Glimpses of old Glasgow

Part I. Historical

Introduction to Part I

IN trying to recall what Glasgow was sixty years ago, and to set forth some of the changes it has undergone during the last half century, I trust these "GLIMPSES" may prove interesting to my fellow-citizens of mature years, and also be instructive to the rising generation.

I am proud of the city of my birth, the progress of which has been quite phenomenal. I cannot but marvel at the rapidity of its growth and expansion. In the year 1830, on the east and west, on the north and south, were farms and farm-steadings, little plantings, and clumps of trees. The Molendinar and Camlachie burns, and the river Kelvin then contained trout, and flowed through fields divided by hawthorn hedges, at whose roots grew bramble bushes, the fruit of which was eagerly sought after by the children for their own eating, or to carry home to their mothers. What a change is now! The city has crept out, and ever out until stone and lime have obliterated, probably for ever, the gowan and the field daisy; and localities endeared to us by boyhood's memories are now completely transformed through the expansive power of commercial development.

I shall not attempt to give a full account of the progress of the city, nor of the memorable changes which have taken place in it in my own day. I shall refer chiefly to the principal thoroughfares, and the more important buildings and institutions of old Glasgow, and endeavour to interweave therewith interesting local events and personal reminiscences which have occurred during the last sixty years.

But, perhaps, it might be as well, ere beginning these memories of my boyhood, to touch briefly on the source of the greatness of our "sea-born city," viz.:-