John Gordon Campbell was born on 14th September 1869 at 66 North Woodside Road. This address no longer exists but can be seen on this map:
Number 66 is marked by the small red circle, on the corner of Lyon Street. It was probably built around 1862, so was fairly new, and I believe it was located above a public house.
The area is considerably changed today:
This is the approximate coordinates of 66 North Woodside Road and the corner with Lyon Street.
John’s father was Hugh Campbell, who was a clerk in a factory making power looms (for cloth). His mother was Isabella Munro, who had been married once before (she married aged 17 and her husband died when she was 26). Hugh and Isabella were both from Sutherland, they had married there in 1855 and their first two children were born there as well. Their third child was born in Glasgow so we can date their move south to between 1857 and 1861.
John had two half-sisters from this marriage and three older brothers and two older sisters; he was the last of Hugh and Isolbel’s six children.
Aged 1, John appears in the 1871 Census with his family:
They are now at 352 St George’s Road; in terms of the map above this would be somewhere at the top. Some of the older children have left home; it is, of course, unremarkable for the time that 14-year old Donaldina had a full-time job as a machinist.
Ten years later and John as a schoolboy lived at 628 New City Road, which would have been somewhere close to Queens Cross (this branch now renamed Maryhill Road):
Rather strangely, the final column, which asks the census taker for a numerical code to show disabilities is marked with a latter G (not used for others on the same page) – I wonder if this was being used to record those who spoke Gaelic?
John was educated at Henderson Street School – this is almost certainly Burnbank Public School (link). He would almost certainly have left at 14 and very probably would have had a job in a local factory, but unfortunately we’re reliant on the Census every 10 years to give us this information.
In 1891 aged 22 he enlisted in the army.
Hugh, John’s father, died in 1900 and in the 1901 Census he was living with his mother and a lodger in a two-room tenement flat at 21 Braeside Street. John’s occupation is given as “soldier (Royal Garrison Regiment)”.
Isabella died later that year.
On 20th February 1903 he married Alice McDonald, 26, of St Clair Cottage, Cloverhil near Temple. John was still a private in the army, Alice is simply described as ‘spinster’ and checking the 1901 Census she also has no recorded occupation. It seems likely she was helping her mother (who may have been unwell, for example) to run the house:
Alice’s mother came from Tongue in Sutherland, like John’s parents, and it’s possible the families may have known each other.
In 1906 John and Alice had a daughter, Isabella Munro Campbell:
At the time they were living at 27 Temple Place, which is now the northern most part of Crow Road, in the stretch where it meets the Forth & Clyde Canal:
It seems likely the house they lived in is still standing, although the street re-numbering makes it difficult to identify in this view from the junction with Fulton Street:
John was still listed as a private in the Royal Garrison Regiment – this army unit had a short life, from 1901 to 1908 and was intended to provide units of ex-soldiers for garrison duties to allow army units to serve in South Africa in the Boer War. John would probably have been sent to one or more of Gibraltar, Malta, South Africa or Canada (link). After 1908 John may have returned to civilian life.
We have a photo of John, which I am guessing dates from about this time:
In August 1914 John was approaching his 45th birthday but when war broke out he was called up as a Private in the 2nd Battalion, Royal Scots.
I haven’t been able to find what happened to John in the following eight months. The British Army had sent a few divisions of the regular army to France but they had taken heavy casualties in the first few months and were desperate for reinforcements. Reservists started being sent to the frontline either as replacements or in whole units as 1914 turned into 1915 and it became clear it would not all be over by Christmas,
On 22nd April, the battalion was in the trenches (frontline) just south of Ypres in Belgium (see map below, Ypres is just to the right of centre). The battalion’s war diary mentions La Clyte which seems to match modern day De Klijte, the small blue circle just below Ypres and to the left.
The battalion War Diary for that day is as follows:
“Lieutenant Colonel Duncan returns from short leave.
J.10 [the name of a stretch of trench] again shelled, the garrison moving into J.4 by means of the communication trench. Shelling again at 5pm.
Lt Colonel Duncan with C and D companies left La Clyte [a village] at 7.30pm to relieve the detachment in the trenches. Inter battalion relief successfully carried out without casualty by 9.30pm. A and B companies returning to billets after a bad tour in the trenches with heavy casualties. Casualties one killed.”
The casualty was John Gordon Campbell and he seems to have been killed by the explosion of an artillery shell. His body was recovered and he was buried in the cemetery at Kemmel Chateau:
Alice chose as the inscription, “He died that we might live”.
In the 1921 Census, Alice and Isabella living with Alice’s father, aged 83 and a carpenter, at St Clair Cottage, Cloberhill.
This is a map from 1914 showing St Clair Cottage:
Matching this to the modern road system is not easy but my guess is at the junction of Baldwin Avenue and Cloberhill Road:
By 1925 there was a new occupant at St Clair Cottage with Alice and Isabella moving out but around ten years later they were living in Knightswood (58 Cowdenhill Circus, a few hundred yards south of the site of St Clair Cottage) when Isabella married Andrew Watt Street, a harbour patrolman from Aberdeen (and this was where the wedding ceremony took place on 4th January). According to the record he was 26 and she was 25 but we know she was actually 28!
They probably lived in west Glasgow because two children are recorded as having been born, Isabelle Munro Street in 1935 and Andrea Street in 1941, both in the Hillhead district. Isabelle married John Leslie McClymont in 1959 in Partick; their children may have been Gordon Leslie McClymont and Alison J I McClymont. If anyone recognises the names, I would be delighted for them to know about this profile.
Footnote: Lyon Street’s reputation
If you have a good memory you will recall John was born at a flat on North Woodside Road but at the corner of Lyon Street. This street has the reputation of having suffered more deaths in proportion to its length than any in Glasgow (link). Glasgow City Council produced a Roll of Honour for the 17 men who died from the street (link) but this would not mention John as he did not live there in 1914 (the map on page is also upside-down).