A Govan Childhood
Part III

MOVE TO LINTHOUSE

Before 1930, Skipness Drive was George Drive, indeed my parents and other older people invariably called it by the old name. When Govan became part of Glasgow in 1912 there were a number of streets with the same names in both, and being the smaller entity the Govan ones were changed. Some changes were made immediately while others were delayed until around 1930. When Linthouse was being laid out for building in the late 1890s, the original plan was for George Drive to run parallel with the then Renfrew Road between Drive Road and Moss Road, and at the beginning tenements were built at each end, but the intention to build more must have lapsed.

 

When a continuous line of tenements was built up on the east side of Burghead Drive, it effectively cut George Drive in two. This led to the two halves being changed in 1900 to George Drive East and George Drive West. Then a large electricity sub-station was built in Holmfauldhead Drive, partly across the two halves, making the division final. In the 1930 street renaming, George Drive East became Skipness Drive and George Drive West became Peninver Drive. This found by checking the Post Office maps held in the Glasgow Room of the Mitchell Library, which go back in almost annual stages to early in the nineteenth century.

 

With newer tenement buildings built around 1900 than those in the rest of Govan, Linthouse was regarded as an upmarket area, the tenement facades in the 1930s showing a less weatherworn aspect than those to the east. But even in this later age only a tiny percentage of houses had a bathroom, and they had to have a fire-place back boiler to provide a limited amount of running hot water. Nearly all the land on which the houses were built was owned by the Alexander Stevens shipbuilding company, and the rents would be paid to its financial services company.

 

Some older tenements elsewhere in Govan had a basement apartment below ground level, with access from the back-court down a flight of steps. While familiar with them, I never saw one used as a dwelling. Any I knew of were empty and boarded up and were a haunt of dogs and cats, and sometimes of derelict human flotsam that had gained access and had to be ejected by the constabulary. Children spoke of them with awe, regarding them as places where ghosts and evil men lurked. Any who went ‘doon the dunny' to play (presumably dunny is derived from dungeon) were regarded as being extremely brave, or reckless and liable to be the object of chastisement by their parents. However, there were no dunnys in Linthouse.

SKIPNESS DRIVE

Because of a feeling that Govan was a rough place and being rather timid by nature as a child, the prospect of living in Linthouse had a strong appeal. To have to walk through central Govan by myself at the age of six would have filled me full of apprehension of unidentifiable dangers, so the move to the `Garden of Eden' (as it was known to Govanites) was a relief. The front section of closes here were tiled to dado (shoulder) height and staircase walls were painted dark brown to the same level. Above these levels walls and ceiling were whitewashed. Tiling a wall to shoulder height was the most effective way of preventing them developing a scruffy appearance caused by ageing and the passage of people, of innumerable shoulders and arms brushing along them, to say nothing of the effects of children's games, for which a painted wall in a close would need re-coating frequently. For evidence of this, look at the outside walls of buildings along busy pavements of street scenes in early 19th century photographs.

 

In particular look at the earliest ones and note how, in densely populated areas even plain stone coursing along walls and passageways has a scuffed, dirty and greasy look from shoulder height down. This is especially true where pavements and closes are narrow. Closes in some old buildings dating from the days before properly paved roads became general had mud scrapers set low down in the wall within the entrance (43). These were simply a thin iron bar with a roughly sharpened edge, fixed horizontally across the centre of a deep hole cut in the stone above ground level, to be used for scraping mud off the soles of shoes. Elsewhere they were free standing, in the ground in back courts for example, only the rusted remnants of which were left by the 1930s, and they were a detested hazard that were liable to trip people up.

LAYOUT OF OUR NEW DWELLING

Direction of ascent of the stairs at number 12 was the same as number 7 Howat Street, anticlockwise when looking up from the ground floor (44), with the usual three houses on each landing. But where number 7 was open plan, in number 12 the two flights of stairs between each floor were close together. The middle house of the three was similar in layout to the one we had left at Howat Street, an ‘all to the front’ two apartment with an exclusive outside toilet on the half landing. Our new re-let house was on the top flat, in the position known as `three up on the right' as you went up the stairs, with the layout of the house opposite being a mirror image. It was again a two­ apartment room and kitchen, but with an `L' shaped lobby. A main advantage here was an inside toilet, the door to which was the first one on the right inside, behind the main door.

 

Through this door there was a small narrow third room about 8ft x 4ft with the walls clad in varnished dovetailed strips to shoulder height, one wall of which was lined with coat hooks where outdoor clothes could be hung. It may have been the original intention of the building architects to be a bathroom but it became known to us as ‘the cloak room’, but was an ideal place for storing domestic cleaning equipment. Towards the rear there was a partition reaching to a height of 6 feet, with a second door in it having a pane of frosted glass in the top half. Beyond the door was a small toilet cubicle with the standard high chain-pull cistern, wooden toilet seat, a shelf, and a window to the outside which overlooked the back court, the lower panes of which were frosted.

 

Moving to Linthouse meant that Dad was farther away from his work so he acquired a cycle. At first, keeping it in the house caused a problem, because the only place it could be parked was in the cloakroom. But people brushing past to reach the toilet sometimes caught the handlebar which caused it to fall. After a time panelling was showing signs of scoring, so he installed a pulley which allowed him to hoist the bike to above head height. In 1940 a cousin of Mum's in Dundee had a racing bike, and when the war began and he was called up for army service. Chick West offered it to Dad at a very good price, so Dad went to Dundee by bus to collect it and rode it back to Glasgow. Having recently learned to ride I was agitating for a bike of my own, so having another bike to cope with he installed another pulley for it.

 

Walking through the cloakroom with that mass of machinery hanging overhead was rather intimidating, but the fact that it was possible helps to illustrate how much higher the ceilings of old tenements houses were than those of modern housing. If this had not been possible the cycles would have had to be parked in the washhouse, and although under lock and key, kept there they would have been at risk from night time prowlers.

 

The term `through and through' may have been a local expression applied to a two or more apartment house, with the windows on one side overlooking the street and the other the backcourt. The usual kitchen fittings were laid out as follows. Entering from the lobby into the kitchen that overlooked the back courts through the second door on the right, the double window was in the centre of the outside wall. The range and mantelpiece in the middle of the left hand wall was of the same design and layout as the one in the Howat Street house, but in Skipness Drive with fireplace and oven positions reversed. The sink and its associated cupboards were the same, but they too were laid out on the opposite hand, with its crane tap on the left side of the window bay. Here, the coal bunker was in the larger lobby so the dresser in the kitchen stood alone but the shelving above was the same as in Howat Street - on the right as the kitchen was entered. Most of the furnishings moved with us, some of which was as previously described with a few additions.

 

As before, there was a four-bar pulley in the kitchen, and adults moving about after a washing had been hung up to dry found that if they didn't duck, their heads might be brushing through damp dangling sheets and shirts sleeves. A pulley for drying clothes is seldom seen today because modern houses have a ceiling height of only about 8ft, compared with the old tenement height that varied around ten feet. In a modern house a pulley would have to be installed away from where people walk, or the hanging clothes would cause irritation. Every old tenement house had a pulley in either kitchen or, if it was long enough, the lobby. There were the usual bed recesses in both apartments, but like the one in the bedroom in Howat Street, the recess in the kitchen was curtained off and used to store large seldom needed items.

 

The kitchen cupboard here was in the corner between range and outside wall, the upper shelves of were used as a larder and the lower ones held crockery, while at floor level bulkier items like potato and vegetable storage boxes etc. were squeezed in. Apart from the advantage of the house having an inside toilet, a great benefit was derived from the bunker being in the lobby, so that if all internal doors were kept shut during a delivery of coal, it confined the spread of dust there.

 

Room sleeping arrangements were as before for my parents, but I had progressed to a single bed placed against the right hand wall between the low fireplace and oriel window. Did I actually sleep in a cot until the age of six in the previous house? There’s no recollection of there being anything else. Alignment of the building at 12 Skipness Drive was such that the wider central oriel room window faced slightly west of south, and because it was on the top floor it had a view of a greater expanse of sky. In that situation, my bed position near the window provided a first look at the night sky when there was time and inclination to study it. One night in winter, without knowing the identity of what I was seeing but aware of the first stirrings of interest, three stars of roughly similar magnitude, in line and evenly spaced close together were observed. Much, much later they were identified as Orion's Belt.

 

My bed was placed against the door of the room press, the name then applied to tall cupboards, which was inconvenient as it did not have castors or even glider-domes. It had to be pulled out on the infrequent occasions when access to the cupboard was required, which eventually caused wear to the new wax cloth floor covering in that area. The high-level view from the three windows of the oriel was dominated by the roofs and, for most of the year, in winter the many smoking chimneys of the surrounding buildings.

 

The fireplace in the room was the same as in the bedroom of the previous house, a broad low coal-burning grate with an adjustable cast-iron ornamented hood, a tiled or cast iron simulated-tile surround, and a mantelpiece of dark varnished wood rising to a shelf at adult waist height. There was also the usual fender. This fire was lit in winter only during the very coldest spells, and after the first winter the capacity of the grate was thought to be too great so, as an economy measure, two shaped firebricks were purchased and installed in the nest corners. I never saw gaslight in this house because, although it was gas only when he took over the tenancy, Dad had electricity put in before the move. However, a memorable feature of this house for me was centred round the fire, as it was the last apartment I ever slept in that had a coal fire. While it was seldom used, it is impressions of lying in bed close to it, and drowsily watching the flickering light of the flames on the ceiling before dropping off to sleep that are memorable.

COMMUNAL CHORES

Number 12 was near the centre of a side of the block, so the stair landings were small, with close- together double flights of stairs and a half-landing between each main landing. The half-landing toilets were used only by the tenants of the middle houses, and a window with large centre panes of plain glass and long narrow stained glass border panes with a marbled surface on the inside overlooking the back court. Keeping staircase and close clean was the responsibility of tenants, who had to take a turn every third week to sweep and wash their double flight. A local by-law was in force that sweeping was supposed to have been done daily. Most closes and some stairs and landings had the edging at floor level embellished with lines drawn in pipe-clay, usually just three-inch deep borders marked with this chalk like substance.

 

Pipe clay was bought in cake form it was beaten down to powder then mixed with water to a thin consistency, and applied with a brush, but it was often done by simply rubbing the end of the cake along the wet surface after it was washed. Some ground floor dwelling housewives with artistic talent, and others who thought they had it, embellished their borders with over-elaborate designs of whorls and/or blocks, usually where their efforts were likely to be seen by people passing by and not just by the neighbours.

 

Washing floors in houses on the stairs was always done on hands and knees by women with a scrubbing brush, a rag for drying, a bar of washing soap and bucket of warm water. Bear in mind that any utensil mentioned on these pages like the bucket or basin, which today is made of plastic, would then have been of galvanised sheet metal, and white enamelled buckets were reserved for indoor use. Stairs and closes were also done this way, with powdered pipe clay added to the water. An enduring memory is of my mother and other women doing this work, kneeling on a pad of sacking or a rolled up piece of old carpet to protect their knees, work which could cause the affliction known as `housemaids’ knee'. Mops were available but the bucket with the depression with holes for wringing a mop hadn’t yet appeared, so if a mop was used it was very difficult to wring out when drying the surface.

 

The impression now is of degrading, laborious and time consuming work. There were always needy women who were prepared to do other people's stairs for payment, who sometimes became notorious for paying for their messages with small change from the earnings, the coins of which were caked with pipe clay from being handled by their contaminated fingers. Semi-literate stair washers advised prospective customers that they `took in stairs'. Some women offered to do washings, ironing and mangling in their home for payment.

 

As the name indicates, pipe clay was the material used to make cheap pipes for smoking, an essential requirement of an earlier age so that low paid working-class people, nearly always men, could afford to smoke. I’ve no recollection of having seen a woman smoking a cigarette or a pipe at any time during this period, but the very odd one or two who were reputed to do so were usually older. A good pipe of wood could cost pounds, the making of which was a skilled profession using rare and expensive wood. While the clay pipe was fragile it cost only a few pence.

 

In the form used for stairs and closes, pipe clay was sold in hardware stores as cakes about the shape and size, but perhaps twice the thickness, of a 2oz. bar of chocolate, I remember being sent to buy it for Mum, when each cake was individually wrapped in newspaper, probably by the hardware shop owner who had bought them in bulk. It was usually too hard to crumble by hand, so it had to be broken up very carefully in a box with a hammer, or covered over with newspaper because, like breaking coal, fragments were scattered around with each blow. After having been washed with the cloudy mixture with bleach added, when the surface dried it had a dusty white appearance.

 

The use of pipe clay for this was sometimes resented by house proud women, because the white powder was carried into houses on the soles of shoes, and visitors had to wipe their feet or the remove their shoes on the doormat before stepping inside. When the borders were applied, it was done with enough pipe-clay or whitewash added to make a separate mixture of about the consistency of today's cheaper quality emulsion paint. In a later development, in an effort to find a more durable treatment, white oil based paint was tried, but even with it occasional touching up was required. There was also the possibility of someone accidentally stepping on it before it dried and unaware, carried it into their house.

 

When the turn came round every third week, the chore of `doing the stairs' was undertaken as part of the other weekly Friday ritual of cleaning the house. This included beating carpets and sweeping, washing and polishing floors, work which often extended into late evening. ‘Mansion’ floor polish was used with pride and not a little danger on linoleum, which tended to make the surface slippery. Other important tasks were cleaning the fireplace and flue, black-leading the grate, and ‘doing’ the brasses. Virtually all houses had some brass in the form of ornaments, such as candlestick holders, a letter rack, companion set, fender and coal scuttle, and even some sections of gas piping, particularly the lighting supply pipe at the `swan’s neck', etc.

 

All main doors had the array of brass fittings previously described, handle, letterbox, name plate, bell pull and keyhole escutcheon plates, which custom and fear of criticism by neighbours, actually fear of being talked about behind their back, drove most housewives to keep shining. Cleaning the brasses using 'Brasso' polish, as well as being sore on the hands was laborious and time-consuming, and any young person today would scorn such work as needless drudgery. Today these items are made from materials of the fit-and-forget variety which needs no maintenance, or if they become disfigured or get broken they are usually cheap enough simply to throw away and buy a new one.

THE NEW ENVIRONMENT

My parents lived in this house from 1936 until the summer of 1945. Much of the following writing is concerned with Linthouse and the surrounding area, and readers with an interest in topography can find their way round by looking at the frontispiece map. However, anyone in possession of an old large-scale street and transport plan of 1960 or earlier vintage, produced for Glasgow Corporation Transport Department, would find it ideal. Construction of the Clyde Tunnel, and later redevelopments in Greater Govan altered the locality after that time. Other excellent large-scale maps of the districts being described will be found in the Mitchell Library.

 

Most street frontages of the Linthouse tenements away from Govan Road had a railed off section along the front between closes. In Skipness Drive it took the form of a rough concrete-aggregate plinth standing about six to eight inches above pavement level, which projected out into the pavement for five feet or so. The plinth was bordered round the three outer sides with decorative cast-iron railings rising to adult waist height, which had a harmless flat-spiked capping of the same material. Elsewhere, in Hutton Drive for example, the fenced-off area, with the railing embedded in an edging of stone capping sections, was of earth and beaten-down grass that was frequented by dogs and cats. An occasional plant, stunted bush, or shrub showed briefly in summer where in the past a tenant living low down had tried in vain to indulge in cultivation.

 

During the war non-essential railings almost everywhere were removed and taken away in an all embracing drive to collect as much scrap metal as possible, supposedly for the war effort. Later accounts of this operation suggested that most of the material recovered was quite unsuitable for any purpose other than railings and had to be recycled.

 

The close entrance to Number 12 was a little to the right of the alignment down the west side of Kennedar Drive. Linthouse Church of Scotland (45), still standing at the north end of the Kennedar Drive/Hutton Drive block, was diagonally across the street from us, so that from the elevation of our room window we had a near eye level view of the bell in the belfry in the west tower rocking backwards and forwards when it was rung. At that time there was a railed-in grassy area in Kennedar Drive on the west side of the church (long since built on), in which the church officer's wife from her house in Hutton Drive next to the church hall hung out her washing.

 

At the eastern end of our street Elder Park was an ideal children’s play area. It had large, level grassy areas for ball and other games, a swing park and paddling pond, putting and bowling greens and tennis courts. There was a model yachting pond with a sailing club and clubhouse, and a permanent resident because he was unable to fly, a swan with one ­leg called Jock. The putting green was a favourite with me when I grew old enough to use it, but tennis courts and bowling greens were just becoming accessible to me age and inclination-wise when we moved to Pollok. The park and its amenities in the 1930s are described in detail in part 5 of this book. Nearer hand there were the back courts with their dykes to climb.

 

The dykes and closes themselves provided a variety of concealments necessary for hiding games. Nearby, there was a football ground, the Maxwell Park, known as the Maxy Park, in the middle un-built-on section of Holmfauldhead Drive (Humflheid in localeese) between Skipness Drive and St. Kenneth Drive, a small section of which including the goal posts at the northern end was visible from our room window. Junior and amateur teams played there, with the players changing in the British Legion pavilion in Holmfauld Road which everyone referred to as `Ferry Road'. The ornate single-storey timber building owned by the Legion (46) was situated on the east side, a third of the way down. It had one large hall which was ideal for dances and wedding parties and side rooms for smaller functions. On the side fronting the road there was a covered veranda reached by two or three steps up from the un-made-up pavement.

 

Having been inside the building once, I recall most clearly the lovely smell of the wood. In 1938 it was set on fire and burned down during the night, and provided another vivid memory in being awakened by my parents and told to ‘Come and look at this!' Viewed from our kitchen window from the opposite side of the block, the fire itself was out of sight. But it was still spectacular with the plume of smoke illuminated by the flames rising up beyond the roof opposite. It was a preview of something we were to see rather a lot of in cinema newsreels within a few years under wartime conditions. After the fire and before the charred remains were removed, my pals and I used to rake through the ashes looking for anything of value. Each time we did this the smell clung to us and gave the game away, initially without being aware of it until reaching home. Mum noticed it immediately and went on at length, demanding that for safety sake we should keep away from the site (47).

THE COUP

An area of allotments lying at a lower level than the road behind the British Legion building covered the area where the south portals of the Clyde tunnels now lie. They took up the southern quarter of the long strip of land between Govan Road and the river, and Holmfauld Road in the west and Fairfield shipyard’s boundary fence in the east. Part of it was bounded on Govan Road and Holmfauld Road by a dark, high clap-board planking fence having a saw ­tooth top. Access to the plots was by a door in the fence in Govan Road opposite Clachan Drive, beyond which plot holders descended a flight of stairs. All that stretch of land to the river and much of the rest of Linthouse belonged to Alexander Stephen's. Lying lower down than the rest of the strip, the central section of it was the original ground level. This area was used by the shipyard as a coup for disposing of their rubbish, and, being unfenced and unguarded, the area was treated as an unofficial adventure playground by children of the district.

 

The coup was a great place to explore. Part of the enjoyment of playing there was because every concerned parent absolutely forbade their children from going near it. It was full of hazards that today, if it was permitted to exist at all under modern environmental regulations, would have to be securely fenced off. The dangers present were broken glass, lengths of nail-studded and splintered wood, pools of permanent oil contaminated standing water that were ideal for rafts, smouldering material, supposedly empty red lead and other paint tins, and oily cotton waste, the oil of which was of a particularly enduring type. Getting it on hands, clothing, or shoes, it was impossible to remove and was a giveaway when you went home. Newly-tipped rubbish often contained partly burned material, from the supposedly extinguished embers from which fires could be conjured up with the oily waste and wood splinters.

 

Carters who brought the stuff out were probably supposed to burn as much as possible before dumping it. But like most work of this kind if it was unsupervised it was done in a careless way, which left more than enough material to create an interest. In the tipping area the ground was about ten feet lower than the surrounding land, which was gradually being filled in over the years. The tipping face advanced only a little during the few years I frequented the place, for the volume of dumped material wasn't great, and only about half the total area had been filled in since it began to be used for this purpose, probably when the yard opened after the middle of the 19th century. It was most likely the original level of the land on the river's flood plain with poor drainage, for there was always standing water of up to six inches in depth over much of it. That was sufficient to float a raft without the danger of anyone suffering anything more serious than a soaking and getting covered in the contaminated mud if they fell in.

 

The entrance to the coup was opposite Stephen's yard mid-way down Holmfauld Road, and the rubbish was brought out in horse-drawn single-axle wooden carts with large iron-shod wooden wheels, of a very common general-purpose and probably local design in use everywhere in the West of Scotland (48). They carried out the same function as the tail-end tipping lorries of today, but their capacity was only a fraction of the loads of modern road vehicles. These carts were built very solidly with slightly outward flaring sides and front about four feet high from a load bed positioned centrally above the axle. When preparing to unload into the tipping area the horse was made to back up to the edge. The harness was released from the horse, then the tailgate fixings, and the cart was allowed to tip up controlled by a rope held by the carter and fixed to the forward end of one of the shafts.

 

Manoeuvring the cart might appear to be a simple operation but it had its perils. Particularly when reversing, or backing-up as it was called in those horse-powered days, over the uneven, elevated surface of the already infilled part of the site. With a docile horse it was comparatively easy, but a lively or fidgety one made it a risky business and the carter needed good control. In particular a young horse that was aware of the drop behind might display much agitation when required to back up, with mincing steps and much head shaking and swinging it from side to side as it tried to see round past the blinkers to check for danger.

 

The man had to persuade it to stop and stand perfectly still at exactly the right spot, without going too far and allowing the cart to go over the edge taking the animal with it. There may have been a wheel brake but there is no recollection of seeing one. After tipping the load the carter hauled on the shaft rope to pull the cart down level and re­placed the harness. A well-remembered sight is of a carter swinging on the rope with one foot up on the wheel tread for leverage to get the shafts down. My great-grandfather, Alexander McFarlane, was a carter, and worked with horses all his life. Indeed during the time he lived in Govan he is reputed to have worked on the horse trams. The tram depot was close to the subway station entrance in Greenhaugh Street.

 

Beyond the coup northwards away from the tip which ran down almost to the river, the land consisted of a series of low grassy hillocks known as `the sunny dumps'. They were at a higher level than the coup, effectively preventing any drainage from it, and had been built up along the river banks on both sides from dredgings during the work of deepening the river during the 18th and 19th centuries. This area was ideal for games like cops and robbers, hide-and­-seek, cowboys and Indians, or plain simple 'sodgers'. These and other games were supplemented by acting out our fantasies generated by the current adventure film being shown at one of the local cinemas, the Vogue, Lyceum, Plaza, or, the smallest of the four in Govan, the Elder in Wanlock Street.

 

Many were the arguments on the pond in the coup about who could be Clark Gable or Errol Flynn on board the pirate ship we fondly imagined our rough lash-up of a raft to be. Or Leo Gorcey in the Dead End Kids, or George Raft and James Cagney as gangsters, as we stealthily crept around the sunny dumps, trying to catch members of the ‘other side' unawares. Another cinema hero was Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, but most popular were cowboy films of Tom Mix, Gene Autry, William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy, and the mysterious Lone Ranger whose name was never revealed. A series of films which provided ideal role models for us was based on what were called `G' Men, and featured stars like Cagney, Raft and Pat O'Brien as special American law enforcement officers or hoodlums they were trying to arrest. G Men were, I think, Government Agents of the 1930s and ‘40s who appeared as characters in the American movies of that era.

PLAY GROUPS

Like elsewhere, children in Linthouse played in groups that formed spontaneously in areas where they lived. The members of the one I associated with were mainly from the west end of Skipness Drive and the nearer ends of the three adjacent streets. Rivalry occasionally broke out which sometimes developed into hostility between groups from adjoining areas. But this was usually confined to shouting insults at each other, with plenty of boasting between members of what they, the group, could do in a fight with any other. Competition between them for possession of the coup for a play area could on occasion become fierce, and occasionally one group would chase off another. With the single exception of the large number which formed a group from the dead-end street called Linthouse Buildings known as `The Linties', there was no special pecking order between them,

 

A street called Linthouse Buildings had been built before the 1880s by the Stevens shipyard company to house their workforce, and it lay within the area of land occupied by the shipyard. It had a single long tenement building, with closes up to number 42 running north from Govan Road almost opposite Burghead Drive. Its residents had the reputation of being rather a rough lot, and their street was regarded as deepest enemy territory by all children in the rest of Linthouse. They were talked about with bated breath by the members of our group and, according to those who actually knew them they were unbeaten in any so-called fight they were involved in. So-called because I never actually saw them or any other group for that matter, actually fighting. It was all hearsay and fantasy! Except for a short section of the street all these tenements have been demolished.

 

This kind of talk was a favourite subject with us, as no doubt it still is with most children in a similar environment anywhere, but it must be stressed that it was almost always confined to talk. The only exception I know of was a battle which drew blood between two boys who were members of our own group. The odd thing about this set-to was that the two involved were a little older than me, and searching my memory about them now, both were decent, sensible and popular, but the cause of the quarrel is obscure. Any encounter between rival groups (I use that term in preference to gang) was stone-throwing or chasing each other, usually ending with a few youngsters suffering nothing more serious than a fright.

 

The Lintie's reputation for toughness was put to the test on two occasions. The first happened on a day I was invited by Dad to go for a stroll. He was a member of and an activist in the political party the Independent Labour Party. After walking with him into Govan Road, he said he had to visit a customer who lived in Linthouse Buildings in connection with The New Leader, the ILP weekly newspaper he delivered. As an impressionable seven or eight year old, I was worried by this and thought that surely he must know it was a dangerous place, and that if we went in there we might not get back out again. He must have noticed the look of apprehension on my face. No doubt he was fully aware of the reputation the place had among the young, for he laughed and then said `Come on, you'll be safe with me'. Although aware of his amusement I wasn't so sure. But he must have recognised what was going through my mind because he took a few seconds to reassure me so that I was able to go with him, but not initially with any confidence.

 

As we walked down the street and nothing happened, passing through groups of playing urchins and lounging youths whose territory this was, who regarded us only with curiosity, my peace of mind slowly returned. By the time we reached the close he was visiting the feeling of panic had almost gone, and far from being a den of cut throats or ravening wolves, it proved to be an ordinary street inhabited by friendly people, who were amused but not surprised when Dad told the people in the house we went to about my fear of entering their street. On the way back, as we past another group a voice exclaimed ‘Haw, there’s Geordie Rountree, whit are you dae’n here!’ It was a friendly class mate from school.

 

The other encounter at a later date had a more ominous beginning but ended in farce. Some of us were playing in the coup when a large crowd of Linties, better described as a mob that seemed like the Mongol horde of historical legend without the horses, as depicted in a then recent film about Kubla, or Khubilai Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, came down ferry road and into the coup towards us. Because of the dead-end nature of the area, the only way out other than by the ferries, was by ferry road itself, so we were panic stricken, believing we were trapped and would be ‘in for it'. In a tight knot we left the coup and moved on to the road, then crossed to the pavement on the west side, all the while trying to make ourselves look inconspicuous and unconcerned, as we slunk along by the yard’s platers' shed wall towards Govan Road. At the same time we kept an eye on the others with furtive glances, hoping they would ignore us.

 

They were boys much like ourselves, though to us they appeared menacing, and for a while they kept pace with us, keeping to the other side of the road and making no move to cross over. They outnumbered us by about four to one, and in the way they eyed us they seemed to be out for trouble - or fun, we fervently hoped. But they were obviously planning something. Presently an older boy among them, evidently their leader, began directing others of his group to cross over and pick out singly individuals from our group and take them back across to their group. This continued as we walked outwardly brave but inwardly quaking towards the relative safety of the main road.

 

We sensed that it would be unwise to start running too soon because that might provoke a chase, and there wasn't enough distance between them and us to be sure of out-distancing them, for if that happened we were certain to be overwhelmed by their numbers. As we neared Govan Road there were only two of us left, so the instant we judged it safe the pair of us took to our heels and ran as if the devil was after us across Govan Road, along Holmfauldhead Drive and into the safety of our own street. We paused here in a state of panic to discuss what to do about the situation, wondering in our juvenile fantasy world if we should we ask someone to send for the polis, or go round the mothers of those ‘captured' and tell them what had happened, and get them to organise a rescue party?

 

We hung about near the corner for a few minutes in indecision while slowly calming down, then decided, before doing anything to have a look back round the corner to see what was happening. On doing so we were amazed and relieved to see all our chums who we half expected never to see again, strolling towards us with smug expressions on their faces. My fellow survivor and I were relieved and agog to find out what had happened to them, but after the fright we had endured their story was too tame for us to accept. All were dismissive of the event; passing it off lightly by saying they knew nearly all the Linties from school. Indeed, when I thought about it later, a few of them were known to me as fellow pupils at St Constantine's, who were probably amused by our panic stricken demeanour.

 

That adventure must have occurred after the war began because two air raid shelters, brick built and with a flat reinforced concrete roof like most of these buildings, had been put up in Holmfauld Road, spaced out beyond where the Legion hall had been and set back at the rear edge of the pavement. Our friends had been taken into one of these and made to obey orders like stand up, and sit down, and run round in a circle, and a number of other tame (to us now) demands, while their captors switched off and on the light for effect before letting them go. It was a great let-down to the two who had escaped, and almost made both of us wish that we had been taken as well. It seems odd now that that shelter had lighting installed, but they were solidly built structures with an entrance at each end at opposite corners. The entrance passageway turned at the rear and led into the main area, which was practically pitch-black inside. But these two shelters (seen in 47 to the left of the tram) were probably there for a special purpose, built perhaps away from the yard to accommodate members of Stephen's workforce, for they were the only ones in our area with lighting.

 

The fence which separated plots from coup was of dense wire mesh that, while it wasn’t barbed, seemed impervious. But it could nevertheless be penetrated by enterprising youngsters who were able to slip underneath it unobserved, if it was done at the right time and in the right area concealed among long grass with no plot holders nearby. The bravest of the group would venture in and crawl away through the dense border of summer greenery and disappear from sight, then return clutching a few of potatoes to bake on a wood fire. This method of cooking was new to me as has already been mentioned, because Mum found that using the fireplace oven at home was too difficult to judge the cooking times. The only time I took part in this coup potato roasting operation proved to be very successful, and despite being sceptical about it initially, the spuds were delicious.

 

There was a tram terminus in Holmfauld Road (47), the rails of which ran down quite a distance from Govan Road to accommodate the many vehicles assembled there to wait for the shipyard workers at stopping time. Each vehicle had a time table to run to, and it had three crossovers to enable them to shunt about and depart in their correct order. But something that intrigued me was that on both lines, where they terminated there were signs of where a vehicle had gone beyond the rail ends and the wheel flanges had cut grooves in the granite cobblestones for a few feet. A burning curiosity developed to know how this had happened, and for years I kept an intermittent lookout in an effort actually to see it happen.

 

Wheel flange grooves were a phenomenon seen at other termini but I was fated never to witness it actually occur. The most likely reason was that it would have occurred during the night, perhaps when the permanent way maintenance squads were working with their specially adapted vehicle and trailer which, in the gloomy street lighting of the period, during a shunt had been propelled too far. Or perhaps a fall of snow overnight had made it difficult for the first driver of the day to judge his position. It might have been harder for an ordinary tram to have managed to do this except by coasting, because it would have run out from under the overhead cables carrying the electricity supply, suffered a loss of power and been stranded.

RIVER TRAFFIC AND INDUSTRY

Although the river was farther away from us in Linthouse it was more accessible than from Howat Street, and it continued to be a source of endless interest for me. The regular traffic of ships and boats passing up and down could be observed from the riverbank path next to the ferry berths. This activity was supplemented by frequent movements back and forth of the two ferries, plus the constant shipbuilding work and occasional launches from the three yards in sight. Despite being well past the peak of maximum activity of previous decades, the 1930s still saw plenty of movement even with a world depression going on, and as the threat of war loomed, activity was very soon to pick up. Set down in this section are some recollections of interesting sights.

 

At the foot of Holmfauld Road, the section of riverbank path of compacted gravel upriver from the two ferry terminals, in that as a path that led nowhere, it was quite substantial. After two or three hundred yards it ended at the boundary fence of Fairfield’s shipyard. From reading historical accounts of river development, among them JF Riddell’s book CLYDE NAVIGATION, it seems that it was, and it may still exist there today if perhaps be inaccessible, the last remaining stretch of the original tow path used in the days before steam propulsion came into general use. This would be before 1820 when horses were used to haul the small sailing ships of the time up or down river during periods of contrary or insufficient wind, and before the steam tug was developed and began to be used for towing. Because of the prevailing westerly wind, direction of tow would have been mostly downriver, but the question is, how did they cope with the difficulties this practice would involve?

 

The towpath was on the south bank, and illustrations have been seen of horse-towing operations. But in conditions of dead calm how were the complications handled when two ships being pulled in opposite directions by horse teams met. The only practical method would be for teams to return whence they came by changing over their tows. Or there could have been a convoy system in force, with a string of boats being taken down-river then another lot being brought up during favourable tide and weather conditions. And how did they cope with a rising wind affecting the behaviour of the ships, depending on size of course and perhaps not yet under control, being blown away over towards the north bank and, unless there was a quick release connection on the tow rope, taking the horse(s) with it? But of course ships then were tiny, and except in calm conditions the tow would only need to be in one direction, into wind, at any time anyway. But as the size of ships increased, so must the problems of towing from the riverbank until steam powered tugs were brought into use.

 

In the 1930s the path was bounded on the side away from the river by the sunny dumps and the coup, and was separated from the river by tall spiked iron railings. The bank at that point below the railings, in common with most other reaches of the river above Renfrew away from docks or quays, sloped down at an angle of about 45 degrees and is laid with large roughly squared off stones with smooth faces set flush. This gives the least resistance to the wash thrown up by ships and waves generated by stormy weather that would otherwise be liable to cause erosion. One of the sights keenly anticipated by young ship watchers like me was a high tide with a strong wind and a tug passing at full speed, so that the wash would come right up over the path. But this was likely to happen only during a spring tide, when the path itself might be under water and the ferry service suspended. I saw this on one occasion. From the material dumped there by early dredging operations, the term ‘sunny dumps’ mentioned earlier was probably originally ‘sanny’ or sandy,

 

Tugs were the most often seen vessels on the river. There must have been about half-a-dozen owned by two or three towage companies, one of which was Steel & Bennie. All ships above a certain size needed the assistance of at least one tug, up to the biggest liners that came up past the Clydebank reach, which might require three or four. Movement of ships above a certain size was regulated by tidal ebb and flow. Large vessels coming up had to begin their journey about midway during a rising tide, and any departing would set off at high water in case they should touch bottom and be grounded, hence the term ‘catching the tide'. If that happened on an ebb tide, the ship would remain there for a few hours until the water returned to the previous level and lifted it off, and it was vital to avoid this because of the risk of damage to the hull. It follows that while bigger ships tended to pass in procession, the smaller boats could move about at any state of the tide.

 

A big ship passing at high tide was awesome. A high water level and narrowness of the river made them really dominate the scene as they went past. Liners on the North American services of the Anchor Line, the Cameronia and Transylvania and the Donaldson Line's Athenia, were the biggest of a number that ran a regular service from the upper reaches of the river across the Atlantic to New York and ports on the St Lawrence River in Canada. The Anchor Line's terminal was at Yorkhill Quay, and the Donaldson Line was at Queens Dock where the Exhibition Centre stands today. When anything of that size went past, whether passenger liner or cargo ship, everybody within sight with time to do so would pause to watch, and at night the sight was even more spectacular as they were lit up like giant elongated mobile Christmas trees. For me these scenes were repeated when during National Service a year in Egypt was spent on the banks of the Suez Canal.

 

Today there is little activity on the river so that even a rowing boat can make people pause and look. In the past the bustle of more or less continuous ordinary river traffic would not merit a glance, much like the attention air traffic of the present receives from most of the population. My fascination with ships was closely linked to a growing desire to travel and see the world. Cargo vessels went off to or returned from exotic places like Africa, India, China, Canada, America, etc., places I longed to visit. That longing was partially fulfilled by the year in Egypt. While many were lost during the war, some of the ships seen in the 1930s were still passing through the canal in the years 1949/50, a surprising number with the port of registration GLASGOW on the stern.

 

Merklands Quay on the north bank, with the cattle lairage behind was in full view from Linthouse. From Govan Road, that is, and it frequently had the ships of medium-size used to transport cattle from Ireland berthed there. But one thing that constantly frustrated me was to see this arrival or departure actually taking place. How I used to envy people who lived in the other side of our block with an unrestricted if somewhat distant, view of all movements on the river, fondly imagining that many were like me - keen ship-watchers with plenty of time indulge in it. My permanent bad luck meant that I would turn the corner at Holmfauldhead Drive and Govan Road and see a new arrival moored there, or a ship that had been ‘tied up’ there for a few days had gone. On these occasions, resolving that in future I would be more vigilant had no success.

 

Another interesting sight was watching a dredger at work, with its buckets on an endless chain clanking round the boom set at an angle which could be altered, allowing it to be lowered to the depth required for the reach (section of river) being worked on. The top of the boom was at an elevation well above superstructure height so that buckets, having scooped up their load of silt from the river bottom, carried it up and over the top. In going over at the start of the return journey the contents spilled out onto a chute angled to carry it to one side, where a hopper barge would be moored alongside to receive it. When full the barges carried their loads downriver and out to the outer firth beyond Bute and Cumbrae, to be deposited through bottom-opening doors off Garroch Head. Barges were nameless, seemingly identified simply by a number on the side such as Hopper No. 11, or Hopper No. 12.

 

During the holiday season regular service and pleasure steamers passed by daily on their regular run down to Dunoon, Rothesay and other destinations and returned later in the day. Lovely little ships like Eagle III (Eagle the Third) on the 11 a.m. departure from the Broomielaw to the Kyles of Bute, calling at Dunoon and Rothesay. And there were Queen Mary II and the turbine steamer King Edward. While the latter was a beautiful ship, initially there seemed to be something odd about it. It was different in some way from other steamers that took me a while to resolve. It moved almost silently, with no rhythmic beat of paddles churning up white foam. My initial reaction in perceiving this was faintly hostile, in that here was a steamer with no visible means of propulsion like other steamers, what made it go? Then realisation came that no ships other than steamers had paddle wheels.

 

At the end of her working life, until 2009 Queen Mary II was moored on the Thames in London having been converted for use as an upmarket restaurant. In the frequent views of that river which appear on tv, QMII with its black hull and white superstructure was sometimes glimpsed. The main attributes of any boat was its lines and speed, and the performance of each steamer was studied closely by most people who used them regularly or who frequented the Firth. Eventually, when it became known to me that turbine propelled steamers were faster, it was recognised that the spectacular visual attraction of beating paddle wheels did not indicate a fast boat. In 2009 QMII was sold to a hotel conglomerate in La Rochelle in France to be used again as a restaurant.

 

At this time marine propulsion was in middle of the process of change from steam to diesel propulsion , but most ships then were still coal-fired to produce the steam. Most of the older ones had tall thin smoke stacks which, when under way, put out plumes of thick black smoke that added the thrill of anticipation to ship-watching in the same way as it did to train-watching with steam locomotives. Under favourable weather conditions, when it was calm with little or no wind, ships gave a visible warning of their approach while still out of sight upriver beyond Govan, or down beyond Shieldhall. If there was a lot of smoke it might mean a tug or tugs in attendance, and this of course, indicated the possibility of a really big one, but we were seldom on the spot for this. Generally we heard about it later on, or at best saw it from Govan Road. When writing `we' I really mean me, for few of my pals showed anything other than minimal interest in river activity, other than when a large vessel was passing.

 

The smell from the river was unmistakable. While sewage was still being disposed of into it from the two plants downstream, Shieldhall and Dalmuir, and while it didn't quite smell like what you would expect, although by no means fragrant it had a certain, almost attractive, salty methane/sulphurous tang of its very own. It was an aroma which quickly became associated with the interesting sights likely to be encountered by its banks. It was similar to the smell from gas works in that when the not quite rotten egg­-like pong was first encountered, it caused wrinkled noses and exclamations of disgust. But soon, some indefinable element in it made one begin to sniff in earnest, to draw in and `enjoy' (if that is the correct word to use in this context) it as much as possible before passing out of its range. Another quite different smell with the same effect was encountered at this time in the Transport Department’s underground or subway.

 

At the time the horse-tram service was being established Cluthas were the almost legendary boats which, for seven years from 1887 operated a passenger service between the city centre and Govan. Reading about them in later years, it seemed likely that they would have been disposed of decades before my time. But the Clyde Navigation Trust had a number of hulks which were used for maintenance work on the river, and it appears that one or two of them were in fact old Cluthas, and one of them was still in use as late as the 1930s.

SHIPYARDS

Forests of cranes of different types dominated the skyline at many places along the riverside as a working requirement for docks, quays (pronounced keys), and shipyards which were collectively referred to as yards.  Docks and quays then had what today would be regarded as cranes of conventional design, with a counterweighted jib which stood up at an angle from a central pivot where the cab was located. But virtually all Clydeside yards used hammerhead cranes with horizontal jibs that pivoted near their centre on top of a vertical support. They were of the same design as the Titans and Goliath cranes at John Brown’s at Clydebank, Yarrows at Scotstoun, and Finnieston. These heavy-lift cranes were manufactured by the Sir William Arroll company. Fairfield’s Govan basin had one for installing engines in ships which was dismantled in 2006. The cab was at one end of the jib while on the opposite end beyond the central pivot, the carriage carrying the lifting gear could travel along most of its own half when positioning a load. The fixed cranes with long reach jibs in use today at shipyards are of heavier build to suit construction loads.

 

Welding was changing the old method of ship construction using rivets during this time, and noise of them being installed was the most prominent feature of this, or any industry working with steel plates secured by them. Boilers for steam engines, whether for ship, rail or other uses, were constructed using curved steel plates riveted together. The work was done in what was called `boiler shops', a name synonymous with deafening noise, the din being increased for the workers by the confines of the building they were working in. In days before ear defenders became available and are now mandatory, deafness afflicted all men who worked in these places. A complaint sometimes directed at noisy children by adults was 'Yer makin' mair noise than a biler shoap'. My own mother occasionally directed that expression at me.

 

Another saying heard occasionally at that time seems to have come from a bible story as being the only explanation for another expression that has long passed out of common use. It was employed in describing an event in which someone created a din by shouting loudly in pain or anger, as when a child had fallen and been badly hurt. In re-telling the event later it was said that they ‘bawled like the bull of Bashem!'. Later reading seems to indicate that what was meant was the `Bull of Bashan'. Bashan is mentioned in a story in the bible as being a town in pre or early biblical times in south-eastern Turkey.

 

In the open air of the yards there was some relief from noise for those in the vicinity of riveters' hammers, except for the riveters and their mates themselves, in that the racket was dissipated somewhat. But it travelling farther afield and could be heard over a wide area. The sound itself has been compared with that of a machine gun, but having experienced both I would say a riveters' hammer was marginally the more penetrating and least tolerable of the two. Living as we did within earshot of four yards, although the nearest riveters would have been working at least five hundred yards away, during working hours the noise they created was an ever present feature of life in the area. In addition there was the frequent loud clangs and the clatter of steel plates, beams and brackets being moved about. Evening and week­end silence was to be savoured, with drowsy warm summer Saturday afternoons the most peaceful time of all.

 

A longing for familiar experiences of the past is common with some older people, even noises which were regarded as annoying at the time. Because of the possibility (more like certainty) that it may trigger other memories of a more sentimental nature, someone could have set up a working mobile display to be taken round old shipbuilding areas? Experiments could be conducted with a steel plate of manageable size, a compressor, a riveter's pneumatic hammer, a supply of rivets and a means to heat them. If it could be arranged, it would surely bring expressions of wide-eyed amazement to the faces of many older people within earshot, with the comment `Ah huvnae heard a racket like that for mair than sixty years'. However, at best that would be only a pale impression of the noise produced in the past by dozens of rivet guns being used along much of the riverside.

 

Ship construction was a natural source of interest for me induced by watching activity in the nearest yards into which it was possible to see from our riverside vantage point, Alexander Stephen's in Linthouse and Barclay Curle’s at Whiteinch. The eastern-most slipway of the former was so close to Holmfauld Road next to the ferries, and lay at such an angle to the river that the bow of any medium-size ship under construction, complete with scaffolding, overhung the pavement. Walking below it on the way to the ferry could be slightly intimidating. A similar situation was found on the north bank in Ferryden Street at Barclay Curle's yard. Part of this fascination was seeing in close-up, and hearing close to, riveters busily engaged in assembling the hulls, which grew up from a skeleton of ribs and stringers. Next, the hull plates were riveted in position and work progressed to the application of the first coat of paint, red lead, indicating that launch date was coming close. When the final coat was applied the launch might be within a week or so. Then one day it was gone, and within a few weeks the skeleton of the next one was rising up in its place.

 

Launches seemed to take place apparently without ceremony because we seldom heard about them in advance. Boats built in the two nearest yards at this time on the slips nearest the road were usually no larger than a few thousand tons, and being fairly insignificant they attracted little or no publicity. It was the bigger ships, especially passenger liners like the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, and the large naval vessels, battleships and cruisers, which received most attention from the media. While there is no recollection of witnessing a launch during this time, I feel strongly that with a grandfather so interested in such things and knowing I was, he probably did take me along. Although it must be remembered that until he retired at the age of 65 in 1938, he worked on weekdays, and launches almost invariably took place during the week. Thinking about that last point, the Queen Elizabeth was launched after I returned from Mearnskirk at the beginning of February 1937, but there is no recollection of being aware of the event.

 

Regarding the other `Queen', there is the most fleeting of memories of being on the riverbank opposite when she entered the water in September 1934, but that impression may stem from seeing photographs or films. Contemporary accounts of the launch speak of flooding of that field by the stern wave produced when the ship took to the water, but this does not help bring it back into my recollection. It would be gratifying to be able to say I saw her after the fitting out had been completed being taken downstream in March 1936, for that sight must have been one of the local wonders of the century (49).

 

To the east of us in Linthouse, because of the lie of the land Fairfield’s yard was less easily seen into. G & J Ingles and D & W Henderson, whose yards were at the mouth of the River Kelvin opposite Water Row, were too far away to see their operations. On the east side of the coup, behind Fairfield’s fence there was an embankment built up from the material removed when the fitting out basin was excavated. It was covered with trees and bushes, with more ground between it and the basin. Even from the north bank ferry terminal little could be seen because fencing bordering Meadowside Quay obscured the vision. The only opportunity afforded, and that briefly, was during a ferry crossing. John Brown’s and Fairfield’s usually built the largest ships, and it was a permanent source of annoyance that I couldn't watch the construction work going on in the latter yard without taking a trip on the ferry. Although it was free it wasn't always convenient, and some ferrymen were intolerant of unaccompanied adolescent travellers who might be intent on mischief, or who might lark around and be in danger of falling into the river.

Another sound that was part of the river environs was ships’ sirens. These ranged from the higher­ pitched whistles of tugs and smaller boats, to the deep blare of bigger vessels and occasional rising hoots of smaller naval vessels such as destroyers, although the latter were seldom seen until the war began. Just how wide-ranging that sound could be is well illustrated by the fact that when we moved to Pollok about four miles from the river, at the New Year with industry shut down, when weather conditions were right we could still hear ships horns sounding at midnight.

 

Another sound of even greater significance was works horns, a phenomenon people of later generations might find incredible. In those days, before personal transport like car ownership became common, most men lived near their work or were just a short tram trip away. An obvious way of alerting them to the fact that starting time was near was for a horn to be sounded, or a whistle that sounded like a ship's siren that was loud enough to be heard over a wide area. They were blown two or three times at intervals, the usual sequence being a half-minute-long blow at fifteen and five minutes before starting time. At two minutes to, the final blast began and was continuous until a few seconds after starting time. At that period a 48-hour working week was the norm, with starting/stopping times something like 8 to 12 am and 12.40 to 5.30 pm. To spread the burden on public transport the times were staggered slightly between different companies. While home from school at lunch (know then as dinner) time, a horn might sound. Mum would say `There's the (quarter-to-one start time) "bummer", you'd better get a move on or you'll be late' (for the 1.15pm start of afternoon lessons).

 

At starting and finishing times the surrounding streets were thronged with crowds of men dressed in oil stained caps and boiler suits or overalls, streaming towards or away from their workplace. At starting time, when the two-minute horn sounded, those outwith a certain radius, at a distance learned through experience, took to their heels in an attempt to get into the gatehouse and stamp their timecards before it stopped, as starting time was strictly observed. Workers clocking in after the whistle stopped were `quartered' that is they lost fifteen minutes' wages, and anyone later than fifteen minutes was half-houred. This was a practice considered necessary in order to maintain discipline in companies employing large numbers of men.

 

At finishing time, Govan Road between Elderpark and Elder Streets, and Holmfauld Road, was a mass of dark-clad men surging out and on to the ranks of trams, while those living locally were hurrying through the surrounding streets. There were no works washing or changing facilities then, and other reminiscences tell of toilet arrangements that were very primitive to the extent of being almost non-existent. Men engaged in dirty work went home as they left their work stations, so that other travellers had to be careful to check the seats on public transport after the works came out. The chance of coming into contact with oil, grease or paint if a worker sat beside you, or had previously deposited it on the seat, was real.

 

Although confined to mornings, mid-day and evenings, works' horns were a major contributor to the general din in our industrialised area. For most women with a husband or son rushing in for a meal the sounds were an excellent way of being aware of the time. It saved the distraction of clock-watching. In addition, not everyone had a wireless from which time checks could be listened for, and cheap clocks could be undependable, especially if the daily wind-up of the mechanism had been forgotten. Company horns had to sound quite different so that the workers knew which was which, and of course everybody else got to know them. Another good reason for them was that it avoided disputes between workers and management about whose time was the correct time.

 

Familiar sounds of those times, from the clip-clop of hooves and rattle of cart wheels over cobbles, whine, screech and clatter of trams, the general din of industry, their horns and ships' sirens and street vendor’ calls, while some are a relief to be freed from, all are but a memory. Even the sound of church bells is rare today, and as nearly all churches had one, Sunday mornings and afternoons of the thirties were briefly enlivened by them ringing out at different times. A glance at a map of the period will show almost a dozen churches to the west of Govan Cross, three of which were in Linthouse alone, and the bells of most of them were within earshot in Linthouse.

 

Normally my father didn't come home for the three-quarter hour dinner break allowed, preferring to take a ‘piece’ (sandwich) for lunch and have his dinner in early evening. ‘Dinner’ in working-class homes always referred to the mid-day meal. When he did come from his work a mile or so away, the sequence in our house and numerous others around this time might have gone something like this. Stephen's horn would sound at ten to twelve and mother put the potatoes on to boil. After ten minutes had elapsed Fairfield's horn was heard, and mum would know they were ready to be salted and Dad would be leaving his work on his bike. After a further ten minutes a third blow from another yard indicated that the potatoes might be ready for pouring, and Dad would be in the street or coming up the stairs.

 

As Dad finished eating, yet another blast, in this case the ‘ten minutes to go' start warning of the first in the earlier sequence of blows, told him he had another five minutes before he needed to leave on the return journey. He was an engineer fitter and worked irregular overtime at the Govan Shafting Co. in Helen Street, and the early evening visit home for his tea was a hectic operation with a shorter break of half-an-hour which, with ten minutes travelling each way, left little time for eating.

 

He usually carried his bike up the stairs to the top half-landing and left it under the landing window where it was fairly safe. At first he left it in the back court under the wash-house window in full view of our kitchen window, although from rather high up, an action that would be regarded as the height of folly in the present day, until one day it disappeared. We all rushed downstairs to look for it, but it transpired that it had been taken by a boy not much older than me, who had no thought of stealing it; he only wanted to try riding it up and down the street, but of course it was much too big for him. The bike was quickly recovered with some harsh words said and it was never again left in the back-court.

 

Extra door keys could not be acquired then as easily and cheaply as they are today. The only keys for the two locks would be in the charge of the woman of the house. A way of indicating they were in the close and that their arrival was imminent, the open staircases allowed the sound to penetrate, so some men would whistle a brief tune of a few notes to alert anyone in the house. Dad used a four note tune for this which I, too, soon adopted. It was handy to be able to signal from the bottom of the stairs that you were on your way up, so that the door was open for you instead of having to wait after knocking.

 

Obviously neighbours used different tunes, and once or twice I must have caused a neighbour's husband's dinner to be cold, as I caught myself absentmindedly whistling their tune as I went up the stairs. Passing a lower landing door lying ajar I realised what had happened, and crept past silently, listened for the mutters of complaint from below as the woman inadvertently fooled into thinking it was her husband realised what had happened and grumbled The echoing acoustics on tenement staircases were ideal for whistling, and reckoning I was pretty good, did it all the time with current favourite tunes.

 

Every flight of stairs had a banister of decorative cast iron uprights topped with a broad handrail of varnished wood conveniently shaped for gripping, which was ideal for sliding down. Some handrails had a gap of about six inches where it made the 180 degree turn at each landing, as ours had, allowing banister-sliders to slide all the way from top to bottom. Other banisters had a gap which was too small to permit sliding, other than the open mid­sections between landings. Some handrails had brass studs, peaked but with the tops rounded off, fixed on to deter banister sliding, although these were confined to the lowest flight. Growing up meant that I could no longer do it; it was too painful, later realising it was because I had reached the age of puberty!

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Travelling on public transport from within Govan to the city centre or to Renfrew was always by tram. The only bus service along Govan Road was Western SMT's red buses running to Renfrew and beyond. The shade of red used was one, which, because of my defective colour vision, I found impossible to identify. Many years were to pass before it was realised that the ‘red' buses people talked about, were those of the Western Company, because the shade was wine red. There were no bus terminal stations as such, and convenient street or roadside in town of sufficient width was used. The Western company’s terminus in the city for the service passing our way was at that time in North Drive alongside St Enoch Station opposite the entrance to the St Enoch Hotel, which was narrow and had an inconvenient steep slope. This is clearly recalled because at holiday time and bound for the Firth of Clyde, when the service was busy with no-one getting off before the city boundary at Merryflatts beyond Moss Road, to make sure of getting on, my parents travelled in to the terminus and joined a long queue there.

 

That terminus endured until road traffic increased after the war, when it was moved to Clyde Street for a number of years. During the latter period, some SMT services from north of the river to destinations to the south used Clyde Street as their terminus, while those proceeding to destinations on the north side used Carlton Place. The low bridge between Langbank and Finlaystone, with its Z bend where the road passed under the railway, meant that single deckers had to be used on services that went beyond Bishopton. The old bridge can still be seen on the alignment of the old A8 road beside the new bridge.

CORPORATION TRANSPORT – THE TRAMS

An unusual regulation affecting public transport, introduced in 1930 to protect the Corporation Transport Department's revenue, was applied within Glasgow’s city boundary. Only Corporation trams and buses were permitted to carry passengers on journeys that began and ended within the city boundary, and as the boundary was then at the Southern General Hospital, we could not use Western SMT buses on journeys to and from the town. That apparent restriction was in fact no restriction at all, as their frequency of service was much less than the ‘caurs' and their fares were higher also. The latter fact meant that when travelling to Renfrew regularly to visit an aunt during a year near the end of the decade, we always used the tram. When we did go farther west by bus it was in the happy atmosphere of holiday time travelling to Gourock to take the ferry to Kilcreggan, and a few years later to Lochgoilhead. But the rest of that story of events after the 1930s belongs to the next book of reminiscences entitled IN PEACE AND WAR (IPAW) which is now finished.

 

Tramcars had broad coloured bands painted all round front and sides outside at mid-height, between the upper and lower deck windows. Vehicle with the same colour band were assigned as far as possible to a service, a rule consistently followed given that there were over thirty services city wide. Bear in mid that the vast majority of travellers then used public transport or walked. Wishing to travel west, when waiting for a westbound ‘car at the stop at Govan Cross goods station at the corner of Greenhaugh Street for example, known as Morris's Corner because of the large newsagent and tobacconist's shop of that name there, it was possible to see for a half-mile eastwards.

 

If you watched out along that straight stretch of Govan Road a ‘car could be seen turning the corner at the dry dock. In daytime its colour was visible, so that intending passengers knew well in advance if it was the one they were waiting for. The advantage of the link between service and colour was best appreciated in the town centre, where at peak times vehicles ran virtually nose to tail. Trying to determine the destinations of cars line up in Argyle Street, Sauchiehall Street, Hope Street, or Renfield Street was often difficult, because they were so close together the destination screens were hidden by the proximity, so the coloured band was a good but not totally dependable guide.

 

When service numbers were introduced in 1938 they were displayed on the nearside front of the vehicle’s top deck, it rendered service colour-coding unnecessary although the colours continued to be applied to the older trams until the end. The numbers were white on black on a large board mounted in a bracket at the top of the upper deck near-side hex panel window at both ends.

 

Two services operated through Linthouse. The one by blue cars, which became the Number 4 service, went as far as Sandyford (where the M8 now passes between Renfrew and Paisley) showing Renfrew South on the destination screen. Green was the colour of the service later numbered 27, which turned in Renfrew Road at Hillington Road. For travellers going to Linthouse and beyond from Govan Cross there was the complication of the yellow car service, the Number 7. This one turned up Golspie Street and went on to Craigton, the terminus of which was then at the Cleansing Department’s destructor plant where an Asda supermarket stands today. This was soon to be extended to Bellahouston over the new wider bridge that crossed over the railway line into Jura Street.

 

When travelling from Govan Cross to Linthouse it might be thought that there was no problem in boarding the correct car, blue or green. But this was a mistake made occasionally by people who were unfamiliar with the district. Westbound travellers sometimes boarded ‘cars at the Cross or points east without paying proper attention to or were unaware of the necessity of checking the colour or what was shown on the front, most often at night or in fog when these indicators were least visible. They then found themselves being carried up Golspie Street and had to scramble off, walk back to Govan Road and wait for a number 4 or a 27 and pay a fare again. A service extended during our time was the originally green Number 12. It first ran from Mount Florida, threading its way along Allison Street, through Pollokshields to terminate in Admiral Street at Paisley Road Toll. Then at the start of the war it was extended to run to Linthouse at peak times only to serve the shipyard workers. Instruction given by residents of Linthouse to visitors travelling from the city was, `Take a blue or a green car, but don't take a yellow car!'

 

Peak hours saw cars coming from other depots around the city and turning at or passing through Linthouse. Up to ten vehicles were stationed in Holmfauld Road late in the afternoons, and a similar number proceeded on to Shieldhall. The Shieldhall cars turned into Bogmoor Road, where a long terminus of track was laid in 1937 to accommodate them. Before that year they used to turn at a cross-over in Renfrew Road near its junction with Shieldhall Road which caused congestion. A large number of workers from the SCWS factories and the nearby KGV dock, which numbered in the thousands, were carried, so at busy times a procession of vehicles trundled out and back along Govan Road.

 

Vehicle width standards of the time meant that the layout of seats on the vehicles was lop-sided, but only on the lower deck. The top deck had, as on present-day buses, conventional double seats down each side. On the lower decks of the older trams, at both ends there were three-person longitudinal seats on each side, on which passengers sat with their backs to the window. Between these end seats, on one side there was a row of four double seats, while on the other there was the same number of single seats for which there was much competition. All double and single seats were set transversely with passengers facing forward. As turning loops were not provided, vehicles could not be turned at termini, so there was an arrangement which allowed seat backs to be reversed by pulling a chromed open-loop handle on each top corner on the side nearest the passage. Ten standing passengers were allowed only on the lower deck, for whom as a steadying aid when the vehicle was moving, grab-rails with dangling straps were fixed to the roof from front to rear on both decks.

 

It might be considered by people who have never travelled on a tramcar or were too young to recall the experience, that the details described here are unnecessary when they can be studied at first hand in the Museum of Transport. But how many would be aware of the necessity for the conductor to reverse all the transverse seatbacks on both decks at each terminus, or having to lean out of the top deck window at the end and haul on the cord which hung down there, to pull over the current collector on the roof to allow it to proceed in the opposite direction? It is likely that the same young people might think the saying `off his trolley', suggests that someone who does something stupid has fallen off a wheeled barrow of the type used to move patients around in hospital. Whereas it's quite likely to come from the analogy of a derailed tram losing power by running out from under the wire which picked up power via the trolley on its roof. Until the 1920s Glasgow trams originally had pole current collectors which occasionally lost contact with the wire. When that happened the pole was free to swing around and cause damage. After this time the bow collector was used until the tramway service end in 1961.

TRANSPORT STAFF

Transport Department uniforms were dark green with red piping down each side of the trousers or skirts of conductresses, and workers were known as `the green staff’. Seasonal wear was a winter coat, medium and light weight summer jackets, and uniforms had to be pressed and kept clean and tidy, with buttons and shoes polished, cap badge gleaming and collar and tie worn. I have retained among keep-sakes a pair of uniform trousers from my time on the buses which could be donated to the transport museum! Crews of driver and conductor worked under a strict regime, and inspectors prowled around constantly looking for infringements of rules and regulations. Simple things such as not wearing the uniform cap or smoking on duty, or more seriously, running late or early from the timetable, showing the wrong destination on the screen or route or service number, or infringements in ticket issuing. Routes were divided into numbered ‘stages’ of about half-a-mile, and a ticket was bought which allowed you to travel to a numbered stage ahead. If a conductor was detected allowing anyone to travel beyond the stage they had paid for, they were reprimanded.

 

In my time as a Corporation bus driver with the transport department during the 1960s and early seventies, when an inspector found an infringement he had to confront the guilty party and obtain from them their name and badge number. During the time of the trams it was standard practice for inspectors to report infringements observed from a distance without needing face-to-face corroboration. If a tram driver for example was spotted fleetingly driving past not wearing a hat or smoking, he could be reported. That seemingly oppressively strict system could have been the reason why the transport department was so well run and highly regarded by the public up to WWII.

 

As the tramway system contracted and buses were introduced in their place, because the latter were not confined by rails to a set route in the same way as the ‘cars, a flying squad of two inspectors of the more efficient and aggressive type was formed. They drove around in a small green van to watch for malingering crews, and their skulking, spying, and hard-nosed behaviour earned them the name of `The Gestapo'. The author has tales of this and other aspects of life on the buses during the 1960s already set down, which might one day be seen in print. I left the Transport Department just before it lost its original identity to become Strathclyde Transport in the urban transport reorganisation. It is now a subsidised privately owned company that changes livery, company name, and owners frequently which confuses passengers.

 

Having to reverse direction at each terminus, the staggered entrances at the ends of the original vehicles were open to the elements. In summer, conditions were ideal for drivers, for anyone young and fit, with the then relatively traffic free roads and no steering demanding constant attention. According to those who worked on them, the open platform gave a fresh air feel when driving in the suburbs on warm sunny days. The sliding door between the driving compartments at the leading end lower deck passenger saloon, which was normally kept closed, could be left open to allow a through draught. A temporary barrier in the form of a spar `T' piece of dark varnished wood, with another crosspiece at mid height to keep children out, was fixed across the opening.

 

Winters must have been hell for them having to stand constantly with an icy blast coming through the doorless entrance and whipping round the cab. Such exposure during a winter freeze-up caused them to dress up to resemble early versions of the Michelin Man. Very occasionally older drivers would have a seat, simply a round piece of dark polished wood set on a metal rod which plugged into a hole in the cab floor. They must have had an infirmity, perhaps due to ageing and long service, to qualify for it. But a less comfortable perch could hardly be imagined, on which a driver would be more likely to fall off than nod off.

 

Access to the upper decks of trams was by curved steps from both platforms which took passengers up to a cubicle with a sliding door. At the leading end, to prevent a through draught when the vehicle was moving, the door was kept closed, and five adults could sit there and be in a little closed off saloon on their own. During warm weather, windows and doors could be left open at both ends to allow a breeze to blow through. The destination screen box on the outside was accessed through a 'droplight' window, which was opened by the same system as the windows on the then current railway carriages, a simple arrangement which did not use counterweights. A heavy leather strap was fixed to the lower edge of the moveable section of the window frame to hang down inside the seating compartment. While the window normally rested in a seating in the frame, to open it, it was lifted by the strap and lowered down a slot within the bulkhead. Railway carriage windows could be set at a variety of heights, because the strap had a series of holes punched in it which pressed over a stud fixed to the inside door facing. However, it's not recalled now if trams had that facility. The top deck had a double row of 2-person lateral seats.

 

Instead of a warning horn they had a bell that was operated by the driver stamping on a plunger in the floor. It may not be obvious to the museum spectator that trams have a form of gate-operated cowcatcher. It was a slatted wooden platform carried underneath the cabs which was hinged set back from the ends. In the raised position the catcher was held just above the road surface, and when the gate at the front struck an object, it swung up and allowed the obstruction to pass underneath. In doing so it released the catcher, the leading edge of which dropped onto the cobbles and scooped the object up. Anyone knocked down and run over would not perhaps be unharmed, but they would have a considerably better chance of surviving.

 

Employees approaching retiral age who found the strain of driving too much weren't discharged. Easier jobs were found for them within the Department, such as point-changer at one of the busy intersections at peak-times, saving drivers of the older vehicles from having to stop and step down to do the switch. The newest Cunarder and Coronation vehicles had a driver controlled on-board device for this. Another job was going round all junctions and cleaning dirt out of the chamber below the moving blade of the point, which was done with a flat rod having a sharp edged bent-over section at the tip for scooping out the dirt, and a flat brush with long stiff wire bristles. The gentleman (for so he seemed) who did this in our area in the thirties, was a very smart tall thin individual of military bearing, with white hair and walrus moustache.

 

Conductors had a simple form of ticket dispenser, a punch, and an extremely heavy even when empty, cash bag to cope with. Tickets were in pre-printed thick bundles of 50 or so, stapled together on a small wooden tray mounted over the cash bag and held in a row by powerful coil spring clips. The bundles, of different colours representing various values from halfpenny, penny, three-halfpence) and so on to 3d (thruppence), were of thin cheap ­type card or heavy coarse paper, oblong shaped and numbered sequentially with the numbers along the top. Other numbers along both long edges corresponded to the stages along the route. When purchasing from a conductor, the request was for a ha'penny-one, or a penny-one etc., and a ticket of the requested value was plucked off the top and a hole punched at the stage number to which the holder was entitled to travel. As the bottom of the bundle was approached, to free them from the staple the few remaining tickets had to be plucked out with a jerk from under the spring. In doing so, as the padding of the bundle decreased, it caused a well remembered and surprisingly loud snapping sound on the wood. Each ticket had in its centre the legend, The Glasgow Numerical Ticket Company & CPB Co. Ltd., Finnieston Street, Anderston.

 

The ticket punch was worn over the breast suspended by a strap which passed over the right shoulder and under the other arm. It was a flat six-inch square of shiny metal about an inch thick with raised GCT letters on an inset area on the front. On top, to the right of centre, it had a narrow peaked extension, with a slot between it and the main part of the unit into which tickets were inserted. Below was a thumb operated lever which, with a ticket in the slot and the stage number aligned, when it was thrust sharply down it punched a hole, causing a bell to ding with a gentle high-pitched tone. A waggish member of the green staff used to tell the apocryphal story of a rather simple fellow newly recruited as a conductor, who wondered if the department employed people to add up the numbered punches to check against ticket money he paid in. The sound of that bell encountered today would bring a tear to the eye of many older people, including me, but it could become monotonous on a busy car. Along with the rumble and the swaying movement of the vehicle, they are among sensations redolent of the age.

 

The cash bag, worn with the strap over the other shoulder, was deep, front to rear, and had a rounded bottom. It had a division across the centre to keep silver and copper coins separate, and a flap in the form of an upward extension of the rear panel which came down in front as a cover, to be held in place by a short punched strap, the hole of which pressed over a stud. Memory of the bag centres on the material it was made from. So thick and heavy was the leather it could almost have been stood on round the edges without distorting. Empty, it was quite heavy, but after a busy shift it must have been back breaking to carry. As a child I had a toy conductor's set, consisting of hat, cash bag with strap, rack of tickets, badge, and punch formed from sheet tin with strap, all very similar to the Corporation's, and a bell which rang in a most realistic way, just like the real thing.

 

Destination screens on trams and buses were different, although both used the same style of roller blinds which might hold up to thirty or forty terminus names. On older trams the container was in the form of a box with two screens giving a double over-and-under display, the lower one indicating a place passed en-route, to which the prefix via was later added. Located on the ledge above the driver's windscreen at each end, the box was only accessible from the top deck compartment’s front opening window for changing by the conductor, whose responsibility it was. The screens were scrolled independently by a crank handle on vertical shafts, one at each end of the top of the box. If, like us, you happened to live near a tram terminus it was a familiar sight to see, as Linthouse bound cars approached the turning point, conductors with long service leaning nonchalantly half out the window in order to see the screen (and read it upside down), while expertly twirling both handles. This of course had to be done at both ends of the vehicle, and it caused a succession of places, familiar and unknown to a juvenile, to flash past so fast that only an occasional name could be picked out.

 

Early in the decade the Corporation Transport Department had an unusual addition to its bus fleet. It acquired an AEC Reliant double-decker (50), the only vehicle until more recent times with a double back axle it possessed. It was longer and had a greater carrying capacity, and as this was before Ibrox bus garage was opened in Helen Street in the early 1940s, the Reliant was based at Larkfield Garage at Eglinton Toll, then the only bus garage on the south side of the city. While never fortunate enough to have a ride on it, I saw it occasionally in Langlands Road when on my way to or from school, on either the number 4 or 4A services. It had large bar resembling a pram handle curved up in front of the open radiator.

 

Most bus destination screens on double or single deck vehicles were dual aspect with the service number above, and these were set within the body at the front. The cranks for changing them projected down from within the bodywork on the front nearside, just within the open 'half-cab' compartment above the engine and quite high up, so that the driver, whose job it was in this case, had to stand on a step provided low down at the side of the radiator to reach it. Vehicles produced after the war had internally accessed screens. All trams had on their platforms (I'm not sure now about buses) a little red box, about 4" square and 8” high, fixed to a wire frame on the platform outside the saloon window. It had a locked lid which sloped steeply with a slot for coins. At the front there was a notice inviting you to `PLEASE PLACE UNCOLLECTED FARES IN THIS BOX'.

STARTING UP EARLY PETROL ENGINES

A device long since done away with from vehicles with internal combustion engines is the external starting handle. Before electric starting motors were developed, all vehicles needed one. Later, even with a starter motor fitted, which in the early days could be undependable, for a time vehicles still came from the manufacturers with handles that were fixed in position to begin with, then for convenience they were made removable which endured until the 1950s. In the early years before starter motors it was the only way to start up an engine.

 

The handle had a spring loaded ‘dog’ that allowed the engine to turn over with it still in position but disconnected. When it was used it had to be pushed in against a spring, then turned for the dogs on it to engage in slots on the on the end of the crank shaft. The hard work of these times started here; the bigger the engine the greater the effort needed to turn it. By the ‘50s car starting handles were removable and were carried in the boot. On lorries the handle was secured with the outer, hand operating section held to one side with a leather strap. Up to the 1940s, however, they were still a permanent fixture at the front, but were usually positioned behind the bumpers of cars. On commercial vehicles and buses they projected out in front in line with the crankshaft, through an opening in the radiator.

 

As late as the 1940s and 50s it was still a regular occurrence to see vehicles having their engines started with the handle. Heavy commercial and public service vehicle starting handles also were spring loaded, to keep the slots on the business end out of contact with those on the forward end of the crankshaft when the engine was running. When starting an engine, the handle was pushed in and turned against the compression of a piston then allowed to return to compress the other way. Using the momentum gained by the ‘reverse’ compression, it was turned harder once more, vigorously in the clockwise direction. The return swing this time was usually enough to enable a full turn of the engine to take place and, hopefully, it would start up.

 

The risk of kick-back meant that extreme care had to be taken during this operation, as a broken arm or worse was an occupational hazard. When turning the engine over, the danger lay in the fact that as the first piston reached TDC (top dead centre), while working against the compression as it builds up, the momentum is reduced. If it reaches TDC and is slow enough, when the ignition sparks, known as pre-ignition, it could cause the engine to turn the other way, which it could do - violently. Occasionally stories were told of this causing serious injuries such as broken arms and even men being killed by large engines, because the bigger the engine the greater the effort needed to turn it and the greater the force of the kick-back.

 

Cold starting heavy vehicles often involved two strong men, and the effort required for the first start of the day in winter in sub-zero temperatures conjures up the vision of a special breed of he-men. My first car, the Standard 8 which I shared with my friend Sam Hill, was acquired for £25 in 1954, had a starting handle that had to be used occasionally. Our Standard Flying 8 had 1939 Glasgow registration number CGE 864.

 

The primitive ignition systems of the early years had elements of hit and miss. The ignition key in early electric-starter motor times had only two positions, off and on. When starter motors were developed, as they were operated by a pushbutton on the dash-board separate from the ignition switch, drivers were prone to forgetting to switch on the ignition while keeping their finger on the starter button which drained the battery. Even after an ignition warning light was introduced it could still happen with the unobservant. This was something that happened to all drivers. Sometime later the power supply to the starter motor was incorporated in the three position ignition switch as it is today which avoided that problem. From the off position the first click switches on the ignition and the second sends power to the starting motor

 

Before trafficators were introduced, to indicate you were turning right you held your arm and hand out the window. Once, travelling behind a small car, I saw a driver signal that he was turning left by holding his right arm out with the upper part horizontal, forearm vertical, and hand pointing over the car roof! The first electrical ‘turn’ indicators were yellow ten inch long ‘fingers’ that when switched on, flicked out from the door pillars to the left or right. A subsequent development was that the finger was illuminated, but the flashing type did not appear until the mid 1950s, first with the flashing finger then as separate units each side front and rear. All the other electrical equipment operated by individual switches for lights and wipers was laid out on the dashboard.

STREET AND BACK COURT HAWKERS

A young person today transported back in time to the streets of the period being written about, and looking around to see what the greatest differences are between them and those of today, might be amazed not so much by the lack of traffic during the day, private vehicles mainly, but also commercials other than horses and carts, and the absence of parked vehicles. Other than the occasional horse drawn ice-cream cart, all side streets away from upmarket residential districts were quite empty during evenings and at weekends. Even during week-days, when there would be the normal occasional passing commercial traffic and a fair number of hawkers doing their rounds, there were few other vehicles. Hawkers used hand barrows or horses and carts, such as the sellers of coal, briquettes, fish, fruit and vegetables, and milk and buttermilk by different vendors, who were the most common. Also the crockery seller and the cheap clothing flea-market type seller/buyer known as the rag and bone man. Less often seen were the scrap iron collector, who would take away any metallic scrap, paying a pittance for it,

 

Not seeing the candy rock men after the move to Linthouse was a great disappointment, as I had grown a bit and could have coped with the scramble. Most streets including side streets were surfaced with cobbles, but by the 1930s almost all of the side streets in Govan had been re-laid with a smooth asphalt surface. There was a certain amount of passing traffic in Skipness Drive we didn't have in Howat Street, mainly because drivers preferred the rumble-free ride away from the cobbles of the main road. They used it as a through route to and from south and east, for vehicles to thread their way from the docks or ferrys to the Craigton Road and Helen Street area. This traffic still mostly consisted of horses and carts, but the proportion of motor vehicles was growing. Nevertheless, streets here were almost perfect playgrounds for children particularly after working hours, although house windows were vulnerable to ball games.

 

With their horse drawn vehicles or handcarts, or carrying their wares in baskets, perhaps even 'humphed' (a local word for carry) on shoulder or back, hawkers provided interesting, or irritating if it wasn't the one you were looking for, diversions in a constantly changing daytime scene in streets and back courts. Most frequent of these were coal merchants with their very low sided four-wheeled horse-drawn carts and a four-foot high tailboard above which metal flags on rods displayed grades and prices. Examples of this might be Best House Coal 1/l0d (one-and-ten pence per cwt. bag) or Nuts, coal graded to a small size convenient for shovelling straight on to the fire, 2/- (two shillings = 10p) per bag. The side edges of this type of cart were really just three-inch high thick metal ­clad ledges, on which the outer edge of the outermost row of bags of coal rested, causing them to lean inwards which helped stabilise the load.

 

One or two merchants displayed signs which indicated that a consignment came from a named mine or pit with a reputation for high quality coal at a correspondingly dearer price. Those names are hazy now, but there is an impression that one or two might have been in Fife. One that does come to mind is the Lady Victoria pit at Newtongrange, Midlothian which is currently a mining museum. The tailboard of the cart was lettered on the rear face, sometimes quite colourfully, with scrolled and perspective lettering displaying the merchant's name and depot address in large letters. Our local coalman in Linthouse was portrayed thus - Daniel Morrison and Sons, Coal Merchants, Shieldhall Goods Station - and in smaller letters - Home Address: 1 Skipness Drive, Linthouse, and their Govan exchange telephone number. The merchant’s name was also applied to the outer edges of the load bed (51).

 

Thinking now about the carrying capacity of these carts intrigues me. The general dimensions of the loading platform were, at a guess, roughly about fifteen feet long by six feet wide. It had two sprung axles with spoked steel-tyred wooden wheels. The leading axle was attached to a truck which pivoted at the centre to enable it to steer, to which were attached the shafts between which the horse was harnessed, so that the cart should follow the horse whichever way it turned. Over the horse's neck and fitting snugly on its shoulders there was a large padded heavy collar, to which the main trace straps of the harness were attached. The collar was sometimes decorated with a metal finial or a pair of curved finials at the top, which stuck up to form a V, a few of which had an additional embellishment in the form of other tracery rising to a point between the finials.

 

Inset at the top there was a small hole with what looked like a ruby, or a piece of coloured glass, fixed in such a way as to pivot and flick to-and-fro. As the animal walked along its head nodded, causing the stone to swing back and forth through the hole so that it sparkled in sunlight. The collar was the means by which horses were able to cope with the weight of a loaded cart by spreading the strain evenly over a large area of shoulders. The shafts themselves were supported by a chain which passed over the horse's back, to lie on a form of saddle which had a groove to confine it. The reins, leather strapping which ran back from the bit in the horses mouth to the driver, were supported somewhere at the mid point to keep the horse’s legs from becoming entangled if the driver became inattentive while on the move.

 

Layout of the load would be something like four bags across by eight along the length, which is 4 x 8 = 32 bags, each of one hundredweight (cwt = roughly 50kg). In addition, when fully loaded most carts would have another part layer on top with about half that number of bags, and there are vague recollections of seeing one or two with a third small layer. Even a roughly estimated total of between forty and fifty bags, which is 2¼ tons, seems rather a lot for one horse to manage, even although they were always one of the heavy breeds, usually Clydesdales, to manage. But the topography of Govan and the surrounding area was mainly flat and level, so this may account for the heavy loads seen here. Carts operating in hilly districts, mainly in the north side of the city, probably had to start work with lesser loads to be able to tackle the hills. The nearest slopes steep enough to cause difficulty in Greater Govan were at the top of Craigton Road and Moss Road where they cross the railway line, but handling a load like that on the level did not give these powerful animals any difficulty.

 

The feeding for the horse, oats, was contained in a nosebag which was carried slung under the rear end of the cart, where it swung gently to and fro as the cart rolled along. Feeding and watering was done at a fire hydrant, and the carter carried a water-main key in the toolbox to turn on the hydrant tap. The name burlap, sacking of heavy dense canvas, comes to mind and this might have been the material of the feed-bag, which had a wooden base and was suspended by a double loop of rope over its head. One loop passed behind its ears while the other was in front, so that the bag was held with the head enclosed up to its eyes, making it snuffle and sneeze constantly as it ate because the oats were usually dusty.

 

Until there was regular treatment of roads with salt and grit, winter brought big problems for horses and carters. If a horse slipped on ice and fell, an occasional occurrence at that time of lower average winter temperatures, the first thing the carter had to do was unhitch the cart and have it pulled clear, then sacking was tied over the horse's hooves. If any kind of grit could be obtained, sand or a shovel full of earth from a garden, or even sawdust, this was spread around. Then the horse was encouraged to try to stand up which produced painful and traumatic scenes.

 

Sometimes the struggle would go on for quite a long time, with the horse slipping and sliding and suffering repeated falls if conditions were particularly bad. In one observed incident the animal was lifted with a sling round its belly by some kind of mechanical means, and set on its legs, probably by a hand-wound crane mounted on a motor lorry that had to be summoned for the task. Very occasionally a horse would break a leg in a fall and in that event it was the end of the horse. It was killed on the spot, how I'm not sure, but disposal with a humane gun would be the most likely method. One animal lay in Drive Road covered by a tarpaulin after an occurrence of this nature, awaiting the arrival of the knacker's cart to take the carcass away. There were lugs on horseshoes, one at the front and one at the rear on each wing gave a better grip in the slots between cobbles on main road surfaces in icy conditions, than on the smooth surface of the asphalt on side streets.

 

A coal cart would be accompanied by two men, but sometimes there were three or four or more. They must have been a strong, stout-hearted lot to survive travelling on the open cart in an icy downpour and freezing wind, and getting covered in coal dust, then having to carry hundredweight bags on their backs up three or four storeys of a tenement. A lumpy bag (actually a sack but never in my experienced called that) weighing a hundredweight on your back would be an intolerably painful experience. Regular workers had a very distinctive kind of padded cuirass of stiff leather studded round the edges with steel rivets strapped on their backs. In the centre, to stop the bag slipping down, it was braced with narrow horizontal strips of thin steel held in place with brass rivets, and the protection was deep enough to cover the wearer from neck to below the small of the back.

 

Individuals without this protection sometimes used an empty bag as a substitute, and they had to be watched carefully when a householder was taking delivery of say, four bags. It wasn't unknown for an inattentive housewife to be unaware that her deliver was a bag short; when a padding sack was slipped onto the empties pile to be counted in front of her as the final total of full ones. The man in charge kept his takings in a bag slung round his neck, to hang down at his hip in the same manner as tram/bus conductors. Our regular coal man Danny Morrison himself had an identical transport department type bag of that very heavy leather.

 

Regular coal carriers handled the full bags with deceptive ease when lifting them from the side of the lorry to stand upright high up on their back near the neck. Others less practised would struggle laboriously to climb flights of stairs bent almost double, clutching the lip of the bag with their forearms braced against their forehead and the bag trailing down to their backside. Sometimes this caused a spill on the stairs so that the woman taking delivery would have to be down `at the toot' (from the French tout suit meaning quickly) with a brush and shovel, as every bit was precious, as well as to clean up before the neighbours saw the mess.

 

Of three methods of tipping coal into bunkers, two were used by the strongest men. In the first, the bag was turned and carried across the shoulders with one hand gripping the bottom and, as they were never tied shut, the other holding the neck firmly closed, until it was in the correct position over the bunker. Then it was a simple action to lean over and release the neck allowing the contents to shoot straight in. But this was disliked intensely by householders because it produced the greatest amount of dust. The second method was to drop the bag straight in and wrestle it empty. But the favourite and the most skilful way was to throw the bag off the shoulder, so that its mid-point landed on the edge of the folded down bunker front with the mouth inside. This would put half the contents straight in, and a deft movement of the hand could catch the bottom to throw it over and empty it. But if the catch was missed some of the contents might end up on the apartment floor.

Wear on the edge of folded down bunker front over time caused a slot to develop when the flap was in the ‘up’ position which gradually widened over the years. Eventually, a stage was reached when, in its normal raised position, young children found it a convenient place to `post' toys and small household items. In my case it was cutlery. Mum used to talk about the time she could not understand why she was so short of these items, and the mystery was only solved when, as consumption of coal progressed they were revealed at the bottom of the bunker. I had put them through the slot just before a delivery of coal.

 

Imagine what it must have been like having to trudge about all day, carrying heavy bags of coal from which gritty dust and/or dampness worked its way down your neck, for the cuirass didn't provide protection from that discomfort. All carriers wore a cloth cap, usually reversed with the peak down the back to give a measure of added protection, and steel-tipped boots or clogs with their trouser legs tied with string below the knee as a guard against rising dust in dry weather.

 

When travelling to their daily sales pitches the crew would travel on the cart, driver on the front nearside, reins in hand, and whip carried standing vertical in a socket alongside him with its top jiggling about with the motion. He was seated on an empty bag at first with them piling up as the load diminished, one leg dangling and the other resting on the cross-tree between the shafts. A second man occupied the opposite corner while any others spread themselves out over the load. Their sales technique was to walk along the centre of the street with the horse clip-clopping slowly behind, and bawl their distinctive cries through cupped hands, going through one close in each side of a block into the back-court and calling again, constantly scanning windows for prospective customers. Sometimes inconsiderate fellows would bawl while passing through the close, and if you happened to be on the stairs just then you were deafened. A practice used by some in an attempt to enhance volume when calling was to place a blackened hand horizontal with fingertips on the ear and palm flat against a cheek.

 

It has to be emphasised that coalmen or other vendors were not in constant attendance. They all had rounds and calling days, usually weekly, so that if a housewife needed any of their wares she had to be alert. This was even more important if she wanted to buy from a particular coalman. If she happened to be preoccupied and missed him, if her stock had been allowed to get too low it could mean no fire in the house until his next visit. It was vital to keep a sharp lookout and listen for his call, and here another annoying problem was occasionally encountered. Like other people in the same situation, Mum found that certain men who were lazy could, if the boss's attention was elsewhere, be deaf and blind to calls and signals requesting a delivery to anyone living on the top flat. Of course their favourite customers lived low down. Some merchants issued regular customers with a card with their initials on it, for them to display on the sash of a window’s upper casement, which saved householders from being tied to their window watching and listening for them. But men of experience checked to make sure there was someone at home before carrying a bag up three stairs!

 

Coal men sometimes sold coal briquettes in addition, but there were a few individuals who specialised in them. One was a local man. Sandy was his name, as I was reminded some years ago on reading reminiscence stories by another Govanite, Jenny Chaplin, latterly of Rothesay, of life in Govan at roughly the same period. Sandy had certain characteristics which made him an extremely comical figure. He was of very short stature, probably only about five feet tall, with the worst example of bowed legs I ever saw in any individual, which gave him an ape-like lurching side-to-side gait. He must surely have had rickets as a child. If he stood erect with feet together his knees must have been about eighteen inches apart, and his face was always so black with coal dust that his eyes and teeth flashed like beacons. He gave the impression that he never washed, because I never saw him any other way. Summer and winter he wore a bunnet constantly and a coat and scarf, all of which were thoroughly impregnated with coal dust.

 

The age had ended when every male other than Sandy wore a hat or cloth cap, and he wore his in a quite distinctive manner. While the top part of caps worn by men were normally kept fixed to the skip by a press stud. In the fading fashion of the time Sandy wore his with it open, with the skip pulled down over his eyes and a little to one side, which gave him a very period look, Victorian or Edwardian. His barrow had a broad single ­axle and large-spoked wheels, with a flat platform having a six-inch-high board edging extending round three of the sides, and the usual pair of parking legs at the shafts. The platform end at the shafts was open for handling the briquettes, which were normally purchased in half-dozen lots. They were carried up to customers' houses by a boy assistant, on a short length of wood with spacers below that allowed the fingers to slip under the ends to pick it up when loaded.

 

All hawkers needed a way of bringing their presence to the attention of householders. Some had a musical instrument like a trumpet, a cornet, or a bugle, while others used a hand-bell, a whistle of the rattling pea type, or a rickety. One man came round with a horse and cart selling cheap crockery from crates stuffed with straw. He would cry out and rattle two plates together in a most effective way, so that I used to wonder how many he broke. Others simply called out. Coalmen in particular always possessed remarkable stentorian shouts. Sandy, our briquette man, was equally distinctive, calling, if I can put it down as it sounded – ‘Coalbrikates' (rhyming with dates and the stress on the second ­last syllable), and the price: ‘A penny each or a shilling a dozen', frequently adding, without bothering too much about the truth of the statement, ‘Big scarcity!'. That mental picture of Sandy, laden with nostalgia is another clear memory of the period.

THE FISHMAN

The fishmonger was Vennard, and his horse and cart was a lighter type and of a similar design to that of the coal man. As well as the usual haddock and whiting in season, he sold Loch Fyne herring, Fynnan haddock, Arbroath smokies, and Aberdeen kippers. Apart from the usual filleted white fish, what puzzled me for a long time was something called line-caught haddock. Having fished on Loch Goil in the 1940s and 50s, I began to understand that net-caught fish were generally bruised in the crush when caught in a trawl net, but line-caught fish was always in better condition and fetched a higher price. The fish man carried his wares in and sold it from flat wooden boxes swimming with melting lumps of ice spread out over the bed of his cart as they came from the fish market. It was weighed on a Salter dial-scale suspended from a gallows-shaped bracket clamped to the side of the cart, the large shallow loose fitting metal pan of which sat in a cradle slung beneath the dial, making it easy to slide the fish onto newspaper for wrapping.

THE MILKMAN         

Johnnie Owens came round twice a day driving a horse and cart of quite distinctive design. It was a short two-wheeler vehicle with panelled high sides and front. At the top of the front, in the centre, there were a pair of short thin metal rods which matched the finials on the horse's collar, about a foot apart projecting upwards between which passed the reins, to confine them when the driver put them down to attend customers. The milk was carried in churns sitting in the body of the cart above and forward of the axle. At the rear there was a low shallow partly enclosed platform stretching from one side to the other, on which the driver and his assistant stood to drive and sell from. A picture of that cart that remains with me is of it approaching along the street with the horse at a smart trot, and only the upper parts of those on the platform visible. The platform itself skimmed along only a few inches above the road surface.

 

The milk was dipped from the churn with metal half-pint and pint measures shaped like the bean or soup can of today. A long handle had been fixed as an extension to their side, with the other end bent over in a tight `U' to be place over the lip of the churn for it to hang down inside. Before milk arrived in bottles nearly everyone had milk cans of a standard shape holding a quart, miniatures of a full size churn, while others brought along jugs. The cans had wire handles forming a high carrying loop from one side of the neck to the other, and most had lids. The large churns for bulk transportation between farm and dairy were round, with a variety of girths from tall and narrow to short and squat, but most had a conical section shoulder near the top, and a further straight extension into which a mushroom shaped tight fitting lid was placed. Other large cans were cone shaped from base to lid. These body designs were evolved to reduce spillages when the churns were being moved.

 

Prior to the middle of the 20^th century, before being treated by pasteurisation, homogenisation and the introduction of refrigerators to working class homes, in warm weather milk would turn sour within 24 hours. Before being bottled the tanks at the creamery had to be agitated to disperse the cream so that it would be evenly distributed to each bottle, and after it settled, bottled milk always had a visible ‘cream line’ because after filling the cream settled at the top. This was something purchasers were always on the lookout for, that the bottles they bought had a good layer of cream. One supplier had a mark on their bottles that ‘guaranteed’ a standard amount of cream, and their slogan was ‘cream line milk’.

 

To save them from having to rise early, empty cans were hung the on landing door handles the evening before. In the morning youthful assistants looked after the daily orders either by going up the closes carrying a large well filled can and pouring the measured amount ordered previously into each one, or collected the cans to take down to be filled. Milk sold in glass bottles was then a fairly recent innovation which soon became general. The early bottles had wide necks and were sealed with round waxed cardboard stoppers, which pressed into a recess just within the neck after it was filled.

 

School milk was free to all pupils and was supplied in ­third-of-a-pint capacity bottles of the same shape, the stoppers of which had a partly punched hole in the centre that was pushed in to insert a straw. The pushing in had to be done with a degree of care, more care than would have been present among any generation of school children, because the whole stopper sometimes popped in causing splashes of cream to shoot out, covering many an adjacent jacket, short trousers or gymslip, not just those of the pusher. As there were no fridges or freezers in working class homes then, there was no way to make perishable food like milk, fish and meat last in warm weather, so these items had to be acquired daily. Potatoes and vegetables lasted longer if they were kept in a box in a dark cool place

RAG AND BONE MAN

The sound of a trumpet or cornet signalled the arrival of the rag ­and bone man, a title which puzzled me for a long time because he was never seen to collect any bones. In retrospect it was probably a worthwhile function of his before this time and the name persisted. At one time bone was a more valuable commodity than it is now, and the collecting of bones from butchers' shops ended some years later. Anyone over a certain age who doubts this need only cast their mind back to the last time they were walking in the street, and caught a whiff of a bad smell as a lorry with low sides and an open top passed by. That was the bone lorry. Bone was ground down and made into fertiliser to be used by farmers and gardeners in the days before manufactured products became widely available. It could also be melted down to make rather smelly glue. When the rag man arrived in the street, a few brassy notes from his instrument was the signal for every child to disappear up their close, to pester their mothers for rags to exchange for a balloon or a celluloid windmill.

OTHER HAWKERS

There were two who pushed handcarts and they are remembered in particular. One who I think worked for Ross’s Dairies sold sour milk, or buttermilk, as it was called. It was known as the 'soor mulk cairt'. My dad sometimes used to buy it, as it was supposed to be good for anyone with chronic indigestion; although it's possible he actually liked it. It was dispensed from a distinctively shaped enclosed olive green push-barrow with a spar supported roof, and sharply curved side edges rather like those on buses but with the ends open. Quite small and narrow it had shelved compartments inside, and was mounted on a single axle with the usual large diameter spoked wheels and a pair of ‘parking’ legs. Buttermilk was packaged in dark green square waxed-card half-pint cartons, similar to today's plasticised milk cartons. Soor mulk is apparently still with us as flavoured yoghurt.

 

Other itinerant callers, some of whom were women occasionally accompanied by children, knocked on doors to sell a variety of items, which might be crochet work like table doylies, or sewing, knitting and packets of  darning needles, hairclips and hairnets, bobbins of thread, buttons and hanks and balls of wool. As well as the rag-man with his horse and cart, there was the rag-wife. She collected cast off clothing and other fabrics, and carried her gatherings wrapped in a blanket or sheet, which she ‘humphed' on her back like the coalman but with the sheet-ends knotted and enclosing her around the neck and upper body. Usually accompanied by a child, who was left in the close to guard the bundle to save the woman from having to carry it up the stairs as she made her rounds, she is a sight so reminiscent of that age.

 

Rag-women were of that class of individuals who picked from what they collected to wear themselves or to sell on; and the ones I remember appeared to be past middle-age and were invariably stout. It was no uncommon sight to see one bent double, trudging along the road late in the day with her bundle, which could reach massive proportions, balanced on her backside, with the similarly laden child struggling along behind.

 

Other vendors visited the back-courts accompanied by a child to sell items by calling up to the windows, and the child would be sent up the stairs with anything ordered by people calling down. Still others had factory rejected or even ‘mended' cast-off clothing picked up from rag-stores, and candles, matches, Murray's Diaries or Old Moore's Almanac’s. Murray's Diary was a small booklet of time-tables, about the size of the once popular Wee Red Book for football enthusiasts, which gave the times of all train and out-of-town bus services. That book was a very popular and necessary item for anyone who travelled much in that age when few had their own transport, when there were few phones and much ignorance of how to use them. There was always a current Murray's in our house, and somehow it was used regularly, particularly in summer.

 

Hawkers were usually male, with many different items of the very cheapest kind used in the home which needed to be replaced occasionally, such as sweeping and scrubbing brushes, mop heads and poles, washing cloths and bars of coarse (washing) soap, clothes ropes, buckets that were made of un-galvanised iron that eventually rusted away, pipe-clay, floor polish and dusters. A point stressed elsewhere has to be made again. It is that virtually all the utensils mentioned are still available today made from that ubiquitous material plastic in various forms. Some callers had firelighters and bunches of sticks (11), or kirbygrips and hairnets. These latter items are generally unknown today, but may still be available for older women. All women wore their hair at least to shoulder length, some of whom kept the longer locks tidily confined inside a hairnet. Among men, only tramps and oddities let their hair grow long and they were generally a target for scorn in the street. At that time only a very few women of the ‘arty' class began to keep their hair short and wore trousers that are now known as slacks or pants. This was considered to be very daring, and if they smoked as well they were regarded as being ‘fast'.

 

Begging was common with people going round the doors soliciting spare coppers (pennies), of which there was little to spare. There were men and women back court singers, one of whom had the bearing of someone in poor health who, with his singing, generated an uneasy feeling that overwhelmed me. When he appeared accompanied by children who may or may not have been his, I had to go off out of earshot. I was avoiding his presence for a reason that only now, examining it more closely I am able to identify as it comes to mind for the first time in over seventy years. It was simply a desire to help without having the means. All hawkers, beggars and entertainers were subjected to the inevitable indignity of scrambling about on the ground for coppers thrown down to them, although sometimes they were wrapped in a twist of paper.

MIDGIE RAKERS

In the local slang the midden was ‘the midgy', and among the lowest elements of the population, at the stage before being consigned to the poorhouse and lower even than beggars, were the 'midgy rakers'. These poor souls both young and old were often the most physically disabled to be encountered. They were subjected to much scornful abuse on their rounds of back-courts and were regarded with revulsion by everybody. They were invariably either mentally impaired, or crippled in some way, such as having only one arm or leg, or a withered limb or a deformed spine in the form of a hump, or one of many other physical deformities like dwarfism or obesity. One character had a most frightful squint and such a wide­-eyed stare that children, and some women, were terrified of him. When he appeared in a backcourt among groups of playing children they all disappeared.

 

A few years ago an Antiques Road Show tv programme in Glasgow was being shown. A scruffy individual was presented before the camera to be interviewed about an item. The interviewer, a usual upper class man, asked the tramp where he got it. The man replied in the usual local rapid staccato type speech, ‘Ah fun’ I(t)’ in a midgie’. The interviewer hesitated for a few seconds, obviously failing to understand what he was being told, and it took a number of other questions before he began to understand that it had been found in a domestic midden. What it was has been forgotten but it was worth a few pounds.

 

Most visitor of this kind came round in an irregular rotation, from one or two who passed through daily that you could almost set your clock by, to the occasional or once-only figure. They carried a sack or bag and were, of course, looking for anything of value, like scrap metal or returnable bottles, and some more than likely wouldn't turn up their noses at discarded food raked out from among the ash. Because of today’s domestic rubbish containers their like are never encountered now. But is it because people do not need to do this, or because modern methods of rubbish disposal in high and low ­rise buildings render access to it difficult? There are possibly some folk in the lower levels of the present day society who would liken this activity to prospecting for gold, and would welcome any opportunity to indulge in it.

 

Another caller, one of the few who provided a useful service who usually kept to the street rather than the back-court, was the knife sharpener. He appeared at infrequent intervals with his unique equipment in the form of a single­ wheeled work-bench. To describe it will be taxing, but it has to be attempted because of period interest. The grinder who frequented our district had an open spar timber structure about 4 feet x 4 feet x 1 foot wide. Inside it there was a single spoked cart-type wheel, which was the means of moving the bench about. With it lowered off the wheel onto a side, the drive for the shaft of the grinding wheel was provided by a foot-operated treadle working through a push-rod to a crank on the large wheel shaft. On the same shaft there was a large pulley round which a belt passed, which drove a smaller pulley at the higher speed needed for the grinding wheel on the same shaft. The grinder parked his barrow/bench at each close or shop such as butchers and provision merchants with the grinding wheel uppermost. He then went round asking for knives and scissors to sharpen then worked away busily on the treadle sending showers of sparks from his grindstone.

 

A curious pedlar we saw only occasionally in summer was one of the seldom encountered foreigners, the ‘onion Johnny', or in the east coast form my grandparents knew him by, 'ingin Johnny', from France. They probably avoided working-class areas because of the necessity if they had to go round tenement doors, of leaving their wares unguarded in the street or back court. I certainly remember seeing them in the thirties, and they may have returned after we moved to a terrace in Pollok at the end of the war. Perhaps they sold mainly to retailers such as greengrocers, although they were seen regularly calling round villas and terraced houses. Those I saw were middle-aged, short, wiry and tanned dark brown, of odd bucolic appearance, complete with beret, a kind of waistcoat, smock, neck-cloth and gaiters. They apparently came from Brittany, a region of France so renowned for the quality of its onions that even today I look for in the supermarket.

 

The onion sellers travelled about on peculiar bikes, obviously foreign models, festooned with pleated strings of onions, which hung in groups all round from handlebars and panniers. Both mudguards had stiff netting strung over them fixed tautly to the wheel spindle to keep the onions from getting caught up in the spokes. Just how they operated and acquired replacement stock remained a mystery to me until recently. I used to imagine them selling all their stock in a morning, and having to cycle all the way back to that impossibly remote, foreign place called France for a fresh supply later in the day. But an elderly knowledgeable friend indicated they had only to go as far as Fife, where they had rented a store.