|
|
Clearances
- Glasgow
In 1840 30,000 Highlanders were forced to move to Glasgow. None of them
spoke English (they spoke the Gaelic tongue), they had never seen a
city. The only work they had ever done was to tend to a few animals
and a small bit of land. They were forced overnight into factory work.
In 100 years Glasgow's population swelled from 42,000 to 477,700.
Work to
be found in the textile mills, on the railways, in coal mines and in
ship building. The cities grew so quickly that it was impossible to
build decent homes fast enough. Conditions in the three and four story
tenements were very bad. The immigrant areas were the poorest in the
city. There was little sanitation, no proper water supply and rubbish
lay in the street. Two or three families often had to share one or two
rooms. These areas were known as slums. Rents were not always cheap
and people were put out on the street if they could not pay on time
By 1830 large numbers
of children were employed in the cotton mills. Many families were so
poor that even very young children were sent out to work. They were
often taken on as scavengers, crawling underneath the machinery, cleaning
and oiling them as they went. Older children worked as piecers, watching
the hundreds of threads and joining together any that broke. Young men
became spinners, operating the large machines.
| ‘‘The
wynds consist of long lanes so narrow that a cart could with difficulty
pass along them; out of these open the closes, which are courts
about fifteen to twenty feet square, round which the houses, mostly
three stories high, are built. The centre of the court is the
dung-hill. The houses for the most part are let in flats. In the
more costly of these abodes…separate beds are furnished
at a price of 3d per night…I did not believe until I visited
the wynds of Glasgow that so large an amount of filth, crime,
misery and disease existed on one spot in any civilised country.’’
- J.C.Symons
in a report to Parliament [1839]
|
The following report
by Doctor Robert graham, Physician at the Royal Infirmary [1818] could
also be used to give the idea of how Glasgow looked.
| ‘….Let
him pick his steps among every species of disgusting filth, through
a long alley from four to five feet wide, flanked by houses five
floors high, with here and there an opening for a pool of water,
from which there is no drain, and in which all the nuisances of
the neighbourhood are deposited… to float and putrefy and
waste away in noxious gases. Let him look, as he goes along, into
the cellars which open into this lane and he will probably find
within them pigs and cows and human beings.’
|
|
Zoom in
