In Peace and War
Part II

FAMILY BACKGROUND – MATERNAL ORIGINS

My mother’s family were the favourites; I liked nothing better than being with them. Grandma, quiet and likeable, had a very difficult time with health problems during most of her life. Mum used to say of her that she was at death's door many times and had been in every hospital in Glasgow. That was an exaggeration certainly but it contained some truth. She was one of ten children and her father, James Himsley (b Dundee 1829), was a whaler. He had married Mary Cairns in 1861, and a morbid family legend which is probably true as it came from more than one source, is that in the late 1870s she woke up one morning and found him dead in bed beside her. He married fairly late in life at 32 to have fathered ten children, but his wife was nine years younger than him. Another curious story concerning these ancestors was that two brothers had married two sisters. Checking the records found that this is not quite correct but the facts are remarkable enough. It appears that a brother and a sister had married a sister and a brother eleven years apart. Below are two extract from the 1987 International Genealogical Index (the I.G.I) of the Mormon Church, page 49,348. The first entry is of my great-grandparents:

James Himsley-m-Mary Cairns at Dundee on 26/08/1861

James Cairns-m-Christina Himsley at Dundee on 17/10/1872

 

My grandmother was Mary Chambers, m.s. Himsley (b1875 d1949). What I recall of her is with her grey hair braided into pigtails pulled tight and coiled into a bun at the back of her head, and needing specially designed shoes to accommodate her bunions. A soft-focus studio portrait photograph of her mother, the above Mary Cairns, hung in the bedroom of her house at 13 Hutton drive. In it great grandma looked very much like grandma herself when near the end of her life, but great grandma wore her hair with the pigtails coiled into earphone buns. A feature of photographs of working class women during the 18th and 19th centuries is that nearly all had that pigtail hair style which could be dangerous when working with machinery anywhere, but particularly in the jute industry, weaving and carpet making. Many were severely injured or killed when their pigtails were caught and drawn into a machine. Coiling the braids up into buns to be held in place with hairpins, or kirbygrips as they were called, usually kept them safely out of the way. Later, hair-nets were used for this which then became a fashion item when worn by women in normal dress. The Mary Cairns photo referred to above was lost.

THE RENT STRIKE of 1915

During WWI many extra workers were required in the industrial areas around Britain. Shipbuilding in particular was affected and this caused a great influx of people into Clydeside in 1915 to work in the shipyards and their ancillary equipment manufacturers. The new arrivals required accommodation which caused a shortage of housing, and through their factors, unscrupulous property owners attempted to take advantage of this by imposing rent increases, not just for new arrivals but on existing tenants as well. Only a tiny proportion of married women worked in those days, some of whom would have been war widows with a meagre pension, and a husband's wages needed careful management to cover rent and other essentials. Living in 13 Hutton Drive), Linthouse, Mary Chambers (23) was an activist in the rent strike in the campaign against those factors who tried to take advantage of the situation.

 

The strike began in Linthouse and was organised by a Mrs. Mary Barbour who became leader of the Tenants Defence Association. The event came to a head in September of that year in a campaign that was supposed to have been nation-wide to affect other industrial areas throughout Britain where rent increases were being imposed. But it was almost exclusively confined to Glasgow and Clydebank, and most of the protest action was centred in Govan. The most serious aspect of the trouble was that wives and mothers of soldiers fighting on the battlefields of France and Belgium were affected. In the struggle against increased rents women on the home front used this point to great effect by getting the serving men themselves, through the Military authorities, to complain that while their men-folk were fighting and dying for their country, their wives and families were being persecuted by greedy landlords.

 

Contemporary accounts of the campaign convey an impression that the experience should have been traumatic for members of any household that was involved. For someone like my mother, whose fourteenth birthday occurred at that time, she should have remembered it with some degree of clarity. However, despite close questioning in later years she could recall exasperatingly little, (she died in 1993 at the age of 91). This was despite the turmoil it caused at the time which almost amounted to disorder bordering on rioting. Repeated questioning would cause her eyes to take on a faraway look, and she would say with regret that despite her legendary good memory when younger, she wished she could be more helpful. It may have been that the threat to the family of eviction from the home so frightened her that she put it out of her mind. In other words she could not bear to think about what was happening at that time.

 

At the height of the campaign, from the large percentage of tenants who refused to pay the increases that were imposed, the property owners selected a few and took them to court. When judgement was given against them and they still refused to or couldn’t pay, warrant sales of their possessions were authorised and sheriff's officers were instructed to enforce them. Newspaper reports of the time and descriptions in books on the subject, state that the women formed committees around Govan and the other districts affected, in groups mainly made up of those who would have been at home or nearby during the day. They set up early warning systems to alert residents of the approach of the sheriff's officers to the houses concerned, the contents of which were to be sold off.

 

When alerted, the warnings were often carried by older children using whistles and bells, a large crowd assembled round the tenement close where the house affected was situated ready to obstruct the officers. Police were then summoned, but the crowd defied them also and refused to disperse, and at that point the officer in charge decided that a different approach was needed (22). It shows a scene being enacted in front of a close, numbered 10 but otherwise unidentified, quite in keeping with what would be expected to cause the police, long before the days of tear-gas, riot shields, clubs and helmets, to stand by without taking any action.

 

Poor quality prints of that incident, probably photocopies made on early versions of these machines, had been seen in the press over the years, but this one is so clear that a lady can be seen in the foreground that looks very like Mary Chambers (24). Assurances had been given in the 1980s by others, whose parents and grandparents were also involved, and who remember more of the details heard in their family circles than did my mother that it was taken in Hutton Drive. Living at number 13 (25a & b) which is almost opposite number 10, and being involved in the campaign, it is virtually certain that Mary would have been there. Having in the course of researching the subject, revisited the location and examined the stone coursing round the close and compared it with that seen in the photograph, there is every reason to think that this is the location. It shows a large, grimly determined looking crowd of mainly women milling around in front of the close, which had suspended above the entrance a sign with the words;

It was reported that when the men tried to force their way in they were roughly handled, stripped of their trousers and dumped in the back court midden.

 

Another figure is visible in this photo that may also be significant. School teacher John McLean was born in Pollokshaws in the 1879, and taught in schools in Pollokshaws (Pollok Academy) and Lorne School Govan. A very popular political agitator against every form of social injustice, particularly so against the war, Mclean was so outspoken and persistent about the latter that within a year or two he was accused of sedition and was jailed four or five times before it ended. In prison he was so badly treated that his health suffered and he died in 1923. The rent strike was a situation he was most likely to be involved in. Left of centre in the photograph a man is seen who could be McLean, standing head and shoulders above the crowd and addressing them. A book in my collection entitled JOHN MACLEAN, a biography by his daughter Nan Milton, page 88, gives a more comprehensive account of the events.

 

When action by the enforcing officials was frustrated the authorities adopted a different approach. Summonses were issued to selected strikers for a court appearance. Among them was Mary Chambers and her brother Charles Himsley, also a rent striker who at that time lived in a ground floor house also at number 13. The campaign lasted several months, and eventually, according to my mother, her Uncle Chairlie had a fine imposed while her mother got off, but no reason for this discrepancy has been found. Like the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) workers in the early 1970s, with foresight the strike committee had set up a fighting fund which covered the fines, contributions to which came from some surprising sources as well as from other men and women affected. One to the UCS strikers fund came from an amazing source, a cheque signed …from John & Yoko! of Beatles fame.

 

The rent strike dispute was finally resolved by thousands of workers downing tools, an illegal act in wartime, and marching to the seat of local government in Glasgow, the Municipal Building in George Square. At that point the National Government became involved, the landlords backed down and legislation was introduced to combat profiteering on rent. Looking through copies of The Govan Press, the local paper of the time it was found that although many columns were devoted to the affair, none of the reports mention names of any of those involved or were taken to court.

 

In February 1987 Channel 4 TV had an hour-long documentary film made by the now defunct Sheffield Film Theatre entitled Red Skirts on Clydeside. Its theme was of women’s place in society and the fight for their rights, and it concentrated on the rent strike. I got in touch with the Sheffield FT and told Mary Chamber’s story, and asked if there was any chance of acquiring a copy of the video tape. They very kindly supplied a tape, and said they were sorry they hadn’t known about my Grandmother as her story would have certainly been included. Initially much of what I knew of the event was gained from the Red Skirts programme. When I became involved with the Govan Reminiscence Group later in 1987, after a number of years as a member I decide to hand the tape over to be held in their archive.

 

In 2005, Channel 4 TV commissioned Wall to Wall TV Company to make a series entitled NOT FORGOTTEN, about individuals who in the early part of 20^th century showed great initiative and bravery in helping others who were being oppressed. There was to be three one hour programmes, each of which was to have four subjects, one of which was about the Govan rent strike. In the early stages the company made enquiries around Govan to find anyone who could remember anything second or third hand about it. They contacted the Reminiscence Group who gave them Mary Barbour’s name and mine. Her grandmother of the same name was the main organiser of the strike. She and I became involved and our stories were recorded on video tape by interviewer Ian Hislop (24b). Mary and her sister Jean, both now deceased, were contributors with the Red Skirts programme, so I brought it to the attention of Wall to Wall thinking that it would help with their research and might provide them with re-usable footage.

 

The Reminiscence Group was asked if I could have my tape returned so that the W-to-W Company could view it, but when the archive was searched it could not be found. So they approached C4 and asked if there was a copy in their archive. Apparently about ten years before, it had been one of many programmes on cassettes that had been handed over to an outside archive storage facility but it could not found there either. Another disappointment was in store for me. When programme 3 of the NOT FORGOTTEN tapes was being made up, the rent strike footage overran the time available. It was with great regret, the director said in a phone call of apology to me a week before it was due to be shown, my contribution had to be left out. As the strike organiser, Mary Barbour’s story was rightly considered to be more important than was that of Mary Chambers. However, I was pleased when Wall to Wall sent me a DVD of programme three containing the Govan footage and a video cassette tape with my contributions. Copies of The Red Skirts programme are still available and can be called up on the internet.

A NARROW ESCAPE

Mary Chambers had an affliction that on one occasion almost cost her and Joe their lives. She had no sense of smell, a condition known as anosmia. A story told by my mother of an event that occurred probably before she was born, when Mary and Joe lived in their first house at 12 Harmony Row, is that her father had come off night shift and was in bed asleep. Mary had been feeling unwell, but running low on coal she was watching for a coal-man, and when one arrived in the street she called to him from a window requesting a delivery. But when the man entered the house carrying the bag on his back, he immediately dropped it on to the floor and said 'Fur Goad's sake, Missies, yer hoose is fula gas, open a' yer windies quick’. Coal gas is toxic, more so I believe than natural gas. A gas tap must have been turned on accidentally and un-lit, the house was filling up and it was making her feel ill. If she had lost consciousness neither would have survived, and I wouldn’t be writing about it.

 

While she was by no means an invalid, the frequent spells of poor health she endured were debilitating. In later life she sometimes made pease brose for a meal, a dish favoured by people with a weak digestion so that may have been her main health problem. Made with pease meal, dried peas ground up into flour, pease brose was regularly consumed in the past by older people who, no doubt, would be well acquainted with it and aware that it was nourishing and easily digested. It has long gone out of fashion because there are (or were) other rather more appetising (or less repulsive) invalid foods available, such as Complan and Parrish's Chemical Food. After cooking, it turns into a kind of thick, dark green and very unappetising looking porage. Today I might be prepared to try it, and perhaps even benefit from it. Back then, to my eyes and nose it was the most revolting form of food imaginable which I refused to taste.

 

Mary and Joe Chambers and their east coast relatives used words and expressions of the period that have long since past out of use which they brought with them. They used to intrigue me, and when mentioned in other people’s reminiscences they bring them into sharp focus. One of the words was dighted, applied to a scatterbrained individual or someone with poor judgement, or perhaps someone today who would be diagnosed as having the dreaded conditions, dementia or Alzheimer’s, something known then as dementia. On one occasion she had an argument on the stair landing with an absentminded neighbour. She came back into the kitchen shaking her head and saying, 'She's dighted!' (pronounced as in lighted and not to be confused with dicht, meaning wipe. If my nose was running I was told to dicht my neb!). Another expression was redd-up. At the end of a meal, to clear the table and do the dishes she would say 'Wha's turn is it tae redd-up?' An untidy clutter was truck, and mud stains on shoes and clothing were gutters. Another curious saying heard from her if you were eating slowly during a nourishing meal, was to c’mon ‘eat it up, it’ll stick to your ribs’.

 

A child given a sweetie and displaying enjoyment was 'as happy as a wee pig among clover'. Another saying if I was slow when eating something I didn’t like she urged me to ‘come on, get it down the red brae’ (throat). Like most people she had a shoe horn, known today as a shoe-lift, which was made originally of the material from which the name was derived, cow’s horn. Yet another expression from the period, used in irritation as well as on other occasions girls when being questioned about who the fellow was they had been seen with. The answer was liable to be "Who d’ye think it wis, big Aggie’s man?" meaning mind your own business.

 

When I was in Egypt on army national service, Mary Chambers died in our house in Pollok where she had been staying during the autumn of 1949. She had a heart attack and passed away later the same day. Having so much to write about Granda Joe in the following section, I regret not having more to tell about Mary. I liked her a great deal, although for reasons that will become apparent in the next section, much less time was spent in her company than with her husband.

AN IDEAL GRANDFATHER

Of all the people encountered during childhood, without a shadow of doubt the person I loved best, dare I set it down here, even more than either of my parents, was Joe Chambers. He was a short portly man in his 60s who, when dressed, wore a rather crumpled suit with a handkerchief in the breast pocket and a flower in a lapel of the jacket, and a waistcoat. A thin leather strap was worn slung across the front of the vest (waistcoat), which on Sundays was exchanged for a chain. He had a pocket watch enclosed in a dust-proof container with a window on one side, which he kept in one of the half-dozen shallow waistcoat pockets stacked, three on each side. From that pocket the strap looped across to a button hole in which a crossbar on the end of the strap engaged. The Sunday chain had a second loop with a fob on the end, an ornament formerly used as an impression for marking a wax seal which went into a pocket on the opposite side.

 

He wore glasses of a kind sometimes seen in old movies and photographs, pince-nez, attached by a ribbon to a button hole in the lapel of his jacket. When not in use the glasses were carried in the breast pocket of his jacket, or, at risk of damage, in a waistcoat pocket; being stout, there was a certain amount of strain in that region. The pince-nez glasses held a peculiar fascination for me, and I longed to be old enough to have glasses like that.

 

The defective colour vision which passed from my mother to me came from him. As a boy early in his working life it was the means of him being sacked from a job in a carpet factory in Dundee. The first time he was given the task of setting up the coloured hemp strands in the carpet weaving machine, he had mixed them up to such an extent that he was fired on the spot. It might seem strange that he undertook such work as he must have been well aware of the defect and the trouble it was bound to cause him. But employment was hard to come by and the affliction was partial, as it is with me. It is highly likely that need, desperation even, caused him to brass-neck it hoping he might get by. In my case, and very likely his and my mother’s, the Ishihara test for defective colour vision classified it as strong deutera-nomalia.

 

With this degree of the defect all the colours are seen but it is difficult, impossible even, to correctly name certain ones, as the following two examples of my experience of the affliction will illustrate. In the days of domestic electric cable (flex) with the rubber insulation of the pre plastic 1960s era, in which the live wire was red, black the return, and green was earth, to my eyes the two most important (red and green) were indistinguishable. While a difference was apparent I soon learned not to try guessing which was which. The other example is the colour tests undertaken during a medical examination when called up for the army. Sheets of paper containing an apparently random jumble of coloured shapes are set out by the examiner, which probably was a form of the Ishihara test. On some sheets a letter, a number, or a shape was immediately visible, while others showed nothing I could identify, for one or two of which I needed assurance that there really was something there. There was, and even when it was pointed out I still couldn’t see it.

 

After I passed driving tests for motor-cycle, car, and PSV (Public Service Vehicle) to drive buses, people used to ask how I managed at traffic lights. In the 1950s most of the older lights had STOP in black letters across the red lens; my answer was that because of it’s the position at the top of the three illuminated lenses in the vertical display, 'you'd have to be illiterate as well as colour-blind to get it wrong!' When I applied to Glasgow Corporation Transport Department for a job as a bus driver in 1960 the interviewer asked if I could recognise colours, so I said confidently, 'Yes'. He then produced a set of miniature traffic lights, switched on the top one and asked 'What colour is that‘. 'Red, I replied'. He turned it off and put on the middle. I said 'Amber', and 'Green' for the bottom light. He said 'you'll do!' If the amber had been switched on first I might just have been caught out.

 

Joe Chambers had a feature I inherited. He was interested in and knowledgeable about the world around him. He had a physical peculiarity, a pinkie with a kink that was reputedly the result of an accident at work but it was probably a condition now known as Dupuytren's contracture. It was very noticeable when he laid his hands palm down on a flat surface, because the first joint from the knuckles of the pinkies were raised up like an inverted 'V'. When I first became aware of it there came over me what can only be described as a fixation when the hand was laid on a flat surface, an overwhelming urge to lean on it to straighten it out. To stop me he would say severely that it was my doing, that I had caused it by some forgotten prank, which made me back off. A programme on television in 2002 reported that DNA research had shown that the condition originated in Viking Scandinavia, and anyone with it is likely to have ancestors who came from that part of the world.

 

My Mother's birth certificate has her father’s occupation described as a ‘hole-borer’. A more technically appropriate description would be driller. He drilled the holes in steel plates and the ribs and stringers for the rivets used then in ship construction. When he came to Glasgow before he married in the late 1890s he lived at first in digs in McLellan Street, Kinning Park, and worked at Fairfield shipyard. From 1930 when he was 57, until he retired he was at John Browns shipyard in Clydebank during the period of the construction of what were then the largest ships in the world, the liners Queen Mary (26) and Queen Elizabeth (27). While it is not known if he actually worked on board the ships, he would probably have been involved in preparing the materials used in their construction.

 

These ships were the latest technological developments of the age. Today it would be like having a close family member working on the production of space shuttles and satellite launch vehicles; actually working on the hardware of manned space rockets and artificial moons, and not hundreds or thousands of miles away sitting at a computer terminal. That was just one of the reasons why I held him in such veneration. It was all very well hearing about these exciting developments and, in the later years of the decade, reading about them, but to have someone actually within the family circle who helped prepare the materials used was awe inspiring. I used to hang on to his every word about progress of work on the second of the Queens, and sometimes wonder now what he thought about being the centre of such rapt attention (28).

 

The only failing Joe had is that he was an alcoholic. He used to hit the bottle hard occasionally, but it did not make him unpleasant or quarrelsome. He became very jolly and generous, to the extent that he would give away his last ha’penny when homeward bound after one of the occasional drinking sessions on a pay day evening. Street urchins were always on the lookout for drunks rolling home, and would crowd round them hoping that they would have a few pence left and be in the frame of mind to share them out. On reaching a certain age I was one of these scroungers, although I always hung back on the fringe of the group and have no memory of actually benefiting from any such hand-out. The feeling of wanting to keep my distance from this probably comes from seeing him subjected to it.

 

It seems to me that alcohol has the power to bring out the true nature of people who indulge too well. Although it generated some sad times for me with my grandfather, it pleases me a great deal now to think that it seemed to show his nature was basically good. With Grandma, and mother's sister Molly, there was much wringing of hands and weeping and wailing each time he was on the randan, but my mother was unsympathetic and even inclined to be vicious with him. While the other two were helping him up the stairs into the house and putting him to bed, they would have to fend her off from assaulting him in her frustration through not knowing how to make him reform.

 

One occasion stands out clearly as a powerful memory. Four of us, Grandma, Mum, Aunt Molly and I were at his house early on a Friday evening of pay day, waiting for him to arrive so that we could have our tea together. As it drew past tea time and on into the evening they began to fear the worst. The term used at the time, (‘on the randan’, is Gaelic which in the highland form is pronounced as in gap, and not Gaylic which is Irish), and means 'having a good time'. And so it proved. He appeared eventually rolling into Hutton Drive and immediately a swarm of children surged round him in the usual begging game, in the process displacing another group from a street he had already passed through. While conscious of the drama that followed having happened before, until then I had then been too young for it to be fully impressed on my mind.

 

I had reached the stage of being able to take in and understand what was going on, and became aware of the attempts being made to keep me away from the unpleasantness to come by confining me to the kitchen with the door shut. However, it was possible to hear the women who were watching from the room window. Comments from Grandma like 'Oh no, wid ye look at that, he's dishin' oot his chienge (remaining cash) tae a' thae weans,' and muttering about what the neighbours were saying and the shame it was causing the family. By no means the least of it was that while not poverty stricken they were anything but well off. Virtually every penny had to be accounted for and, in the early years of their married life anyway, certain items for the home that later came to be regard as basic necessities they had to do without.

 

When he came to the close Molly and Grandma rushed down to help him up the stairs, while my mother stood in the lobby with a grim set face waiting for them. She didn't dare go down with the others, as she was sure to have caused a scene that would have been the talk of the street and had the neighbours sending for the polis. I later heard the word fizzing used to describe someone who was very angry, and knew immediately what it meant. After the sounds of scuffle and struggle had faded into the bedroom, mother entered the kitchen with her expression at its most formidable, chin jutting out, eyes flashing and face dark with anger. She caught hold of me by the arm and pulled me rather roughly into the room. She then almost dangled me in front of Granda, who was sprawled senseless and half stripped on a couch, and said in a voice full of her frustration, 'There ye are, whit d’ye think o' yer favourite Granda noo!' The only thing that mollifies me now in my feeling towards Mother in her treatment of her father on these occasions is that it wasn't known then that he was suffering from an addictive illness. Instead of scorn and abuse, what he needed was treatment and he, poor soul, had no chance of getting it.

 

Having told in A Govan Childhood how Granda often took me with him when he went walking, what wasn't mention was that he sometimes went into a pub we happened to pass for a quick one, and of course I had to be left outside. He used to say to one of the loungers who invariably hung around outside such establishments, 'Wid ye keep yer eye on the boy for a few minutes, and reappear up to half-an-hour later. He never overindulged on these occasions, but I sometimes wondered what his reaction would have been, if on coming out he failed to find me waiting. I remember being rather unnerved by this, and was aware that the other family members wouldn't approve if they knew. But afraid of loosing the privilege of his company I said nothing about, it until one day it slipped out accidentally. Of course it provoked an unholy row and such recriminations that some time passed before I was entrusted in his care again.

 

A time came when in his house I became aware that he would disappear occasionally, which caused the others present to frown and mutter disapprovingly. He would open the door of the kitchen press and stand behind it hidden from sight. Then the sound of a screw-top bottle being opened was heard, followed by the chink of glass and the glugging of liquor. After a minute or two he reappeared wiping his mouth and wearing a satisfied look in his face. This of course was intended to keep what he was doing from my sight. On one occasion the empty tumbler was left at the sink with no-one around, so I had a sniff and then a sip of the dregs, expecting something like a sweet, rich and fruity taste; and was left with the puzzle, how on earth could anyone enjoy this horrible sensation. It was so vile I was convinced it was poison. I have never liked it; I don’t like the taste or the effect it has on me.

 

My love of music was inherited from Granda Joe. Obviously unmindful of the crystal set he made himself and listened to constantly, Mother used to say she was puzzled how he got the opportunity to hear the highbrow music that gave him such obvious pleasure. She herself liked light music and opera. In a reference in AGC to the early days of broadcasting, from around the turn of the century I wrote that anyone with the ability, materials and the knowledge of how to go about it could build a crystal set as the early receivers were called. Joe did this and my Mother said he had made one or two over the years, and that there had always been one in the house as far back as she could remember. Perhaps it was simply that his liking for classical music had developed during this time. He loved dancing, and in his teens had attended a course of rather regimented dancing lessons in which, to strengthen their feet, learners were made to jump off a table (kitchen table was referred to in the story) like ballet dancers on to the points of their toes. As a result of this, although it didn't affect his walking he suffered from other foot trouble in old age.

 

He too was fond of opera, with a preference for the music from the lighter ones, particularly Schubert’s Lilac Time, Tales from Vienna's Woods, the ballet music from Rosamunda, and the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. His favourite piece was known to the family as Granda's March, the March Militaire, one of three composed by Schubert and published under D number 733. A story had it that I would be a music lover because at a year old, one day sitting in my pram in their house the March Militaire was played on the by this time battery operated wireless. Much amazement was created when I began to make conducting movements with clenched fist with index finger stuck out. What probably happened was that having seen him doing this I was simply copying.

 

In the late ‘30s he caused a sensation among family members by having a letter published in a local newspaper. I still enjoy with undiminished glee recalling the look of utter astonishment on the faces of Mum and her sister when, as usual Aunt Molly would be first to see it, and of one reading it out to the other with awe. In the letter, he wrote about his musical preferences, of how much enjoyment he derived from listening to opera and ballet music, with Schubert as his favourite composer, and listening to singers like Beniamino Gigli, John McCormick, Tetrazzini, and Dame Nellie Melba. He was soon to become a fan of Scots tenor Sidney McEwan. He ended by stating how privileged he considered himself to be, with this facility so conveniently available, which enabled him to settle down at his own fireside and listen to the best artists and music from around the world.

 

A very significant comment I heard my mother make was that there were times when he would listen to music with tears running down his cheeks. I know exactly how he felt. Much of the music I have gathered on tapes over time has had this effect on me. In the late 1940s and during  the ‘50s I regularly attended the then Scottish Orchestra concerts (leader Jean Rennie, conductor Walter Susskind) in the St Andrew’s Hall, but could not do so now if the programme contained anything that might cause embarrassment for me and to others sitting near me. One powerful event that affected me was watching a tv programme with all the family in Mum and Dad’s house in Pollok in the 1960s. It was about the preserved A4 streamlined LNER locomotive UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA (29 & 30) - photos of two others of the class). During it there was a long distance, long exposure shot of the train approaching on a long straight of the long since closed east coast line between Forfar and Coupar Angus. The music accompaniment was Stravinsky’s ballet music from Petrushka, the section from the Easter Fair with a beat that exactly matched the puffing of the engine.

 

I was sitting at the back and with everyone watching the screen and the combination of the two aspects of the scene overwhelmed me. I managed to stifle the emotion and wipe my face without anyone noticing. This sensation has increased for me with the passing years, so that now, living mostly on my own I can indulge in it as much as I want. I imagine older people who have never experienced it asking why, if it causes me to break down, do I listen to it. My answer would be that it is such a pleasurable sensation, like being in love again, that I would not dream of avoiding it, in fact I often indulge in it. There was one aspect of music that caused embarrassment.

 

When still in my pre-teens I heard Roger Quilter’s Children’s Overture which featured nursery rhymes that are virtually never encountered now. One of them was ‘Georgie Porgie pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry’. I was so incredibly thin skinned and naive that I felt that it was meant for me and everyone around me knew about it; so much so that I hated it for many years!

 

Stories of Joe's odd eating habits were legion, one of which was of him using a piece of fruit cake to mop up his ham and eggs plate. He was born in 1873, but at this time of writing not much is known about his ancestry. He had only one sibling, a sister called Bridget who was known by the family as Auntie Bridgie who we visited when in Dundee. Bridget was unmarried but had a daughter who has long since been lost touch with. The following entry found on page 18554 in the I.G.I. is of his parent’s marriage: Joseph Chambers -m- Mary Dollan at Dundee on 25/02/1870.

 

In their Hutton Drive house Mary and Joe slept in the recessed bed in the kitchen. A family tale told of the occasion on a cold winter's evening when Mary was visited by two friends. The women were having a good old blether sitting round the kitchen range fire and time was passing, but Joe, who was bored stiff with women’s talk, and feeling tired, wanted to go to bed. More time passed and there was no sign of the women leaving, so in exasperation he said to them 'look up the lum for a meenit' and changed into his pyjamas and climbed into the bed out of sight behind the curtains of the recess.

RHYMES AND GAMES

Joe Chambers had many of the qualities that make an adult popular with children. In that pre-digital age he had an endless series of stories and songs, and nursery and nonsense rhymes that today would be called jingles. There were a number of games and activities like paper folding to make aeroplanes, hats or boats, and paper tearing now called origami - we didn't know that then. A few of the jingles he entertained me with during  my pre-school-age are recalled here:

The windae sole is, of course, window sill rendered in his Dundee accent. The tune to which it was chanted is fresh in my mind but I regret being unable to convey it here.

 

The following is only partly recalled, a local rhyme of which the very act of remembering brings on a surge of long forgotten and very dear memories:

 

Here too the puzzlement this caused me and still does is quite sharp. Accepting it as fact, I used to wonder why a dog would behave in such an un-dog-like way? But lacking experience with dogs made me consider that there might be clever dogs around that could 'go for messages'. Thinking about it now leads to the conclusion that the dog referred to was a nickname or pseudonym for a person, an official perhaps. Maybe the rhyme had been composed sometime in the distant past when it would mean something, in the same way as there is a very real and sinister meaning behind the rhyme Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie. Could there be a connection with Mary, Queen of Scots? After her army was defeated at Langside, she rushed away towards Hamilton when trying to escape capture. Other rhymes of his which go with a tune, are:

 

                                           

     And:

 

This one was sung to the tune of the regimental quick march of the British Grenadier Guards. To adult perception most of these are nonsense rhymes made up to fit the tune by someone good with lyrics. But to a child each line of the last one held such an element of fascination that it induced the urge to go round nearby streets looking for the rope and the barrow, and asking if anyone knew Jock and O'Hara?

 

Joe could perform an entertaining trick with a piece of string called making a cat's cradle. He did it using a loop about three feet long then, holding his hands out parallel with palms facing within the loop, it was passed over the backs and held taut. He would make a further series of complicated loops involving crossovers and different fingers until his palms were six inches apart, with the string forming a number of strands between them. At this point he would hold it out and invite me to 'pull that one', indicating a particular strand. When I did so the whole lot, without apparently coming off his fingers, would fall apart into the original single loop.

 

That description makes it seem tame and pointless compared with the effect it had then, and indicates how such seemingly simple home-made amusements were the equivalent of today's sophisticated TV, computer games and electronic toys. Despite being shown how to do it many times into adulthood it was never mastered, and to this day I still don't know how to do it. Also remembered is the disappointment felt when the cat failed to appear. In recent times I saw it demonstrated on a children’s’ tv programme but still couldn’t understand how the presenter did it.

 

Another pastime was to cut from card, the heavier the better, a disc around two to three inches in diameter. Sometimes a wide-mouth pint card milk bottle top of the time was used. Put two holes in it either side of centre, then thread a length of string through them and make a loop about a foot long by tying the ends together, and place the disc in the centre. With fingers in the ends of the loop, relax tension and with a few flicks put some turns on the disc. Put tension on the loop quickly by pulling the ends apart and the disc will spin to unwind. At the point when it is fully unwound, relax tension, and the momentum of the spinning disc will cause it to wind the other way until the momentum is used up. From there on it was another repetitive and seemingly boring activity, but could be indulged in by groups of children in the competitive way of the time, to see who could keep going the longest. Some time ago after writing the foregoing, while watching a programme on tv about Kurdish refugees, there was a brief glimpse of children playing with strings-and-discs. But as no reference was made to what they were doing, how many people watching would know? Only a few oldsters, I suppose.

 

Granda could make dot-to-dot designs with paper and pencil. One was an accurate drawing of a Maltese cross, and the other a seemingly three dimensional perspective line drawing of a large letter S, achieving the same effect with the latter as would doing it on a greasy surface with a fingertip, but on a larger scale.

 

When he bought a gyroscope kit it gave so much pleasure I can still visualise it, even to the box it came in. It was made from a loop of chromed metal of rounded section about four inches in diameter, with another rather lighter one welded inside at ninety degrees to form the open frame of a globe. In the centre of the frame there was a shaft with a flywheel, which turned on pinpoint bearings set in the heavier of the two rings with the lighter ring lying in the same plane as the flywheel. When a piece of string was wound round the shaft and pulled sharply off, it drove the heavy wheel at high speed.

 

Small metal balls were welded on the outside of the frame at the bearing points of the shaft. When it was set in motion, it could be placed sitting with one of the balls in a cup at the apex of a small tripod mounting that was part of the kit. Set spinning with a strong pull on the string the gyroscope could be placed at any angle, lying horizontal even, with one of the balls resting in the cup on the stand where the centrifugal force made it appear to defy the law of gravity. It would continue to hold the apparently impossible angle until the speed dropped below a certain level then it slowly subsided and dropped off onto the table top. Another great favourite probably provided by him was a set consisting of assorted small coloured architectural bricks, pillars, windows and pediments of polished wood, from which a variety of building facades could be assembled on a flat surface.

SUNDAY EXPEDITIONS

Joe Chambers was of the type some people would have regarded as being nosy. An example of this was when out for a Sunday stroll wearing his bowler and an umbrella over an arm and dressed in his creased best suit, if a motor vehicle approached he would pause to study it. Puffing away at his pipe and pivoting round as it passed; sometimes watching until it was out of sight. In comparison with present day traffic, of course, motor vehicles were infrequent on Sundays then, and having a keen interest in the latest technological developments, the usual horses pulling carts received only a glance.

 

A report in the press about a tug that sank in the river above the entrance to Princes Dock caused him to take me along to see it. There it was sitting in the channel with only its funnel and mast showing. It had been working at the stern of a ship that had its propeller turning over to assist with manoeuvring, but the tug had come too close and had been holed. The report stated that the crew were unconcerned about their safety, they were all experienced and knew the depth at that point and had climbed up the mast and waited to be rescued (31). In the photo note the funnel rising up just beyond the nearest ‘puffer’ on the right.

 

His normal present to me was a book. One was a fascinating encyclopaedia for children which described the latest discoveries in technology. Another entitled Highest, Biggest, Longest, was a thick tome with descriptions in easy-to-absorb detail of subjects like the tallest buildings in the world (the Empire State building in New York had been completed in 1932), the biggest and fastest aeroplanes and ships, longest bridges, railways of Britain and other countries, and many other aspects of technology. It was before I could read, but the pictures in it alone made it of inestimable value as much of it dealt with those aspects of life which were beginning to interest me most.

THE RELUCTANT CATHOLIC

My mother's family were catholic, and at that time attendance at Sunday Mass was mandatory for all practising Catholics who, unless incapacitated, had to attend a service, the last of which started at mid-day. Because Govan was a densely populate area with a large number of parishioners of mainly Irish origin, to accommodate them there were hourly services at St. Constantine’s Church between 7 a.m. and mid-day, the early service being for workers. The service for children was the ten o'clock Mass, and after it was over I usually made my way to his house in Hutton Drive to see if he would be doing anything interesting that day. He was a late riser, but sometimes he would be out early and we might meet, so there would be the pleasure of walking with him along Langlands Road to the church. On other occasions, on returning from the children’s service I called at his house to find that he still had to go out. Invariably I went along with him, and in doing so attend two services on the one day, which made other people comment on how 'good' it was for me. My own feeling about this was of indifference towards the religious aspect, but it was an indication of how much I craved his company.

 

He liked to go to different churches, so we might walk to St. Anthony’s or St. Saviours in East Govan, or Lourdes at Cardonald, and once or twice we travelled to a seemingly enormous church, St Francis's, in Cumberland Street, in the Gorbals, which suited me fine for it meant a lengthy trip by tram. The memory of the architectural splendour of that church has stayed with me ever since, except that, because of the re-development during the 1970s I was rather hazy as to its whereabouts in that district. Until the demolition of the Queen Elizabeth Square high flats in September 1993, that is, when from an observation point in the Southern Necropolis I became aware of the church nearby. Now used as a community centre, it is still an impressive grade one preserved building (32).

 

On one occasion after leaving St. Francis’s we walked on eastwards and crossed the river and found ourselves in a district unknown to me then but which I now identify as Bridgeton. Passing a gasworks, we were amazed to find that, although it was Sunday, a load of coal was in the process of being delivered there by rail. What made the day so memorable was that access was by lines of rail tramway crossing the road from an adjacent goods yard, which seems now to have been Poplin Street. The train deliveries were daily and extended hold-ups were caused by the shunting of a train of wagons crossing the road which blocked it to vehicles.

 

Of exceptional interest was that where the spaced out tracks left the goods yard through gates in the wall and crossed the road, situated inset from the rear edge of the pavement there were footbridges consisting of stairs of brick and concrete in ‘A’ form had been built over the tracks to allow pedestrians to pass the obstruction. These foot-bridges proved to be ideal vantage points from which to watch the shunting, and it being a warm sunny summer’s day, that Sunday walk was dreamed of and talked about with longing for years after. Having delayed so long we missed dinner, and got into trouble for returning home very late, just in time for tea.

 

Joe Chambers and his neighbour Alec Paterson were friendly but they tended to argue rather a lot about politics. One day Granda and I were going out for a walk when we met Sandy and he was invited to go along. During a stroll out Renfrew Road towards Shieldhall they went at it hammer and tongs, and one word, used mainly by Sandy, kept cropping up. It was totalitarianism, which had absolutely no meaning for me and made me heartily wish he hadn't been asked to come. I would have much preferred to have had my favourite all to my self, for him to describe the interesting things and places we were passing and go on relating his fascinating stories. Totalitarianism is a society in which only the ruling party is allowed to make political decisions.

TELEPHONES AND THE TELEGRAPH SERVICE

Urgent communications between people living far apart could be conducted through the telegraph service. Sending a telegram involved visiting to a post office to fill in a telegram form using as few words as possible, as payment was so much per word which included the names and addresses of the sender and recipient. A good example would be COME QUICK MOTHER ILL. The sending office would pass it on by telephone to the post office nearest the destination address. All main district offices had a telegraph boy on duty, the bigger offices having more than one to deal with a greater number of calls handled, with the busiest city centre offices providing a twenty-four hour service.

 

The main Govan Post Office in Govan Road opposite Helen Street provided the local daytime service with one or two boys, while George Square PO covered the 6pm to 9am and week-end service with a squad of boys. They wore a uniform not unlike the Boys Brigade of that time having a patent leather belt with a small pouch and sash strap and a pill box hat, and their transport was distinctive red painted upright bicycles.

 

The boys were invariably school-leavers, 14 and 15 year-olds filling in their time before starting an apprenticeship in the post office itself or a trade at 16. I seem to remember many still wore short trousers. They were looked on as bringers of bad news, and one appearing in your district brought on a feeling of apprehension. They seemed to live up to the requirements of urgency as they peddled furiously, recklessly even, through the streets, and on arrival abandoned the bike with a clatter at the pavement edge and hurried into the close. If a reply was required it was noted down and paid for on the spot.

PLEASURE OF A PIPE SMOKER

Pipe tobacco was available prepared ready to use in wrapped one-ounce packets, but many older men bought theirs by the stick cut from a flexible roll or coil from newsagents and specialist tobacconist’s shops. The leaf was compressed and rolled to resemble rope of a size and consistency similar to pepperoni sausage, and the amount requested was cut from the coil, weighed and sold unwrapped. The main type was called Thick Black, and there were other brands, one of which was Bogie Roll, smokers of which were generally considered to have an above average constitution to withstand it, because it was powerful stuff. When bought by the ounce the close packed coil was lifted from a drawer beneath the counter, and the `rope' end was uncoiled and laid out on a board. The requested amount was usually an estimated half-ounce or ounce, to be cut off with a knife, the blade of which was encrusted with the tar, and weighed on scales.

 

Preparing for a smoke was a ritual for people like Joe. It began with assembling the items need. A plug of tobacco, a penknife with a blade much reduced by honing on a grindstone which was done occasionally, his soft leather tobacco pouch that was considerably worn through years of use, and a small, much scored flat piece of hardwood. At home he had a rack containing half-a-dozen pipes hanging on the wall by his chair beside the kitchen range, from which he chose one. All of them had caps with spring-loaded retaining clips which fitted over the bowl. Also to hand were tapers or a box of matches. Other pipes in his collection had fixed lids which opened on a hinge.

 

First, a few slices were cut from the plug, then laying them on the wood he cut them up carefully into smaller and smaller pieces, turning them this way and that as he did so. What fasci­nated me was how he managed to do this without cutting himself, for his fingers were constantly in close proximity to the slicing motion of the blade. The resultant crumbs were then rubbed in small amounts between his palms until they reached a desired texture, which may explain why in some adverts for packets of cut tobacco; certain brands were described as Ready Cut and Ready Rubbed.

 

The pipe selected was then held with the bowl resting at the outer end of the crease in the palm of his hand, and the rubbings were guided carefully into it and tamped down with a fine judgement of pressure. Not too firm or it wouldn't draw, or too light or the tobacco would burn up quickly. Usually the whole plug was treated in this way and the rubbings stored in the pouch. Then, with the pipe gripped firmly between his teeth and using a match or taper lit from the fire, gas stove or mantle, he applied the flame to the tobacco. After a few deep draws to get it going he sat back and puffed away contentedly.

 

He had a spitoon which was used constantly sitting on the floor at the side of his chair. It was a flat white-enamelled plate-size metal dish, the loose lid of which had a shallow full-width depression with ribs running down to a hole in the centre. Memories of these scenes are the source of another emotional conflict, for although the smoke induced spasms of coughing and unpleasant feelings in my bronchai, the smell of it has ever since generated and continues to do so in certain circumstances a sensation of pure longing for a return of the happy times I spent with him.

 

THE ‘BLACK HOLE’ TOILET

Grandfather Joe Chambers was a pipe smoker who used Thick Black tobacco, the reek of which always caused me to have a coughing spasm, so he always laid it aside when I arrived at his home. His house had no electricity to the end of the tenancy in 1949, and in common with most other gas-lit houses of similar design, it had no provision for a light in the lobby from which it was accessed, or the toilet. It was a tiny 5 x 4 foot cubicle which gave me problems when I needed to use it, for I had a child's fear of the dark. The only illumination to penetrate into it came from the stair landing through a tiny slit set high up in a wall. Even on the brightest days only faint daylight penetrated, and at night the stair-head gaslight was weak and too low down to be of any use, and after dark you had to do the business in pitch darkness.

 

It was a case of finding your bearings with the doors to kitchen and toilet open, to illuminate the interior, then closing the latter and hoping for the best. The seat was a 4 x 2 foot smooth board with a hole that was hinged at the back, but another board standing vertical below the front edge of the seat made it uncomfortable to use. It could on occasion be a dreadfully dark, smelly and frightening though not unclean hole to enter, but the biggest drawback for me was after granda had spent time in it enjoying a smoke while on a natural function known as ‘a number 2'! If during this time there was an urgent need to go I had to wait until he was finished, and there were occasions when on dashing in desperate for relief I found myself in a much worse state, for the tiny compartment was full of smoke, a predicament I experienced elsewhere in later life.

 

For economy reasons there was no such luxury as tissue toilet paper. What happened was that newspaper was torn up into handy sized squares, and with a hole pierced in a corner of each sheet, a length of string was put through them and tied into a loop. The loop with its bunch of sheets was then hung from a nail convenient to hand. I do not recommend anyone on an economy drive to try it because, speaking from experience it really does not work. But then, because of the expense, there was no alternative!

 

Of the brands of tobacco and cigarettes then available, one or two had exotic names. One was made by a Paisley company called Dobbie and their brand name was Dobbie’s `Four Square', meaning a square deal for your money. Their product ready to use was sold in round flat silvery tins of two-ounce capacity. Another brand was called `Balkan Sobranie'. Reading a work by Alexander Solzhzenitsyn some time ago, Sobranie (sobranyie) was described as a Slavic word meaning `pick of the crop'. John Player sold a ready rubbed tobacco and cigarettes called Prize Crop, and W D & H O Wills had another known as Gold Flake. Two other brands of less popular cigarettes come to mind - Craven A, with the advertisement inviting you to `For Your Throat's Sake Smoke Craven A'(!), and De Riske Minors (and Majors?). Tobacco had been scarce during WWII, and when it ended a supply was imported from Turkey called Pasha. But it had a peculiar smell that made it unpopular.

 

With more smoking then, spitting was more common and pubs had sawdust scattered and spittoons strategically placed on floors. The worst offenders for spitting were older men who chewed tobacco, and public transport used to have notices promi­nently displayed at the front of lower decks reading `No Smoking', and on the upper deck where smokers were confined, `No spitting - Penalty 40 Shillings'. Having had to keep away from tobacco smoke, I never-the-less sometimes wonder if 'Willy Woodbines' made by WD & HO Wills are still available?

 

Despite having ultra-sensitive bronchial tubes, which would probably now be designated as an allergy, smoking fasci­nated me. I fondly imagined it was the thing to do and that nearly all men did it and, thinking I would grow out of the sensitivity to smoke, I couldn't wait to grow up to indulge in it. There was an occasion when I found myself in the possession three-halfpence, and through listening to talk among pals knew that two Woodbine cigarettes could be bought with that sum, extracted by the shopkeeper from the then popular un­sealed paper pack of five.

 

Confiding in the boy who was then my closest buddy who was willing to try it, we went into nearby Dick's Newsagent & Tobacconist and bought two Woodbines. The old man in the shop gave me an odd look but handed them over for the three-half-pence – the penny from him and my halfpenny, and having made sure to acquire matches well in advance, we retired to a place of concealment. We lit one each and puffed away for a while, assuring each other how much we were enjoying the experience, although it seemed to me that he felt the same way as I did - rather queasy.

 

Sometime later the opportunity occurred to repeat the experience, but on going into Dick's with the same request, he regarded me rather severely and said `If you don't stop this I'm going to tell your father!' On his way home from work Dad called there each evening for his Evening Citizen newspaper so, quite apart from not really enjoying the experience that put a stop to the smoking experi­ments for a while. From that time on I looked on Mr Dick as an ogre who had

deprived me of the opportunity to experiment with adult things. He was a rather sad figure with a deformed leg and walked with a painful limp from an injury received during WWI. But he is recognised now, rather late in the day, as someone to be congratulated for trying to keep me away from something that could have had an unpleasant effect on my health in later life. Many years ago I learned that the word ‘news’ was first made up by people in the early days of newspapers as being information from North, East, West & South.

 

Then I heard that tea could be smoked in a pipe like tobacco. In another friend's house when his parents were out I mentioned this, and his father being a smoker he produced a clay pipe and the tea caddy and we tried it. Be assured it works, producing a peculiarly pungent aroma. Later, when his mother arrived home she went around the house sniffing and looking at us suspiciously, in a way which indicated that she was sure we had been up to something. Quite rightly, she suspected me, and I was never again invited into that house. Then we found an alternative in cinnamon stick. I noticed them on sale for a ha'penny a stick in Annie Bennie's sweet shop across the street from us but never had the inclination to try them, until one of our group announced that he had heard they could be smoked like cigarettes.

 

This revelation electrified us. With much secrecy, which probably meant that half the streets occupants knew what we were up to, we tried it out and found that it too worked. So for a brief few days my ha'penny a day pocket money was spent on a cinnamon stick for smoking without inhaling, which was the ‘in' thing until our mothers started asking awkward questions about the peculiar smell clinging to us when we went home. At that point I decided that smoking was a dead loss and it was better to find something else to spend my halfpenny-a-day pocket money on. By then we had become tired of smoking and were longing for the usual fare of soor plumes, swizzles, sherbet fountains, liquorice sticks, and the figures moulded from cheap chocolate which could be bought with our ha'pennies.

 

Penknives derived their name from a time when virtually all men had one. They were small knives with usually two blades, one at each end, which folded away into a socket in the handle so they could be carried safely in a pocket. In the days when the only writing implement was made from a feather from one of the bigger bird, pens were made by cutting the stem near the point at a shallow angle using a very sharp knife. With the pointed end of the cut laid down on a piece of wood, the point of the knife was applied to the stem to make a cut about half-an-inch long up from the point to a small hole. When the cut tip of the feather was dipped in ink, the hole retained a few drops of it, from which it was fed to the point by capillary action. At the time being written about, carrying one of these knives was common and they were made use of frequently. Then half a lifetime later the day arrived when they came to be regarded as a dangerous weapon, and if the police found you in possession of one you could be charged with carrying a dangerous weapon

JOE CHAMBERS PASSES AWAY

When Joe Chambers died in 1947 it was in very sad circumstances. I was then aged 16 and living in the family home a fair distance away in Pollok, and therefore saw him much less often than in former years. We lived in the council residential area called Old Pollok consisting of the area bounded by Braidcraft Road, Damshot Road and Crescent, and Carnock Road. Set amid green fields at the western extremity of Pollok golf course, it was regarded as an upmarket district at the edge of the country. On more than one occasion during periods of good weather in summer he was invited to come and live with us. He did so once, but stayed for only a few days before returning home saying that he preferred his own house. His health was failing and he was becoming increasingly housebound, then in 1947 he suffered a heart attack that occurred late at night.

 

When the symptoms began Mary contacted a neighbour who lived in the house above them, and the two walked along to the Southern General Hospital, with frequent pauses to let him recover enough to continue. He was admitted never to get out again. His condition continued to deteriorate, and the strain, today it would be called depression, increasingly affected his mind, until one day during a meal he kicked over the wheeled table that straddled his bed. After that incident he was transferred to what is probably now known as the psycho-geriatric ward, where died soon after at the age of 73. There is no recollection of seeing him in hospital although visits would have been made at the beginning, but the feeling was very deep seated that I did not want to see him in the psycho ward, preferring to remember him as I had known him. When his life ended he provided a final treat, although the real credit for that is due to whoever organised his funeral. When they arrived from the Co-op Funeral Service the cars were Rolls Royces. It was the only time I travelled in one.

MOTHER AND A FAVOURITE AUNT

When she left school at the age of 14 in the 1910s, my Mother (b1901 d1993) worked first in Irwin’s tailors and outfitters shop at the corner of Govan Road and Helen Street (33). Then she and her sister Molly (b1903 d1970) worked in the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society’s (SCWS) tailoring factory in the works complex at Shieldhall, as men’s clothing machinists. Among my collection of photograph is one taken in the tailoring factory workroom, in which Molly is visible in the foreground and Mother is somewhere among a large number of faintly seen but unidentifiable faces in the background (34). Molly was a trouser machinist and Mother was a vest (waistcoat) and jacket machinist. Working conditions and wages at the Co-op then were among the best in the industry, but after a few years, in a surprising bad move Mum left, which worried family and friends. Within a couple of months of going to work for Moore Taggart’s manufacturing tailors in Trongate, actually in their tailor’s work-room upstairs round the corner in a close in High street, she very much regretted it, and returned to Shieldhall. Moore Taggart's retail premises can be seen in a photograph in my collection, p16 number 20, in the book 'GLASGOW AS IT WAS' volume III by Michael Moss and John Hume.

 

The sisters had different temperaments. While my Mother didn't make friends easily there were a few she retained for life, all of whom she outlived. As well as knitting, described previously, two other activities she indulged in during her late teens and twenties were dancing, and in early married life she joined the Co-op women’s guild. As time passed the attraction of the former waned while the latter became a preoccupation from the 1930s to the ‘70s, so that eventually she found herself appointed to committees and regularly attended conferences. On one occasion in the 1950s she went off for a week to attend an international gathering in Gothenburg, Sweden, as a member of a delegation from the British Co-op movement. The experience was talked about with awe, and photographs were produced with any excuse for many years after.

 

By nature she was generous and kind-hearted, but occasionally consideration for others had to be worked on by Dad, the only one who could influence her. If by some minor misdemeanour I had incurred her wrath, it occasionally generated punishment out of proportion to what was deserved. She could be very intimidating when the occasion warranted and sometimes when it wasn't, and the purse of her mouth usually indicated her mood. Like almost all women then she stopped working when she married Dad in 1927. Up to the 1960s married women with a job were a rare phenomenon usually confined to the middle class, who could afford to employ other women as child minders or housekeepers. She met Dad in the early 1930s and they were married in October 1927.

 

Molly Chambers continued to work at Shieldhall until she married James O’Neil in February 1937. She was a very religious person, who became involved in the organisations within the Catholic Church in both West Govan parishes, St. Anthony’s and St. Constantine’s. She had a very good singing voice and was a member of the choir, and attended the church women’s guild and the Legion of Mary etc., and had lots of friends, some of whom I knew but who are now fixed in my mind mainly because they had Irish names. There was a memorable occasion in the mid thirties when I attended a Sunday mid-day Mass with Mum at St. Anthony’s Church, during which the choir in the gallery at the rear sang hymns during the service. On this occasion and being that way inclined, much of the music appealed to me, and I listened to a beautiful voice singing solo with rapt attention. Mother bent down and whispered 'That’s your Aunt Molly singing'. I found attending church so intimidating that I didn’t dare turn round to look for her.

 

In her early thirties, Molly Chambers had been going out with James O'Neil from Renfrew for five years. He was four years older than Molly and there had been speculation among others of the family on why they were taking so long to get married. Both Molly and Uncle Jimmy were special favourites of mine, especially Molly, because circumstances meant that I was often in her company. More outgoing and sociable than her sister, Molly had a placid, even-tempered disposition and made friends easily, so that she enjoyed a greater degree of popularity than her sister. She was a cheerful, happy person who was more gentle and considerate than Mum. While my Mother was rather hard-edged and more introverted, she had a slightly suspicious and intolerant aspect to her nature that inhibited her from making and keeping many friends.

AUTISM

It has become apparent to me only in recent times that she may have suffered from a form of autism which was passed on to me and my sister Nancy. While my own family seem to have avoided inheriting the condition from me, Nancy’s daughter Susan may have it, because they constantly quarrel and find fault with each other. Autism takes many forms and can affect people differently. I always read reports in the press about the latest progress in medical and psychological research. One article in The Herald on 5/8/09 is, ‘We use other people’s body movements and postures, and faces and voices, to asses how they feel. Anyone with this form of autism is less able to make use of these clues to make accurate judgments about how others are feeling’. In other words we tend to say things that irritate, offend, or anger people without realising it’.

 

Only in later years I learned to watch for people looking at me in strange way after I said something. Two friends have stayed with me to the end and they probably understood the condition and made allowances, but there are others who I would have liked to retain, who after a time suddenly became distant and broke off contact for the above reason.

THE CHILD-MINDERS

In the 1930s, remembering how young I was then, there were occasions when I secretly wished my Mum was more like Aunt Molly. Molly had an unusual, desirable trait; she was the kind of person who, if anything exciting or unusual happened she would be among the first to hear about it, and if it was a local event the odds were good that she would have been present. During my life there have been encounters on rare occasions with people you could seldom surprise with news or scandal because they often seemed to get to know about it first. She was my very first example of that phenomenon. No doubt it played a large part in her popularity as everybody wanted to talk to her to hear the latest gossip, including me. An example of this was the time she electrified the household (well, me anyway), by telling us that going to Renfrew on a tram that day, and travelling on the top deck, she saw a plane-crash at the aerodrome.

 

There were times before the move from Howat Street to Skipness Drive when my parents were having a night out and Molly, and sometimes Jimmy too, stayed with me at Howat Street or they would take me to Hutton Drive. On one occasion I was being taken to Hutton Drive where she still lived with her parents, to be left there for the early part of the evening and taken home later. My grandparents were away at the time, probably visiting their families, brothers and sisters, in Dundee, but Molly and Jimmy, who were spending the evening together, had for some reason agreed to keep me at her home during the early part of the evening.

 

Accompanied by one or other of my parents we arrived there after dark, but the house appeared to be unoccupied. Entering the kitchen, except for a glimmer from the turned-down gaslight and a dim flickering light from the fire, it was in darkness and there was no sound or any movement. With the simple concern of a child I was worried about what would happen if no one turned up soon. Where could they be? Then, as our eyes became accustomed to the low level of light, we became aware of two figures, apparently asleep, sitting in the easy chairs on either side of the fireplace. Realising they were spotted they jumped up with loud cries. I was then aged about four and they had arranged this surprise for my benefit, but that incident and the following one remain clear.

 

The second event happened probably on that same evening when they were taking me home in mid-evening. Walking down the street to Govan Road to take a tram, Uncle Jimmy suddenly bent down to me and whispered 'Huv ye goat a wee bawbee fur the caur?' A bawbee was an old name for a halfpenny (others were ‘curdy’ or ‘mek). This worried and perplexed me. Surely one of them would pay my fare, anyway I had no money and also being under five I shouldn't have to pay...and...and... While aware of them watching the changing expressions on my face, it left me sorely puzzled as to what answer I should give. After a few seconds had passed both began to laugh, and when their amusement subsided they took me into the (mid evening?) sweetie shop near the corner of Drive Road and bought me my favourite, a Chinese Luncheon.

 

This confection was available during the pre-war years, but it disappeared like many of the others soon after the war started, but unlike the others it did not reappear when it ended. It was a sausage shaped length of mallow that had been rolled while still soft and sticky in, what I assume from the name, was expanded or popped sugared rice grains. It was the very thing to appeal to my sweet tooth.

PATERNAL ANCESTORS

William James Albert Rountree b1863 d1926 (35 – the first time I saw this photo I wondered why his head was on fire!), is recorded aged 18 in the 1881 census at Headworth, Monkton, County Durham, along with his mother, Sarah (m.s. May), as having been born in Ireland. Efforts to trace him in the Irish records have been unsuccessful, but it was later discovered from WJAR’s 1887 marriage certificate that his father, also William, was a labourer in a soda works in Jarrow or South Shields, and his father had been a farmer in that area. It was noticed in these records that the spelling of the name is Rowntree, and WJAR was the first to use the spelling Rountree; the wedding certificate is the first known evidence of this.

 

In later years in my hearing, members of my father’s own family used to say that WJAR  had a Geordie (North East of England) accent and he had been born in Yorkshire. Following up this supposition meant much time and expense was wasted searching for his birth in the records there. But it transpired that his mother Sarah was Irish and she probably returned to her family there for the birth. It appears also that he was an only child. He was a barber before coming to Govan and followed the profession here, and eventually had his own saloon at 56 Queen (later Neptune) Street (36).

 

My paternal grand-mother Isabella McFarlane's ancestors have proved much easier to research. Her parents came from Falkirk before 1871 to live in Port Dundas north of Glasgow, where she was born prior to moving to Govan. William and Isabella’s marriage certificate records that the ceremony was held in July 1887 at the house of her father, Alexander McFarlane and her stepmother Margaret Barr, at 1 Elderpark Street, Govan. In my time that street ran south from Govan Road, to a dead-end beyond Nimmo Drive so initially it was thought that number one was the close next to Govan Road. But contemporary maps show that in 1887 the section of the street along Elder Park between Govan Road and Langlands Road was called Thomson Street. That name was made to disappear in 1912 when Govan was taken over to become a suburb of Glasgow in that year, when the whole length became Elderpark Street. Therefore the number 1 Elderpark Street of the certificate was not at the Govan Road end but near the north east corner of its junction with Langlands Road.

 

While the original tenement block on the west side is still standing, the one on the east side containing number one was demolished during redevelopment in the 1970s. If the redevelopment caused the numbering of Elderpark Street to revert to what it was originally, then still surviving at the present time is the close at number 40 containing the house in which my father and five of his siblings were born. After the marriage William, a barber, and Isabella went to live on Tyneside. However, around 1894 the family returned to Govan with their first two children and to live for a brief period at 13 Hamilton (later Nethan) Street before moving to 40 Elderpark Street.

 

Before the area was redeveloped in the 1970s, the premises on the corner of Govan Road and Elderpark Street were a curiosity. It was a pub called, strangely at first sight, Number 1. But the explanation is that there was another pub in the same position at the next corner, Elder Street, called Number 2. That came about because Linthouse was then what was called a dry area where by law no licensed premises were allowed, so these two pubs were in sequence for potential customers making their way into Govan for a drink. Up to the early 1900s pubs were commonly known as beer shops!

 

The Rountree family were members of St. Mary's United Free Church at Govan Cross, a connection that continued until 1929 when a split occurred in the UF church. The ruling body (Synod?) decided to give up its ‘Free’ status (i.e. without state aid) and rejoin the Church of Scotland, but a minority of members of St. Mary's, among whom were the Rountrees, chose to leave rather than go along with the majority. This split was known as the ‘disjunction'. The small but significant part of the congregation for a time held their Sunday services in premises facing the church upstairs in the still extant building in Water Row next to Govan Cross Mansions. But within a year or two they obtained permission to use the hall of the Gaelic church in Burndyke Street, where services continued to be held until into 1930s.

 

As the congregation increased and funds became available, during the 1930s they were able to build a church of their own in Moss Road opposite the Langlands Road junction. This was very convenient for the three families of relations who lived nearby, the Rountrees in Rigmuir Road, Curries in Langcroft Road, and Haggarts in Carlieth Quadrant. But road widening in 1964 connected with the building of the Clyde Tunnel caused the first church building to be demolished. The UF church there today is the second one on the site and stands about twenty feet farther back from the road than the original one. The family membership continued there until the last of them, Jemima and Donald Currie passed away in 1967.

ST. MARY'S CHURCH GOVAN CROSS RECORDS

When I began researching my family history, I realised that there should be references to them in the church records of the time, not least of which would be christenings, and possibly all eleven. But when I tried to trace them in the mid 1980s, an unhelpful minister claimed there were none, that they were lost in a fire at a church officer’s house. However, it was later discovered that the loss occurred in 1901, and records after that time show entries relating to some family members. Around 1904 the Rountree family moved from 40 Elderpark Street to 72 Craigton Road. Living there as a boy of 13 Dad would have seen Galbraith’s Bakery, the red brick building currently occupied by Govan Initiative, being built in Craigton Road in 1911 more or less through the wall from their house. A faint recollection from childhood is of hearing talk of him playing at a pickle works across the road, and the large scale 1913 OS map of the time shows Rowat's Imperial Pickle Works in that location.

A POPULAR DAD

My father had been living with his mother, a widow of a year, at 40 Rigmuir Road, Shieldhall at the time of his marriage in 1927 (37). Although he never was a member of the Masons or the Orange Lodge, his anti-Catholic attitude (kept well concealed outwith the family home) could be as hostile as the members of those organisations, although that aspect may have had its origins in his belief in socialism. While there is no recollection of hearing him sing The Sash, I remember hearing other anti-Catholic songs of the time. One of these, thankfully forgotten today, was sung in a mildly taunting way to annoy mother. It used the regimental tune, The British Grenadiers March, to which words were added that included 'At The Battle O' Boyne (pronounced bine) Water' of 1690 notoriety. That tune is associated with 'O’Hara’s' Barra' children’s rhyme referred to previously.

 

In the innocence of childhood I used to imagine the reference was to holy water. The only other fragment of another of those songs recalled now was sung to the tune of the American civil war song 'Marching through Georgia', with the line 'Hurrah, Hurrah, we bring the Jubilee'. The words used were 'Hurrah, Hurrah, we are The Billy Boys', and ended 'we are the Govan Billy Boys', Billy being a reference to King William of Orange.

 

From when I first became aware of Dad’s beliefs, he held agnostic or atheist views. He was a sports enthusiast and favoured boxing, and may have indulged in it at amateur level because he displayed a certain skill when sparring with me when in my early teens. I have never liked combat sports, especially boxing, which may stem from trying with utter futility to cope with his lightening reflexes, although he never hurt me. So fast were they, he gave the impression of being able to freeze time for his opponents while he was free to take advantage of it. He was a keen footballer and played for St. Mary's Church team (38), and he may have picked up the attitude of religious bigotry there. Despite that aspect of my childhood being very occasionally mildly unpleasant, home life was tranquil. Like most marriage partners, their restrained intermittent arguing never went beyond that, and I am conscious of the fact that if that particular difference hadn't been there, perhaps other pretexts might have been invented which could have made things much worse.

 

Although my mother and her sister were fairly close, Mum was lukewarm towards the church activities that Molly undertook so enthusiastically. But this may have been partly because of Dad's anti-Catholic outlook because he could be quite hostile in his utterances against the church. It has to be said that during these early years he was bigoted, so much so that the parish priest never visited our house as they were supposed to. As the years passed, however, his attitude changed. He mellowed and became less prejudiced, and although his views remained atheistic, he could at least discuss religion in general and Roman Catholicism in particular without bias. Visiting my parents on one occasion in the 1970s, after a lifetime experience of his anti-religious outlook, it was with incredulity I heard Mum say the priest from the church in Pollok had paid a visit and he and Dad had enjoyed a good old chinwag.

 

My father was tidy with a good dress sense. While I like casual attire and I’m none too careful about cleanliness, he was always smartly dressed away from work and was clean and neat. Dapper was a word I sometimes heard used to describe him although I've no idea of its derivation, so it probably came from a previous era. Another one applied to him when he dressed for special occasions was that 'he looked as if he came out a band-box'. As a very young child I remember seeing him wearing a kind of protective waterproof cover (gabardine?) called spats over the uppers of his shoes, which buttoned at the side and were held in place by an elastic strap slung underneath the shoe arch. When dressed formally for walking out with Mum, he wore a smart suit and a bowler hat, and carried a rolled umbrella. He had a set of golf clubs and went off golfing at weekends at this time for which he wore trousers called plus-fours with the bottoms tucked into the tops of his stockings.

 

Today's socks with broad gentle elastic tops do not usually give problems in keeping them in position, but in those days there was no such efficient system, and boys had to wear garters with top hose, as knee high stockings were called. Juvenile stocking-wearer’s garters were often just an elastic band worn under the folded-over material at the top. But in this position below the knee, constriction by the elastic was sometimes blamed for causing circulation problems in later life, such as varicose veins. Men, particularly the elderly, were prone to this complaint but the problem was partly overcome by using a suspender belt. So far as I know suspenders are rare and may be unknown to later generations, so clarification might be needed.

 

Bear in mind that what we know as braces for holding up trousers, in American they are call suspenders. In this country, sock suspenders, broad clip-held elasticated straps which spread the constriction, were worn over the calf above mid-height, from which another clip hung down to grip the top of the sock to hold it up. Before tights became available in the 1950s women also wore a stocking belt that fastened around the hips, with two clips that dangled down each thigh to grip and hold up individual stockings.

 

Most women with an expanded waistline wore a corset which most wearers described as devices of torture. It was a garment stiffened with strips of whalebone fixed inside it, and about eighteen inches high, that was worn round the lower body covering it from the breast bone to below the hips. Kept in place by a row of many small metal hooks which fastened into eyes at the front, it was supplied in different sizes. The torture part of it was that wearers had to choose one that was a tight fit and battle with the fasteners by taking a deep breath and at the same time drawing in the waist to get the hooks into the eyes. One of my very earliest memories is as an infant watching my Mother fight this battle! If a corset was worn, the suspender belt wasn’t needed because the corset too had the stocking suspender clips.

THE DRUNK’S BARROW

Dad used to tell a story of how as a youth he could earn sixpence (6d - 2½p) when he was in his early ‘teens around 1914, by helping to push the laden polis's drunk’s barra from the area west of the Cross along to the Police Office in Orkney Street. This was in the days before they had horse or motorised transport. The barrow was a waist-high two-wheeler with a load-bed resembling a stretcher, which was used to transport drunk and incapable individuals picked up in the streets on Friday and Saturday nights.

 

In the early 1960s I became aware that the barrow had survived as an exhibit, first in Elder Park Library, then in the newly established first transport museum in the old Corporation tramcar works in Albert Drive. It was labelled as originally having belonged to the Burgh of Govan, and had been stored in the police station in Orkney Street. When a youth myself, what used to puzzle me about Dad’s story was that 6d was a lot of money, even in the 1940s when I first heard the story, so was he exaggerating? Much later it became apparent that what he had said was 'helping' and 'we', meaning he and his pals, so the 6p would have been spread over half-a-dozen or more boys.

 

Some time after it was established and never having been there my father expressed an interest in visiting the museum, so I took him along. Having in the meantime forgotten about the barrow, as we walked round among the displayed items and were approaching the place where it was exhibited, realisation dawned. I turned to tell him about it, but before I could utter a word he suddenly stopped and stood with his mouth open, pointing. He exclaimed, again but this time with astonishment, 'That’s the barra we used tae get sixpence fur helpin' the polis tae shove past Govan Cross tae Orkney Street!' That would have been just before or during the early part of the First World War.

THE CAMERON HIGHLANDER

When his cousin Alec McFarlane was killed in France in 1916 it is likely that Dad was caught up in the vengeful enthusiasm that affected so many young men at the time. He volunteered for the army and was sent to France, but would never talk in detail about his experiences of the fighting. If asked he would be brief about events away from the fighting, and only a few details can now be recalled. The brainwashing received from the main media of the day, newspapers and public meetings, caused large numbers of men to volunteer for something they knew almost nothing about except the published casualty lists, a situation highlighted in the dramatic performance of a play, THE BIG PICNIC, in Govan in the mid 1990s.

 

In October 1915, when he had turned 17 and was still six months under the legal limit of seventeen and a half, he enlisted giving a false date of birth and was accepted. He joined the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, becoming Number S-49870 Private Rountree G (39). Very soon he became disillusioned and wanted to get out, but declaring his true age made no difference. The only way out was if you had sufficient money to buy a discharge, which of course he did not have. This subject may seem out of place in reminiscences of the 1930s, but the relevance will become apparent below.

 

According to military law of the time, junior servicemen could not be posted overseas if they were under the legal military age, so he worked on a farm in East Lothian for six months, and as soon as he reached the serving age he was despatched to France. It is known that he was in one major campaign, probably the third battle of Ypres. He did say he had taken part in a number of 'over the top' (from the trenches) bayonet charges, and received a minor wound when a bullet grazed him above an eye.

 

When asked about it in later years, other relatives, the one or two left who might have known, had no memory of this, and there was no scar. But pondering the matter, from his faintly recalled description, which included a gesture, a finger drawn swiftly across his forehead accompanied by a toss of his head, perhaps he was indicating the bullet had passed close so that he had heard it and felt its passing. In late 1916 the Germans used poison gas at Ypres for the first time in the war. Many soldiers died from it then, and later, and he was reputed to have received a whiff of it in 1917, and Mother always said the chest complaints he suffered from were caused by that incident.

 

When the war ended, so many men had been to France during the campaigns that a number of French words and phrases were in common use when I was young that are seldom encountered today. Because of their constant usage by ex-servicemen everyone then knew what they meant, and he was able to oblige with a few words when asked. I recall hearing him saying 'Sil vous pleys' for 'If you please', 'San feriez (fairy) an' for 'I don't care', and 'Pleys sil vous terbu marie beaucoup' for 'Thank you very much'. ‘Tout suite’ was ‘quickly’ etc. The foregoing are probably set down all wrong, but it's the best that can be done due to the many decades having passed since my last French lesson and the last time he was heard using them.

 

When the war ended in November 1918 he was retained in Germany as a member of the armistice commission force and spent a further year there. In later life he spoke warmly of his experiences and of his admiration for the ordinary German people. At the end of WW2 a photograph of Cologne Cathedral appeared in a newspaper showing the devastation surrounding it caused by Allied bombing. He had been inside the building and talked of it as a wonderful sight. While most other members of his family were Tory supporters, as he may have been also up to the time of his army service, no doubt his experiences in France contributed to his later socialist leanings.

 

I wrote to the Ministry Of Defence records office to inquire if his service record was available, but the reply was that some of the records were lost by enemy action in the bombing in 1940 and his appeared to be among them. However, this leads to suspicion that perhaps there’s something there that should remained hidden

THE DANCIN'

Mum used to tell the story of how she and Dad first met at the dancing, the 'jiggin' in local parlance, in Govan Town Hall around 1922. Special black dancing shoes of patent leather were worn by men. The material they were made of isn't known to me; perhaps it wasn‘t real leather, and was some kind of composition? It surface had a shine that was far better than could be achieved with ordinary leather dress shoes. It was softer and thinner but to my junior eyes, because it reflected very well especially the lights of the dance hall, it imparted to wearers a kind of flashy appearance.

 

FASHIONS AND CUSTOMS OF THE TIMES

Except for a few individuals who were know as ‘oddities’, at one time there were strict divisions between what people said, did, and wore, and, nearly everyone was careful not to be seen doing anything considered as belonging to the opposite sex. Today, dress, hair-styles, and clothing fashions are regarded as being fairly interchangeable. So too are the simplest of day-to-day tasks like shopping, washing and ironing clothes, cleaning windows and other household tasks. In the 1930s you seldom saw a man in the street carrying a message basket and shopping for groceries. How single men fared I do not know, other than perhaps they persuaded a neighbour, relative, or the wife of a friend to do his shopping.

 

Many examples could be quoted, but totally tabooed was for a man to be seen pushing a pram. Mother used to tell the story of what she had to do when I was a baby and Dad was available, to get him to take me out to let her get on with the housework. Nothing would convince him that he wouldn't be the laughing stock of Govan if he were to push the pram for three blocks along the road to Elder Park. She had to go along and leave us in the park, and return for us later. By the time my sister Nancy came along ten years later things were slightly better, but only a little. He would push her pram with one hand while walking to the side, and whistling and looking about him in an apparently disinterested and self conscious way that was so comical. It was as if he was trying to give the impression that it wasn't really him who was in charge.

 

Like Joe Chambers, my father too had a deformity, in his case it was in one hand. He had lost half of a thumb in an accident at work so that it ended in a rounded swelling at the outer joint. At one time he was a heavy smoker, going through sixty a day, but probably because of my chest ailments he gave it up when I was an infant, and I never once saw him with a cigarette. As for drink, other than a miniature of brandy for medicinal purposes, there never was any in our house at this time. Like most members of his family he suffered from a stomach complaint, for which when he experienced an upset there was always a small jar of Dr. Gregory's Mixture, a commercial product which was also used as a laxative, in the house. The Mixture looked like pepper and, taken mixed in milk as I was sometimes imposed on to do, tasted like what I imagine would a mouthful of seasoned dust.

CANADIAN INTERLUDE

Because of a continuing post-war depression and lack of work, dad went to Canada and remained there for eighteen months hoping to find employment suited to his engineering qualifications. The intention was that if he was successfully established in work Mum would join him and they would marry and settle there. Mum had Himsley cousins living in Hamilton, Ontario, and for a time dad lived in lodgings in that town. At the age of 24 he travelled to Canada by ship on 27/7/23 and arrived at Quebec with £10 in his pocket. After a time he got a job as deck hand on one of the boats that sailed on the St. Lawrence River above Niagara into the Great Lakes. This was before the Seaway was constructed which allows sea going ships to pass through the locks and go directly up into the lakes. Before then, cargos in seagoing ships for ports on the lakes had to be transhipped and moved by land to above Niagara, then loaded on distinctive smaller, long narrow ships that sailed on the lakes, and it was on one of them my father worked for a brief period. The depression being just as severe in North America as it was in the UK, he found it difficult to get permanent employment.

 

The work was seasonal and didn't last, and after an extended period with no work and funds running low, he was having difficulty paying for his lodgings, which so embarrassed him that he told his landlady he was dining out. But often on returning without having had anything to eat and feeling weak for the want of food, she had called him in to the dining room and made him sit down and eat a supper. This and other experiences gave him a favourable opinion of Canadians, and he said that in later years he would have loved to be able to remain there. With the help of a loan from his mother which was repaid in full, after eighteen months away he returned home.

MEMORIES OF ANOTHER HOUSE

In the early 1930s my paternal grandparent’s house at 40 Rigmuir Road, Shieldhall had a well kept garden that was probably looked after by Dad and his younger brothers. They were still living at home in the four apartment semi villa council house in the Shieldhall Housing Scheme to which they had moved from 72 Craigton Road in 1925. A feature of the path from pavement to house that made a lasting impression on me was two mountain ash (rowan) tree saplings standing one on either side of the gate at the entrance. These seemed of enormous significance because of the link with the family name.

 

Tending to be rather thin skinned, initially I disliked my name and resented being called by the then perceived as insulting, now regarded as innocuous, nicknames it generated. Realisation came with maturity that there were advantages in having an uncommon surname. A black Scotch terrier called Jock was one of the inhabitants of the house, but who owned it I never discovered. It seemed in venerable old age so may have originally belonged to the grandfather who died four years before I was born.

PATERNAL GRANDMOTHER

By the time my grandmother Isabella (m.s. McFarlane) Rountree moved from Rigmuir Road to the smaller three apartment house at 18 Langcroft Road in 1935, Dad’s brothers Alec and Jack were the only members of the family still with her. When she died in November 1937 my father made the arrangements for the funeral. His name is on the undertaker’s bill which is kept among the family memorabilia, and a scene from that day is imprinted in my memory. With Dad attending the funeral, I remained with Mum, and the two of us had walked from Skipness Drive to stand in Moss Road at the corner of Langcroft Road.

 

We watched as the cortege set off from the house travelling at walking pace until it left the street, as was always done in those days. Passing close to where we were standing, it turned south into Moss Road for the short trip to Craigton cemetery. As it passed us we saw dimly among the occupants of the car behind the hearse, a figure in the back raising a hand holding a bowler hat and moving it slowly up and down once or twice. It was Dad acknowledging us on that sad occasion. That hat is seen in the early family photos of the time.

 

One of Dad's sisters worked for Blackadder, a retailer of photographic equipment whose name is still in existence in that business today. Dad bought a Kodak folding Brownie Autographic camera from the company through Mima that was used for taking family snaps until the mid 1960s, which is marked by the last of the black and white photos in the family collection. The Autographic facility was a panel in the back of the camera body, that opened to allowed exposure details to be written on backing paper of the special film using a stylus attached to the camera. This remarkable feature was never used, but would have been invaluable if any manufacturer had re-introduced it. Many early family photographs were taken with that camera, some of which may be included with this story, and I took it with me during the year and-and-a-half of national service, first to London then Egypt 1949/50. To allow it fold flat it had a bellows between film and lens which, age causing light leaks that gave me some trouble when I inherited it.

THE FIFTY PITCHES

The angle of Rigmuir Road and Fulbar Road overlooked a large open space laid out as football pitches that was known as the Fifty Pitches. Although there were many I never counted them, and more than half a century on would guess there were at least a couple of dozen. None exist there today, because much of the land of the pitches was taken over in the 1970s when the M8 motorway was constructed and the rest landscaped. In later years the publishers of the Daily Record have had a plant built on part of the remainder of the ground. In the 1930s near the entrance to the pitches, at the junction of Moss Road and Rigmuir Road, there was a long wooden hut with a corrugated iron roof lying parallel with Rigmuir Road containing toilets and changing rooms by schools and amateur club teams.

 

My sole experience of playing football there was in a Saturday morning school inter-class match, and on another occasion played cricket, again inter-class, on a grassy strip at the western end of the area that now lies on the south side of the motorway. That area is accessible today by the loop road which passes under the motorway through the bridge from Shieldhall Road opposite Hardgate Road.

 

The large area between the pitches and what was the LMS Glasgow to Paisley railway line, was laid out as allotment gardens, while a smaller grassy portion next to the Moss Road - Berryknowes Road over-bridge served as a junior play-park. The important feature of my grandparent’s house for me was its proximity to the railway, which in those days had four tracks and was dead straight for four miles between Gower Street and Arkleston. The main reason I liked to go to Rigmuir Road was to watch the trains.

POLITICS

Like many socialists my father’s political outlook leaned towards pacifism, which manifested itself in a way that used to irritate me. He was very much against firearms, real and imitation, which I considered most unfair because most of my friends had cap firing six-shooters (we called the caps 'keps'). Much of the fun of playing cowboys and Indians with a roughly cut piece of wood from an orange box, cut-down tree branch or other substitute, was lost in the face of ridicule by the other participants. Then I received as a present a toy, the main part of which was an excellent replica of a pistol, the picture-gun described in AGC. But it was essential for the main purpose of the set of which it was part, and was reckoned to be too good to be taken out of the house in case anything happened to it. It took time, but eventually Dad's objection to guns was overcome, and I was able to use it in the required manner in games with my friends.

 

The caps referred to above that could be bought were contained in small round card boxes in newsagents. They were tiny discs of brown laminated paper about three-eights of an inch in diameter for use in revolver type toy guns. They had spots of explosive powder in the centre within the lamination, and were put into a small depression in line with the barrel which was fired by a trigger operated hammer. Other caps for pistols were on continuous strips as a roll that fitted inside the imitation weapon, and worked by being propelled one-at-a-time by a lever operated by the trigger.

THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY (ILP) GOVAN BRANCH

By the 1930s the ILP was past the peak of its power which even at its greatest with only a handful of MPs was tiny. But having a dad who was a member of and a party worker for the Govan branch, and hearing discussions going on between him and his acquaintances, the impression gained was that it was forging ahead and was destined to dominate the political scene in the future. The Party had a hall, actually a large shop on the north side of Govan Road near the dry docks. Branch officials were keen organisers of social functions, using them to attract support from among the local but perhaps less politically aware people.

 

Despite counter attractions of wireless and cinema, the hall was in regular used in evenings and at weekends for meetings, socials, concerts, whist drives, dances and the occasional wedding reception. With their love of dancing my parents attended these functions at every opportunity. In winter a regular dance held each Saturday evening was attended by all the dancing enthusiasts among the membership, and as many outsiders as could be persuaded to come along in the hope that they might join the party, if not for the politics then perhaps for the social life.

 

As described before, when Mum and Dad attended these functions an arrangement had to be made for someone to look after me, for which Mum’s sister Molly usually took on the role of baby-sitter. Then as I approached school age it became possible for me to go along with them and pass the time playing with other children present. Memories of these functions make them seem rather incongruous, and do not fit in with what would be expected of the socialist ideals of the party at that time. The men wore evening suits, white shirts with black bow ties and the flashy patent leather shoes. The women wore gowns of seemingly remarkable elegance, although it could be that what is recalled of these occasions were actually special events.

JIMMY MAXTON MP

At this time James Maxton MP, an uncle of John Maxton who was MP for Cathcart in the 1980s and ‘90s, was the leader of the ILP. Jimmy was a brilliant public speaker and popular figure, and away from Parliament he regularly made speeches at political meetings around the country. He occasionally came to Govan to address meetings there. An event not witnessed by me, but is described graphically by a Govanite of an event in the early ‘30s, James Wilson, member of The Salvation Army, formerly of Govan Citadel and later of Mill Hill, London. He said Maxton on one occasion addressed a meeting from on top of the canopy over the entrance to Govan Cross subway station, at that time in Greenhaugh Street, having been thrust up on it by enthusiastic supporters.

 

Another name from the past among members of the Govan branch, and one encountered when reading accounts of national political history, was Bob Edwards. There was an elderly (to my juvenile eyes) white-haired man of that name who lived in the Summertown Road area. He was one of a handful of individuals who would nearly always be present on any visit to the hall when I was there with Dad. Now I wonder was this the same man? Another individual who was much reviled by the membership at that time was John McGovern. The reason for this appeared to be linked to the fact that at one time he had been a powerful supporter of the ILP, but had defected to the Labour Party. This was done probably from his viewpoint of transferring from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in an ocean in which he hoped to be big eventually. This move was regarded as the basest treachery and was bitterly resented by ILP supporters.

 

Among the events Jimmy Maxton attended were party rallies in Scotland, although my memories of him are faint, because I was there simply for the fun with the other children present and not the boring speeches. They were great family gatherings, large picnics really which, as well as lectures on left wing politics, included sports events and entertainment. ILP branches around the country collaborated to arrange a gathering on a weekend during the summer months, with everyone, transported by buses to assemble at such places in the central belt as Perth, Stirling or Ayr etc. Family and friends, and any outsider who wanted to buy a ticket, could come along.

 

It was at one of these rallies a photograph, now lost sight of that I would dearly love to trace, was taken of Maxton among a group of children in which I am standing 'stage centre' beside him. A well remembered feature of these gatherings was the company singing the Red Flag and the Socialist anthem the Internationale. All that can be recalled is the first line of the latter, 'Arise ye starvelings from your slumber', the rest of which is along the lines of encouraging the poor and the downtrodden to 'throw off the yoke of the oppressors’.

 

Mentioned elsewhere in these writings is the biography of political agitator John Mclean, published by his daughter Nan Milton c1973, a copy of which is in my collection. The ILP is mentioned in it frequently, so that some idea of the relationship between his activities and the party can be gained. It would have been expected that his ideas of socialism would have made the ILP attractive to him. But at that time the number of socialist movements with miniscule differences between their views was so diverse, and his views being so focused, not enough of them matched up to what he believed to be the ideal. This, generally, meant that even as little as a word added to a party manifesto could cause people to leave one branch of a socialist party and join another. They were so busy arguing, quarrelling and fighting with each other that it took decades for socialists of different persuasions to agree a common manifesto and come to the fore and be electable (40).

MAY DAY DEMONSTRATIONS

In Glasgow in the early 21st century, the May Day demonstrations are only a pale shadow of what they were when compared with those of the early and middle decades of the 20th and may even be extinct now. In the ‘30s, ‘40s & ‘50s they were in the form of a long procession with many groups each carrying banners. They attracted unattached left wing supporters and my father never missed attending the parade until long after he retired. I have memories of going with him to walk in the procession in the late 1930s carrying a collecting can for contributions to party funds, from the city centre along Victoria Road to Queens Park sports ground, although my interest in the event was somewhat diminished when the speeches began.

 

On one occasion at school the following Monday an argument developed between a class-mate and me which threatened to become violent. He had been taken along as a spectator, saw me in the procession and accused me of being a communist. It didn't occur to me at the time to ask why he was there, for it was well outside his home territory. The person who brought him along was probably of the same political persuasion as my father.

 

It might be difficult for young people to understand today that despite living conditions being much worse then, in the thirties active supporters of left wing politics were in a minority in the community. But there was always a good turnout for the spectacle along the route of the procession and the meetings in the park. There was an atmosphere of hatred between the right and left wings of politics born of an establishment-generated fear of communism on the right, and the resentment by the masses of those in power who, behind a facade of supposedly doing good used their position to enrich themselves. Today most people prefer the pub, sport and the bookies, or the fantasy world of TV, the internet and computer games.

THE PARTY ACTIVIST - THE NEW LEADER, FLYPOSTING AND CHALKING THE STREETS

During the decades from 1920s to ‘60s my father used much of his spare time working for the branch, selling the party newspaper the New Leader, fly-posting and writing political statements on street surfaces with chalk. While he did not seem to take part in any organising or decision making, he was deeply involved with the foot-slogging aspects, giving out handbills, leaflets, and delivering copies of the paper. He had regular customers for the latter in his area of West Govan and Linthouse, calling on them each Friday evening or Saturday afternoon, during the course of which he had to carry around, ‘humph’ in the local patois, and deliver up to 40 copies. For a brief period he had a pitch at Govan Cross where he sold them to passers-by on Friday evenings, standing among the other paper sellers of the time, with his bundle under his arm and billboard sheet tied with string around his waist which flapped in a breeze.

 

Paper sellers were a common sight where people congregated, although I never heard him call out like the others. For a short time, too, he walked round the west Govan streets on Friday and Saturday evenings, this time calling out as other paper sellers on the streets did while scanning house windows for chance sales. The other rather disreputable task he undertook was fly-posting. This was pasting bills advertising meetings or setting out the views of the ILP on contentious political matters on any convenient wall, sometimes illegally, in places where there were plenty of passers-by to see them. As much frowned on by the authorities then as it is today, it had to be done during darkness while keeping a lookout for the polis.

 

Chalking the streets was a legal alternative to or supplementing fly-posting. It involved setting out in large format on a smooth road surface using pipe clay advertisements for meetings, which seldom lasted for more than twenty-four hours. The most suitable locations for it were side streets with asphalt surfaces adjacent to a main road for preference, where it would be visible to the greatest number of people. Individuals with a bee in their bonnet about a topic they considered of vital importance to mankind also used to set out their messages on the road for all to see. With today’s traffic levels such a thing would be unimaginable, but in these times of quiet, relatively traffic free side-streets it flourished outwith working hours.

 

A perfect location would be at a side-street corner with a suitable road surface near a busy tram or bus stop. The subject was usually laid out in large letters using as few words as possible to be taken in at a glance, but often as an elaborate panel with an artistic border and pleasing calligraphy. Of course like the housewife with her washing it would only be successful during dry weather, and many an extensive message covering a lot of ground, laboriously laid out at night in dry conditions, could be completely washed away by early morning rain.

 

The actual chalking was done in letters big enough to be legible within a reasonable distance using either whitening applied with a paint brush. More often it was done with a cake of pipe-clay about the size of a thick chocolate bar using the width of the narrow end of the moistened cake. Headings using extra large letters to catch the attention like newspaper headlines were employed. This activity intensified among rival political parties before an election, and when done by someone with artistic flair, even with a boring message it produced a pleasing effect. There was one occasion, probably during the run-up to an election in the late 1930s, when I was up unusually late. Dad had come in with his hands covered with pipe clay, boasting gleefully how he and a friend had managed to cover so many good pitches, getting in before the Tory party workers.

STREET CORNER MEETINGS

Another common sight of the time was street corner meetings. Certain places regularly saw such gatherings at week-ends and, less often, on weekday evenings. They were almost invariably political or religious gatherings much the same as the Salvation Army members used to conduct until recent years. Large crowds often turned up when the subject was political. Such meetings were usually advertised in advance by the aforementioned chalked messages, fly-posting and handbills. Today, a gathering like this in the street would most likely be because of an accident, or an event involving law enforcement. Like the street message writers then, anyone with the urge and the ability indulged in it. People seemed to have more time to spare and the inclination to stand and listen, when there were fewer distractions than the many forms of entertainment and activities that currently clamour for our attention.

 

A crowd of up to a couple of hundred would gather in the street round a speaker in a large circle, hoping for entertainment in the form of heckling as much as to listen to what was being said. The strange thing is that people did not usually crowd round close to the speaker, as is often depicted in period drama scenes. They formed a large circle with the speaker at a point on the circumference (41). If anyone tried to do such a thing today anywhere other than in an open space, park or city centre pedestrian precinct, they would be regarded closely to see if they were loopy, with scorn, or simply ignored. The most frequented place in Govan for such meetings was in the open space by the Aitken fountain at the Cross, sometimes with more than one meeting on different subjects going on at the same time.

 

Also attracted by a crowd would be newspaper, pamphlet distributors and ice cream sellers. But popular also were any of the side street corners along Govan Road and Langlands Road, and my father would join any meeting when politics was the subject. Shaw Street was a favourite spot, and sometimes when out walking with him, if we came across such a meeting I was left to hang around and wait for him.

 

Something that has puzzled me in recent years is that in the ‘30s there was another ILP hall in Burghead Drive at the corner of Penninver Drive. I now wonder why my father, living in Linthouse only a few minutes walk away from it, chose to attend the larger and perhaps busier premises situated so far away in Govan Road opposite Burndyke Street. Having accompanied him so often to the east Govan hall, it is peculiar that I had no recollection of ever being inside the Linthouse hall. But this may have been because when he first joined the ILP he was living nearer central Govan, and after moving to Linthouse he had opted to remain as a member of the Govan Branch.

SOME ODD SIGHTS

There were many more people with physical disabilities and mental conditions than are encountered today, a number of the former of which suffered from one of the wasting diseases. Perhaps this is simply because today there are far fewer of them, and those that do exist lead sheltered lives and are better cared for. Individuals with a malformed foot, what was called a club foot were relatively common, as were the ones with limbs or parts of limbs missing or malformed, many of whom were ex-servicemen. People referred to today as the disabled were then known collectively as cripples. Squints (crossed eyes) were a minor though very common and now easily corrected affliction. More serious were those with deformed spines which caused a hump, making them a hunchback.

 

Another disability encountered was people with legs of different lengths. This was overcome by wearing a boot with an extension to the sole of the foot of the shorter leg (42). A simple thin iron frame made up the height difference that in the worst cases may have been as much as six inches. The frame was made from a strip the shape of the edge of the boot sole and heel, so that the metal part in contact with the pavement gave their usually pitching gait a very distinctive clunking sound. Others with part of a leg missing stumped around on a padded socket with a heavy brush-pole-like extension known as a 'peg-leg', and a crutch like the pirate Long John Silver in the film of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story Treasure Island.

 

There were people with a cleft palate; they had no roof to their mouth which caused them to speak with an almost incomprehensible lisp. Anyone with this affliction was marked with a diagonal scar that ran from the corner of the nose and across the mouth, and was known as ‘a hair lip’. This was the outward sign so that you were forewarned before they attempted to speak. To give an idea of what they had to endure, try talking without letting your tongue touch the roof of your mouth. That affliction is never encountered in the west now. It still affects many in developing countries but a simple operation can correct it if carried out when the afflicted are young.

 

A few unfortunate individuals were born with mental defects, but some had sustained very bad head injuries, the worst cases of which were rendered idiots or imbeciles. Among children, these poor souls were talked about with bated breath as having been kicked by a horse. The first time I heard this it altered my feeling of affection towards horses, and made me resolve in future always to keep well clear of their rear ends. There were others who were totally helpless. They suffered from encephalitis lethargica which was known then as sleeping sickness. Adults so afflicted were confined to heavy wheelchairs constructed so that the occupants lay in an almost prone position on what was virtually a stretcher on wheels. Their demeanour was always that of someone heavily sedated. Yet another affliction was known as water on the brain. It is occasionally encountered today and is known variously as hydro-encephalomyelitis or simply encephalitis. Many were cared for at home, with the carers never receiving any official help or financial consideration other than from charities.

NATIONAL CRISIS - THE ABDICATION

Royalty, often anathema to working class socialists, is dealt with here purely because of the intense interest it generated at that time, many of the details of which remain quite prominent with me.

 

A national event that became international news in 1936 was the constitutional crisis involving the monarchy that began with the death of King George the Fifth. Next in line of accession to the throne was the Duke of Windsor who actually reigned as Edward the Eighth for eleven months. But because of his involvement with a divorcee, the American Mrs. Simpson, there was disagreement within government and Church of England authorities as to whether he was a suitable person to be Monarch. It might seem a trivial affair now, and would surely be treated rather less hysterically if anything like it happened today, but at that time the country and the whole world (or so we were led to believe) were desperate for the latest news about the scandal. Some reports, which seem fantastic today, suggested that the nation and the 'Empire' would collapse if the matter wasn't resolved quickly. Every news bulletin on the wireless and in all the papers, except those of the extreme left wing such as the socialist press, The New Leader and Forward, were full of it, and after it commenced in January 1936 the furore continued until it was resolved in December.

 

Of course the reason it is mention here is because of the way the subject dominated the media of the time. Without understanding any of it, what I clearly recall is how seriously seemingly everybody, except my father and like minded people, regarded it. Dad was rabidly anti-royalist, and his fulminations about these goings-on were scathing. He called them parasites funded mainly by the taxes taken from workers who mostly had barely enough to live on. Previous to her marriage Mum had been one of the women royal watchers who followed these events closely.

 

Many, even among those who were then called 'the lower orders', followed the doings of people who were definitely spongers. Without loosing that interest, my mother was to come round to agreeing with Dad's way of thinking in later years. Resolution of the situation took place during the time I was in Mearnskirk Hospital, and despite what is written in a previous chapter about listening to a wireless there, there is no recollection of being aware of the outcome at that time. This situation could be resolved if the funding of the royal family was stopped and the money provided by contributions from anyone who wanted to, like a charity!