Merchant’s House and Glasgow Queen Street station on George Square (photograph: Gill Newton)

We start our tour outside of Queen Street Station, crossing the road to the corner of George Square and facing right to begin with, then turning left and proceeding to the opposite end of the square.

Queen Street Railway Station (as it is known today) opened in 1842, and was soon surrounded by hotels, some of which commanded very high rents. In 1861 next door to each other along the west side of George Square were the Waverley hotel operated by Mrs Crawford, and the Crow Hotel operated by George Cranston. He was the father of Kate Cranston, whose enormously successful Willow tearooms we will encounter in Stop 15. On the same side of the square as the station entrance was the Clarence Hotel operated by James McGregor, for a colossal rent of £1500 per year.

 

Waverley Hotel, Crow Hotel and Clarence Hotel on George Square circa 1865, with railway station entrance arch on the far right (image: Mitchell Library)

Queen Street Station was just one of several railway stations that brought people directly into the heart of the growing city. Glasgow in the mid-19th Century exerted a greater pull in terms of population movement in Scotland than London did in England. Scottish migrants came to Glasgow mainly from populous lowland counties adjacent, filling manufacturing positions and diverse other employment opportunities.[1]

Highland Scots started coming to Glasgow in large numbers in the 1840s. They often settled around the river, from Broomielaw to Partick along the north bank and from Kingston to Govan southside. Considered physically robust, especially compared to urbanites born in Glasgow, the men worked mainly as labourers on the docks and canals, as mariners, or as police officers.[2]

Highland women are often found living further west, in the middle-class suburbs. This wasn’t because of their greater material wealth, but because they were able to obtain work as servants in prosperous households. In the 1881 census, two-thirds of economically active women living in Glasgow who had been born in the highland counties were in domestic service.  

George Square is now a formal, mainly paved, area that is home to the city’s war memorial. It was first laid out to gardens in 1787 as Glasgow began expanding westwards to provide elegant new housing for its merchant class.  As time passed it became less of a green space and more of a space for displaying civic pride and power. The council chambers are at the far end and the Merchant’s House overlooks the square at this end, immediately opposite the station exit.

 

Glasgow Council City Chambers (image: Mitchell Library)

Merchant’s House relocated to George Square in 1873 and is home to the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. The grand building reflects the historic importance of merchants involved in international trade to the city, including the Atlantic Trade in sugar and tobacco produced by enslaved African people.

Its role was complemented by Trades House (on Glassford Street), which since 1605 represented the interest of skilled craftspeople such as weavers, bakers and masons, organised into guilds that we will hear more about in Stop 8. Organisations for merchants and guilds largely monopolised political power in Glasgow city until the 1830s.

 

The Battle of George Square (image: Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the civic order implied by its statues, royal name, and grand buildings, George Square has also long been a place where dissent has come to a head. As urbanized industrialisation in the 19^th century progressed, labour became more organised, and strike action in support of better pay and working conditions became a more frequent part of working-class activism.

Perhaps the most infamous strike in Glasgow’s history occurred in 1919. Campaigning for a reduction in working hours to 40 hours a week, an aggrieved crowd clashed with the police, who had forcefully attempted to clear the tram route around George Square. The ensuing riot and violence is remembered as The Battle of George Square.

Described as a ‘Bolshevist rising’, in reality the Battle was less the result of an outburst of revolutionary intent so much as the outcome of hostile policing.  This strike alone did not achieve the 40-hour week, and it certainly did not trigger the downfall of UK capitalism. But the battle became part of the ‘Red Clydesider’ legend, and – for many – an indication of the militancy of the Glaswegian working class.[3]

 

[1] Briggs Victorian Cities, and Withers, ‘Demographic history’

[2] Mackenzie, Highland Communities.

[3] The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/06/100-years-on-the-day-they-read-the-riot-act-in-glasgow

 

We now move to STOP 2 - Anderson Institute

 

 

Royal College Building (photograph: Gill Newton)

You are now outside the Royal College Building at the University of Strathclyde.

The University traces its origins back to Anderson’s Institution, established in 1796 under the will of John Anderson of Glasgow University, who wanted to create a place of ‘useful learning’. Anderson’s ideas were progressive, and the institution provided instruction in scientific subjects. There were evening classes for working-class people, and both men and women were taught from the start.

Anderson’s Institution (image: Mitchell Library)

Electrical engineering laboratory (South machines laboratory) (image: University of Strathclyde Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections, OP/2/1/26)

The building in front of you was built between 1903 and 1912 and was needed to cater for the growing number of students training at what had become known as the Glasgow and West of Scotland technical college, many of whom went on to serve the industrial hinterlands of Glasgow and the West of Scotland.

Reflecting the strong relationship between industry and learning within the city, some of Glasgow’s most prominent industrialists were involved in education at this time.  Charles Macintosh was amongst the original Trustees of Anderson’s Institution.  Macintosh is most famous as the inventor of the waterproof raincoat – something that should always be carried on a walking tour of Glasgow! 

Robert Nielson, of Nielson & Co., one of the largest producers of railway locomotives in Britain in the nineteenth century, was president of another of the University of Strathclyde’s antecedents, the Glasgow Mechanics’ Institution, from 1866 to 1874.

 

Loading a locomotive at Glasgow dock (image: Mitchell Library)

However, James Young is perhaps the most famous alumnus of Strathclyde during this period. He established the processes that led to the extraction of oil from coal and the world’s first commercial oil refinery in Bathgate, between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Young was a student at Anderson's University in the 1830s and later became its President in 1868. 

Although there is limited heavy industry in the city today, in the 19^th century Glasgow contained a number of large factories. In 1861, the Glasgow trade directory lists over 2000 manufacturing businesses located within the city. The census that year suggests that there were at least 26 businesses in Glasgow that employed 500 people or more. 

Ship building was one of the largest employers. Just over a mile from this stop on the banks of the River Clyde, Robert Napier & Sons, Tod & McGregor, and James & George Thomson, employed approximately 5000 people at their ship yards.

Glasgow’s heavy industry, as well as employing large numbers of people, also resulted in significant amounts of pollution hanging over the city. At the St. Rollox Chemical Works, a 435 feet (132 m) high chimney stack was built in an attempt to lift fumes above local residents.

The Tennant’s stack was the largest chimney in the world until 1859, when a 454 feet (138 m) chimney was built at the nearby Townsend Chemical Works. Its successful construction became a public marvel. You could pay to see the view from the top by being hoisted up on a small, sideless platform – not one for those with a dislike of heights!

But isolated attempts to improve air quality had little impact, and those who could, moved west – the direction prevailing winds blew from – to the newly established suburban burghs such as Kelvinside and Hillhead and their fashionably spacious and airy new housing. 

A bird eye view of Glasgow in 1864 (lithograph by Thomas Sulman; image reproduced with kind permission of Glasgow City Archive). The image shows the heavy industry and chimney stacks along the Clyde, and the large St. Rollox chimney stack in the centre background.

 

We now move to STOP 3 - Victorian Trends: Bird Stuffers and Ball Kickers and Fizzy Pop

 

Albion Street (photograph: Gill Newton)

We now stop on Albion Street. 

The open area in front of you is one of a number of similar spaces within Glasgow city centre where earlier buildings have been knocked down.  As Glasgow evolved, buildings came and went. Even whole streets have appeared and disappeared. In the nineteenth century this part of Albion Street was called North Albion Street, and connected to College Street, now disappeared, heading east towards and under what is now the University of Strathclyde Technology and Innovation Centre.

In 1881, this street was home to a number of businesses, including the Bird and Animal Stuffer shop of Jason Gairdner.  His was one of at least 15 taxidermy shops in Glasgow at this time.  The number of these businesses is indicative of widespread curiosity about the natural world in the Victorian era.

Gaining popularity in part through the great exhibitions of science and innovation that happened across the world at that time, exotic taxidermy became the most fashionable home décor of the age. Stuffed birds and feathers were also popular adornments for ladies’ hats.

Some of the bird stuffers of Glasgow may have learned their trade from an Edinburgh rival.  John Edmonstone, a freed enslaved man from Guyana, had travelled to Scotland in 1817.[1]  Once freed, he set up shop as a bird stuffer in Edinburgh.  In addition to selling stuffed birds, Edmonstone made an income through tutoring Edinburgh University students in his art.  Amongst his pupils was Charles Darwin, who we know went on to use the skill during his voyage on HMS Beagle, preserving bird and animal specimens that would help evidence his theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859.

 

 

John Edmonstone tutoring Darwin  (image: Copyright State Darwin Museum)

Every green space, like the one in front of you now, is a precious commodity in a city. Before the development of parks and sports grounds, unused land at the city margins was used for informal recreation. As leisure time increased, so did sporting activity. Many sports of the era have left a long legacy. Arguably the most influential on modern society has been football (soccer). 

Glasgow was home to the first association football team in Scotland.  Queen’s Park F.C. was formed in 1867 and was the most successful football club of that early era.

McNeil Advert from Glasgow Trade Directory (image: National Library of Scotland)

Amongst the Queen’s Park players of the 1870’s was Henry McNeil.  Henry received 10 international caps for his country.  Amongst the games he played in was a 7-2 win over England, at the original Hampden Park stadium in March 1878. Henry scored two goals that day. Taking advantage of his knowledge of the sport (and his celebrity), he ran an outfitters with his brother on Union Street, making and selling a variety of football-related kit.

The McNeil brothers were not the only businesspeople to see an entrepreneurial opportunity in sporting trends. There were an increasing number of athletic, bicycle, cricket and football-related commercial listings in trade directories at this time.

At the same time that football was gaining a foothold in Glasgow life, so was a particular fizzy drink known and loved by many today. In 1875, Barr's famous aerated water was one of hundreds of soft drinks businesses in Scotland. Soft drinks were popular because they seemed to represent a safe, modern drink in ways untreated water could not, combined with the energy that their sugar content provided.[2]

Early IRN BRU advert with strongman

Fizzy sweet drinks are now an international, multi-billion-pound industry. There are global brands, and regional brands, and some. like Scotland’s Irn Bru, are regional brands that out-compete global ones. Whatever they taste of - some countries like celery or even tarragon flavoured soda – it is certain that the fizzy drinks loved in one country are a matter of puzzled curiosity to people elsewhere.[3]

If you had asked a person on the street in Glasgow in the 1880s to predict which businesses out of taxidermy, football, or fizzy drinks would go on to become global industries they might not have guessed either football or fizzy drinks. Business was, as it is now, difficult to predict, and some types of businesses have been lost from the streets of Glasgow.

 

[1]https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/features/john-edmonstone-enslaved-man-to-free-as-a-bird-stuffer

[2] https://www.agbarr.co.uk/about-us/our-business/our-history/ 

[3] Levin, J (xxxx) Soda and fizzy drinks: A global history

 

We now move to STOP 4 - The Old Fruit Market, Candleriggs Bazaar

 

Cross the road to Candleriggs street opposite Ramshorn (St. David’s) Church and burial ground. This was the final resting place of many prominent Glasgow merchants of the 1700s. On Candleriggs, look down to see pavement poetry by Edwin Morgan commemorating the former markets and trades at this location.

Pavement poetry (photograph: Gill Newton)

We pass the City Halls façade to stop at the entrance to Merchant Square on the left.  If it is open, walk inside. Afterwards exit diagonally onto Bell Street to resume the route.

 

 

Merchant Square entrance and present day interior (photographs: Gill Newton)

This collection of buildings along Candleriggs includes The City Hall, The Fruit Market and Merchant Square. Merchant Square was originally known as Candleriggs Bazaar. The bazaar was a new type of retail space in the 19^th century. Bazaars were covered marketplaces, often with glass roofs. Some also contained picture galleries, winter gardens, tea rooms, and other spaces for entertainments.

Candleriggs Bazaar was predominantly a food market - less than half the stalls were fruit and vegetables sellers, with the remainder being taken by cheese, egg, butter, ham, and poultry sellers, as well as non-food items like books.

 

Bazaar and City Hall interior layout shown on nineteenth century town map of Glasgow, (Image copyright Ordnance Survey 1857 and 2024)

One in three of the bazaar food businesses were run by migrants, almost all of them Irish.  We know that migrants in this period usually looked for jobs, rather than self-employment, when they came to Glasgow. With few resources, they urgently needed income. They were often fleeing –economic hardship, like the mid-19^th century Great Famine in Ireland (1846-50). Those who did seek out self-employment needed a way of starting a business that had lower entry costs. A stall at a bazaar required less monetary outlay than a bricks and mortar shop. 

One of Glasgow’s best-known businessmen was a grocer of Irish decent - Thomas Lipton.  Lipton’s parents had emigrated from the north of Ireland following the potato famine and, eventually, owned a small grocery shop in the Gorbals. It was a tiny store, but Frances Lipton sourced her ham, dairy goods, and eggs directly from farmers she had known back in County Fermanagh.[1] When Thomas Lipton came to build his retail grocery chain he followed the same model – calling his shops ‘Irish markets’ and importing goods direct from the producers.

In order to feed the growing city, food came from great distances. By 1881 we know that, as well as improved rail connections for transporting ice-packed fresh goods rapidly, there was new refrigerated ship technology that allowed for transatlantic, and even the first antipodean, shipments of meat. Glasgow firms, for example, Bell & Co, were shipping meat from America for sale in Glasgow and London.[2]

 

Steamships at Broomielaw (image: Mitchell Library)

Lipton built up a reputation for selling high quality food cheaply, and by the 1880s had 150 stores around Britain. One of his first grocery stores was not far from here at 37 High Street. As his business continued to grow, he continued the same business model and liked to buy direct from the farmers. In the case of tea buying, he went an additional step and bought his own tea estates in Sri Lanka.  setting up his own blending factory. The supermarket chain ceased to have the Lipton name after 1982 and most people now only know Lipton as a brand name in tea.

 

	Advert for Lipton's Ham
	(image: Mitchell Library)

                                                                                                                               

During the growth of his business empire, Lipton was known for paying his employees much better than his rivals did and offered better working conditions and hours than elsewhere. If you recall the information about strikes and labour unrest that was covered in Stop 1 at George Square, then Lipton can be seen as an example of positive employment. He was generally popular with the working classes and not just because of his low prices. He supported the families of strikers in other industries on many occasions by supplying them with free provisions from his stores.

[1] Mackay, James A. (1998) Sir Thomas Lipton: The Man Who Invented Himself, Edinburgh, Mainstream Publishing.

[2] Project data

 

We now move to STOP 5 - Bell Street

 

We are standing now at the junction of Bell Street and High Street

 

Bell Street in 1868 (photograph: Thomas Annan, sourced from Wikimedia Commons)

The photograph of Bell Street taken by Thomas Annan in 1868 was amongst a set commissioned by the City, documenting the old closes and streets of Glasgow. They were taken before slum demolition in line with the City of Glasgow Improvements Acts from 1866 onwards.[1] Annan’s images are famous for capturing the social and spatial complexity of Glasgow at this time.

If you look closely at the photograph, on the right-hand side, at first floor level, you can see the part of the signage of the firm of Jason Howie. Howie was a funeral undertaker and carriage hirer, who had his main premises at 6 Bell street, and stables across the High Street at 70 McPherson street. 

Many businesses in the city needed horse power to transport goods around the city and offer other services. Valuation roll records give us an insight into how varied the need for horses was in the city through stabling provision. We see stables associated with businesses as varied as auctioneers, bottlers, chemists, dairymen, builders, and all manner of food sales businesses and other manufacturers and merchants.

Horse-drawn carts in Argyle Street (image: Mitchell Library)

 

Looking across High Street, the large building on the corner was built as a bonded warehouse in the 1880s by the Glasgow & South Western Railway for the whisky trade. A bonded warehouse is a secure premises where goods that will be subject to taxes or other duties are kept, or subject to manufacturing processes, before they are taxed.

 

Warehouses opposite Bell Street (photograph: Gill Newton)

Canal and river-adjacent sites were other preferred locations for warehouses, making transportation easier.  Over 50 bonded and free warehouses were advertised in 1881 and 1901 trade directories. Some were connected to particular distilleries, like Laphroaig and Bowmore, both producing whisky on the Isle of Islay in western Scotland.

Others dealt in a range of goods, and bonded warehousekeepers found inventive ways to reduce their tax bill. In 1881, Laidlaw & Co and James Fleming both made duty-free tobacco juice. Fleming advertised the tobacco juice as an insecticide for sheep!

The development of the railway system had a beneficial effect in widening the market for Scotch whisky from distant distilleries, now able to be more cheaply transported to buyers from much further afield. The bonded warehouse opposite would have received whisky straight off trains arriving into College Goods station behind, and then locked it away until the tax and duties were settled.

 

1903 Advert for Isle of Mull Whisky bottled in Oxfordshire (image: Wikimedia Commons)

Whisky was purchased by wholesalers and whisky brokers, but it was the blending business that showed the most promise, as ‘district whiskies’ with pronounced flavours became less fashionable. Unlike today, in the 19^th century blended whisky was seen as the premium product.

Increasingly, firms looked outside the limited domestic market for new opportunities.  At the beginning of the twentieth century, Australia was the strongest export market for Scotch Whisky.  Out of a total export volume of 5 million proof gallons, Australia took almost 2 million.

Although some ‘entrepreneurial’ producers most certainly took advantage of international customers with less product knowledge, and were therefore less choosy about what they sent, blending whisky allowed for improved consistency in both aroma and taste.  This approach to whisky production, combined with increasingly sophisticated marketing strategies that differed depending on market, created what is arguably considered today Scotland’s most successful export achievement.[2]

[1] Boman, Charlotte. "At home in the Victorian city? Revisiting Thomas Annan and the social contexts of early urban photography." History of Photography 43, no. 1 (2019): 27-46.

[2] See Glen, Iseabal Ann. "An economic history of the distilling industry in Scotland, 1750-1914." (1969) for more detail on the Whisky trade in Scotland.

 

We now move to STOP 6 - High Street corner at Glasgow Cross

 

Tolbooth steeple (photograph: Gill Newton)

 

You are now standing at Glasgow Cross with the Tolbooth Steeple in view along Trongate, all that now remains of the municipal tolbooth building dating from 1634.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tontine Building in 1868 (photographer: Thomas Annan; image Wikimedia Commons)

 The Tontine building that was next to the Tolbooth formed the main commercial meeting place for merchants in the eighteenth century, before the Royal Exchange was built, and when this part of town was still the fashionable centre of Glasgow.

In fact, the High Street that you have just walked along formed the spine of the oldest part of the city. It was the main street in the medieval period, forming a north-south route between the Cathedral of St. Mungo in the north, sweeping past the original grounds of Glasgow University (which would eventually be developed into College railway goods station), and down to the banks of the River Clyde.

As the 19^th century progressed, the large houses of the merchant classes and their gardens built in this area in earlier centuries were squeezed by the land use pressures of a rapidly expanding city. The merchants moved westwards to grand new houses. Their old houses were extended and subdivided, especially in the backlands behind the street, which decayed into cheap rents affordable to incomers.

Rapid expansion of the city and its population was not without cost. Glasgow’s population more than doubled in forty years, reaching nearly one million inhabitants by 1901.[1] The city has its visible scars from coping with this and the changes that followed. In some areas, like the High Street, it is difficult to see much that remains of 19^th century buildings, or any particular period, to unify the streetscape. Instead we see the cumulative effects of waves of overcrowding and infill building, slum clearance, 20^th century decline, and of poverty that persisted despite the wealth of the city.

Immediately southwest of here was a residential area  well-known to Dr James Burn Russell, pioneering public health reformer, as Sanitary District 14. It covered the area bounded by Stockwell Street and Saltmarket, Trongate to the north and the river to the south, including numerous wynds (alleys) and streets like Bridgegate and Goosedubbs that had become notorious for overcrowding, deprivation, disease and crime. Covering just 35 acres (13 Ha),  less than a hundredth part of the city’s area, the block contained nearly half of the 99 lodging houses known to the city authorities, and was the unhealthiest part of Glasgow.

Dr Russell was Glasgow’s first Medical Officer of Health and successfully lobbied the city for improvement. This meant slum clearance and – eventually - rebuilding at lower density, with better sanitation. Russell described the Sanitary District 14 slums as "filthy beyond measure.... For years the population of many thousands has been added to Glasgow by immigrants without a single house being built to receive them."

Slum clearance helped control disease outbreaks, but displaced so many inhabitants between 1871 and 1881 that a reviewer of Russell’s triumphant reports drily noted  “Much of this district has been improved off the face of the earth”[2].

High Street from the Cross circa 1870 (photograph: Thomas Annan, sourced from Wikimedia Commons). W & G Millar’s is on the right.

 

Directly opposite the tollbooth steeple on the other corner of the High Street in the 1880s was the shop/warehouse of W & G Millar. It commanded one of the largest retail rental values of the city in that period and was a substantial and fitting addition to this important street.

But there was even more money to be had in lodging houses than there was retail, as we know from a court case of 1888. In addition to the warehouse, W & G Millar owned the building next door and immediately to the north of their furniture shop. Gavin Millar converted it to hostel-style accommodation and rented it to Thomas Craig in 1883 for £400 per annum and the additional price of wooden partitions. There were three flats, containing 300 beds.

In 1886, Millar decided to take advantage of this new business opportunity himself, converting a storage building behind the High Street premises into another lodging house. This new accommodation was called Watson Street Home, fitted out with an astonishing 512 beds, and let at an enormous rent of £1000 per annum.

Thomas Craig sued Millar for breach of contract, insisting that if there had been other lodging houses in the area he would not have entered into the lease and made additional improvements. Millar had seen how much money Craig was making and decided to exploit the situation – and now there was too much competition for Craig to make a decent return on his investment.[3] Craig’s claim that there were no other lodging houses appears to have ignored the many others in Sanitary District 14 just across the other side of Trongate. Millar made much the same point in his defence.

 

[1] Population of Glasgow municipal burgh plus its suburban burghs because the city’s urban footprint was expanding into these areas

[2] The Vital Statistics of Glasgow . Nature 34, 568–569 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034568a0

[3] Craig v Millar, 20 july 1888, Docket 177 Court of Session, 1^st Division. https://vlex.co.uk/vid/craig-v-millier-803819761

 

We now move to STOP 7 - Trongate

 

You are now standing opposite the distinctive steeple of the Tron, or Laigh, Kirk.

The tower interrupts the otherwise uniform frontage of Argyle Street, easily identified in old photographs and paintings of Glasgow. ‘Tron’ refers to the beam that was used to weigh traded goods before they entered the city walls.[1] It is an apt name to mark the entrance to the Merchant City, and this 1628 structure is one of the oldest in the district.

 

Trongate in 1889 (image: Wikimedia Commons)

The kirk is now a theatre, and stands as a reminder of the raucous entertainments that were a feature of 19^th century Glasgow and of the east end of the city once the ‘respectable’ citizens moved out to the western suburbs away from the industry, boarding houses, and hotels.

A little further down Argyle Street on the same side of the road you can find the Panoptican Music Hall building. Singers, comedians, acrobats, and animal acts all appeared on the same programme including the teenage Stan Laurel, of Laurel and Hardy, who made his debut there.[2]

 

Panopticon Music Hall Building (photograph: Gill Newton)

The area around Trongate was a heady mixture of bars, brothels, and affordable entertainment. In 1861, just on Trongate itself, there were at least 30 premises that sold or stored alcohol – from William Mitchell’s tavern and bowling alley at no. 164 to Mrs Deans the spirit dealer at no. 25. By 1881 there were fewer 'taverns’, with alcohol being sold primarily from so-called wine and spirit merchant shops, which were usually pubs, and cellars.[3]

Thomas Lipton’s mother, the provisions shop keeper, and Mrs Deans, the spirit dealer, are examples of where we find a lot of women in the entrepreneurial population of the late 19^th century. They ran businesses that are allied to the provision of food and drink. The women in business that we meet at this end of town – the boarding house keepers, tavern owners, and dining room proprietors – are not the only type of women’s businesses that we will encounter on this tour, but they are representative.

Public houses on Bartholomew’s  map of 1884. Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.

 

Theatres, music halls, saloons and bowling alleys provided further business opportunities. All forms of entertainment were big business and we find women actively engaged here too. Popular theatres and circuses in particular could afford to pay increasingly high rents, maximising the return on the premises they occupy.

In 1861, Mrs Edmund Glover, was paying £500 rent for the Theatre Royal (in some sources her more famous husband is credited as its manager but the Valuation rolls and Trade directories clearly state that she is the manager and lessee). After the well-known London actress Marie Litton took over the Theatre Royal, by 1881 the rental value rose to £1200, outstripping increases on other property types in the area.

Mrs Glover also managed the Prince’s Theatre, with a rental value of £225 in 1861. A few years later that theatre was taken over by Hengler’s Circus, famous for its equestrian acts (today there is a pub named after Hengler’s circus on Sauchiehall Street). Over the next twenty years the value of this former theatre more than trebled. In the 1860s to 1880s, permanent venues for previously temporary attractions like circuses were sought after, flourishing in newly populous Victorian cities like Glasgow, meaning suitably-sized buildings were in high demand.[4]

Another indoor circus, that of James Newsome, tripled the rental value of a warehouse on East Ingram Street he had taken over in the same twenty year period between 1861 and 1881.  If you had the choice of renting out your building as a theatre or as a warehouse in the city centre, then you could bank on the higher returns that entertainment’s profits would deliver. [5]

Hengler’s Circus poster circa 1872 (image: Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] https://www.theglasgowstory.com/image/?inum=TGSB00095

[2] https://www.britanniapanopticon.org/history

[3] Project data

[4] Brenda Assael The Circus and Victorian Society, University of Virginia Press, 2005

[5] Project data

 

We now move to STOP 8 - Trades House

 

Trades House monument (photograph: Gill Newton)

We now stand outside a monument to Glasgow’s trades: look to the left down the passageway and you will see Trades House, home to the trade guilds of Glasgow. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trades House (right photograph: Gill Newton)

A guild is an association of craftsmen or merchants that formed to protect and further their interests. They, to all intents and purposes, operated a monopoly on who was allowed to trade in those crafts in the city. If you were not a member of the guild you were not permitted to trade.

Guilds invested large sums in lobbying governments and political elites to maintain their rights.[1] The trade guilds of Glasgow covered fourteen crafts and included: the hammer men (metalworkers), wrights (skilled carpenters), fleshers (butchers), barbers (medical practitioners), and bonnet makers and dyers.

 

 

 

 

 

Guild crest of the Hammermen (Harry Lumsden: History of the Hammermen of Glasgow, 1912). The guild originally comprised craftsmen associated with metalworking – for example blacksmiths, goldsmiths, armourers, sword-makers, clockmakers, tinsmiths and other similar activity.  

 

Like many other European societies, guilds in Scotland had considerable influence until the late eighteenth / early nineteenth century.[2]  In Scotland, the right of the guilds to claim exclusive privilege over trading in burghs was abolished in 1846. 

By this time the nature of production was changing considerably, and the traditional apprenticeship structure of training  could not keep pace with changes in the labour market. Today Trades House is a charity focusing on both educational initiatives and supporting people in need.

Guilds were vulnerable to changes in how goods were manufactured or produced. Through scaling up the size of operations, businesses produced goods in higher volume more efficiently, and were increasingly developing economies of scale.

They were taking advantage of the productive powers of the division of labour that Adam Smith (Glasgow’s - if not the world’s - most famous economist) had outlined almost a century before.

 

The pin factory (engraving: Robert Bénard in Diderot & D’Alembert: Recueil de planches, sur les sciences, les arts libéraux, et les arts méchaniques,  Vol. 4,1762, Epinglier pl. III). Described by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776) when outlining how the division of labour into specialized tasks could speed up production and increase profits

Scaling up was facilitated by changes in business law.  Incorporated companies became easier to set up. They had a legal existence and resources separate and potentially ring-fenced from the personal assets of their founders (limited liability). They could also raise large sums of money from many individuals through shares.

Trade directories show that incorporation was on the rise - there was a trebling in business corporations with a presence in Glasgow between 1861 and 1881. But partnerships that simply pooled individual partners’ assets and required no legal declaration remained the most important large business form until the very end of the 19th century. Many partnerships started out as family businesses and introduced other partners to keep the business going, eventually becoming corporations in the 1890s.

On a scale that would perhaps have been unimaginable even to Adam Smith, The Singer Manufacturing Company’s factory in Glasgow was one of the world’s best examples of scaling up at the start of the twentieth century.

 

The Singer factory on Clydebank circa1900 (image: Wikimedia Commons)

Employing almost 15,000 people at its peak, it produced over a million sewing machines a year in the decade before World War I.  Sewing machines became essential items in millions of households worldwide. Early models were beautiful and substantial pieces of furniture, as well as functional labour-saving devices that sped up the drudgery of hand-sewing clothing and furnishings.   

 

Glasgow 1861 Post Office Directory Singer advertisement (National Library of Scotland)

An American company founded in 1851, I. M. Singer were already advertising their sewing machines in Glasgow Trade directories by 1861.  Singer built their first dedicated sewing machine factory in Europe here in the manufacturing district of Bridgeton, east of Glasgow Green at 116 James Street in 1869. 

Glasgow was selected as a location for the factory because of a combination of the availability of relatively low cost, highly skilled labour, and also its shipping links to the world. As production grew and Singer became one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world, they expanded to west of the city in the 1880s, opening the new factory at Clydebank to meet global demand for sewing machines. [3]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Ogilvie, Sheilagh. ‘Guilds and the Economy’ Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance. Retrieved 10 Apr. 2024, from https://oxfordre.com/economics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190625979.001.0001/acrefore-9780190625979-e-538

[2] Ogilvie, Sheilagh. "The economics of guilds." Journal of Economic Perspectives 28, no. 4 (2014): 169-192.

[3] Se. Godley, Andrew C. “Pioneering Foreign Direct Investment in British Manufacturing.” The Business History Review 73, no. 3 (1999): 394–429.

 

We now move to STOP 9 - Hutcheson's hospital

 

Standing now at the end of Hutcheson Street, you will be able to see a striking white building with a clocktower and spire.

 

Hutcheson’s Hospital building (photograph: Gill Newton)

Hutcheson’s Hall was constructed at the beginning of the nineteenth century as a hospital. It wasn’t a hospital in the medical sense we now understand it, but served as a charitable home for the destitute. It replaced a much older hostel in Trongate and the statues on the outside were part of that earlier 17^th century building.  Over the years it has also been home to a library, school and clearing bank.

The responsibility of caring for the sick in Glasgow fell to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary immediately to the west of the Cathedral, which received its Royal Charter in 1792.

Glasgow Royal Infirmary circa 1812 (image: Wikimedia Commons)

An industrial city in the 19^th century was a dangerous city, with frequent accidents adding to the burden of infectious disease. Joseph Lister developed his pioneering work on antiseptic in surgery at Glasgow’s infirmary in the 1860s, inspired by the very many compound fractures he saw, which arose from industrial accidents across the city.

Loss of limb in industrial accidents was commonplace at this time. Glasgow had no less than 5 artificial limb makers listed in the trade directories in the early 1880s. This stands testament to the rudimentary surgeries possible while anaesthesia was in its infancy, and amputation was still the only remedy for severe injuries.

 

1901 Glasgow Post Office Directory Artificial limbs advertisement (image: National Library of Scotland)

Injured workers were fortunate compared to the many who lost their lives in industrial accidents in this period.  In 1883, more than 100 workmen and boys lost their lives when the SS Daphne sank in the Clyde as it began a final fitting process. In 1889, 29 young women lost their lives when a partially constructed wall blew down onto a weaving shed at the Templeton Carpet Factory on Glasgow Green. In 1872 an explosion at Tradeston Flour mill saw the loss of 18 lives when a fire ignited dust distributed throughout the building. Death, disablement, and ill-health were accepted as part of the cost of business in this period.

Tradeston Flour mill explosion (Illustrated London News, 1872)

Financial support was needed for the victims of industrial accidents. At the start of the twentieth century, we see the development of improved employers’ liability and worker’s compensation schemes, which offered some support for employees, and access to compensation following industrial accidents.

Workers were encouraged to join one of the many local and nationwide insurance companies or non-profit friendly societies providing life assurance in Glasgow, such as the Caledonian Fire and Life Insurance Co, Sun Fire and Life Insurance Co, Mutual Providence Alliance, ‘for all Classes’, and the Royal Liver Friendly Society.  These provided lump sum payouts if the worst occurred, typically covering the costs of decent burial, and sometimes also paying for medicines or treatment, in a time well before the NHS (National Health Service).

Before you turn left along Ingram Street, take a look at the grand building with columned portico to your right, now known as Old Sheriff Court. This was the home of Glasgow city council until 1889, when it moved to the city chambers on George Square that we saw at the beginning of this tour.

 

We now move to STOP 10 - Virginia Place

 

We now stop at Virginia Place (at the Corinthian Club).

 

Virginia Place (photograph: Gill Newton)

In the second half of the 19th century this imposing building was a bank, owned by the Glasgow and Ship Bank and then the Union Bank of Scotland following a merger. 

The name Virginia Place is related to a more ancient building on this site. In the 18th century this was the location of Virginia Mansion, which was built by the Glasgow tobacco merchant, George Buchanan. Prior to the dominance of heavy industry, Glasgow was best known for its Atlantic trade in tobacco and sugar, which depended on the exploitation of enslaved people working on plantations in America and the Caribbean.

Many other street and place names in central Glasgow are connected with the Atlantic trade.  Buchanan Street, Cochrane Street, Cunninghame Road, Glassford Street and Ingram Street are named after merchants involved in the tobacco trade. Jamaica Street traces its name to the sugar trade.

Slavery in the United States tobacco plantations continued until 1865 following the American Civil War. In territories including Caribbean sugar plantations that Britain controlled, the Emancipation Act ended slavery in 1834, although it took several more years until the former slaves were no longer obligated to their former owners.  After emancipation, the slave owners (but not the slaves) were paid large sums in compensation, giving some sense of the value of the labour the enslaved African workers had provided.

For example, Mungo Campbell Junior was a West India Merchant in Glasgow and a partner in John Campbell & Co, in 1861 living at 247 St Vincent Street, about 1km west of here. He shared in £45,000 the family firm was awarded for freeing its slaves in British Guiana.[1]

The It Wisnae Us website has an interactive map that highlights additional landmark sites and buildings in Glasgow connected to tobacco and sugar merchants. You might want to retrace your steps another day to learn more.

George Buchanan’s Virginia Mansion in Glasgow (image: The Glasgow Story)

In Victorian Glasgow, the profits and capital that had accumulated from the Atlantic trade still provided sources of business start-up finance within prominent merchant families.  Many of these families became involved in the banking companies that established themselves in Glasgow during this period, and credit sourced from these banks drove the commercial economy.

The Glasgow entrepreneurs of the 19^th century are not so frequently remembered in the street names as the sugar and tobacco ‘lords’ of the previous century. They often preferred to build monuments and leave their mark in the form of impressive statues, mausoleums, and headstones in the Necropolis cemetery and park overlooking the city or in the cathedral, as well as in the name of their own firms. But their traces are all around us – in the transport networks, the layout of the suburbs, even the pollution stains on the buildings.

Despite all the wealth generated in the Victorian period, many of the social problems of industrialisation were not systematically addressed until the 20^th century. But personal philanthropy was an important outlet for some of the most successful 19^th century century industrialists. Their legacies fund amenities Glasgow still enjoys today.

Elder Park, south of the river, was Glasgow’s first publicly gifted park, given to the people of Govan in 1883 by Isabella Elder, independently wealthy widow of John Elder,  engineer and shipbuilder. On his sudden death she became sole owner of the Elder shipyard in 1869 until a new partnership involving her brother took over almost a year later. John Elder had created a welfare fund for workers and was highly respected as an employer but died before realising other philanthropic intentions. Isabella Elder added her own feminist twist to his philanthropy. She made about £200,000 of public donations while living and left another £125,000 to charity on her death in 1905. She funded a library, nurse training, and Queen Margaret College and Elder medical school, the first Scottish college for women.

Necropolis tomb of John and Isabella Elder (photograph: Anabel Marsh, image: Wikimedia Commons)

 

[1] Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery database, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/45275)

 

We now move to STOP 11 - Royal Exchange

We now stop opposite Royal Exchange Square, with the imposing columns of the Gallery of Modern Art in view. 

 

Present day Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art on Royal Exchange Square (photograph: Gill Newton)

Today this square is probably as well known for the statue of the Duke of Wellington (often to be seen adorned with traffic cone headwear, as in the image) as it is any of its historic buildings. At the centre of the square is the Royal Exchange, now Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. 

It is hard to believe, because the gallery looks like it was always intended to be a public building, but it started life as the private residence of William Cunninghame.  Cunninghame was one of Glasgow’s wealthy Tobacco Lords, and amassed much of his fortune through speculation on the price of tobacco during the US War of Independence. Completed in 1780, at a cost of £10,000, the building was considered “one of the most magnificent mansions in the West of Scotland”.

The building became home to the Royal Exchange in 1827. A focal point for the city’s merchants, the ‘Exchange’ was the place that businessmen gathered to make deals in respect of commodities and other goods. Reflecting the changing nature of commerce in Glasgow, in the 19^th century tobacco and sugar took second place to home-produced coal, metals, and manufactured textile goods, to name just a few. It was said of the iron trade that the deals made in Glasgow were a barometer of global prices and conditions.[1]

Royal Exchange ‘Iron Ring’ circa 1900 (image: Mitchell Library)

Surrounded by the Lanarkshire coal and ironstone deposits, Glasgow had a strong natural advantage for fossil fuel-powered industry, but both are heavy materials and trade in iron and coal would not have been possible without advancements in railway infrastructure and shipping. Glasgow produced both locomotives and ships, becoming a significant producer of cutting-edge ships with world-leading technology. Fast, frequent and reliable steam shipping made the increases in global trade in the second half of the 19^th century possible. 

Giving access to routes around the world, the port of Glasgow shipped more tonnage of cargo than London or Liverpool in the 1850s.[2] After improvements to the river and the building of new docks, large ships were able to come directly into the city rather than ending their voyages 30km away on the coast. The Post Office trade directories give an indication of the importance of shipping to the city.  Over 450 shipping companies or their agents had a business presence in Glasgow.

The Anchor Line building on St Vincent Street (near to Stop 16), is one of the most identifiable reminders of the shipping industry’s importance in Glasgow. Today it is home to a restaurant, but the Anchor Line shipping company was one of Glasgow’s largest home-grown shipping firms, and operated regular passenger and cargo services around the world.

 

1911 Anchor Line shipping advert (image: Glenvick-Gyonvik archives)

Improvements in communication were not only happening between countries, but also where needs were at their most intense, at the everyday local level, connecting firms, customers and individuals. By 1901, some Post Office trade directory listings included new telephone numbers and telegraphic addresses for immediate spoken contact or brief written messages conveyed instantly.  All detailed business information on products and services still needed to be physically sent to the recipient, through an increasingly sophisticated postal system . Private delivery companies carried packets locally, integrated with national and global forwarding services. They supplemented the several daily letter and packet deliveries operated by the state-run General Post Office.

It is often overlooked, but another of Scotland’s most significant exports in the period of industrialisation was its people. Gross migration figures count the number of people who leave without taking account of those who return. Between 1853 and 1930 the gross migration figure for Scotland was approximately 2.15 million people, creating the Scottish diaspora in Australia and New Zealand, Canada, the United States of America, and across the globe, linked by common cultural roots. The broad patterns of emigration were similar across Scotland, England and Wales but Scottish rates were always proportionately higher than England especially in the 1850s, the period 1901-1914, and in the 1920s. [3]

One of the families leaving Scotland in 1848 were the Carnegies from Dunfermline. The group travelling included the 12-year old Andrew Carnegie who would go on to lead the huge expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He sold his company in 1901, split his time between the US and Scotland and devoted the rest of his life (and his fortune) to philanthropy. Carnegie valued education and its role in building peaceful, prosperous societies as paramount.  His main charitable foundations in Scotland were devoted to improvement and expansion of the Scottish universities and student financial aid; aiding his home town Dunfermline’s educational institutions; and libraries, theatres and child-welfare centres. [4]  Carnegie’s wealth helped fund 14 libraries in Glasgow. He once said, “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.[5]

 

 Andrew Carnegie in 1893 (image: Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] C. Bewsher: The Glasgow Royal Exchange Centenary (1927), p. 31.

[2] I. Maver: Glasgow (2000), p. 122.

[3] Anderson, M. (2018) Scotland's Populations from the 1850s to Today. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

[4] https://carnegie-trust.org/about-us/our-history/our-founder/

[5] https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/libraries/family-history/stories-and-blogs-from-the-mitchell/times-past-blogs/carnegie-libraries-times-past

 

We now move to STOP 12 - St Enoch and Argyle Street

 

 

Looking down Argyle Street to Central Station (image: Gill Newton)

You are now standing on Argyle Street.

Today Buchanan Street is the main commercial street within the city and it was a major street in Victorian Glasgow too. However, Argyle Street was busier.  By the 1870s two railway stations brought trains directly into this part of town. Caledonian Central Station, still located just west of here, connected Glasgow with Edinburgh , while  St Enoch Station was located right here (now gone, except for the subway station).

From 1876 passengers could travel directly from London St Pancras station to St Enoch station in Glasgow. These new stations brought crowds of people straight into the city centre. For decades before that, people travelling by train from the south arrived the other side of the river and had to cross Glasgow Bridge, usually on foot.

Argyle Street connected people to Trongate and the original heart of the city around the High Street, but it also continues the other side of Central Station, leading west to the newer part of town.   Its importance is reflected in the commercial rents we see. Argyle Street had more commercial premises and a higher median annual rental value for shops at £115 in 1881 compared to £100 on Buchanan Street. These two streets, along with Queen Street near where you began this tour near another central railway station, and Jamaica Street, ranked highest among Glasgow’s late 19^th century shopping streets.

 

St Enoch Station Hotel in 1879  (photograph by James Valentine, image sourced from Wikimedia Commons)

In the 1860s when the trains still terminated at Bridge Street Station on the other side of the river,  Jamaica Street just up the Argyle street beyond Central Station, and joining on to Glasgow Bridge, received more footfall than it does today. With its proximity to the passenger steamship docks on Broomielaw and bustling crowds making their way north into the City, Jamaica Street was a great place to position your business.

Amongst the businesses located on Jamaica Street in 1861 was A. Gardner & Son, cabinetmakers and upholsterers.  Located at 36 Jamaica Street, their shop and warehouse, constructed in 1856, is the oldest commercial building with a cast iron facade in Britain, modelled on new plate glass construction techniques demonstrated in 1851 by London’s Crystal Palace exhibition space.  With rows of large, arched windows to let in the maximum of natural light, this furniture emporium contained 5 floors of elegantly arranged merchandise, and was considered “amongst the city’s many magnificent temples of trade”.[1]

 

Jamaica Street (photograph by James Valentine, image Wikimedia Commons)

In 1881, there were over 27,000 commercial premises in the city, with a total rental valuation of over £1.5m a year. Similar to today, city centre premises came with a significant rent premium.  Larger firms wanted central offices in prestigious and easy to access locations. Argyle Street was notable for its concentration of large shops. A good selection of different businesses selling  a wide range of goods helped visitors find what they needed, choosing from a variety they could not expect to find smaller towns and villages.

Shops also supplied local residents with everyday needs. Some of those residents lived closer than you might think. Tenement ‘houses’ (not just for the working classes) meant many families lived in purpose built apartments often located above the shops, accessed through passageways to stairs at the back.

Rents were higher in the central streets even among the generally smaller businesses run by one owner. These sole trader businesses paid almost twice as much for premises in the city centre than elsewhere in the city. Locations on the best streets were affordable only to those with access to sufficient capital, pricing out some entry types of business.

In 1881 Argyle Stret had over 200 shops but only three ‘house & shops’ , a smaller and cheaper form of premises where the business owner lived at the back.  Women paid approximately 25% less for the premises they occupied across the city compared to men. But for those with the means to access the opportunity, prime locations like Argyle Street were sought after by  businesswomen as well as businessmen.

 

Argyle Street is in RD (Registration District) 7, the darkest area on the maps where rents were highest, Men and women who could afford premises in this area traded on equal terms in terms of the rents they paid.

 

[1] http://www.glasgowwestaddress.co.uk/1888_Book/Gardner_A_&_Son.htm

 

We now move to STOP 13 - Argyle Arcade

 

You are now at the entrance of Argyll Arcade.

Argyll Arcade entrance (photograph: Gill Newton)

If you are here during opening hours then we invite you to walk through the arcade, and you will emerge round the corner on Buchanan Street. If you are not able to enter then you may be able to appreciate its fine period features and grand style from this postcard image.

Argyll Arcade circa 1908 (image: Mitchell Library)

We have already seen another example of another covered shopping development, an innovation that was all the rage in 19^th century retailing, at Stop 4 and the Candleriggs Bazaar. Scotland’s arcades were inspired by those in Paris, and the first UK example was built in London in 1817.[1]

Argyll Arcade was built just 10 years later in 1827 – and joined two main shopping streets, Argyle and Buchanan. Arcades were glass-roofed, undercover shopping areas and very much the preserve of small retail shops for those with money to spend on the finer things in life.

Today, Argyll Arcade is known for its high-end jewellery stores but in 1881 there was a wider range of goods and services on offer – from wine merchants, to opticians and confectioners, all the way to watchmakers.

At No 1 in the arcade in 1881 was the foreign exchange service of Jessie Barnett, the jeweller. At No 6 there was the needlework supplies store of Ellen Greig. Further along still were the fancy goods store of Magdalen Blair, the toy dealer Jane Austin, the milliner Joan Hilton, and the Misses Gilchrist and Cameron, who sold feathers for hats and other items of clothing.

In fact, the records show a total of 15 shops in the arcade at that time were occupied by businesswomen.[2] Arcades were a type of retail environment that women chose to locate their retail businesses in and which attracted women as consumers.

 The number of commercial premises – the stalls, shops, dining rooms and boarding houses that we have already discussed – that are occupied by women and their businesses in the 19^th century may surprise you. If you just looked at the trade directories of this period you would find that about 1,300 and 1,600 of the businesses listed in Glasgow in 1861 and 1881 respectively were operated by women.[3]

 

Shop with female owner in the doorway (image: Mitchell Library)

We know that figure is an under-estimation because women sometimes chose not to draw attention to their gender and identified themselves by a forename initial and family name rather than their full given name. Some women continued businesses in widowhood and were listed under their husband’s name. Other women chose to advertise under their husband’s name but – in property valuation records – these wives were identified as the sole occupiers of the business.

By looking at the Glasgow Valuation Rolls records we find another 1,300 women in 1861 and 2,200 women in 1881 occupying commercial premises that we don’t see advertised in the trade directories.[3] Conversely, women who ran businesses from home, including private schools, midwives, and many dressmakers, can most easily be found in the trade directories.

Midwife advertisement from 1901 Glasgow Post Office Directory (image: National Library of Scotland)

The top ten jobs that women with commercial premises in the Valuation Rolls had in 1881 were different from the shops that we see in the arcade. Most were in the business of making sure Glasgow had enough food, drink, tobacco and hats!

 

 

1. Grocers
2. Confectioners
3. Milk and dairy sales
4. Alcohol sales
5. Fruit and vegetable sellers
6. Tobacconists
7. Hat makers
8. Furnishings
9. Hotel and refreshment rooms
10. Broker and agents[4]

We have trouble finding all of them because of the limitations of the historical records, but – to the residents of Glasgow in the 19^th century – entrepreneurial women would have been very visible behind the counters of their own businesses.

 

 

[1] Project data

[2] Project data

[3] Project data

[4] Project data

 

We now move to STOP 14 - Mitchell Lane and Agents

 

 

You are now at the entrance to Mitchell Lane.

 

Michell Lane, right of this building on Buchanan Street (photograph: Gill Newton)

The many backstreets of the city were also sites of industry and commerce in 19^th Century Glasgow.  Mitchell Lane is a good example. In the early 1880s, it housed a number of manufacturing businesses and shops. The image below shows the building to the left of Mitchell Lane as it appeared in 1887.  The photograph was taken following a fire which destroyed much of the building.  If you look at the windows above the shops you can see that the front of the building survives until today.  

 

Fire-damaged building, Buchanan Street/Mitchell Lane (Mitchell Library)

Newspaper reports estimated damage to the building and other losses was around £40,000 -  that’s £4.5m in today’s terms. We know that a number of insurance companies paid claims for this fire including the Scottish Union and National, which had an office in the city. But you might also be surprised to know that other insurers included The West of England Fire and Life Company. What was an insurance company based in a port town 450 miles away in Devon doing insuring a building in Glasgow, and how did it do so?

This insurance firm is an example of companies that were represented in Glasgow by agents.  Agents were individuals who often represented third party businesses that were interested in testing the market for their product, seeing if it was worth establishing their own premises and staff. In industries like insurance, agents acted as intermediaries and sold products on a commission basis.

 

Agent brass plaque for Pearl Assurance Company (image courtesy of Beamish Museum)

If you look closely the image of the burned building, it also shows that these corner premises were home to the chinaware merchants, McDougall & Sons. Family partnerships – where brothers or sisters went into business together, or fathers and sons – were not unusual in this period. But of all partnerships listed in the trade directories of Glasgow at this time, we know that the vast majority were formed between people with no family relationship.

Whilst friendship ties might account for many of these partnerships between unrelated people, there still needed to be a way for people to learn about business opportunities. The answer? Classified advertisements placed in the Glasgow Herald, one of the city’s prominent daily newspapers.

One such advertisement reads: “PARTNER – wanted. An active, energetic Man, with about £500, for wholesale trade.  One either to travel or take charge inside. – 4315 Herald Office”.Advertisements of this type show how relationships that brought together capital, and/or skills into a business were formed.

 

We now move to STOP 15 - Tea Shops

 

You are now standing outside of the Willow Tea Rooms at 97 Buchanan Street.

 

Willow Tea Rooms, Buchanan Street (photograph: Gill Newton)

The tea room is on the first floor so – if you can’t see it – look up. Business premises in the 19^th century weren’t just at street level and many of the buildings around you would have had different businesses operating out of different floors, amongst residential tenement apartments.

The Willow Tea Rooms are most famous in the 21^st century for their association with the artist and designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but at the time they were opened the tea rooms were part of a wider response to alcohol in society. At an earlier stop in Trongate we talked about the ready availability of alcohol from wine and spirit merchants, taverns, and cellars and so it is no surprise to see alcohol linked to concerns about anti-social behaviour. These appear to be well-founded. The police reported over 126,000 arrests for being drunk and incapable in the three years between 1871 and 1874.[1]

One response to the obvious problem of alcohol in society was the Temperance movement. Temperance societies campaigned for the abolishment of alcohol. Large numbers of people ‘took the pledge’ to abstain from drinking and would be issued with beautifully decorated pledge cards to remind them of their vow.

 

Temperance Pledge from 1886 printed by Glasgow firm Campbell and Tudhope (image sourced from Wikimedia Commons)

Temperance societies tried to provide alternatives to recreational drinking – they organised coffee stalls in the street (perhaps we can thank temperance societies, in part, for the 21^st century love affair with takeaway coffee), excursions, mother’s meetings, cookery and craft classes and had a long running tradition of concerts every Saturday at the City Hall, which was a feature of our stop in Candleriggs above the bazaar.[1]

The temperance movement also supported a number of hotels in which alcohol was not served or allowed. Temperance hotels were commonplace around Glasgow. In 1881 we find 26 listed in the Post Office Directory and temperance more widely, was an important part of the story of Catherine (Kate) Cranston and the Willow Tea Rooms.

 

Cranston “Waverley” Temperance Hotels Advertisement (photograph: Kim Traynor, sourced from Wikimedia Commons)

 The Cranston family were well-established in the hospitality industry in Glasgow and Edinburgh in the mid-19^th century. Catherine’s father owned hotels around George Square and his cousin, Robert, was the founder of several temperance hotels in Edinburgh and Glasgow.[2] It was Robert that provided the start-up funds for Catherine’s ‘Crown Tea Rooms’ on the ground floor of a temperance hotel in Argyle Street. But it had been Catherine’s brother, Stuart, who had come up with the idea of the tearoom. Stuart was a tea seller and started offering brewed samples of his tea for sale in his shops, eventually creating space for tables and chairs for customers to drink the tea and to partake – for an extra charge - of cake and sandwiches. Stuart’s chain of tea rooms mainly catered for working men.[2]

 

Waitresses in the Room DeLuxe at the Willow Tea Rooms on Sauchiehall in 1903 (photograph: J C Annan; image sourced from Wikimedia Commons)

Catherine, in contrast, wanted to elevate the surroundings of her tea rooms and to cater for the growing leisured middle-class population of women. She opened her second tearoom on Ingram Street in 1886 and another in Buchanan Street in the early 1890s. In total, there would be four ‘Miss Cranston’s Tearooms’.

Kate Cranston’s story is a remarkable one not just because of her championing of Scottish art and design in the interiors of her tearooms, but also because it was incredibly rare for women to be running multi-location businesses. In 1881, just as Catherine was starting out, we know of just 47 women in a total of nearly 1000 businesses, that operated out of more than one premises.[3] Her four tearooms were a significant achievement – not only in their design, their ability to exploit a growing market and social trends, but also for the fact that she was able to expand into and maintain a multi-outlet business.

 

[1] https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/libraries/family-history/stories-and-blogs-from-the-mitchell/times-past-blogs/temperance-in-glasgow-times-past

[2] Kinchin, P. (1998) Taking Tea with Mackintosh: The Story of Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms. San Francisco: Pomegranate 

[3] Project data

  

We now move to STOP 16 - St Vincent Street

 

Anchor Line building, St Vincent Street (photograph: Gill Newton)

 

As you turn the corner onto St Vincent Street from our last stop on Buchanan Street, if you look right and back towards George Square, you might be able to make out the crisp white building of the Anchor Shipping Line which was discussed at stop 11.

We now stop along St Vincent Street, at the intersection with West Nile Street.

Opposite, you will see what was the Phoenix Assurance office building. You can clearly see the Phoenix in the emblem on the corner of the building, representing a mythological creature reborn out of flames, an apt logo for a fire insurance company.

 

Phoenix Assurance building (photograph: Gill Newton)

As you head along St Vincent Street towards our next turn up Renfield Street you will pass a Bank of Scotland building. This building was the Glasgow head office of the Union Bank of Scotland.

 

Union Bank of Scotland Building, built 1927 (image: Mitchell Library)

As the Union Bank of Scotland building neared completion, it was inspected by the Prince of Wales, as part of his visit to Glasgow in November 1927.  He remarked that many of the features of the building reminded him of some of the structures he had seen in the United States of America. Others have noticed the same thing. Reflecting the growing popularity of Scotland and Glasgow as a film location, St Vincent Street has been used to represent New York in the 1960s in one of the Indiana Jones movies.

Many of the buildings on this street belong to the early 20^th Century, but similar grandeur was also a feature of the 19th century streetscape they replaced. This reflects the importance – and resources - of businesses that support commercial activity within a large city. St Vincent Street, in particular, had a large number of accountants, banks, insurance companies, solicitors, and shipping firms. These were all businesses that provided services to economic activity.  The 1881 Trade Directory lists no fewer than 36 such businesses, mainly acccountants, along this first part of St Vincent Street/St Vincent Place, within 250m of  George Square.

If you continued walking up St Vincent Street, over Blythswood hill, the street became a mixture of residential, commercial, and industrial land use.  Not far from the Mitchell Library at 412-424 St Vincent Street, J. Robertson located both his coach building works and showroom. 

Robertson’s coach works and showroom (from Stratten and Stratten, publishers: Glasgow and Its Environs,1891, p.63)

The showroom fronted onto St Vincent Street, and his works (in the centre of the picture, with all the chimneys) were accessed via Dorset Street side to the north.  The works are surrounded by residential tenements on all sides. A conveniently short journey to work, perhaps, but the noise and other nuisance neighbours must have  experienced from having the factory at their back windows helps us appreciate what living in the city was like for many at this time.

 

We now move to STOP 17 - Renfield Street

 

You are now standing on Renfield street, at the intersection with West George Street.

 

Renfield Street/West George Street intersection (photograph: Gill Newton)

This is the heart of the gridiron street layout of Glasgow’s West End. Look up or down the street and you will see regular blocks, wide intersections, and tall stone buildings.

Many North American cities, including Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, are laid out on a grid, but this is unusual in European cities. Irregular streets with winding side streets, like the pre-improvement layout around Glasgow’s High Street, are more typical. So why is this part of the city a grid?

Renfield Street came out of the former Blythswood country estate developed mainly in the 1820s, consolidating Glasgow’s prosperous ‘new town’. The layout was not planned by civic authorities. Under Scotland’s feu system, Archibald Campbell, a private landowner, retained a financial interest in the land even after it was sold off for development.

Planned grid layout of Blythswood Estate (Peter Fleming, 1807, reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland)

Campbell insisted on wide streets because he intended to create a lucrative high-class built environment. Land was released in stages to small construction firms seeking the maximum possible income, which was achieved through tall multi-storey buildings subdivided for multiple tenants. Despite the steep gradients on Blythswood Hill, it made sense to parcel up the land in regular rectangles so they would all fit together eventually.

This part of Renfield Street was a prestigious address for offices. These buildings marked a new separation between commercial and residential property that emerged over the Victorian period. Unlike mixed use buildings like tenements, the only people who tended to live here were responsible for servicing the buildings. For example, in 1881, Mrs Martha Campbell, an office cleaner, lived at number 43 Renfield Street. Her building otherwise contained eight offices, and these were occupied by various merchants, an engraver and a (legal) writer.  At ground level, a few shops sold tea, wine, books, and other high value goods, but with almost no residents there was less demand for the food sellers and small dealers that abounded in the old-style mixed residential/commercial streets.

 

Office cleaners in 1910  (image: Mitchell Library)

Blocks like Blythswood Square further west were, by contrast, purely residential. They were inhabited by wealthy shipowners and brokers who could afford rents that were more than ten or twenty times the average.

Prosperity and population growth drove middle class residents still further westwards towards airy Hillhead and Kelvingrove away from the polluting chimneys, or to spacious villas southside in Pollokshields. But that meant that people needed a way of getting into the city besides walking.

Horse drawn omnibuses and then a tramway system, again powered by horses, were needed. Omnibuses routes increased from the 1860s, run by private operators like Andrew Menzies.[1]

 

One of Menzies’ horse drawn omnibuses in 1865 (image: Mitchell Library) 

Perhaps you noticed the tartan design on the side of Menzies’ carriage?  Menzies decorated his carriages with his family tartan, and they were no doubt easy for the paying public to spot.  With the city growing, he saw an opportunity for a higher quality service to meet the demand that had sprung up from the “houses of a superior class in the suburbs of the city”.[2] 

Menzies went on to become the first managing director of the Glasgow Tramways & Omnibus Company in the 1870s.  Laying tracks on which to pull the carriages, the company created a much smoother journey for passengers across the city. 

 

A horsedrawn tram on Keppochill Road, circa 1894 (image: Mitchell Library)

By 1881 the Glasgow Tramway and Omnibus Company Ltd had built over 15 miles of tramway in the city – with this part of Renfield Street being one of the first built – and south of the river the Vale of Clyde Tramway had extended routes throughout Govan.

 

Tramway routes in Glasgow city centre in 1881 (image: Gill Newton)

Cheap workers’ fares also encouraged more of Glasgow’s workforce to move southwards to Gorbals and Govan, or eastwards into Calton, aimed at easing pressure on dwellings in the old town.

 

 

 

[1] See http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/mlemen/mlemen064.htm 

[2] Ochojna, A. D. "The influence of local and national politics on the development of urban passenger transport in Britain 1850–1900." The Journal of Transport History 3 (1978): 125-146.

 

We now move to STOP 18 - The Stock Exchange

 

Our last stop brings us back onto Buchanan Street at Nelson Mandela Place.

 

 

Roundels of the Glasgow Stock Exchange (photograph: Gill Newton)

The Glasgow Stock Exchange building is on the right-hand corner as you look down Buchanan Street to the river. Above its pointed arches on both sides of the corner, you can see five roundels that depict various industries that the Stock Exchange dealt with, including mining, science and engineering. 

Glasgow stock exchange building in 1898 (image: Mitchell Library). 

Not much has changed, with perhaps the exception being the pace of traffic moving past the building. This same building housed the exchange from the 1870s.

You may be surprised that Glasgow had a stock exchange. Stock exchanges made it easier for local companies to raise money from local investors. Regional stock exchanges were common in the second half of the 19^th Century and Scotland had exchanges in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee, Greenock and Glasgow. 

The earliest daily share list of the Glasgow exchange was published in 1845 and showed 76 companies. By the end of the century there were 927 listings and 188 brokers working out of the exchange. Edinburgh, by way of comparison, had only 61 brokers.

Before the Internet and electronic communications created the global information economy at our fingertips today, investors preferred to hold shares in local firms because they had better access to information about those companies, making it easier to judge whether they would perform well.

Unquestionably, one of the most turbulent periods at the exchange was following the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank in 1878.  The City of Glasgow Bank was a large commercial bank that failed following a series of bad lending decisions.  Its failure left the majority of its shareholders bankrupt. Unlimited liability, then usual for many companies including banks, unlike today’s limited liability corporations, meant that shareholders had to use their own money and assets to cover the bank’s huge losses. The collapse did not just affect businesses but also individuals and their families. A charitable subscription fund was set up to relieve their financial distress.[1]  

The bank’s failure was a major scandal and the senior management were put on trial. Robert Stronach, the manager, and Lewis Potter, a director, were found guilty of ‘‘falsifying and fabricating the balance-sheets of the Bank’’, and were sentenced to 18 months in prison. Several of the bank’s other directors also served prison terms. Today’s corporate leaders might find 19^th century notions of who to punish when wrongdoing occurs refreshingly direct.

 

Title page of Report of the trial of the directors of the City of Glasgow Bank (Edinburgh Publishing Company, 1879)

Amongst the wide selection of stocks listed at the Glasgow exchange, you would be able to spot the names of other Scottish Banks still familiar today, insurance companies, and firms like Shotts Iron Company, which was the largest employer in Scotland at this time.

Other listings included the Glasgow Corporation Water and the Glasgow Tramway Company – both of them raised funds through the exchange.  In this period, it was not uncommon for local authorities to raise money from capital markets to support infrastructure development like the piping of clean running water to Glasgow homes and businesses, or to see private enterprise raise funds to build public transport initiatives.

New tunnel at Glasgow Water Works, Loch Katrine in 1876 (photograph: T & R Annan & Sons, sourced from Wikimedia Commons)

The Glasgow’s Stock Exchange merged with the other Scottish exchanges to form the Scottish Stock Exchange in 1964, and then merged again with the London Stock Exchange in 1973. By this time, the uniqueness of local stock markets had virtually disappeared, and the Glasgow Exchange was increasingly in direct competition with London.

 

[1] City of Glasgow Bank Relief Fund, listed in 1881 POD; described in newspaper coverage eg https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13428150

 

That concludes our Glasgow Victorian Enterprise Walking Tour.