In Memoriam: John Wallace 1931 – 2021
Our dear Evelyn lost her father recently and she is very upset. And we are upset for her. John was 90 years of age, Glasgow (Bridgeton) born and bred. But what was going on in Glasgow in 1931? What was life like ninety years ago? I thought it would be fun to explore and to share the results with Evelyn; a sort of gift of a personal and unusual nature.
The main difference between then and now is that humans have evolved colour vision. Glasgow was fully monochrome in the 1930s; I have a strong impression that photography in full technicolour would have made little difference! I think I prefer it that way.
In the census of 1931 Glasgow reached its maximum-recorded population: 1,088,000. This made it the second city of the British Isles, behind London. Overcrowded tenements, poverty and rickets (the Glasgow disease) blighted life in the endless slums of the Gorbals et al before sprawling new suburbs and high-rise flats were created to ease the population density. Little else was achieved. Those suburbs built in the 1950s, such as Pollok, Nitshill and Castlemilk, provided for new housing; alas the Government failed to build anything else – shops, schools, libraries, theatres, churches, social facilities, employment. Different problems arose!*
The monarch of the time was King George V. Ramsay MacDonald (b.1866 Lossiemouth) was the Prime Minister in 1931. This was the time of the Great Depression. The general election, held on the 27th October, was won by the National Government following the collapse of the second Labour government. MacDonald had been encouraged by the king to put together this coalition ‘party’ as a temporary measure. It was a landslide victory; Labour did appallingly badly. Of the fifteen Glasgow constituencies, ten returned Conservative members. Glasgow Bridgeton was a Labour hold. There had been two Glasgow by-elections in May of that year. On the 7th Glasgow St Rollox was won by William Leonard for Labour and on the 21st Rutherglen remained Labour with David Hardie.
John loved his football, being a life-long Glasgow Rangers supporter. Rangers won the Scottish Football League for the season 1930-31, by two points from second-placed Glasgow Celtic. Celtic won the Scottish Cup but it took a replay for them to overcome runners-up Motherwell. The first leg was a 2-2 draw in front of 104,000 fans at Hampden Park. Just 98,000 saw the replay a week later in which Celtic triumphed 4-2. Motherwell went on to win the league the following season. Dundee had knocked Rangers out of the cup in the second round. Hibernian and East Fife were the two relegated teams, swapping places with Third Lanark and Dundee United.
Rangers won the Scottish Premier League in the 2020-21 season, neatly top and tailing John’s life. Evelyn described this as ‘thoughtful of Rangers to be champions when he came into the world and strive to win it in the year he left’.
On the 5th September, in an Old Firm derby, the Celtic goalkeeper John Thompson was kicked in the head, accidentally, by Rangers’ player Sam English. He lost consciousness and died later that day in hospital.
Glasgow had one of the largest tram systems in Europe with over 100 route miles, served by over 1,000 trams. The first line was laid in 1872. In the early days the tramcars were horse-drawn but from 1898 onwards the entire system was electrified with the last horse, being retired, put out to grass, sent to the knacker’s yard, whatever they did in those less sentimental days, in 1902. In May of 1931, car number 1123 was derailed in Dumbarton Road by points moving beneath the vehicle. The motorman was thrown out and killed. The entire system was closed by 1962. The subway, an underground railway of four-foot gauge, opened in 1896: only the third in the world after London and Budapest. Initially it was operated by cable but subsequently electrified, with juice supplied by a power station at Pinkston (close to Queen Street station). According to a post on the Lost Glasgow website ‘The whole area was like something out of the Lord of the Rings – massive chimneys, huge blackened buildings, and ponds of steaming water – the cooling ponds – which were often home to huge goldfish’.** A massive cooling tower was added in the early 1950s and demolished in 1977. There was also a trolleybus network between the years 1949 – 1967. Whilst the Subway remains, the environmentally clean(er) trams and trolleybuses were all replaced by diesel powered buses. What a waste.
We cannot talk about Glasgow without mentioning shipbuilding. In December 1930, ‘Hull Number 534’ was laid down at Brown’s yard. In 1931 work ceased due to the aforementioned depression. Government money got the project restarted and the ship was launched in 1934 and made her maiden voyage in 1936 from Southampton. Name? RMS Queen Mary – Mary Teck, the wife of the reigning monarch.
Who else was born in Glasgow in 1931?
13th March – Actor, James Martin (Partick). 'Eric' died of a heart attack whilst playing the puggy machine in The Clansman.
18th March – Actor, John Fraser
27th April – Folk singer, Alex Campbell ‘Big Daddy’
29th April – King of Skiffle, Anthony James ‘Lonnie’ Donegan (Bridgeton)
September – Gangster, Arthur Thompson (Springburn)
16th December – Singer, Karl Denver, ‘Wimoweh’
Additional information supplied re the latter was that Evelyn and Mrs Denver were members of the same congregation in Rutherglen.
The novel Hatter’s Castle, written by A J Cronin (b.1896 Cardross), was published in 1931, set in the fictional town of Levenford, on the Firth of Clyde.
* New York Times 14/04/76
** lostglasgow.scot
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