by Alan Taylor
Miss Cranston’s ‘Groveries’ establishment was, of course, only a temporary affair, which closed at the end of autumn, when the Exhibition itself ended, but by that time any lunch tea-room of hers was assured of permanent popularity. She opened glorious ones in Sauchiehall Street and Buchanan Street, Argyle Street and Ingram Street, designed externally to attract the eye by architectural novelty, yet restrained and elegant.
They were deliberately conceived as houses of light refreshment most obviously for the pleasure of women and run wholly on ‘temperance’ lines. Even had the cocktail been in fashion at the time, it would have been unprocurable in any of the Cranston’s shops, which far more than made up for the absence of alcohol by features peculiar to themselves.
That wonderful woman appeared to have in view her own aesthetic gratification more than the rapid accumulation of a fortune on conventional restaurant lines. She was, herself, unique, vivacious, elegant, always with something of the fête champêtre in her costume, and the maids who served her tables took their note from her.
Miss Cranston brought to light the genius of a Glasgow architect, Charles Mackintosh, who died only in recent years and was the inspiring influence of a group of Glasgow artists, men and women, who made her tea-rooms homogeneous in structure, decoration, and furnishing. They were strangely beautiful, the Cranston tea-rooms; women loved them, and ‘Kate Cranstonish’ became a term with Glasgow people in general to indicate novelties in buildings and decorations not otherwise easy to define.
BAIRD REMEMBERS REITH, 1906
John Logie Baird
By extraordinary coincidence two of the most inspirational and influential figures in the development of television, John Logie Baird (1888–1946) and John Reith (1889–1971) were Scottish and students contemporaneously at Glasgow Technical College (now the University of Strathclyde). Baird is regarded as the inventor of television while Reith is revered as the founder of the BBC. Reith’s time at the College was not a happy one: he remembered it as ‘something of a nightmare’. If he had any recollection of Baird there, he made no record of it. Later, in the 1930s, the men’s paths crossed again when the BBC decided not to adopt Baird’s system, which may well have coloured Baird’s view of his fellow Scot.
There were, however, a few exceptions, gentlemen’s sons, well off and with real anxiety as to their future. Among these was a tall, well-built youth, the son of the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, by name, John Reith. I met him for the first time in rather unfavourable circumstances. I was, and still am, very short-sighted and, at the beginning of one of those classes, the Professor asked if those who were short-sighted and wanted front seats, would hand in their names. When I went up to the platform to give him my name, three large impressive students were talking to him. They talked in terms of equality; in fact there was a distinct aroma of patronage. The young gentlemen were of the type we would today call ‘heavies’, and they boomed with heavy joviality at the poor little Professor, who was distinctly embarrassed and ill-at-ease. I interrupted, timidly, and handed him a piece of paper with my name on it. As I did so, the heaviest and most overpowering of the three ‘heavies’ turned round and boomed at me. ‘Ha! What is the matter with you? Are you deaf or blind?’ I simpered something in inaudible embarrassment, and he turned his back on me, and the three ‘heavies’ walked out of the classroom booming portentously to each other.
This was the first time I saw Reith. I did not see him again for twenty years. Reith did not distinguish himself in examinations; he was worse than I was without the excuse of ill-health, but now we see him as a Cabinet Minister and a national figure while those who soared above him at College are lost in obscurity, little provincial professorlings, draughtsmen, petty departmental chiefs and the like, hewers of wood and drawers of water. The examiners awarded no marks for impressive appearances, no marks for oracular booming voices, no marks for influential relatives. To the examiners an overpowering ‘heavy’ and a lean rat-faced little cad were all alike.
AT THE PICKSHERS, c. 1908
Jim Phelan
Addicted to ‘the dream-drift of the road’, Irish-born Jim Phelan (1895–1966) was ‘a tramp at heart, an opportunist by inclination, a beggar boy by philosophy’. At the age of eleven he left school with little formal education to run wild amidst the ‘beggars, slum women, racecourse drifters . . . ballad singers, rag-pickers, apple-women, and all the colourful, raucous, roaring denizens’ of Dublin’s netherworld. An incorrigible, and doubtless unreliable teller of tales, he travelled relentlessly and did whatever it took to survive, in the course of which he was twice sentenced to death and encountered the writers Liam O’Flaherty and H.G. Wells. Eventually, Phelan turned to writing himself and became a regular contributor to radio. In The Name’s Phelan (1948), the first part of his autobiography, he told how, like countless of his fellow country-folk, he found his way to Glasgow.
To me Glasgow looked, smelt, and sounded like a dream-town. Now this was a real foreign city at last. I could not understand one word of the speech. Heaven!
After the first couple of hours’ wandering. I drifted away from the city centre and the shops. Something like the Combe district in Dublin, I judged the place where I found myself. (Later I learnt to call it the Gallowgate.) From some ragged boys I learnt about lodgings – share of a slum room cost fourpence, and two of the boys lived there. Carefully, almost religiously, I set myself up to imitate their speech.
Years later I knew a wealthy and cultured young Frenchman who, having had the misfortune to slay someone during his first few hours in England, found himself in prison for years. Promptly and of necessity he learnt English – in Dartmoor and similar places.
It was vastly funny to hear him break from the French equivalent of an Oxford accent into, ‘I ups and ses to ’im, I ses, “Look ’ere,” I ses, “wotcha tike me for?” I ses.’ He told me, often, that the English language sounded marvellous to him. That was the way I learnt to speak Scotch, in the Gallowgate.
Sometimes, with other slum boys, I went to beg from the workmen who came from Park Head Forge. One caught glimpses of great flashing fires, heard the thumping of mighty hammers somewhere. Then the crowds of men came out, on their way home.
The begging was very simple. Many of the men would carry home part of their midday meal, uneaten. We stood, in a little crowd, and repeated continually, ‘Any bread? Any bread?’ The men gave us much more than we could eat.
(Almost I had forgotten! Our chorus was ‘Onny br-raid? Onny br-raid?’ My own accent was the thickest and most raucous of the group.)
Most of my days were spent in prowling, in the neighbourhood of the docks for preference. But the riverside was not at all like Dublin’s. Big warehouses, dead walls, locked gates, hostile men with notebooks, came between the prowler and – whatever it was I looked at. All I remember is a meaningless list of ships and ports.
My companions were far too practical for any such occupation, and again I began to feel over-shy and reserved, something from which I had known blessed freedom for a few weeks. Gradually I came to dislike the boys, discovering them as clumsy, foolish liars who could not even tell lies. The end came one evening at the ‘pickshers’.
A sailor had given me a shilling, and although penniless except for the solitary coin, I had spent eightpence on taking a boy to the cinema, retaining only the vital fourpence ‘stall’.
The pictures cannot have been very enthralling (it was 1908), for the other boy and I talked most of the time. A slum-boy with one leg, a drifter like myself, he lived at my lodgings, had no family as far as I knew. That evening he told about having escaped from a reformatory.
I had read about Glencree near Dublin, knew of reformatories by hearsay only. But after the first few minutes I had picked a hundred holes in the story. These were the silliest lies I had ever heard. And this one-legged boy, fourteen or so, was the leader and most experienced of all. The Gallowgate was beginning to let me down.
The most thrilling part of the e
scape story ended with the loss of my boy-friend’s leg. How, I enquired. Shot off, he explained. He carried a pair of crutches, got about with ease, had no wound or bandage. Yet his leg had been ‘shot off’ some seven weeks earlier. My Gallowgate dream-world was beginning to fall apart.
Outside the cinema I simply walked away. Although it was evening and I still clutched the fourpence in my trouser pocket, I did not go near the lodging-house, went prowling aimlessly along the river. Tomorrow I would find another stall; I was never going back with that crowd any more. Shot off!
A ROOM AND KITCHEN IN SPRINGBURN, c. 1914
Marion Smith
Marion Smith lived in a room-and-kitchen tenement house from 1914 until her marriage in 1927. Her mother had ten children. Her father was a brass worker at a locomotive works. The couple were dedicated to raising their family as well as possible on a very limited income, and instilled in their children strong moral values and a sense of their own worth. Marion was the eldest daughter and shared with her mother the responsibility of looking after the younger children. The kitchen here described was typical of countless others.
All my childhood days were in Springburn. Our first house was a single-end, but when another baby put in an appearance, we moved into a room and kitchen in the same close. We had been away from Springburn for a spell through Dad chasing work again, to the Carron Ironworks. The First World War had started and there was now no shortage of work, so we came to, where else, Springburn.
Our house had a coal fire in a stove, which had to be blackened with a paste mixed up in an old saucer, and then buffed up, and finally shone to a gleaming finish. There was a piece of velvet kept for the purpose. The steel trimmings were shined with emery cloth. As my father was a brass moulder, the mantelpiece, above the stove, was gleaming with brass ornaments, all made in the works. This was one of the perks of the trade. Everybody made things in the works. We had brass iron stands, brass candlesticks, a little brass anvil, a watch stand, which was in the form of an angel’s head with outstretched wings. Your pocket watch was taken off and hung there when you went to bed, presumably watched over by an angel. Other brass items I remember – a shoehorn in the shape of a lady’s leg, very daring! A small brass stool with a slot in it, which said, ‘Our wee girl is no fool, she puts her pennies in a stool.’ We had a solid brass poker, and on the hearth, a solid brass stool intricately patterned, about eighteen inches high. It was called a toddy stool, and was supposed to hold the kettle of hot water at your side, to make your hot toddy with whisky and sugar and lemon. This despite my dad being a teetotaller!
There was linoleum on the floor, which was polished, and a small hearth rug in front of the fireplace. The kitchen chairs were wooden, and the kitchen table was covered with a sort of oilcloth so that it would be wiped with a damp cloth. At each corner of the table there was a cornerpiece with a horseshoe on it bearing the words, ‘Good luck’. This held the oilcloth in place and presumably blessed us with good luck whenever we sat at the table.
There was an inbuilt coal bunker and a wooden dresser alongside. Just imagine coal being tipped into a bunker in the middle of the living room! There was a black iron sink with a single brass swan-neck cold water tap. Cupboards for pots were underneath the sink, and the cupboard for food was alongside at right angles. This was always referred to as the ‘press’. There was a set-in bed at right angles to the fireplace.
Above the wooden dresser, opposite to the fireplace was a set of electroplated dish covers, which hung on hooks in a row. These ranged from a huge one, suitable for a baronial feast in some place like Balmoral Castle, all the way down in size to a small one. There were four of them, never, ever used. But they were a wedding present. The shelves above, two shelves, held a blue and white dinner service, a wedding present from the firm my mum worked for, hardly ever used, and a tea set, which my mother was proud of; it had pansies on it, hand painted, my mother told us. This was only ever washed then put back on the shelf. Also there, in the centre, a brass jelly pan, and an ornamental brass kettle. On the wall in the room there were two great big photos, oh about eighteen inches by two feet. Lovely portraits, one of my mother, one of my father, taken after their wedding day.
We had gas lighting, quite new then. Inverted gas mantles, ‘Veritas’ make, and a glass shade. We also had a paraffin lamp. My dad was the only one allowed to touch it, trim the wick, and fill it. It was on a stand and quite elegant, another wedding present.
SUFFRAGETTES AT WAR, 1914
Helen Crawfurd
Originally from the Gorbals, Helen Crawfurd (1877–1954) grew up in East Anglia. However, as a teenager she moved back to Glasgow, where in due course she married a Church of Scotland minister. She became active in the women’s suffrage movement at the turn of the century but a decade or so later she switched support to the more radical Woman’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). In 1912, she broke the windows of the Ministry for Education, for which she spent a month behind bars. A year later she was twice arrested in Glasgow when Emmeline Pankhurst was speaking. She was again jailed for a month and went on a five-day hunger strike. She left the WSPU in 1914 over its support for the war and joined the Independent Labour Party.
The body of the Hall had a large part of it filled with Socialists and anti-war adherents. The organ was pealing out patriotic songs which were countered by revolutionary songs from the body of the Hall. Many shop stewards, who were fighting in the workshops against the dilution of Labour by women at undercut wages, were also there to hear what the speakers had to say. The question of equal pay for equal work was not discussed but merely propaganda on the patriotic duty of women to go into the factories and produce munitions. Soon the audience became restive, and the singing and shouting rose to a deafening height. The Lord Provost Dunlop said if the uproar didn’t stop he would let the munition workers loose on them. The women’s patriotic fervour had been lashed to fever heat and they came down into the body of the Hall and up into the gallery and began an attack upon the men, some only with their hands, others with sticks. It was a most disgraceful scene. The fight was an unequal one. The finest men refused to return the blows rained on them, while others gave as good as they got. I was disgusted at Christabel Pankhurst and Mrs Drummond for being a party to such work. To me it was lowering to the dignity of women. I had not taken part in it but sat quietly watching till I could endure it no longer. I got up and walked down the centre passage of the hall, mounted the Reporter’s table and protested, saying: ‘Shame on you Christabel Pankhurst to get these women to do your dirty work. It is an insult to womanhood.’ One of the platform party lifted a carafe of water to throw over me, but Flora Drummond prevented them, saying: ‘She is not responsible!!’
BEARDED LIKE A MAN, 1914
Patrick MacGill
It has been estimated that around 300,000 refugees migrated to Britain during the Great Irish Famine of the mid-nineteenth century. Of those around a third arrived in Scotland. The influx of Irish continued well into the twentieth century, with the majority settling in the west central belt, Glasgow and Lanarkshire especially. Patrick MacGill came from dirt-poor Donegal, where he left school at the age of eleven, working for hiring fairs and farms before getting a job on the Glasgow–Greenock railway line. He made his name with a slim volume of verse and for a spell was a journalist. Known as the ‘Navvy Poet’, he is best known for his book, Children of the Dead End (1914). In its foreword he wrote: ‘When asking a little allowance for the pen of the novelist it must be said that nearly all of the incidents of the book have come under the observation of the writer.’
I got a job on the railway and obtained lodgings in a dismal and crooked street, which was a den of disfigured children and a hothouse of precocious passion, in the south side of Glasgow. The landlady was an Irishwoman, bearded like a man, and the mother of several children. When indoors, she spent most of her time feeding one child, while swearing like a carter at all the others. We slept in one room, mother, children and myself, and
all through the night the children yelled like cats in the moonshine. The house was alive with vermin. The landlady’s husband was a sailor who went out on ships to foreign parts and always returned drunk from his voyages. When at home he remained drunk all the time, and when he left again he was as drunk as he could hold. I had no easy job to put up with him at first, and in the end we quarrelled and fought. He accused me of being too intimate with his wife when he was away from home. I told him that my taste was not utterly so bad, for indeed I had no inclination towards any woman, let alone the hairy and unkempt person who was my landlady. I struck out at him on the stair head. Three flights of stair led from the house down to the ground floor. I threw the sailor down the last flight bodily and head-long; he threw me down the middle flight. Following the last throw he would not face up again, and I had won the fight. Afterwards the woman came to her husband’s aid. She scratched my face with her fingers and tore at my hair, clawing like an angry cat. I did not like to strike her back so I left her there with her drunken sailor and went out to the streets. Having no money I slept until morning beside a capstan on Glasgow quay.
RENT STRIKE, 1915
John Maclean
In 1915, in the middle of the First World War, many wives in Glasgow whose husbands were serving as soldiers found their rents were escalating. In the words of Helen Crawfurd, who had been raised by middle-class parents in the Gorbals, the ‘fight was essentially a women’s fight’. Through careful organisation and swift action, a campaign was mounted, supported by the shop stewards’ movement and including the likes of John Maclean (1879–1923), who opposed the war on the grounds that it fuelled capitalism. After six months, the government capitulated and passed the Rent Restriction Act.
