In a previous post I covered what was probably the single biggest loss of life in the bombing of Clydebank, at 72 to 80 Second Avenue when a parachute mine hit packed tenement buildings (you can find this by clicking this link).
I was aware of another incident on Second Avenue, further to the west. The map below was revised in 1937 and published in 1939 (thanks to the National Library of Scotland for making it available). To set you up, the Singers Factory is off the map at the bottom – you can see the timber yard in the bottom left and the sports ground just above that and to the right. Kilbowie Road is a couple of hundred yards off the right edge of the map.
Second Avenue runs from the bottom right corner to the centre left side of the map extract; even numbered properties were on the north side and odd numbers on the south side, with the numbering starting from Kilbowie Road (so numbers increase from right to left). Looking at the 1940 Valuation Roll, the last numbers are 169 on the south side and 158 to the north.
On Thursday 13th March 1941 the air raid sirens sounded around 9pm. (I have set out a timeline for the all the events in the Blitz of Clydebank and Glasgow, click this link to see the post.) There are two key sources for information about what happened on the western end of Second Avenue:
- “Untold Stories”, a collection of eyewitness stories collected by the Clydebank Life Story Group and published in 1999
- Ian MacPhail’s book “The Clydebank Blitz”, published in 1974
I have quoted from them below and am indebted to the authors.
Very early in the raid, a bomb fell on 159 to 163 Second Avenue (the red circle on the map above). The timing comes from the account of 13-year old Nora Foley in her account in “Untold Stories”. She lived with her family in a top floor flat at number 163 and says they were bombed out “in the first fifteen minutes” of the attack, so around 9.15 to 9.30pm.
This fits with McPhail’s account of one of the policemen who was awarded a medal for heroism for his actions that night (page 32): “Sergeant John MacLeod, who lived at 43 Albert Road, was on his way to take up duty when bombs demolished homes on either side of him. From one of them he heard the voices of children shouting and he immediately clambered through the ruins and rescued two of them. He then went to another wrecked house and from under the debris helped to rescue three children and their mother and bring out the body of another child.” It is not stated that the incident at 159-163 Second Avenue is the one being described, but the proximity to Sergeant McLeod’s home address and the timing (within 15 minutes of the bombing starting) seems to match when a policeman going on duty as the raid started would have left his home.
If this is correct, then the final sentence of the extract would be a good match for the Malcolm family who lived at 161 Second Avenue. The mother would have been Eileen Malcolm (nee Burns) and the rescued children would have been Mary, Ellen and Isabella, aged 7, 3 and 1. The child who died was their brother William, aged 5.
In “Untold Stories”, there is an eyewitness account from Helen Robertson, a married woman who had trained as warden when war broke out but who had been paid off with many others when attacks on Clydeside did not materialise in 1940. From her description of the location of her home and the name of a neighbour, it’s nearly certain she lived at 167 Second Avenue.
She describes going to the shelter at the rear of their building, bordering on the sports field. “We weren’t long there till we heard Wheeeeeeee! And I remember very calmly just thinking to myself that was probably the last sound I’ll ever hear. However, the bomb exploded, and even though my eyes were shut, I still saw the flash and suddenly my mouth was filled with dust. I ran out the shelter and saw the neighbours further up the street running into what I could just describe as a big cloud of dust … I ran through our close and round to the front and there was just a heap of rubble in the street.”
This would have been the rubble of numbers 159, 161 and 163. Following her training, she took some survivors (possibly including Nora Foley) to St Stephens School where there was a shelter, then went to Boquhanran School to get an ambulance. When she returned, she saw “Two closes were flattened {probably 159 and 161]. Fortunately the ambulance was there ahead of me, and a Mr Malcolm was standing in the ambulance with blood on his head. I said, ‘You come out of there’ (a tin hat made you a heid yin), ‘you’re able to walk.’ And he said quite calmly, ‘It’s my wee boy. I’m just helping him into the ambulance.’”
Mr Malcolm is the husband of the lady rescued by Sergeant MacLeod. The boy, who was also named William, was already dead, Helen thought.
Allowing about an hour for Helen to have made her away out of the shelter, gone to the two schools, reported and returned, this was probably no earlier than 10.30pm.
This is the site of 159 to167 Second Avenue from Google Street View in 2021:
The next thing that happened was the parachute mine on numbers 74 to 80 Second Avenue, a few hundred yards to the east; this is the green circle in the bottom right-hand corner of the map above. This happened at 12.45 am, from the account of Ruby Stewart who was bombed out of her home at 84 Second Avenue at 12.45am. With other survivors she was sent to High Park (presumably Boquhanran Park?). From this vantage point Ruby said, “I saw St Stephen’s being hit. Bits of the building flew up in the air – girders looking like matchsticks.”
This was where there was a larger shelter, and people had been gathering there. I’m grateful to Tom McKendrick for the information that in the vicinity of St Stephen’s Chapel next to the school /Railway, there was a public shelter that took a direction hit with a 250kg bomb.
On page 21 of his book, McPhail quotes William Smillie, Clydebank Fire Brigade: “I went to Second Avenue and saw three incendiaries lying in the road. I was earthing them over [covering them with dirt to stop them burning] when I heard someone shouting, ‘For God’s sake come and help us.’ A shelter had collapsed and there were men in it trying to hold the roof up with their backs. I put my crew in and ran for a rescue squad. A gas main was leaking and when I got back, four of my crew were unconscious.”
Again, we cannot be certain this was St Stephen’s School because the description is not specific; it’s possible it was a smaller shelter in a back court but that would probably not have been big enough to have men holding it up and require four firemen to help (or to have space for them.
We know Nora Foley was one of those who survived the bomb on 159 to 163 Second Avenue and had been taken to the school. She remembered: ”We went to an air-raid shelter in St Stephen’s School and after many hours it fell on us. Seven people were killed. My mother, granny and I were buried. My father and another man who offered help dug us out with our bare hands, my eleven year old brother doing his best to help them. A doctor and some medical students from Dunoon came to help us. Granny had a broken leg and a head wound and died two weeks later in Killearn Hospital. My mother and I had head wounds.”
Hannah Ahern, aged 80, died on 31st March 1941 at the hospital in Killearn.
If we combine Nora’s memory that the shelter collapsed “after many hours”, with Ruby Stewart’s information that she was bombed out at 12.45am, then had time to recover sufficiently to walk to the park, then we can estimate this took place around 3am to 4am. There is a photo of the original primary school among the collection of Stuart McBay, posted by him on Facebook (link).
In the morning, the Co-operative store across the road from the bombsite on Second Avenue was open, and the grocer was wearing a tin hat and only allowing two people in at a time, because the roof was in danger of falling in. He seems to have been selling off his stock, which was just as well as the roof did fall in later on. Helen Robertson remembered: “Next door to that was a wee kind of sweetie shop. Mr Anderson was killed in that shop. Now I don’t know who lifted those bodies but on this bit of wall across from our close there were three bodies lying on the street… Each of them was covered with a grey blanket. Our pavement was full of rubble, so you had to walk past these bodies and I’ll always remember, one of them: there was a bare leg out of the blanket, I don’t know whether of a man or a woman. These bodies lay there for a couple of days.” The rescue services were simply swamped by the scale of the disaster that had happened.
John Chisholm Anderson, aged 70, died at 158a Second Avenue.
On Friday 14th March the consequences of the bombings were still playing out. As night approached, people who had lost their homes heard the air raid sirens and were justifiably afraid the Luftwaffe would return, taking cover wherever they could. One such place was the air raid wardens’ post at the top of Janetta Street. Describing what happened that night McPhail wrote (page 42): “In Parkhall District, the new High School at Janetta Street (in use as a First Aid Post since Thursday night’s raid) was hit by a parachute mine at the west end and the walls there caved in. Fortunately, the explosion was well away from the stretcher cases, which had been laid down near the Janetta Street door. Later, a messenger came in to report that the Wardens’ Post (on the site of the present Parkhall Branch Library) had received a direct hit and a number of people sheltering in it had been killed or injured. A rescue team from Helensburgh assisted in bringing out the casualties, which included eleven killed.” McPhail’s book was published in 1974; consulting a map from 1972 suggests the library was at the corner of Janetta Street and Hawthorn Street.
Here is the site on Google Street View in 2021:
The eleven dead included Margaret Lee and four of her children. The oldest child, Patrick, was also there but survived with broken bones. They had been lucky to escape 163 Second Avenue the previous night; it’s possible that Margaret took her children to St Stephen’s (I believe she was catholic so this may have been a place she knew well) so may have survived that bombing as well. We may think, “What were the odds of that?” but Hugh Wood and two of his children died here having been bombed out of First Terrace, close to the incident at 74-80 Second Avenue. Also the seven dead at St Stephen’s School shelter included two and possibly three people bombed out of Graham Avenue where ten people died at numbers 25 and 27 on the night of the 13th/14th, They were:
10-year old Annie Beaton is described in CWGC as having died at a shelter on Second Avenue, her home being 25 Graham Avenue
Charles Finnen, aged 16 months, died at Second Avenue with no location specified. His family lived at 31 Graham Avenue
Agnes McKay aged 22, who lived at 35 Graham Avenue is said to have died at 161 Second Avenue by CWGC but why would she have been there if she had not been evacuated?
This map extract shows the location of the houses on Graham Avenue and the purple circle shows where the bomb fell, judged by where the most people died. Note Graham Avenue numbered from Kilbowie Road, beginning at 3 on the south side, then 5 and 7. The La Scala Cinema was built on the empty ground after number 7, completed in early 1938; the houses then started again at 21 and finished at 41. On the north side there were only three houses at the Kilbowie Road end, numbers 4, 6 and 8; the rest of the north side was left as grass and there is a postcard in Stuart McBay’s collection that shows a horse grazing on it (link). This shows the last properties on the west end of Graham Avenue, numbers 41 and 39, with the south end of Singer Street (not First Street as the caption on the card says).
The site of numbers 21 to 41 Graham Avenue on Google Street View in 2024:
Fortunately there is another view available, using the Britain From Above website, from 1934:
The view is looking east-north-east with the Singer factory clock in the bottom left and Kilbowie Road just clipping the bottom right on the photo. The purple circle on the right matches that in the map of Graham Avenue above to show the site of the bombing. This view also shows the shops in the ground floor properties of the buildings all along Second Avenue after Singer Street. The green, red and blue circles match up to the circles on the map, showing the bomb incidents at 74-80 Second Avenue, 159-163 Second Avenue and St Stephen’s School respectively.
While it is not exactly the same view, this photo from Britain From Above in 1947 shows where the incidents took place and can be compared to the 1934 photo above:
The names of the people who died were as follows (they lived at the same address, unless otherwise stated):
ON SECOND AVENUE
At number 158a
John Chisholm Anderson, aged 70, confectioner
At number 159
John Duthie Findlay, aged 26, and his son James Summers Findlay, aged 13 months. John had been married to Christina Greenhalgh since 1939 and they lived at 13 Singer Street. In the 1940 Valuation Roll, a John Findlay lived in a ground floor flat at number 159, probably John’s father.
James Woods, aged 9. James was the son of Daniel Woods (the 1940 Valuation Roll gives the surname as Wood).
Andrew Patterson, aged 58
Cecil Stevens, aged 41, married to Christina. Cecil’s parents lived in Cape Town, South Africa, although whether he was born there is not known.
At number 161
Archibald Graham, aged 41. He was born in Renton and was a member of the ARP Rescue Service.
William Malcolm, aged 5. His parents were William Bruce Malcom and Ellen Burns.
Mary Jane McSherry, aged 40, and seven of her children (Matthew 16, Mary 14, Edward 12, Sheila 5, Margaret 3, Lucy 2 and James aged 10 months). Mary was the widow of Matthew McSherry, whi had died in January 1940 of lobar pneumonia at the age of 47.
James and Annie Nisbet, aged 50 and 45, and two of their children, James 16 and John 13. James was from Airth, and had married Annie Cunningham from Dalmuir in 1918.
In addition Agnes McKay, aged 22, of 35 Graham Avenue is said to have died here but I have explained above why I think she could have died later that evening at St Stephn’s School.
At number 163
Charles and Elizabeth Henry, aged 74 and 65. Charles was from Ballyargus in County Donegal. He married Elizabeth Duffy in Cambuslang in 1894.
AT ST STEPEHEN’S SCHOOL SHELTER
Hannah Ahern, aged 80, was fatally injured and died on 31st March 1941 at Killearn Hospital. Hannah Martin was born in Kilturk, Northern Ireland in 1860 and married James Ahern in 1885 in Westmeath. They had seven children and we can trace the family’s moves from the children’s birthplaces: they were in Glasgow (1886-1895), Muirkirk in Ayrshire (1899), Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1900-1902). By 1918 the family was living at 28 Second Avenue, Clydebank; where they received news the third oldest son, Patrick, had been killed fighting the Turkish army in Palestine in a little-remembered part of World War One. Hannah’s husband, James, died the following month. In 1941 she lived at 163 Second Avenue with the family of her youngest daughter, Mary. Hannah was known as Nellie.
Annie Beaton, aged 10, is recorded as having died in an air raid shelter on Second Avenue. She was the daughter of James Beaton and Annie Stevenson and had at least four sisters and a brother; from the 1940 Valuation Roll, they lived at 25 Graham Avenue.
Charles Finnen, aged 16 months, of 31 Graham Avenue is recorded as having died at Second Avenue. His parents were James Finnen and Isabella Dempster who had married in Glasgow in 1939.
ON GRAHAM AVENUE
At number 25
James Harvey, aged 13. He was the son of James Harvey and Catherine Blake, and he had two sisters.
Ben O’Brien posted this photo of James on Ancestry.co .uk:
At number 27
Thomas Duncan, aged 9. Thamas’s parents were James Duncan and Julia Harris, married in 1922. He may have had three brothers (James, William and Christopher).
Helen Morrison, 38, and her children Helen, William and Margaret, aged 10, 9 and 1. Born Helen Kane in 1902, she married Norman Wilkie Morrison. Norman survived with three of their children, Norman, Ronald and Annie, aged 5 and 4. Norman died in 1952, aged 45.
Margaret Thomson, 42, and her children Williamina, Margaret and Christina, aged 24, 20 and 19. Margaret was born in Stirling, nee Fraser, and married William Thomson in 1917.
In addition two people died at number 3 First Street, and it’s possible this was in the same incident. Their names were George and Mary Adams, aged 63 and 55. It’s possible they were from Ireland, and had at least two children (Jane and Thomas) and possibly more (Sarah, others?). Mary died at the scene; George survived and died in the Royal Infrmary in Glasgow on 12th April 1941.
AT JANETTA STREET WARDENS’ POST
Peter Graham, 52, of 12 Cherry Crescent. He was born in Campbelltown, the son of a seaman. He married Cecilia Pettigrew in 1916 and they had three children.
Margaret Lee, 32 and her children Margaret, Kathleen, Evelyn and James, aged 11, 9, 7 and 5. Margaret was born in Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland, nee McNally. She married James Lee from Belfast in 1924 in Mullingar and their first child was born there. They moved to Clydebank in 1929 or 1930, and had four more children. On Ancestry.co.uk, Diane Main has posted a photo of her:
Jeanie McLean, 47, and her daughter Margaret, 18, of 4 Cherry Crescent. Jeanie Elliott Kerr married Dugald McLean in 1914 at which time Dugald was a boilermaker and they lived at 3 Shaftesbury Street, Dalmuir. They had six children together of whom Margaret was the second oldest.
Hugh Wood, 36, of 14 First Terrace, and two of his children John and Margaret, aged 15 and 5. Hugh married Margaret McTavish in 1925. I believe they had three children together, the youngest, James, being born in 1941.