Mrs. Barbour’s Army spread through Glesga like the plague

The maisters got the message and the message wisnae vague

While oor menfolk fight the Kaiser we’ll stay hame and fight the war

Against the greedy bastards who keep grindin’ doon the poor

Alistair Hulett, Mrs. Barbour’s Army

International Women’s Day, 8 March 2023, marked the fifth anniversary of the unveiling of the now-iconic monument to Mary Barbour and her “army” in Govan Cross.  Barbour, whose husband was an engineer at Fairfield Shipbuilding, became a resident of Govan shortly after her marriage in 1896, and she soon became active in the Independent Labour Party, the Kinning Park Women’s Co-Operative Guild, and the Socialist Sunday School, a movement founded in Glasgow to organise society ‘on a basis of love and justice’.  While all of these groups encouraged equal participation among men and women (aside from the lack of women’s suffrage), the co-operative guild in particular encouraged working-class women to value themselves not only in the domestic sphere, but also in social and political matters affecting their communities.

At the turn of the twentieth century, with the proliferation of tenements, Glasgow’s housing was seen as being among the worst in the nation.  At the outset of World War I, as the men of the city were joining the front lines in Europe, profiteering landlords – hoping to capitalise on the influx of workers to the munitions factories and shipyards –  raised rents in the city by 8-23%, assuming that the women left behind would have little recourse but to pay or be evicted.  The Labour Party soon established the Glasgow Women’s Housing Authority, and Mary Barbour was head of the South Govan branch by 1915.

Struggling not only to pay rent but also to secure food for their families, the angry housewives of Govan began to agitate for a rent strike.  Barbour organised the first of these in May 1915 along with what Red Clydesider Willie Gallacher named “Mrs. Barbour’s Army”, and by November, over 25,000 tenants were refusing to pay the exorbitant rents.  When eighteen families in Partick were taken in to the Sheriff Court for failure to pay, Barbour, who was joined by fellow activists Helen Crawfurd, Agnes Dollan, and Mary Burns Laird, organised a massive demonstration throughout the city, joined by men from the factories and workshops, to descend upon the court.  This forced the hands not only of Glasgow officials, but also Parliament, with Lloyd George, then the Minister of Munitions, being forced to cap rents and mortgages at the August 1914 rate through the issuance of the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act 1915.

After the successes of the Rent Strike of 1915, Barbour turned her energy to securing food for the people of Govan by working with local fish mongers to distribute the fish they discarded as too small to sell to families in Govan Cross.  She then advocated for green spaces for children and greater opportunity for working-class women and the working classes in general.  Barbour went on to achieve many firsts in Glasgow.  She became the first female councillor for Govan’s Fairfield Ward in 1920; became Glasgow’s first female magistrate and first female bailie representing Govan in 1924; and founded the woman-staffed Women’s Welfare and Advisory Clinic, Glasgow’s first family-planning clinic for married women, in 1926.  After a life of service to the working classes of Glasgow, Mary Barbour died in Govan in 1958.

Unfortunately, though not uncommon among historical women, her story was soon somewhat forgotten; though, she lived on in the memories of many Govan residents.  As regeneration efforts were undertaken in the community at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Govan Reminiscence Group (GRG), invaluable curators of Govan’s social history, sought to commemorate her achievements by having one of the newly built streets named in her honour.  Esmé Clark, GRG’s secretary, wrote a letter to the Glasgow City Council to make this request and received in return what she called “the cheekiest letter”, which claimed that it was the Council’s policy that no twentieth-century figure be named in the built environment.  Members of the GRG contacted local councillors, who could find no evidence of this rule.  Additionally, Clark cited the fact that Nelson Mandela was honoured with a square in the city centre, so it was unclear why a street in Govan could not be named after Mary Barbour.

Still, the idea of commemorating Barbour in some public and permanent way continued to simmer, and in 2013, The Remember Mary Barbour Association (RMBA) was formed with the aim of installing a monument in her honour.  The group was chaired by Maria Fyfe, a former Labour MP from Maryhill, and when they formally organised as a charity to raise approximately £110,000 for a statue, their stated objectives were ‘to advance education for public benefit in the life, works and importance of Mary Barbour as an iconic figure in the history of Govan, Glasgow, Scotland, and the UK’ and ‘to advance the arts, heritage and culture through the erection of a statue in a public place to commemorate Mary Barbour.’

Esmé Clark was soon invited to join the RMBA, and in fact it was she who came up with the name for the organisation.  As news of the monument began to spread, she recalls how enthusiastic Govanites would hand her money on the street so often that she had to start carrying small envelopes around with her to ensure these impromptu donations were properly documented and accounted for.  Councillor Stephan Dornan, Vice Chair of the RMBA, likewise described “weans giving their pocket money” as excitement began to build.

Through donations big and small (including from Govan legend Sir Alex Ferguson), GRG bake sales, and the sale of merchandise and event tickets, the RMBA raised the funds needed to commission a monument.  After significant community input, a design by sculptor Andrew Brown, which reflected Barbour’s ‘grassroots campaigning and down-to-earth nature’, was selected.  Dr Catriona Burness, who served on the RMBA board and functioned as its historical researcher, believes Brown’s design was chosen because it represented working people coming together to achieve a goal, with Barbour as the leader but still a part of the group.

Though originally intended to be in place by the centenary of the 1915 Rent Strike, the statue was unveiled on 8 March 2018, International Women’s Day (IWD), to a great deal of enthusiasm.  At the event, Maria Fyfe expressed her confidence that ‘the memorial [would] help the people of the area reconnect with their rich social history and heritage [and would] serve as a beacon of inspiration to women everywhere.’

Former Councillor John Kane, Treasurer for RMBA, also noted that it was ‘an exciting, important and proud day for the people of Govan and Glasgow.  It’s highly appropriate that we gather on International Women’s Day to celebrate the legacy of Mary Barbour…who made a massive contribution to this city, and beyond.’  As proof of Barbour’s legacy, the Govan Reminiscence Group has led an IWD celebration at the monument every year since the monument’s installation.

Councillor Dornan and members of the GRG note how the statue has become a rallying place for groups not only in Govan, Glasgow, and Scotland, but across the UK, including housing associations, Scotland’s Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPIScotland), artists, groups against gender-based violence, and politicians from all creeds.  GRG Chair Colin Quigley is pleased to see that the groups that gather are promoting ‘good causes, fitting for what Mary Barbour herself did.’  Furthermore, a week after the monument’s unveiling, one of the figures received the famous Glasgow “cone treatment”, and Barbour and her army have also been “yarn bombed” in hats and scarves on cold nights.

Of great surprise to members of the GRG is the fact that the monument has never yet been vandalised and that “all the kids respect it”.  Clark recalled an incident when two inebriated football supporters were seen throwing chips at the monument.  However, when another local reprimanded them, saying, “You can’t do that! That’s Mary Barbour!”, one of the men apologised and immediately picked up the chips and took them away. Quigley expresses with some satisfaction the fact that more young people now know about Barbour and what she did for Govan, and her activism has since become part of the school curriculum.  In a time when statues are more and more contested in public spaces, he notes that he has never heard a bad word about the statue nor does he know of any occasion when it has been spoken of in a negative context.

Despite not occupying a place among the grand academic narratives of Scottish history, Mary Barbour has been remembered and respected by the citizens of Govan who aspire to her ideals of community cohesion and of neighbours helping neighbours.  The unique nature of Govan’s socialist and industrial community in Mary Barbour’s time helped shape her as a leader, activist, and politician, and she used her influence not to her own benefit but to improve the lives of Glasgow’s working classes by helping them help themselves.

By Erin Burrows

Published 23rd March 2023

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The connections between Glasgow and the tobacco trade of the eighteenth century are well-known. Furthermore, the links between some of the trades’ most prominent merchants and the slave trade are also becoming known to a growing audience. This is in part thanks to vital research conducted by scholars over the past decade which seeks to address the ‘uncomfortable truths’ of both Glasgow and Scotland’s past. Perhaps more recently, the growth in interest can be attributed to the BLM movement and heightened tensions over the treatment of black people in both the US and the UK. This has brought up discussions as to where our place names, street names, statues and grand city centre buildings come from and whether or not it is correct to hang onto them, with many calling for streets to be renamed and statues to be removed.

Understandably, much of the research has focused on the city centre. However, we at SGHET have looked at how the Southside of the city fits into this dark part of our history. In doing so, we have largely built our research around the estates and grand houses south of the River Clyde. Many of these still exist (such as Pollok House and Aitkenhead House), although dwarfed by the cityscape, while many more were demolished as urban expansion took hold during the twentieth century.

Nonetheless, many of these houses and their grounds stood on the outskirts of the city, which many merchants bought with their newly acquired wealth from the plantations, affording them a degree of disconnect from the rough and tumble of their trade. Here we will focus on two houses which are no longer with us, Craigton and Shawfield, both of which were owned by prominent tobacco merchants during the ‘golden era’ of the tobacco trade which depended on the transatlantic slave trade.

James Ritchie of Craigton (1722–99)

Situated in the old Craigton estate in the parish of Govan, Craigton House was demolished during the inter-war period to make room for housing. The house and its grounds had belonged to one of the ‘Four Young Men’ of the Virginia tobacco trade, James Ritchie. Ritchie, who bought the estate in 1746, was known to have benefited from the transatlantic slave trade in several ways. Firstly, through the trade of tobacco on America’s eastern seaboard, and secondly, perhaps more indirectly, through his connections to the Thistle Bank which he had helped to establish alongside infamous Tobacco Lord and slave trader John Glassford.

Indeed, if you look at compensation records – created following the 1833 British Abolition of Slavery Act (which took effect in 1834) – the Ritchie name is mentioned on two separate claims for compensation following abolition. Both claims were made by James Ritchie’s son, Henry, who had taken over Craigton house in 1830 along with his partnership in the Thistle Bank. Henry Ritchie is listed as a trustee in a joint claim made on the 4th July 1836, along with James Maxwell Wallace and William Stirling. They were compensated over £4000, around £380,000 in today’s money (using MeasuringWorth.com and bearing in mind that such numbers are impossible to calculate exactly) for the loss of 210 enslaved people, of which Ritchie received around a quarter.

Daniel Campbell of Shawfield (1671/2–1753)

Campbell is perhaps better remembered for his tenure as an MP, during which he was one of the signatories to the Act of Union in 1707, and later voted in favour of the much maligned Malt Tax of 1725 leading to the infamous Malt Tax riots. This saw his city centre property of Shawfield Mansion (on what is now Virginia Street) ransacked and its interiors demolished for his troubles. The mansion is also known to have housed John Glassford, one of the most notable of the Glasgow Tobacco Lords, whose links to the slave trade are well-known.

Campbell himself, however, acquired much of his wealth in trading tobacco for iron ore which provided him the means to purchase the Shawfield Estate, next to Oatlands and Polmadie, in 1707. Prior to the Act of Union, Scots were unable to trade with English colonies in the Americas through the Navigation Acts (1651-96) which sought to maintain English monopoly over the colonies. Despite this, Campbell made a considerable amount from both the trade of tobacco and more directly, in the trading of enslaved people.

The house and estate were passed down to his son Walter who then sold it to the chemical works firm J&J White in 1788. Due to ongoing contamination issues, the site which included the 150-year old Shawfield House was pulled down in the late 1960s. Today the area is home to a large industrial estate which sits on the city boundary between Glasgow and Rutherglen.

This blog is part of a wider article which details our research on the Southside’s links to the slave trade.

By Mark McGregor

Southside Slavery Legacies project

In 2020 South Glasgow Heritage and Environment Trust began working on the #SouthsideSlaveryLegacies project, including a potential heritage trail, walks and events, as well as blogs on our website and published articles.

If you would like to know more or become involved, please sign-up to the Southside Slavery Legacies mailing list, message us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact info@sghet.com.

Further Reading 

1. Moss, Michael, ‘Daniel Campbell of Shawfield’ (Online, 2004).
2. SCOS Archive, ‘James Ritchie of Craigton and Busbie’ (Online, year unknown)
3. Mullen, Stephen, It Wisnae Us: The Truth About Glasgow and Slavery (RIAS, 2009)
4. Devine, T M, The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities c. 1740-1790 (Edinburgh, 1990).
5. –, Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland, 1700-1900 (John Donald, 2006)
6. UCL Department of History, ‘Legacies of British Slave-ownership’ (Online, 2009-2020).
7. Shawfield House on Canmore (Historic Environment Scotland, John R Hume collection, online)

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Early Life and Education

Hannah Frank (1908-2008) was an artist and sculptor based in the Southside. She was born in Glasgow and lived in the Gorbals in her formative years, first in Abbotsford Road and later in South Portland Street. She then moved further south, living at 72 Dixon Avenue, Crosshill, where she was part of the vibrant local Jewish community around Govanhill.

Her parents were Jewish migrants from Russia. She attended Abbotsford Road Primary School, Strathbungo Public School on Craigie Street, and Albert Road Academy in Pollokshields, before attending the University of Glasgow from 1926–30, and Glasgow School of Art.

Drawings

She is remembered for her distinctive black and white drawings and her graceful bronze sculptures. She produced these drawings, in an Art Nouveau style, from the age of 17, under the pseudonym Al Aaraaf. (This pseudonym was a reference Edgar Allan Poe’s poem of the same name). Her drawings below are reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley but carry Frank’s unique style.

You can see a 2016 reproduction of one of these images, Girl in a Wood (1928), in the 7 Arches of Cleland Street underpass. The 7 Arches was created by Liz Penden and arts group WAVE Particle. Their artworks also depict local legends Thomas Lipton of Lipton teas and boxer Benny Lynch.

Poetry

Hannah Frank was also a poet, and memorised her early poem ‘Faery,’ which she was always happy to recite. It was published in the Glasgow University magazine, GUM, in February 1927.

Faery

I stayed me there in tall trees’ shade
In Faery. And wild strange music played,
Piercing the air with sweetest strain,
So that I trembled. Dimly lit, a train
Moved from the forest’s depths.

I saw them by the weird moon’s gleam
On horses pass. As the riders of  a dream
They passed – noiseless hoofs and harness swaying.
Fair ladies singing songs, and strange words saying,
As olden stories tell.

In Faery I stood in tall trees’ shade.
Dim were the windings of the glade.
They were gone. I heard music still,
Faintlier, wafted faintlier, till
It died in the forest’s depths’

Sculpture

Her sculptures are mostly figure studies, in plaster, terracotta, or bronze, focussing on female forms. There was an exhibition of her work on what would have been her 110^th birthday at Glasgow University Chapel in 2018-2019, which included her Seated Figure (below) from 1989. Her work has been exhibited on three continents and at the Royal Glasgow Institute, the Royal Academy, and the Royal Scottish Academy.

This artistic legacy and body of work makes her one of Scotland’s most significant artists. She produced sculptures well into her 90s and died aged 100 years old, posthumously receiving Glasgow City Council’s Lord Provost’s award for Art, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Glasgow. She is buried in Cathcart Cemetery (who also have website and can be found on Twitter).

You can learn more about Hannah at hannahfrank.org.uk, find some of her prints in the Glasgow Women’s Library archive, buy books about Frank from the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre, and explore Southside sites connected with her life on our Govanhill and Gorbals heritage trails in South Glasgow Heritage Trails: A Guide (2019).

By Saskia McCracken

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The children were hunting the ‘Gorbals Vampire’ – a seven-foot-tall monster with long metal fangs who had killed and eaten two local boys.

These vampire hunters returned the following two nights to continue their hunt.

Adults in Glasgow blamed American comics, full of vampires and monsters, for the wild events of that week. Gorbals’ Labour MP Alice Cullen took the issue to the House of Commons, resulting in the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act of 1955, banning the sale of ‘repulsive or horrible’ reading matter to children.

That said, those involved in the hunt later recalled that they had ‘no idea’ what a vampire was, saying, “nobody knew we needed stakes – we didn’t have Christopher Lee [of the Hammer Horror films] to explain you had to put a stake through the heart to kill him. We were just going to cut the head off, end of story. Don’t know what we’d have done if we’d met one, like.” These children couldn’t afford American comics and didn’t have TVs at home.

The vampire was probably the product of big imaginations, local ghost stores, the scary atmosphere of the cemetery with the ironworks in the background, and the vampire’s appetite for children could have been connected to the hunger that was part of everyday life in what was then a deprived area.

The story was adapted for the stage at the Citizens Theatre in the Gorbals in 2016. In preparation for the play, the community ran writing competitions for schools and comic book sessions where children learnt about the 1950s horror comics that were censored after the Gorbals vampire incident.

There was an exhibition accompanying the production featuring recorded interviews, an anthology of the children’s winning stories, and artworks designed by the locals as part of a ten-month project leading up to the show. There’s also a mural of the Gorbals Vampire by teenager Ella Bryson and Art Pistol street artists, in an archway on St Luke’s Place near the Citizens’ which includes a short description of the hunt.

One of the tales in our Stories from the Southside collection is set on the first night of the hunt and takes you right to the heart of the Southern Necropolis. Harry Nixon’s ‘A Night to Remember’ walks you through ‘the ominous gatehouse and into the land of the Dead’ – enjoy a spooky this spooky Halloween read by buying the collection on our website or reading our book on the City of the Dead: A Guide to the Southern Necropolis.

You can also follow the Friends of Southern Necropolis on Twitter, and visit the Southern Necropolis and mural yourself!

By Saskia McCracken

Published: 26th October 2020

Sources

‘The Gorbals Vampire.’ Plays to See.

‘Gorbals Vampire Brought Back to Life.’ Glasgow Live.

‘The Ghastly Tale of the Gorbals Vampire.’ Herald Scotland.

‘Gorbals Vampire Mural.’ Glasgow Discovered.

‘The Gorbals Vampire, Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis.’ David Castleton.

‘Gorbals Vampire.’ Plenty of Nothing.

‘We Went Hunting the Gorbals Vampire.’ Glasgow Live.

‘Children playing in Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis’ (Photo by Bert Hardy, 1948).

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Thomas Lipton was born on 10^th May 1848 at 10 Crown Street, Gorbals. The son of immigrants from County Fermanagh, Ireland, he was the youngest of 5 and was the only one to survive infancy. In the 1860s Thomas’ father setup a small shop in the Gorbals, selling basic provisions to the local community. Thomas left school at the age of 10 to start his first job at a stationers on Glassford Street, earning just “half a crown’ for a wage.

At 16 Thomas signed up to work as a cabin boy on a steamer between Glasgow and Belfast and managed to save up enough for passage to New York before being let go from his position. He travelled around the US for 5 years and worked in a number of positions including obacco plantation in Virginia, as an accountant and bookkeeper at a rice plantation in South Carolina, as a door-to-door salesman in New Orleans, a farmhand in New Jersey, and finally as a grocery assistant in the World’s largest retail store (at the time) A. T. Stewart & Co at 280 Broadway, Manhattan, New York.

It was here that Lipton learned the many unique selling methods that allowed him to change the way of shopping in Glasgow when he returned home in 1869, strategies such as “low mark up, high volume” and “set prices”.

When he returned in 1870 he setup his first store – Lipton’s Market – at 101 Stobcross Street in Anderston. Here he employed many of the techiques that he had learned in New York – the sales assistants were in bright white aprons with rows of ham and cheese. It was bright and airy and ridiculously clean and Lipton behind the counter being as charming as ever.

It wasn’t just about the store, it was also about the products on sale. He sold a number of irish goods but also imported a number of high quality goods from further afield. He also employed someone to go out and meet the farmers before they arrived at the market – and guaranteed a price, cutting out the middle man and allowing him to control the supply chain. As more stores started to pop up Lipton proved to be a master of marketing too. He had butter sculptures, giants cheeses on elephants, pig parades and much more!

By 1888 Lipton had 300 stores and wanted to grow his empire further. Tea prices were following and his middle-class customers were demanding more so he decided to open his tea-tasting office and bought Ceylon tea gardens before establishing the Lipton tea brand and distributing it throughout Europe and the USA . In doing so was able to in order to sell teas at low prices to a poorer working class market, who had previously been unable to afford such a luxury.

By this point Lipton’s stores had made it as far as London and he was mixing with royalty and the upper echelons of Victorian Society. In 1898 he floated his company, retaining a controlling interest, but pocketed £120m (£1 billion in today’s money).

In 1901 he was created a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) by King Edward VII.

Growing up on the river Clyde it is understandable that Lipton had an interest in boats, making and floating models as a child. Lipton tried to join the Royal Yacht Squadron but was turned down due to snobbery. He ended up joining the Royal Ulster Yacht Club in Bangor (County Down) and set out on a quest to win the America’s Cup in his yacht ‘Shamrock’, in 1899 but was defeated. The image of Lipton in a yachtsman’s hat ended up featuring on a lot of Lipton packaging. He challenged again a number of times up until 1930 but was always defeated each time and was labeled the “most cheerful loser” but Hollywood actor Will Rogers.

Lipton died in 1931 and huge crowds lined the streets as the funeral cortege made its way to the Southern Necropolis, where he is buried less than a mile from the Gorbals street where he was born.

Published: 25th September 2018

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