In a recent post of Facebook, Glasgow City Archives showed the photo below, captioned “Hospice, Metropole Theatre, 331-343 St Georges Rd, 1964” (link):
My understanding of a Hospice was a quiet place for people to go in the final weeks of their life – why would it be on St George’s Road and why would it be linked to a theatre? This article describes the story of the Hospice and the 30 women who lived there in 1921. (Spoiler: it was next door to the theatre but otherwise entirely unrelated.)
When a church was built at the northern end of St Georges Road in 1824 its situation on the edge of the urban area was such that it was called St Georges in the Fields. This map is from 1844:
While the southern end from Charing Cross to St Georges Cross was well-developed by 1875, the northern stretch to Garscube Road was still being filled in, including a pair of adjoining houses about 50 yards up from St Georges Cross. (The earliest evidence of occupation I can find is July 1882.) The first owner (and assumed builder) was Thomas Brown of Lesmahagow (link).
The design had a suburban feel because they were set back several yards from the pavement to give them a gate and short path through a nominal front garden to reach the front door, seen in the 1960 photo (the building to the left is the Metropole Theatre):
They were given the street numbers 327 and 331 and we know a little of the internal layout from an advertisement to let (Glasgow Property Circular, 24th March 1885)
Between 1880 and 1911, the houses proved popular with doctors of medicine: in the 1895 Valuation Roll Dr John Chisholm was at 327 and Dr Cyril Earle at 331. In 1909 a different medical use had been found (Fifeshire Advertiser, 27th February):
In 1911 the two houses were taken over by the Scottish Christian Social Union. Formed around 1900, their goal was: ‘To claim for the Christian law, the ultimate authority to rule social practice…to investigate and study social problems and to take action…”
More practically, it promoted the idea that the Christian faith should be more active in tackling social problems of the day. Members came from churches, richer families and academia. Newspaper reports describe public lectures, summer schools etc., so there was an emphasis on public debate and campaigning, for example to restrict access to alcohol (temperance). The city council was lobbied to provide places to drink tea in public parks to encourage working people to use them; the council was also asked to make school buildings available in the evening for classes for adults and other ‘improving activities’. The establishment of a small club on Sauchiehall Street for actresses in local theatres who had nowhere else to go might make us smile so after around a decade of existence the Union did not have a track record of supplying important services themselves.
But in 1911 an ambitious plan was formed to provide accommodation to women in full-time work who were either orphans or whose parents did not live in Glasgow and who earned less than 10 shillings per week. To give this some context in 1914 a labourer, one of the lowest paid forms of work for men, averaged 22 shillings per week. A house painter, tram driver or engineering worker (fitter), all men, would earn 30 to 35 shillings a week (source). “It is well known there are many girls who begin work at an age of 5 s a week, or even less.” (Inverness Courier 27th October 1911).
The plan was to charge the boarders 5 shillings and sixpence per week for their board “although no respectable girl who cannot afford this sum will be refused.” (Inverness Courier)
The Hospice was affiliated to the SCSU and was non-denominational. Religion was confined to ‘family prayers’ which boarders were ‘invited’ to attend.
Faced with practical issues, the plans were scaled back and 327 and 331 St Georges Road were acquired at a total cost of £3000. This was sufficient for 30 boarders and three staff (one matron, one cook, one housemaid).
This article adds the detail that the bedrooms were “bright and daintily furnished” and that there was a sitting room, refectory and laundry as well as “a large patch of ground at the back of the building”.
The Hospice opened too late for the 1911 Census but ten years later, on 19th June 1921 (the day of the Census), it was fully occupied. The boarders’ ages ranged from 16 to 57 with an average of 27; only one was over 40. One declared herself married, one widowed and 28 single. Nine were born in Glasgow, 19 elsewhere in Scotland and two in England.
I tried to find more about each woman using websites such as Scotland’s People and Ancestry. Of the 30, about one-third could not be identified, mainly because they shared a name with many other babies and there is no way to distinguish between them. this is not always the case and some names seem distinctive but still did not give me a lead; we can only speculate about why. Of those I could trace about half the women subsequently married (generally the younger ones). On average they died aged 73, which is probably in line with general population figures for that time).
The most common types of work for UK women in 1921 were domestic service, manufacture of textiles, manufacture of clothes, teaching, nursing and clerical. Of the 30 boarders, 8 had jobs involving office work (clerkess/typist), 12 worked in manufacturing (of whom 5 and possibly 6 worked in making clothing), 7 were in retail (saleswoman, sales girl), and 3 were in service jobs (waitress, domestic). I would love to introduce you to them as individual people but only have the barest biographical details, so, with some reluctance, I have grouped them by the places they worked and the type of work they did, then provided a brief biography where the information was available.
Imagining them leaving the Hospice in the morning for work, the biggest group must have been travelling to the city centre to a shop. (Buses, trams, even the underground, were available but I wonder if they could afford them?)
Mann Byars sold clothing and household goods (link) – similar to a department store in some ways, it was described as a warehouse which I think implies they held a lot of stock on the premises as well. It occupied the area of today’s Marks and Spencer’s on Argyle Street (the main entrance was in Glassford Street, see photo below, roughly the side-door of M&S).
Charlotte Duncan, 24, was a sales woman; Marion Ramsay, 23, Annie Stevens, 17, and Elizabeth Wilson, 24, were clerkesses (a term my 21st Century spelling checker does not even recognise!)
Charlotte Duncan was born on 15th December 1896 at New Bridge Street, Cumnock; her father was a pit engineman. She died in Ayr aged 84 in 1981.
Marion Howie Ramsay was born on 14h July 1897 at Hill-of-Beath, daughter of Archibald, pit timekeeper. She married David Gillies (“printing machine room assistant”) on 27h June 1924 in Cowdenbeath; her occupation was book-keeper. They moved to Edinburgh where they had three children, Marion Shier Gillies, Douglas Ramsay Gillies and Moyra Howie Penman Gillies, born in 1925, 1926 and 1928 respectively. Marion died in Edinburgh in 1964 of multiple myeloma, aged 67.
Annie Watson Stevens was born on 6th December 1904 at the Crown Hotel in the Arcade in Stirling; her father, Peter, was the hotel-keeper. Her father lost money and sold the hotel lease, and her parents emigrated to America where they both died young – Maggie in 1914 and Peter in 1917. It’s not clear whether Annie was with them or left with a relative. On 16th October 1924 she married Isadore (Israel) Barnett, who was an auctioneer. They had two children and lived in Leeds. Annie died there in 1982.
I could not reliably trace Elizabeth M. Wilson.
Manuel and Webster, was an Italian warehouseman, family grocer and wine merchants, with a shop at 103 West George Street (link). Jean Torrie, 24, worked here as a sales-woman. Jane Torrie was born on 1st November 1896 at Port Ellen. Her father, George, was a seaman (her mother registered her birth, presumably her father was at sea). The middle name she adopted was probably McGilvray, her mother’s maiden name. Her mother died when she was 1 and she moved in with her (paternal) aunt with her brother and father (now a general labourer). Her father died when she was 9. She married Colin Currie MacLean on 22nd August 1922 at the Highlanders’ Memorial UF Church (corner of Blythswood Street and Waterloo Street). Colin was a locomotive stoker. They had three children – George Torrie McLean, Josephine McLean and Jessie Wilson McLean in 1925, 1927 and 1934. Josephine died as a baby. In retirement, she moved to Mallaig with her husband where she died in 1966.
Annie White (the youngest of the boarders at 16 years and 9 months) worked as a sales-woman for Robert Gibson and Sons, an educational publisher at 45 Queen Street:
She was possibly Ann Morton White born in Maryhill in 1904.
Another group of women had jobs on Sauchiehall Street. The Treron department store building still stands today:
Hannah Campbell, 29, worked here as a waitress; most stores of this type would have had a café or restaurant. She was a widow, possibly as a result of the First World War.
Lumley’s was a well-known sports shop, close to the junction with Renfield Street (on the right hand side of the photo, above Lauder’s).
Blanche McKenzie, 32, worked here as a sales-woman. The Census records she was born in Liverpool and was single.
Grieve’s was “a couture dress maker, mantle maker and silk mercer” on Sauchiehall Street (at Garnet Street, next to the Beresford Hotel building). This brilliant article (link) notes the name is still visible just below the top floor window:
Margaret Mcintosh, 23 from Aberdeen worked here as a mannequin, or a live model for clothes. The same article has photos of some of the clothes made here and maybe even modelled by Margaret:
Directly opposite Grieve’s shop on Sauchiehall Street was the shop of Lyon Limited, stationers (link):
Margaret McKenzie, aged 20 and from Torridon, worked here as a clerkess.
Round the corner from Sauchiehall Street in Charing Cross Mansions and at the start of St George’s Road, Bamber’s was a hairdresser and beautician:
Jean Sinclair, 19, from Thurso, worked here as a typist. She was born Jane Calder Baikie Sinclair on 10th November 1900 at Berridale on South Ronaldsay. She was staying at the Hospice with her older sister, Margaret, see below. She married James Swanson Rosie in 1923 in Thurso and they had at least one son. She died in 1987.
St George’s Road was packed with shops and three other Hospice boarders worked there. At the Co-op at numbers 296 to 33 Margaret Thomson, 17, was a sales girl:
She had the shortest journey to work because it was right across the road from the Hospice. Margaret Urquhart Thomson was born on 19th September 1904 at 41 North Park Street, by the canal at Firhill. Her father, William Alexander Thomson, was a wine and spirit salesman. Her presence in the Hospice in 1921 could be linked to the death of her mother a few years earlier; her father may have gone to England. She married on 2nd April 1925 to Richard Moffat O’Brien a railway waggon shunter, possibly working at St Enoch Station. At the time her occupation was “boot saleswoman”. From an Ancestry family tree, she was known as Pearl. They had three children – James Thomson O’Brien (1925), Richard Moffat O’Brien (1926) and Martha Thomson O’Brien (1929). Margaret died aged 36 of breast cancer at Gartloch Hospital in 1941.
Close by at the junction of New City Road, St George’s Road and Great Western Road, was the drapery and clothing store, Wood and Selby:
Margaret Sinclair, 22, worked here as a dressmaker. Margaret Gordon Sinclair was born on the 14th July 1899 at Mount Pleasant, a farm to the south-east of Thurso. Her father, Alexander was a farmer. She married James Daniel Shearer in 1929 in Wick. They had at least two children, Anne Baikie Sinclair Shearer in 1930 and Alexander Shearer in 1933. Margaret died in 1970.
Robert Campbell had a grocer’s shop at 57 St George’s Road:
Grace Crawford, 23, was a sales-woman here. Grace Helen Elder Crawford was born on 20th July 1896 at a farm at Auchterderran, near Kirkcaldy, where her father was a dairyman. She married aged 46 on 27th August 1942 to Arthur Dickson Rodgers at Lansdowne Church on Great Western Road (the one nearest Kelvinbridge). They lived at Holyrood Quadrant, off Napiershall Street; Grace died in 1973.
Here’s the site of the shop today, in the scrubby trees on the right hand side:
Three of the boarders worked at the Blind Asylum on Castle Street in Townhead. This was founded in 1828 to help people with no or partial sight integrate into society through providing them a general education (including the development of an early ‘tactile system’ of letters analogous to Braille) and teaching them a trade and employment in workshops at the asylum (the workshops would evolve into Blindcraft). In the photo below, the clock tower still stands immediately north of the older part of the Royal Infirmary but this shows it used to have an accompanying building that would have housed the workplaces:
Annie Johnston, 29, was a “bedding machinist” from Maybole; sisters Christina and Annie Connal, 24 and 20, were machinists. I cannot find any evidence they had sight problems themselves (earlier versions of the Census reported ‘disability’ for every person) so they must have been staff who worked alongside people without sight to produce a finished product.
Christina and Agnes were sisters. Christina was born in Edinburgh on 14th April 1897 and Agnes Daisy Connel was born in Stirling on 2nd October 1900. (Agnes was called Daisy in the 1901 Census.) Their father was a labourer; their mother died in 1902. Later in life they lived in Possilpark and neither of them married. Christina died in 1976, Agnes in 1979.
Ada Holding. 39, was a “shirt machinist” for Messrs Tillie and Henderson Limited. This company opened a factory in Derry, Ireland around 1850, installed steam-driven sewing machines, and were soon making millions of shirts per year and employing thousands of workers. Ada worked at their much smaller Glasgow factory at 39 Miller Street; it would have stood on the right side of the photo below.
This aerial view gives a glimpse of what this part of Miller Street would have looked like:
Ada was the daughter of Charles Henry Holding, a railway clerk, whose family moved around the country with his work – from Beverley in Yorkshire, to West Hartlepool in County Durham (where Ada was born in 1881) and to Glasgow by 1889-1890. They stayed in Dennistoun and in the 1901 Census Ada’s work was “shirt machinist”. They moved to Springburn but Ada’s parents died within two months of each other in 1910, her mother of stomach cancer and her father of cirrhosis of the liver. In the 1911 Census she lived with her three brothers in Springburn; all of them were in paid work, Ada’s job was still “shirt machinist”. Ada never married. She died on 15th March 1959 at Gartloch Road, Glasgow.
Four women worked in smaller companies making clothes.
1 Mary M Brown was a blouse maker for William Henderson at 46-48 King Street (seen below looking north to Trongate):
Mary was 27 in 1921 and from Glasgow. The only child of that name born in 1894 was Mary Morrison Brown but she married in married in 1914 and had at least one daughter, so it seems unlikely.
2 Anna L. Brown was a tailoress for Walker and Weir, Ingram Street. I found the company at 176 Ingram Street, which you will recognise as being at the junction with Glassford Street:
She was 29 years old in 1921, born in Glasgow. I searched on Anna Brown born in Glasgow 1891 or 1892 but the only find was an Annabella Brown.
3 Ina McGuffog, 23 and from Balmae in Kirkudbrightshire, was a tailoress for “Weir, West Regent Street”. This matches James Weir who was a tailor renting some workspace within 108 West Regent Street. Robina Brydon McGuffog was born on 15th October 1896. Balmae itself is a hamlet but her birthplace likely refers to a cottage on the estate of Balmae House where her father was a gardener; by 1911 she was sharing a four-room cottage with her parents and six younger siblings. After 1921 she worked as a dressmaker (fitter) in Dumfries and died there aged 50 in 1947 of kidney cancer.
4 Jean Clarkson, 22, was a machinist working for T Duncan, 107 Buchanan Street
In the same textile sector, Mary Jane Steel was a clerkess for William Colvil, an agent for a textile company, at 142 Queen Street – this is the red sandstone office block on the corner with George Square, best known for having a Greggs shop!
Two boarders worked for a confectioner, Pullar and Co. Their factory was in Mathieson Road (later renamed Grovepark Street) in Woodside, a few hundred yards north of the Hospice. Both can be seen in this 1937 photo:
Pullar’s works are in the red oval, while the Hospice (in between the theatre and the library) is in the yellow circle, next to St George’s Cross in the orange circle. Christina Young, age 40, worked here as a clerkess. Mary Silcot, 26 and from Glasgow, was a despatch worker.
Christina Smith Young was born on 3rd July 1880 in Bonnybridge. Her father, John was an iron moulder in Denny. By 1901 the family lived in Shamrock Street where her father was a full-time church officer. Her father died around this time because by 1911 Christina, her brother and her mother were living her married sister and her two young children on Otago Street; Christina was an assistant draper. In the 1911 Census she lived in a three roomed flat at 9 Glasgow Street, Hillhead, giving her occupation as “boarding house keeper” but with one boarder, a 17-year old girl. She married in 1927 to Alexander Sweeney, a shipwright, and died of a stroke in 1942, aged 62.
Valeria Lamb, age 39, was a cardboard box maker working for Charles Sprenger and Sons, 37 Buccleuch Street. This aerial photo is looking west with the factory ringed in red. For reference St Aloysius is in green, Dundasvale (the Normal School) is in yellow and the gushet building at the start of Shamrock Street is in yellow.
She was born 28th November 1878 on Possil Road, Glasgow; her father was 58 and her mother was 24. In the 1901 Census she was a fancy box maker living on Hopehill Road with her mother, sister and brother; her mother died in 1907. In the 1911 Census she lived with her sister Agnes in a single room at 42 Agnes Street, Maryhill. She died in 1951.
Margaret Jelly, paint worker, Alex. Ferguson and Co, Maryhill. This was the Glasgow Lead and Colour Works on Ruchill Street (link).
In the Census Margaret gave her age as 57. Margaret Anne Jelly was actually 64 at the time, having been born on 16th June 1857 at 36 Whitelaw Street in The Butney area of Maryhill. Her father was a coal miner from Ireland. Age 14 she was a linen weaver and ten years later she was a cotton weaver, now living at Argyle Street, Maryhill (which would be renamed Kilmun Street) – in the 1881 Census her names is listed as Maggie Jelly. She was a weaver for at least 30 years. She was first recorded at 331 St Georges Road (the Hospice) in 1920 and as late as 1932 when she was 75. She lived out her days at Trefoil Avenue in Shawlands, dying aged 94 in 1951.
Jeanie B. Finnie, 39 and married, worked as a waitress for “Thomson, 29 Camphill Avenue, Langside”. This is quite mysterious as this address was a block of tenement flats. A ‘Thomas C. Thomson C.A.’ lived at number 29, but why would he need a waitress?
Jean Borland Bowie married an Irishman, John Alexander Finnie who was a commercial traveller, at the village of Crosshouse in Ayrshire on 19th July, 1904. At the time her job was “grocer’s assistant”. They lived at 132 Jamieson Street in Govanhill and had three children, Euphemia, Nellie and John, born 1905, 1907 and 1909; at the 1911 Census John (father) was assistant in a grocer’s shop. It’s not clear what happened between 1911 and 1921 – Jeanie does not say she is divorced but she was living alone at the Hospice. The only child I could trace was Euphemia, living in Kilmarnock as the adopted daughter of John and Marion Colquhoun. Later in her life she lived in Caernarvon Street, off of St Georges Road. She died in 1969, Euphemia being the informant and giving her relationship as “daughter”.
As she travelled to her work in Langside, Jeanie may have been accompanied by Dorothy E, Thomson, 23, who was an assistant at Langside Public Library. Dorothy Eleanor Thomson on 27th April 1898 in Langside, daughter of an artist, Henry Thomson. On the day of the 1901 Census she was with her grandmother, father and aunts in Cadder. I thought this might be a chance that her mother was away but in the 1911 Census she lived at 3 Smith Street with her father, now describing himself as a house-painter. After 1921, we know nothing of her until she died in 1975 aged 77. She had been an assistant librarian all her life.
The Hospice had three full-time staff. The matron was Marjory W McGregor, 53, and from St Andrews. Elizabeth McL. Reid, 58, was the cook and Christine P Milne, 22, was the maid. In addition, one of the boarders gave her occupation as domestic but had no stated place of employment so I imagine she was temporarily working there as well: she was Mary Nicolson, 32, from Skye.
The matron, Marjory Walker McGregor, was actually born in 1863, making her 58 at the time of the Census. She was the fifth of seven children in her family and when her mother died, she seems to have taken over. The 1901 Census records her aged 26 as the oldest child still at home with her father, a farmer. She died in Newington, Lothian, in 1944.