Glasgow (10 page)

It is of great moment, as affecting the state of crime, that the health of the lower classes of the community be strictly adhered to. In the very centre of the city there is an accumulated mass of squalid wretchedness, which is probably unequalled in any other town in the British dominions. In the interior part of the square, bounded on the east by the Salt-market, on the west by Stockwell-street, on the north by Trongate, and on the south by the river, and also in certain parts of the east side of High-street, including the Vennals, Havannah and Burnside, there is concentrated everything that is wretched, dissolute, loathsome, and pestilential. These places are filled by a population of many thousands of miserable creatures. The houses in which they live are unfit even for sties, and every apartment is filled with a promiscuous crowd of men, women and children, all in the most revolting state of filth and squalor. In many of the houses there is scarcely any ventilation: dunghills lie in the vicinity of the dwellings; and from the extremely defective sewerage, filth of every kind constantly accumulates. In these horrid dens the most abandoned characters of the city are collected, and from thence they nightly issue to disseminate disease, and to pour upon the town every species of crime and abomination. In such receptacles, so long as they are permitted to remain, crime of every sort may be expected to abound, and unless the evil is speedily and vigorously checked, it must of necessity increase. The people who dwell in these quarters of the city are sunk to the lowest possible state of personal degradation, in whom no elevated idea can be expected to arise, and who regard themselves, from the hopelessness of their condition, as doomed to a life of wretchedness and crime. Much might be done to relieve the misery, and to
repress the crime of this destitute population, by compelling attention to personal cleanliness, so as to remove and prevent disease, by placing the lodging-houses for the destitute under proper regulations; by preventing the assemblage of a large number of persons in one apartment; by opening and widening the thoroughfares, and forming new streets wherever practicable; by causing the houses to be properly ventilated, and all external nuisances removed; and by an improved plan of sewerage for carrying away all impurities. Were it possible to adopt measures something similar to these, the health of the community would be greatly improved; and by breaking up the haunts of vagrancy, a happy check would be given to the spread of profligacy and crime.

1851–1900

CITY OF MERCHANTS

THE TRIAL OF MADELEINE SMITH, 30 JUNE, 1857
The Illustrated London News

Did Madeleine Smith poison her lover Pierre Emile L'Angelier? An Edinburgh jury was unconvinced and decided the case against her was ‘Not Proven', a unique Scottish verdict which has been interpreted as ‘go away and don't do it again'. Smith was the daughter of a Glasgow architect who had fallen headlong for L'Angelier, the son of a French nurseryman who happened to be working in Glasgow. In the course of their affair the couple exchanged dozens of passionate, explicit letters. When she transferred her affections to another man, L'Angelier refused to return Smith's letters. Subsequently, he died from a huge dose of arsenic which could have killed a hippopotamus. In court it was revealed that Smith had been buying arsenic from a local chemist. So she had a motive and the means to kill her lover. But did she? We will never know. The trial, which was held in Edinburgh because it was believed Smith would not get a fair hearing in Glasgow, attracted international coverage. The following extract, from
The Illustrated London News,
is of its opening day
.

One writer describes her appearance as more than ordinarily prepossessing. Her features, he says, express great intelligence and energy of character. Her profile is striking, the upper part of her face exhibiting considerable prominency, while the lower part is cast in a most delicate mould, and her complexion is soft and fair. Her eyes are large and dark and full of sensibility. She looks younger than her reputed age of 21, but at the same time, her countenance betrays the effect of confinement and anxiety, in an air of languor and weariness, which her natural spirits and strength of mind in vain attempt to conceal. She was elegantly but simply attired in a white straw bonnet, trimmed with white ribbon and mounted with a figured black veil, which, however, she did not make use of to conceal her face with. She had on a visite [short cloak] trimmed with lace; her gown was of brown silk. She held in her gloved hands a
cambric handkerchief and a bottle of smelling salts. Her figure seemed to be less than the middle size, and girlish and slight.

Her portrait has thus been sketched by another pen: Miss Smith is about five feet two inches in height. She has an elegant figure, and can neither be called stout nor slim. She looks older than her years, which are twenty-one. I should have guessed her age to be twenty-four. Her eyes are deep-set, large, and some think beautiful; but they certainly do not look prepossessing. Her brow is of the ordinary size, and her face inclines to the oval. Her nose is prominent but is too long to be taken as a type for the Romans, and too irregular to remind one of Greece. Her complexion, in spite of prison life, is clear and fresh – indeed, blooming – unless the colour with which it was suffused was the effect of internal excitement and nervousness. Her cheeks are well coloured and the insinuation that a rosy hue is imparted by artificial means, made by some portions of the press, does not seem well founded. Her hair, of which she has a rich profusion, is quietly arranged in the fashion prevalent before the Eugenie style. She was dressed simply, yet elegantly. She wore a brown silk dress, with black silk cloak, with a small straw bonnet, trimmed with a white riband, of the fashionable shape, exposing the whole front of the head. She also had lavender coloured gloves, a white cambric handkerchief, a silver-topped smelling bottle in her hand, which she never used, and a wrapper thrown over her knee. Altogether she had a most attractive appearance, and her very aspect and demeanour seemed to advocate her cause.

During the whole day's proceedings the prisoner maintained a firm and unmoved appearance, her keen and animated expression and healthful complexion evincing how little, outwardly at least, she had suffered by the period of her imprisonment and the horror of her situation. Though, on once looking round, a dark veil was thrown over her face, the interest she took in the proceedings was yet evident. Her head never sank for a moment, and she even seemed to scan the witnesses with a scrutinising glance. Her perfect self-possession, indeed, could only be accounted for either by a proud consciousness of innocence, or by her possessing an almost unparalleled amount of self-control. She even sometimes smiled with all the air and grace of a young lady in the drawing-room, as her agents came forward at intervals to communicate with her.

The indictment charged the prisoner with intent to murder, and with murder; and it set forth that on the 19th or 20th of February last, the prisoner, in the house in Blythswood Square, Glasgow, occupied by her father, did wickedly and feloniously administer to Emile L'Angelier, now deceased, a quantity or quantities of arsenic or other poisons in cocoa or coffee, or some other article of food or drink, with intent to
murder the deceased, and that he having taken the said arsenic or other poison so administered by her, did in consequence thereof suffer severe illness; that on the 22d or 23d of February she repeated the crime, and also on the 22d or 23d of March, and that he died on the latter day in consequence of the said arsenic or other poisons having been taken by him, and was thus murdered by the said Madeleine Smith.

A SUBURB OF THE DEAD, 1857
George Blair

Though Jews are renowned for their wanderlust they appear not to have discovered Glasgow until relatively recently. Their eventual arrival coincided with the exponential expansion of the city in the early nineteenth century, since when the contribution of Jews to the city's cultural and commercial growth has been considerable. Initially, many of the new immigrants came from Germany and Holland but as the nineteenth century progressed greater numbers arrived from Poland and Russia, fleeing persecution and pogroms. Between 1890 and the start of the First World War the Jewish population increased from around 2,000 to almost 6,000, most of whom lived south of the river. Today, Newton Mearns is regarded as the main Jewish centre in the west of Scotland. The following extract is taken from
Biographic and Descriptive Sketches of Glasgow Necropolis
by George Blair, a Church of Scotland minister
.

Some allowance must be made for olden prejudice, even though they do not rest on any valid principle, and therefore it is perhaps well that the burying-ground of the Jews has been placed in this sequestered corner [of the Necropolis], which may be regarded as a suburb of a beautiful city of the dead. Although the position is a partial separation, it is not an exclusion, and perhaps the arrangement is equally satisfactory to both Jew and Christian.

A beautiful gateway and ornamental column, erected at the expense of the Merchants' House, mark the spot where the children of Abraham are interred . . .

. . . Here, in this northern section of a remote island, mingling with people of whom it was once said, ‘
penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos
' [‘Britons totally divided from the whole world'], these descendants of the Mesopotamian patriarch actually slumber in a quiet place of sepulture near a magnificent Cathedral devoted to Christian worship, and not far from a monument erected to the memory of John Knox. Everything
is Christian around them, and here, in a corner of the city of the dead, is a little group of Jews, slumbering peacefully together in a place of rest at last, after being strangers and sojourners in a land to which they have given a religion, and from which they receive only a grave.

NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING, 3 MARCH, 1860
Glasgow Sentinel

In the days when the Clyde was clean there was no need for those living near its banks to go far to fetch water. Increasingly, however, it became polluted and it became imperative that uncontaminated water be piped directly into people's homes. Bringing fresh water from Loch Katrine in the Trossachs thirty-four miles from Glasgow was one of the great feats of the Victorian era, the benefits of which Glaswegians still enjoy today. Why anyone wants to buy bottled water when they can turn on their taps and drink water that tastes like nectar defies common sense. The entire project took only three years to complete but along the way there were one or two hiccups
. . .

Considerable excitement was occasioned at Maryhill on Tuesday evening by the bursting of one of the large pipes by which the water from Loch Katrine is conveyed to Glasgow. The pipe burst in Main Street, nearly opposite the branch office of the Union Bank. The water for some time discharged itself into the air to a height of about 20 feet, causing great destruction of property and danger of life. In a short time every corner around for a considerable distance was entirely flooded, and so strong was the current running toward the Kelvin through Gairbraid farm steading, that in the court-yard it was impossible to pass through it. The whole of the out-houses in connection with the farm were completely flooded, particularly a byre, in which were about 40 cows, and which had a beautiful stream running down its centre. The private house of Mr Renwick, the occupier of the farm, also suffered very much; indeed in several rooms the water stood two feet deep. Mr Renwick had a beautiful garden lying to the south of the house, which has been completely destroyed. The water took this way on its course to the Kelvin, cutting up the garden fearfully – in some cases the channels thus formed were three or four feet deep – and carrying the greater part of the surface of the garden a considerable distance, as far, indeed, as the avenue leading to Beechbank Cottage, the residence of J.L. Ewing Esq. The soil thus removed from the garden choked up the avenue to the
height of from three to four feet, so that to get out of his own house Mr Ewing had to go a round-about way and climb over his garden wall.