Origins – Living in a tenement house up a close – Doors & cupboards – Kitchen window recess – An early memory – Window blinds – The recessed bed – Dresser & coal bunker – Mantelpiece & gas light – Kitchen range – Gas stove – Range fireplace – Fender & coal scuttle – Firewood – Coal briquettes – The chimney sweep – Chimney fires – Back smoke & blow-downs – Chimney pots – Landing toilets – House furnishings – Wireless – Climbing the dykes – Washday before washing machines & spin dryers – The wringer – Drying the clothes – Ironing – The mangle – The midden – Street scenes – Street lighting – Neighbours – Horses

 

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ORIGINS

An urge to learn about my family history and a desire to find out what conditions were like in the world they lived in made me realise that some time in the future someone, descendant or stranger, might be curious about what life was like in the Govan of the 1930s. In the 1970s I began to jot down what memories could be dredged up, but doing so by hand proved to be laborious and time consuming, and after a year or two I had achieved only in sixty to seventy hand-written pages with about fifty to sixty thousand words. Even after more time had passed there wasn’t much more, and a significant amount of that was devoted to the results of family history research. But some of it related to life in Govan in the decade before the Second World War as seen through quite young eyes, and it is those experiences that have been drawn on for this book. The follow-up volume entitled In Peace & War (IPAW) includes wartime experiences.

 

In 1988 technical assistance in the form of a word processor was acquired, which made a significant difference to the amount of work produced. The next paragraph gives a brief picture of my origins, in general the writing concentrates on much of what was interesting for entertainment’s sake as well as for serious study in the future. Although sparsely referenced in each chapter heading, they could be consulted by students of the period. (IPAW contains more about family life).

 

My maternal grandparents came from Dundee in the late 1890s, and while my paternal grand-mother was Glasgow born her husband was a ‘Geordie’ from north east England. Mum was born at 16 Harmony Row in 1901, and Dad at 40 Elderpark Street in 1898. This building is still standing in 2011. After their marriage in 1927 my parents lived in a sub-let room, vague details of which I had heard about over the years but never knew exactly where. Then I happened to look with a more searching eye than usual at details in an insurance document dating from that time, and it was there, 80 Elderpark Street - 6th February 1928. They lived here for about six months before moving to a rented house on the first floor at 7 Howat Street, where my mother lost her first baby at the end of 1928 by a miscarriage. Then in September 1930 I arrived.

7 HOWAT STREET –  LIVING ‘UP A CLOSE’

At this time all tenement properties were owned by individuals who employed factors to supervise them and let them out to tenants. The first time I heard of a tenant buying their house was in the late 1950s. Number 7 Howat Street (1) is in a corner of the tenement block. It has, or it had, because my last visit there was seventy-odd years ago and refurbishment in the 1970s will probably have altered it, a large open stair-well with the staircase winding up from the ground floor round the walls to the three upper landings. The stairwell was gas lit, but in common with most others similarly located in a corner of a tenement, it had no windows to the outside to admit daylight, but a section of the roof above it had windows known as roof-lights which provided daytime illumination. Other stairs away from the corners of blocks had conventional staircases with close-set flights of steps and windows on the half-landings which almost invariably overlooked the back courts.

 

THE LANDING MAIN DOOR

On the outside face of the outer door frame, at shoulder height on the side on which the door was hung, there was a wire operated bell pull. It was a half-inch thick by five inches by three plate of sheet brass, pressed and shaped with flanges to appear solid, which was fixed to the frame with the long axis vertical. In the centre of the plate there was a knob of the same metal, with a square steel rod extension that went part-way through the door frame. A length of flexible wire was attached to the other end of the rod, which passed over a small pulley wheel on the inside and went up to the top of the fanlight, where it was attached to a length of spring steel or a coil-spring secured to the frame at its other end. When the knob was pulled a small bell on the end of the spring tinkled.

 

The main door had a knob and a large name plate and letter box of brass which, with the bell-pull, in those days of one-up-man-ship cleanliness competition with the neighbours, every housewife was driven to polish with Brasso at least once a week. Internal apartment doors, of lighter construction but of the same design as the outer door, had knobs that were incorporated in a metal plate internally which had a small sliding locking device on the inside known as a ‘snib’. Above each door, the outer and the two leading to the apartments, there was a fanlight window to allow light into the lobby in the days of gaslight, because other than the staircase skylights, no light was provided here until electricity was installed.

 

Our house, the last one of three on the first landing (one stair up), was a simple 2-apartment room-and-kitchen with a short 8’ x 4’ hall, or lobby as they were known, with two tall shallow cupboards called presses in the facing end walls. On entry, the wall facing the landing door had the two apartment doors, bedroom on the left and kitchen on the right. A standard feature of the period was that all doors, outer and internal, were of solid wood with tall narrow recessed panels in four sections. The panels were in the form of two short above and two tall below a raised horizontal centre line, and these were bordered by an inset wood moulding. In a later age tenants took great delight in flush panelling these doors with hardboard or plywood. Thirty or more years on other younger people ‘discovered’ and removed the panels, imagining that they had made a great discovery of an old decorative design underneath.

HOUSE LAYOUT (2), FIXTURES AND FITTINGS – DRESSER & COAL BUNKER

Fixed against an inside wall of the kitchen which lay at right angles to the outer wall, and constructed of three-quarter-inch thick planks of timber, were those standard fixed fittings of rough furniture in all tenement houses, a dresser and coal bunker (3). The dresser and bunker, placed together and of similar dimensions, were waist high units four feet wide and about three feet six inches high, and twenty inches from front to back. The dresser had a single compartment with a two door, two shelf cupboard which invariably served as the pot press. Above the cupboard and lying side by side were two drawers for cutlery and other kitchen implements.

 

The bunker for the storage of coal had a hinged lid fitted with the hinges a few inches away from the wall so that it would lie open safely leaning back against it. The front flap too was hinged above mid-height so that the top eighteen inches could fold down outside. Its capacity, which was seldom filled because of the expense, was two 1cwt (50kg) bags of coal with the front down, and another two with it raised and secured in place with rotating catches at the fixed top corners. Above the dresser and bunker, at a height of around six to seven feet there were two shelves, long and short, of the same heavy-gauge wood fixed to the wall, one above the other about a foot apart and the same in depth, and on these were stored large pots, china mixing bowls and other large or less often needed cooking items.

 

KITCHEN WINDOW RECESS

Kitchen windows in old tenements built between 1890 and 1920 had a single casement or a double casement four feet in width with a central mullion (4), seen in the second of five prints taken of a very good mock-up constructed of heavy duty card by members of the Govan Reminiscence Group for an exhibition in December 1989. As the outer walls of tenements were about two feet thick, the windows were recessed on the inside by about eighteen inches into the wall with an outer stone sill of six inches. A standard original fitting in the interior sides of the recess, which were angled at about thirty degrees opening out into the kitchen, were shutter doors two feet wide that reached up to the full window-frame height with the hinges at the outer edges. These were panelled, and, like all the other woodwork around the house, doors, shelves and skirting boards, were painted brown. While the shutters could be closed to cover the windows they seem to have fallen out of use by the 1930s because I never saw them closed in any house.

 

The window recess housed two of the main items of equipment in the kitchen, the sink and work-top. The sink, referred to by older people then as ‘the jawbox’, was boxed in with wood panelling to form two-door cupboards which stretched across under the window for the full width of the recess and reaching out a few inches on either side beyond. Older tenements had sinks of blackened cast iron that could never be made to look clean. Cleaning materials used around the sink were kept in the cupboard.

 

On one side above the cupboards and alongside the sink there was a worktop, an inch thick solid panel of wood fitted level so that it didn’t drain, with a slight extension over the near edge of the sink. A single swan neck water tap that supplied only cold water was the standard fitting in all houses in working class areas. It was called a ‘crane’, and was fixed to one side above the sink in a low bulkhead at the foot of the casement shutter. This bulkhead provided a small shelf to hold items like a soap dish, scrubbing brush, nail and tooth brushes, shaving equipment, pumice stone, and steel wool for cleaning pots. The crane itself was fixed low down at the foot of the shelf support. It could be turned down into the sink to enable the shutter on that side to be closed, or to allow another board to be placed over the sink to give extra workspace if required. Only now, seventy decades on, do I realise why the tap was called a crane; it was because it could be made to ‘luff’ like the jib of a single arm crane.

AN EARLY MEMORY.

At the age of three it is of sitting on the drainer with my feet in a basin of water in the sink, being washed before going to bed in the dark of a winter evening. Quite clear is the recollection of looking out past the side of the window blind into the dim gas-lit street, and seeing the many illuminated windows of the houses in the building opposite. Domestic gaslight was at a lower level than electric lighting, and at this time all windows had blinds of beige paper or fabric. This meant that in houses with kitchens to the front or at the rear, the silhouette of anyone working at their sink or drainer appeared on the blind, making them visible from outside.

 

Frequent movements were seen of people busy with one of the never-ending household chores like preparing a meal, washing dishes, a man just in from work stropping an open razor then shaving and washing himself, or a woman washing small items of clothing and using a scrubbing board. In those days domestic chores took up far more time than they do today. A popular song of the period heard frequently on the wireless was:

 

 

These words from Love’s Old Sweet Song (when sung by Irish tenor John McCormick) are indelibly imprinted in my memory. They appeared to my very young perception to have been specially made up to describe what I was seeing. It was the first of many occasions when a piece of music became associated with an event in later life.

WINDOW BLINDS

Paper or fabric blinds were wound on to Swedish made spring-loaded light wooden rollers. Pulled down to the required level by a long cord fixed to the centre of the lower end of the blind, when held steady for an instant it locked the blind in place, the pulling down having wound up a return spring inside the roller. A quick gentle pull freed the lock and allowed the blind to roll up controlled by the cord. But years of wear eventually caused the lock to become undependable as the brass pawl and the teeth on the ratchet became worn, so that people occasionally received a dreadful fright, sometimes in the dead of night, when the blind unexpectedly shot up the full height, whirling round violently on the roller with a loud clatter.

MANTELPIECE & GASLIGHT (Spelling - mantelpiece/shelf is the structure, mantle is the white asbestos fitting on the gaslight necessary to burn the gas and produce light efficiently.)

Glasgow Corporation had taken over electricity generating plants from private companies at the turn of the 20th century, and had installed it in most tenements by the 1930s. But it was only wired into closes and up to the landings, and if tenants wanted to be connected they had to arrange for and pay to have it installed in their house. There was gas only during the nine years my parents’ were in their first house, but when we moved in 1937, my father had it put in the new (re-let) house in Linthouse before moving in.

 

The mantelpiece (seen in 4 & 6) containing the kitchen range with fireplace and gas stove was built into the wall facing the bunker in most houses. It was a solid structure of brick with cement facing about four feet wide, which rose to above eye level and projected out about four inches from the wall. It was surmounted by a wooden platform known as the mantelshelf. The shelf was broader and deeper than the mantelpiece, with a fairly deep overhang at the front and rather less at the sides. It was a convenient place on which to keep certain items in regular use at the fireplace, like the tea caddy, matches, a spare mantle for the gas light, and tapers and candles. A kitchen clock placed here as depicted would have had to be moved away from the heat rising from the fire as it affected its time keeping.

 

Other items were the penny coins kept handy for the gas meter, and it was a convenient ‘parking’ place for ornaments of brass and china, such as ‘wally dugs’ (pottery dogs). But it invariable became a location for all kinds of other odds and ends that were needed around the kitchen. The overhang at the front of the shelf was an ideal place to have installed underneath it a length of expanding curtain wire with spring clips at each end which fitted on the shelf ends. This was the place to hang dish cloths and towels and any other small damp item that would dry quickly by the heat from the fire and stove. The most important installation on the mantelshelf was the gas light fitting.

 

The mains gas supply was piped up from the ground floor close with cast iron piping through the landings to the three upper floors of the staircase, with a branch pipe to each house and the landings lights. A gas meter installed in the lobbies of each house was well above head height, and a stool or chair was kept handy there to reach it. From the meter another pipe ran down to a branch under the floor of the lobby, one pipe from which led to the room, and was embedded out of sight within the wall and across to the centre of the ceiling. The other branch passed from the lobby under the floor boards into the kitchen to the corner of the mantlepiece, where it ran up the side corner to the mantelshelf and along the back against the wall to the middle of the shelf. Here, it had a ninety degree elbow turn and projected out a few inches beyond the shelf, where there was a tap to control the flow of gas and where it became a small diameter pipe of brass. It then turned up in another elbow bend and ended in a tall swan’s neck with the light fitting on the drooping end well above normal head height. The gas light seen in 3 & 5 is less elaborate than the ones I was familiar with.

A circular metal collar about four inches in diameter and held in place with four brackets was fixed on a horizontal position on the end of the pipe. In it there were three knurled screws pointing inward spaced evenly round the circumference. The screws held in place a globe about eight inches in diameter of usually clear glass that might sometimes be engraved with frosted artistic designs. The globe had openings top and bottom, the top one having a thickened, outward curling lip which fitted into the collar to be held in place by the screws. The opening in the bottom of the globe was wider and generally had a decorative moulded edge. Inside the globe, on the end of the pipe was the device which produced the light, a mantle, a delicate creation shaped like a large fat thimble with small holes. Made in a mould of white clay/asbestos type material, with use it had to be replaced occasionally. This was because during warm weather with no lit fire, to save using a match to light the gas stove, a taper or a paper ‘spill’ was applied to the mantle which tended to cause wear to its delicate fabric.

 

When lighting the gaslight, a naked light was always applied first to the mantle by a match or a taper (spill). When the gas was turned on, the mantle ignited with a ‘plop’, and continued to burn with a soft hiss, producing a pleasant white light. It was vital to follow this procedure because if the gas was turned on before the light was applied, the gas could fill the globe, and when the light was applied there was a mild ‘boof’ of an explosion which could shatter the globe. A reduced flow of gas was necessary by means of the tap to begin with until the mantle warmed up, because it too could shatter if too much heat was generated too soon. The light it produced was roughly equivalent to a 60w electric bulb.

 

Increasing the amount of illumination could have been done by adding extra light fittings, but I never saw such a thing in any working class home, because the additional cost, both of the fittings and the gas used, made it too expensive. Some upmarket homes did have brackets with two, or even three, mantles and globes in the centre of the ceiling to illuminate large rooms. An easier alternative to operating to the tap in the pipe near the mantelshelf was one fitted to the vertical part of the swan’s neck. It had a long horizontal arm fixed at the centre with holes at each end to which thin chains with large loops on the end were attached, that dangled down to within easier reach. This arrangement provided a finer control for the amount of light required.

KITCHEN RANGE

The range (5), which occupied the lower half of the recess in the mantelpiece, was composed of cast iron plate parts in two unequal sections with the fire-place located between them. When bolted together they made up the fire-place and oven. The structure projecting out a few inches from the recess was about thirty-two inches high above floor level and extended about eighteen inches into it. The external surfaces of the plates were black enamelled, but the curved decorative edging was shiny. The whole surface was treated with black-lead, a graphite preparation called Zebo Grate Polish, and the edges were buffed up and kept clean with emery paper or steel wool. Flooring in the houses was of dovetailed planks, but the section in front of the mantelpiece, the hearth, was either brick, tiled or plain, or a concrete slab. This was boxed in on its three sides by a removable fender which was supposed to confine safely any cinders falling out of the fire.

 

The original tenement fireplaces had the disadvantage that the fire itself was about a foot above floor level to accommodate an ash pan in the space below, so that in cold weather in these draughty houses feet had to be propped up on a stool to benefit from the warmth. In the 1950s people began experimenting by removing the ash pan and grate and installing a ‘nest’ which stood in the recess on short legs to raise it up above the hearth, with a space for the ashes to gather underneath. Fireplaces in a room-and-kitchen house had flues that ran up inside the wall to a chimney-head in the roof, to draw the smoke up from the fire. The off-set range had the gas stove sitting on top of the larger of the two sides, left or right-handed depending on the location of the flue.

Above the fireplace there was an access to the flue, a low cast iron square sectioned tunnel that could be moved by sliding it in and out (back and forward), to facilitate cleaning when the fire was out. The floor of this tunnel, which was level with the range top, was a solid cast plate which could also be moved in the same way. When pulled out over the fire, with the fire lit the smoke passed up behind the plate and went up the chimney, and with a good-going fire, as the plate itself warmed up it could be used as a hob. Also, by removing first a disc in the centre of the plate itself, then a ring, gave small or larger apertures for a cooking pot or a kettle to sit on.

 

When the fire was lit, after a time the tops of the range on either side became hot enough to keep a stock pot warm. A gas stove sat on top of the larger side of the range, and below it there was an oven with a heavy door and two wire shelves that was heated by gas jets supplied by a branch of piping running from the mains supply out of sight under the floor. This was supplemented by heat conducting through from the fire. Mainly because of the difficulty in judging temperature I never saw our or any other oven used seriously for this purpose; it was only ever used for keeping cooked food hot or warming dinner plates. There were no oven thermometers in those days for working class homes so skill had to be gained by experience, and most women were reluctant to experiment because of financial restrictions and the fear of wasting anything. Nevertheless, stories were heard of certain individuals who were adept at using their range oven for baking.

GAS STOVE

Sitting on top of the broad section of hob over the oven, the stove was made up from thin iron strips riveted together into an oblong frame. It had three burners, the largest of which on one side of the frame was easily converted to a grill by a lever. For this there were two iron grill plates that, for cooking above or grilling below, could be raised or lowered into or out of the flame by turning the lever. The other two burners were set front and rear in the rest of the frame, a layout from which originated the saying when referring to a project postponed but not forgotten, that it was being put on the back burner. The meaning here was that when necessary, a stock pot with a bone for soup placed on the stove over a low heat for a long time would, in the restricted space, be out of the way, leaving the others free for normal mealtime cooking.

 

To allow the hob to be cleaned, the stove could be lifted up at the end nearest the fire and parked over-centre to rest against the side wall of the recess,. The frame itself had a pair of loose swivelling feet that were self-locking when the stove was in the down position. The burners were of course part of the frame, and the gas feed arrangement to allow this to be done was simple.

 

The shape of the pipe carrying gas to the burners was in the form of a ‘J’, lying horizontal from the point where it left the main pipe and passed round the leg of the mantelpiece into the recess. The long leg of the J was within the recess, and it was from it the feeds to the three burners emerged in a row, each with a tap to control the flow of gas. Because of the need to mix air with gas to make it burn efficiently, the usual arrangement, as with the Bunsen burner in the science class of school days, was for a rotating collar with a hole in it to be placed in a tight but adjustable fit over the Bunsen tube. The collar could then be turned to match up with a similar hole on the burner stem allowing, according to its setting, a variable amount of air to be drawn in. When the stove was in the using position, the pipe beyond the tap was in the form of a tapering nozzle which fitted free, i.e. with space all round, into each burner pipe which had a belled end to receive it.

 

As with the Bunsen the amount of air allowed in was critical, and the adjustment here was by a thick disc about the size of an old penny with a fine screw-threaded hole in its centre. The disc had a knurled edge and was a little larger than the belled end of the burner pipe, and ran on the thread behind the nozzle. When turned on the thread the disc opened or closed the gap, altering the amount of air going in to mix with the gas. The advantage of this arrangement was that there was no physical connection between the nozzle and the burner pipes, which enabled the stove itself when out of use to be lifted up on its pivot without having to uncouple piping. If burned without being mixed with air, coal gas did so with a cool dirty white flickering flame. But when air is introduced the flame turns blue and gives off a muted roaring sound, and when it is adjusted correctly the heat generated is intense.

RANGE & FIREPLACE.

Most people born after the 1960s will have no experience of living in a house with an open fire. Today, houses with ‘live’ fires are rare and those still in use are usually in the form of enclosed coal, coke or wood burning stoves. Few people will have any conception of what an open fire was like, of the labour involved in keeping it going, the amount of dirt it produced, and the danger involved if it wasn’t watched constantly. Properly looked after and fed with good quality coal, while it was a wasteful source of heat, it was a very efficient apartment warmer.

 

It was vital to ensure that no smouldering ember fell out and bounced over the fender and burned a hole in the carpet, a not infrequent event which could set the house on fire if there was no-one in the kitchen. On burning down, coal reduces first to cinders, then ash, a fine grey powder with the consistency of flour. The fire had to be stirred up occasionally by raking it with a poker, to riddle the ash through the bottom bars of the grate into the ash-pan below, or it became choked and went out because the flow of air was blocked. This operation was known as ‘poking the fire’.

 

While most of the ash went down into the ash pan some of it was drawn up the chimney with the smoke by the natural draught, but a certain amount always drifted into the apartment making cleaning a much more frequent job than could possibly be visualized today. Of course the immediate surroundings, the range itself, and furnishings and carpets near the fireplace, were worst affected. The work of keeping the fire going was dirty and unpleasant and was avoided if possible, except in cold weather when it became almost a favourite chore. From the visit by the coal-man, who carried in the 1cwt. bags (stiff dense canvas sacks) on his back through which some of the coal dust always percolated, who dumped and emptied them into the coal bunker, to the point where it left the house as ash to be taken to the midden, a coal fire generated an exceptional amount of work.

 

In wet weather the bags were damp which kept the dust down. But when they were dry, on being emptied the fine coal dust drifted out in a cloud over the surroundings which required a general cleanup. The coal then had to be dug out with a coal shovel or by hand, and put into a bucket or coal scuttle and carried over to the fire-place. Some of it was in large lumps that had to be broken up with a hammer, which further spread dust and coal fragments around, and making you aware of another hazard; unless you were very careful you might get a bit in the eye - eye protectors were unknown then. The rest of the operation was equally disagreeable, because keeping a fire going was a task requiring a fair amount of skill which only came with practice.

 

If fresh coal was put on a fire without first raking out the ashes, it gradually settled down into a dense layer which blocked off the air needed for combustion, so that the heat given out diminished, it would die down and could go out. This happened occasionally to even to the most vigilant stoker through inattention or being distracted, especially if the coal was damp or of poor quality. Women gossiping with neighbours on the stair head for an extended time were particularly affected, when one might be heard saying, wide-eyed and with a gasp - ‘Ah’ll need tae go or ma’ fire’ll be oot!’.

 

Raking out prior to the stoking operation required fine judgement during cold weather. If it was begun too soon, unless you had a long poker it could result in scorched knuckles. Left late, so that the heat had died down past a certain point, the fire, loaded up with fresh coal, could take a long time to regenerate, leaving the occupants huddled round the range wrapped up in coats, hats and scarves, and holding out their hands to catch some warmth until it did so. In my memory there is no exaggeration in that description!

 

As bed-time approached the fire was left to die down as low as possible to reduce the chance of a cinder falling out unobserved. Some people, particularly those with children, had a fireguard of metal mesh to put in front within the fender which could be an effective block to stop cinders and sparks reaching the carpet. While it was effective, a fireguard restricted the amount of heat getting into the apartment so it was only used if the need was imperative. In winter mornings getting the fire going quickly was necessary. First the cinders remaining would be thoroughly raked to clear out all the ash from the grate down into the ash pan. Then, carefully checking they were cool enough, using fingers the cinders were lifted out and placed on a sheet of newspaper and made up into a parcel.

 

All of the range, hob, cooker, all round the back and sides of the recess, the grate of the fire and the vertical bars at the front, the hearth and at regular intervals up the chimney through the sliding access hatch in the top of the recess with a long handled flue brush as far as the arm could reach, to sweep it clear of soot. The debris gathered from this operation was deposited into the ash pan and taken down to the midden in the back-court and dumped there (7). It was once estimated that in winter something like 80% of all domestic rubbish was ash and cinders from domestic fires, as not everyone was economy-minded enough to save the cinders. Bear in mind too that the fire was an excellent way of disposing of burnable household rubbish which, if it generated additional heat, so much the better.

 

Public health authorities advised that to help keep down vermin and deter scavenging cats and dogs, empty food tins should be scorched in the fire before being put in the midden. Removing the hot cans was a job for the tongs. After the cleanup, the fire was laid ready for lighting by crumpling up a sheet of newspaper and placing it in the bottom of the grate. Sticks of wood were put on top, criss-crossed to leave air passages, then the parcel of cinders was laid on top along with some small pieces of coal. When applying a light it was essential to do so with a taper to the paper at the bottom, so that the sticks caught alight before the paper of the parcel burned through and allowed the cinders to fall down and smother the flame before it got a proper hold. If that happened the laying operation had to be done over again.

 

An essential item at the fire-place in every home was the companion set. It comprised of a small brush and a shovel, and a poker and the aforementioned tongs, which were suspended from a metal rod mounted in a base having a cap on top with a carrying loop, and four brackets set at 90 degrees to suspend the implements by loops on the ends of the handles. The tongs were used to lift out the cans and the odd stone that sometimes arrived with the coal. One of the stove fittings was a small shelf that clipped on to the range directly in front of the fire bars, and a pivoting door that was normally left open but could be closed in front of the bars, forcing the draught to enter through the bottom of the bars if the condition of the fire needed it. Both of these were of the same cast iron as the range, as was another longer shelf in front of the oven below the door to rest anything hot on momentarily as it was being lifted out. The smaller shelf at the fire-bars was convenient for sitting the filled teapot on to keep it warm, while making sure that the handle and the knob on the lid wouldn’t be scorched by heat.

THE RECESSED BED

At this period of tenement design, both room and kitchen had set-in beds in what were known as bed recesses, with timber battens fixed to the three interior walls at waist height to support the bed frame (8). Made also of timber, unless they were older and pre-standard, double-bed frames were constructed to a size of six feet by four-feet-six inches. If there was one which had been handed down through the family, perhaps it had even belonged to grand-parents, its dimensions would quite likely be too small for it to sit on the battens. In that case, a supporting four-by-two (4” x 2”) timber frame had to be made up for it.

 

The surface of the bed-frame on which the stuffed, un-sprung mattress lay was a dense inter-coiled spring-wire mesh which, when it sagged with use, could be re-tensioned by tightening screws in one end with a spanner, almost like tuning a stringed instrument. With the bed made up, the recess could be curtained off from the rest of the apartment, its height above the floor providing a good storage space underneath. A disadvantage of the height of the bed was the risk of someone falling out. Usually after this happened a couch would be placed against the bed, which served as a step for anyone going into bed, and to catch anyone taking a tumble during the night.

FENDER & COAL SCUTTLE

In front of the range, the flat stone or concrete projection called the hearth extended out about eighteen inches at floor level. It was bordered by a fender, a moveable low decorative edging of cast iron, or assembled from pressed sheet brass or copper, which in its simplest form was shaped like a flat ‘U‘. It lay on the floor and bordered the hearth, and was available supplemented with decorative features like rods and knobs. The one bought for our next house in Linthouse had two boxes of the same metal with padded hinged lids which stood at the outer corners. These could be used as seats that were popular in cold weather, and they held the paper, sticks and cleaning materials needed around the range, and shoe polishing equipment. The fender was to stop anyone from accidentally getting too close to the fire, and to prevent burning coals that sometimes fell out of the fire from landing on the carpet.

 

The coal scuttle (9 was a receptacle, made from similar material as the fender found in most houses to hold ready to use coal. It was in three parts; an outer drum with embossed decoration, side handles, a pagoda-dome removable lid with a broad, pointed knob on top and three low feet, which was normally kept within the hearth or placed just outside it. Inside the scuttle there was a plain inner bucket with two wire loop handles fixed to the rim for lifting it out to be carried to the coal bunker for refilling. What remains in my memory about the coal scuttle was that when the inner bucket was removed for filling, it was essential to up-end the scuttle itself to empty any dust or small pieces of coal that had fallen inside. If this wasn’t done, when the replenished bucket was being replaced, the piston effect caused the displaced air to waft the dust up and into eyes and lungs.

 

A taper holder hung from a nail driven into a side of the mantlepiece (10). It was a tapered, triangular shaped box of stiff card less than a foot high and about three inches at each of its three sided top, having a short extension from one of the sides with a hole in it for hanging pointed end down from the nail. It held the tapers that when lit from the fire, were used by smokers to light a pipe or cigarette, the gas stove or gas mantel. Tapers were bought as packets of thin strips of soft wood, or were painstakingly made up from strips of folded up newspaper, something my granda used to do.

FIREWOOD

It could be bought as ready to use bunches of sticks from hardware stores, ironmongers, newsagents and other corner shops. They were usually made from old railway sleepers which, having originally been treated with creosote burned well. The sticks had to be of a suitable size from six to eight inches long, if they were too thick they wouldn’t catch alight, or too thin they would be consumed too quickly before the cinders started to burn. The bunches held as many sticks as could be grasped in a loop a little larger than would be made between the hands with middle fingers and thumbs almost touching, and were tied with a length of twine which incorporated a carrying loop (11). In the 1930s they cost three-halfpence a bunch, but I remember selling them in the Co-op grocers in the 1940s and ‘50s, by which time they cost tuppence-ha’ppeny, or 1p in today’s money.

 

It was seldom necessary to buy sticks for our fires because Dad, an engineer, brought home pieces of wood from his work. Engineering works handling heavy materials always had baulks of timber lying about for use as props and chocks. The smaller pieces used to disappear after a time as they became covered with oil and grease, and six-to-eight inch sections sawn from the length were carried off home by workers to be used for kindling. Another local street trader, the one in our district was Drummond, used to sell bags of ordinary box and other scrap wood from his cart, and once or twice when Dads’ supply failed to turn up a much complained about bridging quantity lacking the oil contaminant was bought from him.

 

To prepare the wood for kindling it was taken out to the landing. There, kneeling on the door mat within the lobby and working over the doorstep on the stone floor using a small axe, the pieces of sleeper was split down to the required size, usually by the man of the house. This job, done weekly in winter, it was always done on a Friday evening, fascinated me and I could not wait to be old enough to be allowed to use the axe. Landing surfaces were invariably chipped by the axe, but the marks were covered up when the door mat was replaced. Residents of these houses today where the surface of the landing is as it was originally might wonder how the marks came to be made. The best I could hope for then was to be allowed to gather up the chopped sticks and place them properly aligned and tidy in the storage box, a wooden Australian butter box scrounged from the Co-op. At this point a childhood rhyme comes to mind:

That seemingly irrelevant last line was probably an expression of relief when the job, one of a seemingly never-ending series of chores, was completed.

 

A hazard encountered when using wood as kindling was that certain kinds of timber could occasionally spark when burning. This was caused by explosive bangs which shot out tiny slivers of smouldering wood that could, and occasionally did, land on a fireside rug and burn a hole in the pile if it wasn’t spotted and dealt with in time, or on furnishings or the clothes of someone sitting nearby. The phenomenon was probably caused by small pockets of air trapped in certain types of timber (one I think was larch), in which expansion produced by heat cause it to explode. That type of wood had to be avoided, but we were never able to tell which was which until the first of it was burning and sparking away. Then the rest of that batch had to be disposed of into the midden. It may seem a peculiar thing to be nostalgic about, but I well remember the distinctive smell of burning carpet when a spark had landed there un-noticed. This caused noses to twitch until it was identified, then panic set in as the chairs near the fireplace were pulled back and the carpet or floor searched frantically, looking for the tell-tail wisp of smoke. If it wasn’t immediately spotted a sure way of finding the ember was to run a hand over the pile. It was effective but could be painful.

 

Although the gas stove on the hob had a grill, in our house toast was always made at the fire because, apart from economy reasons in that it used no gas, it seemed to taste better done that way. But the grill had to be used during warm weather when the fire wasn’t needed. When toasting bread at the fire, if scorched knuckles were to be avoided a proper toasting fork was required, but ours was a stout implement with two wide spaced prongs and a short bone handle. A three-pronged fork seen in another house and coveted very much by me, was the same length as ours and was made of wire, but it had and extending handle which doubled its length so that there was no risk of getting scorched (12). Usually the best heat came through the bars at the front. Alternatively, if the fire was burning well it could be done on top, but if toasting new, soft bread in that position, there was the chance that unless the slice was securely stitched on the prongs it could fall off onto the coals. If that embarrassing event occurred to me and no-one else had noticed, the slice was quickly recovered, any trace of ash or coal was removed from it and it was slipped onto the pile with the fervent hope that I wouldn’t get landed with it.

COAL BRIQUETTES

When coal was delivered to the merchant’s depot, the process of bagging it always produced a fair amount of surplus dust and tiny pieces known as dross, only a small amount of which householders would accept with their delivery. Surplus dust left after the bagging was swept up and stored and sent to the briquette makers, where it was mixed it with a little cement or plaster and water then cast it in moulds around the size of a half brick. The moulds were put into an oven to dry and harden, then sold to men, usually apparently disreputable types who went round the streets in winter selling them, sometimes still steaming, on a broad barrow with a flat platform. They called out ‘coalbrikates’, and sold them for something like one-and-six (1/6, one shilling and six pence) a dozen. Tam, the elderly bowlegged short individual who did this in our district occasionally added for effect, ‘big scarcity!’ Bulk-for-bulk, briquettes were cheaper to burn than coal and one could be put on a fire along with the coal as an economy measure. Another type of briquette encountered at a later date was oval in shape, like a large egg. These could be shovelled up, and were sold by weight.

CHINMEY SWEEP

A critical aspect of looking after a domestic fire was the condition of the flue and chimney. A local bylaw required them to be swept once a year, but because it cost a couple of shillings and was an unpleasant and traumatic experience to undergo, people seldom complied with the statute. It was normally only done when it became absolutely necessary, which was usually after two or three years of average use and a sluggishly burning fire. By then the deposit of soot in the flue would have built up so much that it would be restricting the draught needed to keep it going efficiently and ‘draw’ the smoke up, draw being the term used to describe the condition of the flue.

 

The chimney sweep (13) was seen regularly with his assistant in the streets as they passed along between jobs carrying their equipment. It consisted of a long coil of soot impregnated rope having the round flat stiff-bristled brush on the end with a heavy iron weight attached by a short length of chain, a ladder to gain access to the loft to get on to the roof, and a bundle of sooty sacking to cover the fireplaces. As the day went on he became blacker and blacker, so that by the afternoon he began to look like an African of the very blackest kind without the shiny skin. If there was any man whose employment made him dirtier than the coalman, it was the chimney sweep.

 

The flues from all the houses on adjacent sides of two closes, one from each apartment in each ‘through and through’ house, passed up within the dividing wall separating the closes to a common transverse chimney head on the roof that in a three-storey tenement had sixteen chimneys pots (14). In tenements flues from the middle single apartment house on each landing were usually contained in a four pot chimney head overlooking the street. The main job of the sweep’s helper was to assist in locating the correct flue to be swept, and the two of them, the sweep at the chimney head and the helper at the fireplace, shouted to each other via the flue.

 

When the correct chimney was found (this is when mistakes were made because in very dirty chimneys voices could be quite muffled), after a pause to give time for the helper to cover up the range with the sacking, the sweep would drop the brush down. Aided by the weight he pulled it up and down, lowering it down a few times, a section at a time, to dislodge as much of the soot as possible. But no matter how carefully the fireplace was sealed some always escaped into the apartment which added to the housewife’s labours. After the cleanup in a ground floor house with the tallest flue, a bucket full of soot could be obtained which the sweep deposited in the midden

CHIMNEY FIRES

Accidental fires could be caused by excessive stoking, heaping the coals up too high in very cold weather, or by putting something very inflammable like a handful of bacon rind or beef or mutton fat into the fire. While trying to avoid paying for a sweep, some people took the risk of deliberately setting fire to their chimney by shoving burning newspapers up the flu through the cleaning vent. However, this was recognised as being dangerous and was done in trepidation, because it meant a summons to court and a fine if you were found out. A chimney fire could be quite frightening for occupants of the house affected, as well as those in any above where the flue passes thought the wall on its way up to the chimney head, because the burning was accompanied a loud roar and a powerful draught ‘up the lum’.

 

A feeling of relief was experienced when the noise began to subside. But if it was your chimney, apprehension rose again when on looking out the window you became aware of people in the houses round about at their windows, or in the street or back-courts, looking up at the sight. The chimney pot would have been belching out a thick plume of dense black smoke and sparks like a mini volcano, with burning soot being spread around downwind, to be replaced with a jet of flame which shot up as the burning reached the chimney itself, before subsiding. If washings had been hung out to dry in the path of all this muck, their owners were in for a nasty surprise when they came to take them in. Although it wasn’t easy to identify whose chimney was responsible, some very lively altercations can be recalled. I seem to remember that when it needed sweeping, our chimney was set on fire most times because Dad thought that the shorter top flat flue of the house in Linthouse posed less of the risk of being caught.

BACK SMOKE & BLOWDOWNS

There were two other hazards of the coal fire, both of which could occur in chimneys in need of sweeping. In windy weather it was possible if conditions were right for a reverse draught to occur in the cold flue of a newly lit fire. But it could also happen with a fire loaded up with fresh coal, when the flue had time to cool down and the upward draught was at its minimum. At that point the amount of smoke being produced would be at maximum, so the effect on the household when it began to pour out and fill the apartment can be easily imagined. Fortunately, it didn’t happen often, and when it did it seldom lasted for long.

 

In the older tenement buildings of that era, and some not so old, depending on the standard of workmanship and materials used in their construction, flue linings sometimes began to break up. Or it could be caused by a sweep’s too vigorous use of the brush, when the weight was made to bang about in the flue with his sweeping effort that was perhaps aided by weakening caused by many chimney fires in the past. All fires had individual flues and if you lived in an upper floor where the flues were like this it was possible to get back smoke from a fire in a neighbour’s house below even with no fire burning in your own house! I remember this happening to us in Linthouse.

 

A blow-down was usually caused by a strong wind dislodging a layer of soot high up in a chimney pot in need of sweeping, which, in falling knocked down more which increased in volume as it fell. In the worst case it had been known to happen to a family living on the ground floor in a three storey building, with debris from the full height of the flue descending on them and pouring out into the kitchen just as they had sat down to a meal. Their difficulty in cleaning up would have been compounded by having a partially smothered fire to cope with. I used to think that soot was an incombustible product of the fire, but later came to understand that it is composed of a certain still combustible element escaping from the coal before it had reached a temperature high enough to burn it. It went up the chimney as smoke where some of it was deposited in layers as soot.

CHIMNEY POTS

Made from semi-glazed earthenware pottery material, the chimney pots originally had a two-foot extension seen on the one on the left in (14) which sat over the top and rested on three or four lugs on the pot’s upper rim, leaving a narrow space all round for a current of air to enter moving upwards to boost the draw. The flues were made from unglazed pottery material, some of which gave more trouble with a lack of ‘draw’ than others. When it was persistently troublesome the only alternative was to replace the chimney cap with a can, a four-foot slightly tapered tube of thin galvanised sheet steel, which had to be paid for by the tenant, plus the cost of fitting. The cans were of two or three different designs, which spoiled the tidy appearance of the row of pots on the chimney-head. The most common cans were those with the top rim cut away to resemble a circular row of upward pointing arrowheads.

 

There were other cans of more elaborate design, one of which had a mouth which lay over at 90° in a moveable cowl with a fin on top that ran on a bearing, to turn the vent away from the wind so that it served as an extractor. This type wasn’t as popular as the advantages might imply, because as it aged the cowl could stick on the bearing so that it could act as a scoop when the wind blew into it. There was also a type with a ball shaped rotating dome having a cap with a number of angled vents which rotated according to wind-speed. All these had additional difficulties of their own, one of which was that they had to be guyed down to stop them being blown off by a strong wind. Another was that they had to be removed when the chimney was being swept, and any can over a certain age was sure to be affected with rust and could be in danger of collapsing when handled, which meant of course that it had to be replaced - at a cost. But I seem to remember these cans had a vertical opening in the side with a door that could be opened allowed a sweep’s brush to be inserted (15).

A situation sometimes developed which was exasperating, but viewed from this distance in time was comical when, as deterioration progressed, a ‘granny’, as the rotating type of chimney can was called, developed a squeak. It could become more of a penetrating variable shriek as the wind rose and fell, which was bad enough during the day, but imagine what it must have been like for people at night within earshot trying to sleep. When that happened it could generate much frustration, because often nothing could be done about it as it was the responsibility of householder, who in many cases could not afford to have it attended to. The best that could be hoped for was that collapse was imminent.

HOUSE FURNISHINGS

Our wooden kitchen table was of a design that was very common at that time; it was 5’ long and 2’ broad. It had a 2’ hinged flap on one side and two shallow drawers for cutlery and kitchen utensils on the other. The top and the flap were smooth, but bare and unpainted and had to be kept well scrubbed, while the lower parts were painted black. The legs were decorated with simple turned mouldings, and there was a spar between the two end pairs, with two long spars joining the end ones at an all too convenient height for putting your feet on. Even after being well warned, many a crack on the shins I received from Mum for absentmindedly marking the spars. The popularity of these tables was reflected by the fact that they were made locally, in the kitchen furnishings department of the SCWS Co-op factory in Shieldhall.

 

Similar tables were found in other houses visited. The Govan Reminiscence Group had one just like it which was donated to them by a now deceased member. It will be seen in the series of photos taken by a member of the Group (3 & 4), of the mock-up of a kitchen of the 1930s built by other members around 1990 for exhibition purposes. Note the couple of pairs of shoes parked on the spars. This table has a hand operated domestic meat mincer mounted on it. What can be recalled of the rest of the house in Howat Street is somewhat hazy.

 

There were two easy chairs, and a settee covered with a shiny material (16) that looked like leather to begin with, but was, as it soon became apparent, a cheap substitute. It may have been a fabric called Rexine which hardened and became brittle with age and use. After a time it began to crack and open up in areas of greatest use and curled up along the weft of the canvas backing, leaving uncomfortable sharp edges. But the settee continued in use by covering the seat with a tartan blanket. It was probably this settee that features in my second Govan book, In Peace & War; the story told in chapter 5 in the section entitled Move to Blairlomond (from Cove).

 

Floors were covered with linoleum, or wax-cloth as it was commonly known, which was available as squares, oblongs, or by a measured length cut from a roll. The most common pieces were the individually patterned oblongs with a border design that at best were slightly smaller than the dimensions of the apartments, the surrounding area of floor board planks of which was treated with dark staining. My parents’ first working class home was at first unable to afford carpets, but with the passage of time mats were introduced, then bigger carpets that covered most of the floors in both apartments was acquired. The area in front of the fireplace nearly always had a mat that was either laid on the lino or on top of the carpet, which could be replaced at less expense when it became worn or had traces of being burned by sparks from the fire.

 

Keeping the carpets clean was a laborious task which was done at a frequency that depended on how many occupants lived there. Few householders were able to afford a vacuum cleaner, but most had what was called a carpet sweeper, a mechanical device with a brush pole type handle. It had four rubberise wheels which, when the body of the device was pushed and pulled to-and-fro, turned by gears a central, laterally mounted brush, that picked up dirt from the carpet and deposited it in catchments at the back and front within the body.

The first electric vacuum cleaner my Mother was able to buy in the late 1930s was a German made cylinder type. Before this time the smaller mats and carpets had to be taken down to the back court and hung over the dividing railings to be beaten with a carpet beater, then brushed with a carpet brush. Protection from the sharp spikes of the railings was achieved by community minded individual providing a length of three-inch-by-two timber long enough to accommodate the width of the largest carpets.

 

The strip of wood was hammered on over the spikes, then secured with a length of fence wire wrapped over each end and under the railings top then twisted tight (17). Shaped like a tennis racquet, the beater was made of cane, with the strand ends from the pleated flat part twisted together to form a handle about eighteen inches long and bound at the outer end with wire. The ‘business’ end, about the size of a large dinner plate, was quite efficient at dislodging the dirt when used energetically, then the job of dislodging the fluff was finished off with a carpet brush. Carpet beaters had to take care not to do the beating if there were washings hanging out.

WIRELESS (of the period seen in 3)

Except for the BBC’s publication, Radio Times, ‘radio’ was then an ultra modern term that didn’t come into general use until after the war. When called up for national service in 1949 I trained initially even then as a wireless operator. Having started transmitting in 1923 from established stations, the BBC was still at a fairly early stage in its development, the corporation having been set up some ten years before the period being written about. There are some recollections of the programmes of the period the most noticeable aspect of which I found was the voices. Regional accents just did not exist as far as the first Director General Lord Reith was concerned, and all broadcasters spoke ‘proper’ upper-class King’s English. The next generation saw the same phenomenon at the beginning of television, and it is ‘well seeing’ that Lord Reith died about thirty years before Rab C. Nesbitt came on the scene. However, future generations might consider Rab to be tame compared with what they, in their more ‘enlightened’ age, will encounter.

 

News bulletins carried reports of wars, in China involving the Japanese at first, then later in the decade the civil war in Spain. At the end of bulletins listeners were frequently rendered agog with the words ‘Here is a police message’. They featured requests for information mainly, about road accidents or, less often, crime or missing persons and related mostly to the London area, where anyone with information about incidents was requested to telephone Whitehall 1212, or, very occasionally, for events in our area the number was Glasgow Bel ****. The annual licence fee of ten shillings for all receivers was between a quarter and a fifth of Dad’s weekly wage.

 

There were recitals of chamber music and orchestral concerts, and variety shows with bands, comedians and singers (crooners was the term then) with the latest popular songs mainly from theatre shows, and drama in the form of plays. Dance music was performed by the orchestras of Henry Hall, Ambrose, Harry Roy, Joe Loss, Billy Cotton and others. Scots songs were one feature of our local station. A variety show of enduring memory, ‘Monday Night at 7 o’clock was to prove so popular that it was changed to the greater peak listening time of Monday Night at 8 o’clock, with an introductory song, the words of which were: ‘It’s Monday night at eight o’clock, O can’t you hear the chimes, They’re telling you to take in easy chair…’

 

The programme had features such as playletts, comedy spots with a resident comedian, and sometimes a guest orchestra playing different types of popular music, and a quiz called Puzzle Corner, the answers to which were given the following week. The quiz was conducted by a gentleman named Ronnie Waldman, and featured something that began as a genuine mistake which generated so much interest that it was made permanent, a deliberate mistake that listeners were invited to listen out for. Writing in with the correct answer had the exciting possibility of having your name mentioned in the programme the following week.

 

Children’s hour at 5pm on weekdays is remembered with fondness. The presenters were Uncle Mac (Derek McCulloch), Auntie Kathleen (Cathleen Garscadden), and another with the unlikely name Auntie Cyclone. There were stories and plays such as ‘Toytown’ with Larry the Lamb, Mr. Growser and Mr. Plod the policeman etc. The children’s television comic drama series Worsel Gummidge of more recent times was first broadcast on the wireless in the 1930s. The tv version was, initially anyway, a nostalgic experience for me to watch. Farmers used to set up figures stuffed with straw and dressed to resemble a human in their fields to act as bird scarers, and Worsel G was an animated version. In Scotland they were known as tattie bogles. In the 1980s a tv programme celebrating the 50th anniversary of Children’s Hour featured a recorded interview with Auntie Kathleen, and a thrill of nostalgia was experienced on hearing her voice again, but she died not long after this.

 

Among the many performers on the variety programmes, one in particular remains prominent in my memory. Suzzette Tarry was obviously French and spoke in heavily accented English. Another contributor was a man who was introduced with the song, ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. Very little of the output was recorded because the main medium then was 78rpm discs with a maximum of five minutes a side, and playing anything longer than five minutes involved a pause while the record was turned over or changed on the turntable that had to be done at similar intervals thereafter. Programme timing sometimes left gaps of a minute or longer, and the interval was filled with a pleasant sequential peal of Bow Bells.

 

The ‘Paul Temple’ detective series by Francis Durbridge shown on tv during the 1960s was first broadcast on the wireless in the 1930s. Further series were continued after the war when the introductory music used was ‘Coronation Scot’. But the music used for the original series was ‘The Storm’ from the suite Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov which was almost my first exposure to orchestral music. In my opinion, never has a piece been employed so successfully for tension heightening effect. Whoever selected it deserved an award, but this was half-a-century before award ceremonies were conceived. Each evening when the weekly episode was due, Mum, Dad and I waited with mounting excitement as programme time approached. After the announcer finished his introduction, the first notes of the approaching storm always generated for me a spine tingling thrill of anticipation. Other excerpts from the same suite were used with the same electrifying effect during the course of each episode, which invariably ended with a cliff-hanger situation leaving us on tenterhooks until the following week. Since then I never hear it without being carried back to a time of seeming tranquillity.

 

Houses without electricity had to have either a crystal set or one powered by dry batteries or an accumulator. The latter was a heavy square section clear glass moulded lead/acid battery, a little larger than the present day motor cycle battery, which had a thin metal-strap carrying frame. Depending on the amount of use, with a full charge it had the endurance of a month or so. On running down, the accumulator had to be taken to a radio shop or a garage or hardware store with charging equipment. The nearest place to us was George Munley’s ‘Govan Music House‘, in Govan Road west of Howat Street, and people were seen carrying their accumulators there. The Munley shop can be seen on the right in photo (18) of the Fairfield goods train in Govan Road.

 

But these power packs had one major disadvantage. Should the accumulator or dry battery run down at tea time, without the possibility of getting it recharged until the next day, having a fully charged spare or a stand-by dry battery to hand was essential if an eagerly awaited programme was due to come on. Failing that, an evening without the wireless was unavoidable. But the expense of a spare accumulator was beyond the resources of most people, who, to avoid disappointment, considered it best to save up for a mains operated set.

 

Early dry batteries had two disadvantages; their endurance was poor and tended to leak towards the end of their life. Many a chest of drawers or sideboard top was ruined by a battery at the end of its life, connected up and lying out of sight behind a wireless set, with highly corrosive fluid leaking out and ruining a polished surface. Even taking the precaution of sitting it in a metal tray was no sure protection, as the metal could be eaten through more slowly but just as surely. Going to the cinema or a theatre, or listening to the wireless was the best family entertainment available. There were between six and ten theatres ‘up the town’ that put on variety shows and plays, but the only times I was ever taken there was for the Christmas pantomimes. One occasion involved the additional thrill of a trip on the underground railway at the age of five, when it was still cable hauled, to Cowcaddens station to a theatre panto in New City Road.

Crystal sets could be made by anyone with the skill and knowledge of what was required. My maternal grandfather Joe Chambers had made one for his own enjoyment and love of classical music over the years since the early 1900s, but by the time I came along he had a battery operated set. Crystal sets also had a major disadvantage in that they needed an elaborate aerial in the form of a long length of copper wire. Tenants in the long sides of an oblong tenement block were ideally placed for aerial hanging, but they had to come to an arrangement with a tenant in a house in the opposite side of the block to have the wire suspended between them, and this was only possible for those living above one-storey level.

 

Ground floor dwellers of course could not have an aerial of this type. They had to arrange to share with a neighbour living higher up allowing them to connect into their cable; otherwise they and block-­end dwellers were restricted to an in-house aerial. Even with the arrival of battery and mains powered sets the external aerial arrangement gave the best reception, and continued in use until the late 1940s when the development of more powerful transmission and better quality receivers allowed an indoors aerial to be used. This was probably a spin off from wartime research into wireless development. Mains sets had to be earthed, which was done by a cable that plugged into a socket at the rear and the other end attached to a water pipe. Attaching it to a gas pipe wasn’t a good idea.

 

The bare wire aerial cables had to be insulated from contact with earth through the fabric of the building, and this was done using white porcelain insulators rigged at each end, from which the signal was taken inside to the wireless by a length of insulated cable. The distance involved meant that the length of un-insulated cable would be just about right, but what others living in the block ends did to overcome the problem caused by the much greater distance isn't recalled. A solution would be to suspend the cable diagonally, at an angle between ends and sides of the block, but there is no recollection of having seen this done. But even those with aerial wires living one stair up could encounter difficulty because, except near corners, where the wires passed across above the dykes and were almost within the reach of children dyke-climbers, they were liable to be interfered with. The newer battery/mains valve sets required smaller aerials that could be easily installed indoors.

 

When a valve set, which might have as many as six of them, is switched on there was a delay while they warmed up, especially the large valves which were of the size and shape of an elongated 40 watt bulb. This could take as much as a minute or so, which always produced the slightly apprehensive feeling of the ‘will it/won't it work' kind, especially if you had switched on late to listen to something you particularly wanted to hear. People today with radios often have them turned on all the time if there’s nothing on tv worth listening to, but that didn’t happen in the days before tv because of the amount of power the valves of wireless sets used. Thinking about this now seems to indicate that the external aerials were only needed for crystal sets, and they became redundant but were left in place when battery and mains set were acquired.

LANDING TOILET

The toilets at number 7 Howat Street were on the half-landings of each floor. Like the others on the four floors of the close, because of its awkward situation in the corner of the building it was a small oddly shaped cubicle for which each of the three house on the landing had a key. Tenants had to take turns washing the stairs and toilet.

CLIMBING THE DYKES

Like many tenement blocks in the West of Scotland, the ground plan of the ones we lived in at Howat Street and Linthouse were enclosed oblongs, with individual back-courts for each close that were divided by spiked railings. At eight feet in height with flat concrete roofs having a slight slope, the dykes in the enclosure within the blocks along the centres of the courts were composed of wash-houses and middens (19), one of each for each close, with the two double sets on either side of the block's long axis standing back to back. In the Skipness Drive block, and presumably the same in Howat Street, both ends had pairs of individual detached washhouse/midden buildings with slated roofs for the three closes each in Holmfauldhead Drive and Clachan Drive. The space between these buildings was filled in with an 8’ brick wall, and this setup was a magnet for adventurous children.

 

The arrangement meant that there could be gaps of different widths between some buildings which provided challenging jumps of varying degrees of difficulty. Initial access was gained by climbing up onto one of the railings where they abutted a washhouse wall, from which standing carefully on top of the spikes brought the roof to chest height where it was easy to scramble up. When the jumps of our own dykes had been mastered, those that were within our current ability anyway after much time was spent daring and goading each other, we began to trek round neighbouring blocks looking for other gaps to further test our nerve.

 

As time passed we became more experienced, returning occasionally to try to conquer those that defeated us previously. Considered now the dangers were appalling, less so in falling off than what you might land on. In those days almost all railings everywhere had spikes to deter climbers. All were dangerous, but some were lethal with those separating back-courts among the worst, having slim sharp spikes. Concern of parents was understandable, knowing their offspring were larking about and forgetting the danger, and their dilemma was great in not wishing to call them off and give them a 'showing-up' in front of their pals. In my own case, at the age of seven I was warned off a few times in private, but the obvious way to avoid being seen was to go to one of the neighbouring blocks and climb there, hoping that no-one knew your parents and would 'tell' on you. Stories circulated of falls ending in impalement on spikes but there were no fatalities I was aware of, although a boy of brief acquaintance showed me two piercing through and through scars in a thigh!

WASHDAY BEFORE WASHING MACHINES & SPIN DRYERS

Access to the wash-house (20) where most tenants did their weekly washing was allocated in daily 'turns‘, mornings or afternoons, among the tenants of the usually twelve houses in a close. Inside, within a corner of a space about ten feet by eight with single thickness walls of rough brick, a concrete floor and sloping roof, to heat the water there was a large copper boiler with a capacity of around ten gallons. It was set within a squat round brick housing standing to waist height and attached to the wall, on top of which there was a shallow dome-shaped sheet metal lid, loose, not hinged, with a handle in the centre of the top of the dome.

 

Under the boiler, which was filled from a tap, there was a fireplace with a raised nest, and a flue which rose up in the corner to a chimney-head with two chimneys on the roof, the other one belonging to the neighbouring wash-house. While the water was heated here, there was no outlet to draw it off. Next to the door, against the outer wall and below the window, there were two deep, white-glazed pottery tubs, each with a cold water tap, a drain hole and plug. To have the water boiling in good time the woman with the first turn of the day had to have the fire set and lit at an early hour, and attend to it occasionally for stoking so that it would be ready for at the latest around 9am.

 

The routine was that if the husband was up for work early enough, or rose earlier than usual and was willing, getting up at 6am was normal, he carried paper, sticks and coal down and set the fire. He then filled the boiler and lit the fire before going off to work. But no matter how careful he was, sometimes the fire failed to catch and it would go out. When that happened and the wife failed to check that the chimney was smoking, it might mean that unless she could be squeezed in between or after other users, her turn would have to be put back until later in the week. In winter and on other rare occasions a washhouse was seen in use by candlelight. The wife’s work began after eight o’clock with taking down the clothes to be washed. They were carried in a large oval wicker basket along with washing soap and powder, a washboard, scrubbing brush, a Reckett or Dolly Blue whitener, a clothes rope and clothes pegs. The wringer was a heavy item that was carried down separately. When the water was boiling she had to be ready to begin the hard work.

 

Using a large tin ladle with a wooden handle which held about half a gallon, around half the scalding water was transferred from the boiler to the nearest tub. Then the white things were put into the boiler itself with soap powder to be boiled for a time, perhaps with a whitener in cube or powder form added. Scalding accidents caused by spillages were an occupational hazard when transferring the hot water. After the water in the tub was cooled to hand temperature with water from the tap, the laborious work of washing began. The wash-board, a flat wooden frame with legs, stood about two feet high by around eighteen inches wide was used for this. A flat piece of wood was fixed across the top, and below it within the frame there was a ledge to hold the washing soap and scrubbing brush. Below this was fixed the large ribbed glass or aluminium plate for rubbing the clothes on. It was a tiring operation that no-one having a washing machine with a one-and-a-half to two hour washing cycle has to endure today.

 

The actual rubbing of the clothes was done using the washboard, with its feet in and the upper part resting on the front of the tub. In this position it lay at a comfortable angle for the work, and using an up-and-down motion over the ribs with as much force as could be exerted, the soapy clothes were alternately dipped and massaged. After being washed the first batch of clothes were put individually through a wringer. Then they went into the other tub to be rinsed in clean cold water, put through the wringer again and hung out to dry. After a period of boiling, so that the hot dripping clothes could be handled from a safe distance, the white clothes were transferred from the boiler using a heavy brush pole that was bleached with use to the now empty tub. With the water cooled the white things were treated in the same way as the others, then they too were put through the ringer, rinsed, wrung again, and hung out.

THE WRINGER

In the two inch space between the tubs a wooden batten was fixed permanently in place on which the wringer was mounted. A predecessor of the spin dryer and made by the Acme, a Bridgeton company, the wringer (21) was a device for squeezing most of the water from the washed clothes. It was fixed to the batten by clamps at each end of its base. Wringers had two spring loaded white or light coloured hard rubber rollers mount horizontally, geared together (at this time with unguarded coarse gears) and operated by a handle similar to the starting handle of contemporary motor vehicles. Pressure on the rollers was exerted by a spring that could be adjusted with a round cast-metal open wheel on top of the wringer body, which, in a post-war design improvement, became a kind of decorative wing-nut.

 

A big disadvantage of the wringer that the spin dryer does not have was that it was severe on clothes, and buttons in particular tended to get broken. Fingers too needed careful watching, particularly when two people were involved. Underneath the rollers there was a pivoting tray to catch the water squeezed out, so that it could be diverted to run into either tub. When the washing was finished, the plugs in the sinks were pulled out for them to drain down onto the floor and, if it was the last wash of the day, the boiler fire was drawn and the boiler itself emptied and dried off.

 

The floor had a slight slope all round running down to a drain in the centre of the floor, and it had a draining channel in it from under each sink to carry the suds and rinsings to the drain. A duckboard on the floor at the sinks kept the feet dry, and there was an unpainted wooden bench on which the washed clothes were shaken out and folded before being put into the basket and hung out to dry. An aspect of the still hot water left in the boiler by the morning user, was that the woman with the second turn of the day could watch the quantity of white clothes being hung out in the morning. If she was less fussy than others and was under the pressure of a large washing to do, she could ask the woman who was finishing to leave it for her to use, which would save much time waiting for a fresh lot to heat up from cold.

 

At that time starch was still used on collars and cuffs of dress shirts, and on parts of certain women's garments, to stiffen up the limp natural materials then used, for dressing up on special occasions. Most shirts worn by working men were made without collars; the latter could be purchased in whatever quantities were judged to be needed. Six collars was the usual number, and they were fitted to the necks for wear using collar studs, one each front and back, which meant that with a fresh starched collar fitted each day a shirt could be worn for a week. I seem to remember that my Dad's working shirts had this arrangement, but he habitually wore them without a collar.

 

In the above description of doing a washing there is no mention of bed clothes and, in particular, blankets, curtains or other bulky items that needed only occasional cleaning. This was a whole new dimension to the work for which most women used the ‘steamie’, as the district communal washhouses were known. The average number of children in any family was around three, but more than that wasn’t uncommon, and having a large family could double or treble the work.

 

Agreements had to be negotiated among tenants about the rotation of access to the washhouse, and disputes sometime arose over turns. The door of the wash-house was kept locked when out of use and the key was circulated according to turns. Occasionally, because of someone’s absentmindedness the key went missing and the cry would go up about ‘who’s got the washhouse key‘. With usual number of houses in each close, if every tenant needed to use it, with one turn in the morning and another in the afternoon, six days would be required for all to get their washings done.

 

That never seemed to occur because there was nearly always one or two single occupants or couples, the woman of which preferred to do their washing in the kitchen sink, and only using the washhouse occasionally. Others, such as those with washings to do for a large family took it to the steamy, the nearest of which was in Harhill Street a few hundred yards away using an old pram. But there were nearly always individuals of a quarrelsome disposition who found something to complain about in the various aspects of washday, and some lively situations can be recalled. One of these was the failure of a user to empty the boiler or clean out the grate of the fire properly, and tidy up before handing over the key to the next person.

DRYING THE CLOTHES

Small items were taken up to the house and hung on a pulley in the kitchen. A pulley fitted to the ceiling was essential for drying clothes in wet weather, especially in winter where they benefited from the warmth of the house, and as it wasn’t an original fitting it had to be bought and installed by the tenant or had been left by a previous one. Two sets of pulley wheels, each carried in a metal frame with a long screw, one with a single wheel and the other one with two, were fixed into the centre of the ceiling about eight feet apart at right angles to the window. Usually the one with two wheels was installed nearest the window and the other close to the rear wall near the doorframe. A rope, a pulley rope of standard length bought for the purpose, was threaded through the double wheels, one end of which was fed down and the other carried along to the single wheel, so that the two rope-ends hung down to about chest height while leaving sufficient spare in the loop.

 

The simplest type of pulley had a single 3” X 1½” piece of timber of around three feet longer than the distance between the pulley wheels. The rope-ends were passed through holes bored through the 3” section of the wood for the purpose, and secured with a knot. This single span was insufficient where there were more than one or two people in the house, but the capacity of the pulley could be increased by fitting a pair of fretted and usually decorative cast iron brackets on the rope ends. These had four holes through which thinner (1½ ” X ¾”) wooden struts with the edges rounded off were put through, which increased the capacity of a pulley by up to four times.

Bearing in mind the greater height of the old tenement apartment with ceilings of between ten and twelve feet, when the pulley was assembled, the loop for pulling it up and lowering it had a knot tied in it at a point which allowed it to hang level. Then, when it was lowered the knot came against the double wheel, holding it at a convenient height of between waist and shoulder for hanging the clothes on. With the loaded pulley raised, the excess of the now much longer loop was wound securely onto a cleat screwed onto usually the adjacent window frame facing, or, if the pulley was hung the other way round, it was fixed to the adjacent door frame. In houses with large families the housewife had to get all the clothes dried in relays which, for a number of reasons, in winter caused a great deal of irritation.

 

First, the smell of cooking might be very noticeable when garments were worn, which hopefully would soon fade. Second, large items on the pulley tended to hang down to head height, shirt sleeves for example, dangled down so that the heads of adults brushed through them. But the main difficulty was that, in the depth of winter, if the washing was extra large, there were occasions when the previous weeks washing hadn’t dried when the next weeks compliment was ready to be hung up. One solution I never saw in any house to getting all the washing dried during wet weather in houses with six or more occupants would have been to install two or even three pulleys side by side. But this would have made the atmosphere in the kitchen very damp and muggy.

 

During the time we lived in Linthouse, from 1937 to 1941 there were three of us in the house, then my sister arrived in that year. Very occasionally the situation described above regarding the problem of getting the clothes dried happened to us. What people did when there were up to ten or more individuals to ‘do’ for is hard to visualise. Still in use in my house today, there is a clothes horse I made in 1958 when newly married.

 

Whenever possible, weather permitting washings were hung out in the backcourt. As mentioned previously, the back courts of closes had iron railings around four feet high separating them. Some courts had four permanent poles installed in the ground to string the clothes ropes from. In others the railings themselves had extension bars going up to a height of six feet, with hooks near the top with one, sometimes two, on each side of the railing for tenants to loop the rope on (17 shows part of the setup). This arrangements could cause friction between tenants in adjacent closes, when a less perceptive woman, when putting out her rope, did so by looping it on in such a way that one put on previously by someone on the other side was trapped. When the owner of the trapped rope took her washing in she had to leave her rope until it was freed. This might seem pointless, but I remember my mother ‘fizzing’ (being very angry) about this on more than one occasion, because it was starting to rain and she couldn’t take her rope in. In the days before plastic or nylon rope, it was made from hemp that tended to shrink when wet, which strained and weakened it.

 

Additional hooks were sometimes fixed to the tenement wall and/or the washhouse itself, to give extra stretches. A large washing sometimes required as many stretches as was available, so that two ropes were needed. With all the washing hung out and secured with clothes pegs, the next problem was that when first put out damp, some items would be heavy, depressing the rope and causing the clothes to hang down near to or even touching the ground, so that people walking to the midden, and sometimes children playing brushed through them. This was partly taken care of with portable clothes poles.

 

The poles were eight to nine feet long lengths of 2” x 1½” timber with a notch cut in one end for the rope, while the other end had a flat point to dig into the ground. With this pole placed in the centre of a stretch, most of the clothes could be raised to a relatively safe height which also helped them to catch a breeze. Each tenant was expected to contribute a pole that was usually marked with the owners initials. They were kept in the washhouse to be used by anyone. Another point to take into consideration is this. Materials used for most clothes today are often modern inventions that are a good deal easier to clean and will dry quicker than the natural fabrics of the period being written about.

 

In being dependent on getting the washed clothes dried outdoors it was a case of watching the weather, and that could be a heartbreak causing extra work. Often women working within the very limited view of the interior of the tenement block, and dependent on the appearance of that portion of sky visible from within it, covered the backcourt with a big washing, when a wider view would have allowed them to see that rain would be arriving soon. Many are the times I heard my mother and other women say with heartfelt anguish, 'Ah’d just covered the back with all my washing when the rain came on, so ah had to rush and take it all in again, and it's still raining so how am I going get it dried now?' In winter an extended period of wet weather could cause severe problems.

IRONING

Before electric irons became available the type in use was of solid iron known as sole-plates, which had two brackets fixed on the back. Between the brackets there was a length of round wood, usually a six inch long piece of brush pole, for a handle leaving a gap sufficient to avoid scorched knuckles. The sole-plate was heated either by being put on a lit gas stove burner with a low flame so that the handle did not heat up too much, or by placing it standing on end on the metal ledge in front of and close to the range fire with the sole-plate facing, where the heat coming through the bars could warm it up (4 & 5). In both cases the sole-plate was invariably contaminated with ash or soot, so that had to be wiped clean on a pad before it was applied to the clothes. Occasionally an item of clothing had to be returned to the washing basket when the user forgot to do this. At the side of the mantelpiece, the gas piping had a single tap extension, so that with a length of hose attached, single small separate burner ring could be plugged in to for heating the irons.

 

The iron had to be put back to re-heat frequently, so most women had two of them, one to use while the other one was heating up. The wooden handle was necessary for its insulation properties but often even it could become too hot to hold, and I remember seeing my mother, after a long session of use and working on the kitchen table, wrapping a clean cloth duster round it for additional protection. There being no thermostat to regulate the temperature, women developed the technique of wetting a finger with a lick and dabbing the sole plate which caused a hiss. It was a somewhat painful hit or miss and less than accurate way of judging the temperature.

USING THE MANGLE

The mangle seen in (22) is an industrial example. The domestic one was really a giant wringer of early Victorian design standing over four feet high, with six-inch diameter spring loaded wooden rollers mounted on a large blackened cast iron frame similar to, but heavier than the frame of a Singer sewing machine of the same era. As it stood on the same kind of small iron wheels as a Singer, care had to be taken when moving the mangle inside the house, as its great weight bearing on a small surface area could cause it to cut through and break up part-worn linoleum and even floor boards weakened by rot. It was operated by turning an 18” diameter open frame cast iron wheel mounted at the side, having four spokes which curved from the rim in to a central boss. The handle for turning the wheel was fixed to the rim at right-angles, the operation of which turned the rollers through a gear train. Like the wringer, on top of the mangle frame there was a similar wheel for adjusting spring tension. Beneath the rollers there was a broad wooden tray of what was once smooth timber, the grain of which now stood out in close set ridges with their tops highly polished by generations of use. The mangle in our house was inherited from an aunt-by-marriage of my Mother, and is the one on which this description is based.

 

The aunt died in 1940, and having been offered to Mum, I dimly remember it being pushed carefully along the street on its tiny wheels from 13 Hutton Drive to 12 Skipness Drive, and carried by Dad, assisted by a couple of friends, with some difficulty up the three flights to our house. The people I knew who had a mangle were nearly all older women, which may indicate that they were no longer being made, and those that were around had been in the possession of families for a long time, perhaps having been handed down through two or three generations. Some women, the aunt was one such, could make a copper or two by taking in other people's washed clothes to put through their mangle, charging something like tuppence for an average wash and a ha'penny for a pair of linen sheets, linen and cotton being ideal materials for this treatment. Laundries and one or two small local shops also provided this service. For large, bulky domestic items such as blankets, winter sheets and curtains, the mangle was ideal.

When we moved from Linthouse to Pollok in 1945, Mary Ann's mangle came with us in the flitting, and was installed in the brick air-raid shelter that had been built at the start of the war in the back green of our end-terrace house there. It was in use for about a decade before being abandoned as washday requirements altered when, with the march of progress, Mum acquired her, first washing machine with a wringer attached which could cope with the heavier articles. Eventually it was taken away by a scrap man who gave Mum a shilling or two for it. In operation, it had to be treated with care and concentration especially if the work was being done by two people, more so than with a wringer for the larger diameter rollers of the mangle could more easily trap fingers.

 

I became a victim of the mangle on one occasion when working with Dad. In the gloom of the shelter he was turning the handle while I was feeding sheets into the rollers when, just at the point where the rollers begin their grip and I should have released mine, fingers of both hands were caught, and at that same instant he was distracted and had looked away while continuing to turn until he heard my cry of pain. Although not bad enough to require hospital treatment or even a visit to the doctor, both thumbs and forefingers were badly crushed so that I lost thumb and index fingernails in the weeks following as the injuries healed.

THE MIDDEN

Known as the midgie, the midden was next to the washhouse, and the less said about it the better, although some comment must be made (7). The interior was about seven feet square, with an opening across which, initially anyway, a piece of slate which came to above knee height was permanently fixed. All rubbish was simply thrown in to pile up, and the cleansing department workers (13) came round weekly and cleared it out. They operated a night shift for a time, wearing lights attached to their hats like miners, but this caused complaints because of noise disturbance and it was discontinued.

 

They had a horrible job, where one of them had to climb inside and shovel the rubbish into large deep baskets for the men to carry out to the collection truck in the street on their backs. This system was changed quite soon; the slate barrier was removed and five square metal bins with side handles were installed, making the job easier but no less distasteful, as they still had to carry the loaded baskets which, although they were lined, allowed a certain amount of ash to run through on to the shoulder and back of the carrier. Midden fires happened occasionally when someone put ash drawn from a fire that contained still burning cinders that had been raked through the bottom bars of the grate.

 

The vehicles used for collecting the rubbish, a large fleet of which was operated by the Cleansing Department, are worthy of describing in that their design, though appearing antiquated today, was then ahead of its time, with a feature not seen again for about twenty years (23). The disposal plant (by burning) was at the top of Craigton Road where today there is an ASDA superstore. Other than trams, all road vehicles up to the time being written about had petrol, diesel or steam engines up front, mounted over the front axle. The steam lorry engine was actually under the load bed, but the boiler that produced the steam was at the front with a chimney that rose up to pass through the roof. Internal combustion engines were enclosed in a close­-fitting housing or bonnet between the front mudguards of the wheels, with a cab above or behind. This meant that the driving cab was quite far back behind the front axle. But cleansing trucks were battery powered and had flat front ends. Because there was no engine as such they had a large cab mounted well forward, so that the position of the driver was slightly ahead of the leading axle. The advantage of this arrangement became known to me in the early 1960s, when for a time I was the owner of a Ford Thames van of similar design which was found to give excellent front end visibility for manoeuvring in tight spaces.

STREET SCENES

A favourite street hawker with the children of Govan was undoubtedly the candy rock man. Many Govanites of my generation and older who were youngsters then still remember him today with nostalgic delight. His arrival would be anticipated well in advance by the sound of his progress through nearby streets. His pony and cart was always surrounded by a milling throng of dozens of boisterous, noisy and excited children in a fever of anticipation. The cart was in the charge of two fellows (who ought to be termed the candy rock men) who were most likely father and son. One took the bridle and walked the animal slowly along the centre of the street, while the other stood on the back of the cart and shouted at the surging crowd of youngsters `WHO LIKES CANDY ROCK?' After every single voice in the crowd had yelled `ME', he would throw a few (unwrapped!) pieces among them which caused a frantic scramble.

 

Today this would be called a sales and marketing ploy to attract as many potential customers as possible. They would pause for a while to sell some then move on to another street for the next performance.   As I was of pre-school age at this time I was never able to take part in that dangerous pushing and shoving game in Howat Street, or even after we moved to Linthouse in 1937. Without a doubt an accident prevention officer today would have nightmares if he encountered anything like it, and would immediately take steps to put a stop to it.

STREET LIGHTING

In those pre-war days it was in a long term transition from low height gas lamp-posts to tall electric rolled steel hollow poles. The main streets had been converted to the tall poles, assisted no doubt by those installed to support the overhead electric power supply cables for trams, and side streets were gradually being changed over. I have photos of the old gas standards still remaining in side streets in Pollokshaws taken in the early 1960s. Some Corporation housing schemes had electric street lighting from the beginning, such as those in our part of Govan, Greenloan and Greengairs, Shieldhall and Drumoyne, and more distant Mosspark, all of which date from the mid 1920s, and West Drumoyne which was built in the early 1930s,

 

All these electrical installations were mounted on the same type of posts as the gas lights. They were very distinctive low, cast iron fluted poles with a flared base and a crossbar below the lamp. The light bulb had a reflector that was unique in that its like had never been seen anywhere else other than in the Glasgow area. The reflector was angled towards the pavement and had a naked bulb that projected from the centre of a white enamelled shallow cone which flared away from it.

 

Reflectors are usually designed as a cone or a bowl round the bulb to achieve maximum efficiency by reflecting light that might otherwise be trapped, so if the designer was aiming at the unusual he certainly succeeded here. A particular memory of these lights dates from pre-school years. It is of walking or being carried by my father from Rigmuir Road into Moss Road, on the way home to Howat Street after a visit to his mother's house on a dark night of fine rain. Very noticeable were these distinctive lights marching off in a double row, to fade in a mysterious way into the mist shrouded distance down towards Govan Road a half-mile away.

NEIGHBOURS

Memories of the tenants who lived up the close at 7 Howat Street are slight. Only one family stands out because they had two children of around my age. They lived on the ground floor and became the first acquaintances I had outside the family.

 

Motorised transport in the area bounded by the northern section of Elder Street, Taransay Street and Howat Street, and including Luath Street, was infrequent because of its semi-seclusion. Those streets form in plan a broad flat `A' with Govan Road passing across its base, so the only vehicles seen there were mostly horse-drawn carts and hand-barrows. Motor lorries, vans and cars were seldom seen. In that small area a private car in the street might belong to a doctor, but even that was rare for not all of them had cars, or was attending a wedding or a funeral. Another individual who lived up the close next to ours, number 9, had a motorcycle and he comes to mind in a rather dramatic fashion.

 

The owner of the bike created an entertaining scene each time he went out on it. From recollections of its appearance it was probably even then a museum piece. It stood in the street in front of his close propped up on a stand, the old style `U' bracket extending under rear wheel which when not in use was held up at the back by an over-centre spring. When starting it up he pushed it north from the close towards Taransay Street, gathering speed until he was running as fast as he could, then he leapt high in the air and came down on the kick start, usually without success. Why he did this is puzzling unless it needed a combination of push/kick start. On reaching the north end of Howat Street he crossed over to the other side and proceeded back as far as Govan Road, going through these comical and strenuous antics which included much fiddling with the controls on the handlebars.

 

The man’s physical attitude was like that of a predatory bird looming menacingly over the contraption while making the adjustments. Continuing the circuit he returned to the close. This went on for a couple of circuits until either the engine started with lots of smoke and explosive backfires, or he gave up exhausted. Motorcycle owners with their noisy machines were fairly common even then. When walking along a road and one roared past, it sometimes meant being engulfed in fumes having the distinctive hospital reek of a then occasional fuel additive to boost power - ether. There were no regulations governing the amount of noise and engine produced. Some drivers had no silencers and others had one that looked like a trumpet and was known as a megaphone silencer!

HORSES

The proportion of commercial horse-drawn to motor traffic was about mid way through the long process of change, with the number of horses on the streets becoming steadily fewer. Nearly all had gone by the 1950s, although a few continued because some contractors must have liked them, usually individual business operators with one animal to be described below. Studying large scale OS maps of urban areas dating from the days of the horses, troughs, marked HT, will be found placed at regular intervals in localities with a lot of traffic to provide drinking water for them. Other than very faintly there is no clear recollection of seeing any troughs except in old photographs, so they must have been removed shortly before I reached the stage of noticing such things.

 

The large number of horses in the streets meant that there was always dung lying around on road surfaces which made them a health hazard, particularly after a spell of dry weather. Heavy rain usually flushed them clean, but an extended dry spell caused the dung to turn to dust and chopped up straw which resembled sawdust. A wind of sufficient strength could, and often did, whip it up and make it a danger to eyes and lungs. Such weather conditions, which would merely be annoying today, could be rendered hazardous. Householders with gardens or plots used to send their youngsters out to go round the streets with a barrow or a bogie and a shovel, and even a garden brush, to collect it for use as manure in season. The more enterprising children realised there was a ready market for the stuff, and took to collecting it and selling it to householders with gardens.

 

Of dung collectors, I can still picture the expression of glee on the face of an urchin, from his appearance not long started school, as he spotted a pile steaming in the street which a horse had just deposited while stationary. This meant that instead of having to sweep or scrape it up into a heap if it had been deposited while the horse was on the move, he could scoop it up at one go with his coal shovel. The street sweeper, or 'scaffy', had far less litter to cope with, but deposits from horses more than made up for it.

 

A simple barrow for collecting dung, which could be put to other uses around the garden, was easily made at home by acquiring from a grocers a discarded wooden box, like the one referred to before in which our sticks were kept. An Australian or New Zealand butter box was of an ideal size, although there was strong competition for them from people looking for cheap kindling and during the children’s bogie building season to be described later. Butter was just one of many items bulk packed in non-returnable wooden boxes. Dried fruit, oranges and canned goods were others. A single axle with a pair of wheels from an old pram could be nailed across the bottom at the centre, and a spar, or a pair of spars fixed one on either side of the box to project up at a low angle served as shafts.

 

Some horses of a nervous disposition were easily frightened and were liable to gallop off out of control with the cart. There were occasional newspaper items with the headline running something like HORSE BOLTS WITH CART and the by-line Kills Man. There were two main reasons for this. Any sudden loud noise such as a sound virtually never encountered today, a backfire from a motorcycle, car or lorry, a common feature of motor vehicle engines at that stage of their development. It was a misfire caused by fuel passing through the engine un-burnt until it hit the hot exhaust, whereupon it would ignite and cause a bang which sounded like a gunshot. A car horn used thoughtlessly close to an animal could startle it.

 

Another all too common cause of a horse galloping off out of control was the barking of a dog. Some dogs are territorial with a natural defence mechanism that, when another animal, horse, dog or cat, appeared in what they consider to be their territory, could cause them to bark, growl and snarl round the feet of any horse that appeared in the street. When that happened, and there were other causes than the ones mentioned, even apparently placid Clydesdales would snort and neigh, rear up then paw the ground and roll their eyes. It was a fearsome sight with the carter trying desperately to calm the animal as it tossed its head. Holding on tight to the bridle, he would be thrown about while trying to fend off the dog.

 

As part of the head harness, all horses had to have patches called blinkers fitted one over each eye in such a way that they could only see forward without turning their heads. It was found that when motor vehicles first appeared, much trouble was caused by horses taking fright when one appeared from behind. Through time they had become used to motor vehicles, except in one very important situation, when being overtaken. When a vehicle travelling in the same direction passed close to a horse, appearing suddenly in its vision, it can be startled, but fitting blinkers helped overcome the problem. This is where the term `blinkered' came from when used to describe the attitude of a person who refuses to see the obvious.

 

The traffic congestion which occurred on main roads in towns could sometimes be severe enough to obstruct the tram lines. If a carter had to make a delivery to a shop or other premises and found he couldn't park nearby, he simply double parked. This is tolerated in some circumstances today, but in the past if it was done on a tram route it could cause a hold up if the cart fouled the line. When coming upon such an obstruction, the tram driver who had a timetable to keep to, would clang his bell furiously and bawl and shout, because he was subject to a severe regime of discipline which didn't tolerate late or early running. Some alarming or entertaining scenes of conflict were witnessed because of this.

 

Another more serious cause of friction between tram and cart drivers was engendered by the fact that carts were built to a standard wheel track which corresponded almost exactly to that of the tram lines. It will be appreciated that carters took advantage of this whenever possible by running along the rails, to be free from the noise and vibration of the cobble surfaces of all main roads then, simply because it made life easier for them. A period postcard-type comic cartoon encountered in the past showed just such a scenario, with a tram visible, running close behind a plodding horse and cart which is occupying the rails in an otherwise empty Govan Road. What was missing for me was the sound of the tram bell and the imprecations of the driver for the carter to `Get out of the adjectival road!'

 

The noise made by a cart rolling over cobbles was so penetrating that near it, it could be almost painful to sensitive ears. Carters obviously had to tolerate it while on the move, but why they did so if there was alternative employment was quite beyond me. Some seemed quite oblivious to the racket and with an empty cart, or lightly loaded one and drawing near finishing time, they 'gee'd-up' their horse to a gallop which greatly increased the din. However, this was also a factor which made them choose to go by the smooth asphalt ­surfaced back streets whenever possible. Gee-up was an expression used by carters when getting their horse to start moving. Another command was a sound made with the tongue in the cheek – ‘check-check’.