooms, and Griffin’s demanding routines make clear that safety does not mean comfort or independence. In the family’s new home, poverty is not left behind; it is rearranged around them.

Causes and Arrival

When the eviction threatens Angela and her children, Grandma explains that they need shelter until they can get back on their feet, though her own space is limited. She offers the family a place in the house rather than the loft, which would be unsuitable for the younger children. Griffin gets out of bed and moves the kitchen table against the wall to make a way up to the loft; Grandma tells Angela that they can move in that night and will not have eviction officials after them.

The move is a hurried, late-night operation. Angela and the children pack Alphie into the pram and pile household necessities around him: a pot, pan, kettle, jam jars and mugs, the Pope, bolsters, and bedclothes. They cover their heads with coats and push the pram through the streets, trying to keep quiet so the neighbors will not know they have been evicted. The pram’s faulty wheel pulls it off course, while Alphie taps a pot with a spoon and Michael sings a song from a film. The children find the journey exciting, but Angela is acutely aware of the shame attached to their public displacement.

After reaching the house, Frank and Malachy return to Roden Lane for the trunk, which Angela fears losing. The family settles into the small sleeping space: the two boys lie at opposite ends of one bed, while Angela shares the larger bed with Alphie and Michael. Their belongings and sleeping arrangements make the move’s consequence immediate: the family has shelter, but little room or privacy.

The House and Its History

The house is damp and musty, and Griffin snores above the family. It has no stairs, a detail that alters the children’s familiar story about an angel who leaves a newborn on the seventh step. Frank observes that, at twelve going on thirteen, he may already be too old for angels. The absence of a staircase makes the new home not just a different address but a place where an old family image no longer applies.

Angela explains that the house used to be a shop, where Griffin’s mother sold groceries through a small window. She had saved enough to send him to Rockwell College, and he later became an officer in the Royal Navy. Angela recounts the family story that he fell in love with the American film star Jean Harlow, was rejected by the distance between their social worlds, began drinking, and was dismissed from the Navy. In the present, he works as a laborer for the Electricity Supply Board. The house, full of old possessions and disrepair, bears the marks of a life that has not been put in order since his mother died.

The children and Angela begin clearing the rooms. They carry boxes and bags to the shed, open the windows to air the house, and make enough space to see the floor and sit down. Among the stored things are bottles of purple hair oil, which the boys try on their hair, and old copies of The Illustrated London News. The house also contains Pear’s soap and a thick encyclopedia; Frank stays up reading the book, drawn to its promise of information. The clearing work thus exposes both the accumulated neglect of the place and the small materials through which the children begin to inhabit it.

Domestic Life with Griffin

Griffin’s routines govern the household. He returns from work most evenings, eats, and goes to bed; on Saturdays he may remain in bed from early afternoon until Monday. Because the house has no stairs, he uses the kitchen table and a chair to climb to and from the loft. When he is too drunk to manage the climb, he asks Frank to bring up his pillow and blankets, or sleeps downstairs by the fire or in the room with the children.

The arrangement also makes Angela responsible for accommodating Griffin’s needs. When he decides he is tired of climbing to the backyard lavatory and wants to use his mother’s chamber pot, Angela has to move the table and chair so he can get down, then carry and empty the pot. The move therefore brings the family under the same roof as their benefactor, but it does not give Angela control of the domestic space. Griffin’s habits and requests become part of the daily work of making the house livable.

Shelter, Displacement, and the Narrative

The move is one episode in a wider history of precarious shelter and family separation. Earlier, Grandma Sheehan had sent money to Philomena Flynn and Delia Fortune, who bought tickets, found a steamer trunk at the St. Vincent de Paul Society, hired a van, and took the family to a ship in Manhattan. Later, Malachy agrees to go to England after Christmas to work in a factory in Coventry, telling Frank that the boy will have to be the man of the house. He initially sends three pounds, raising hopes of food and outings, but the weekly remittances soon stop. Against that background, the move to Griffin’s house is not a settled homecoming: it is another practical response to a family’s continuing lack of money and dependable support.

The improvised refuge also anticipates later movement rather than resolving the conditions that force it. As an adult, Frank arranges passage on the Irish Oak from Cork to America for fifty-five pounds, after being told that flying via London would cost too much. The ship offers a route out, whereas Griffin’s house offers only a place to stay. Together, these episodes make movement—across a street at night, between Ireland and England for work, and finally across the Atlantic—a recurring measure of the family’s changing hopes and limited choices.