Chapter 8 (ii)

 

                           Francis McGlynn  [141] (D2): 1892 -1943.

 

      Francis was born on the 12th of November 1892, and his birth is registered as taking place on the farm at Kingarrow.  When joining the Glasgow Police Force he stated that his place of birth was Doochary, Co Donegal; which although he was born on the farm at Kingarrow is probably where it was registered. 

           Why did Francis leave his family, birthplace, and native country?  This is the very essence of all 'Irish Emigration' between 1870 and 1914.  The Irish family unit remained at six children, whilst fertility in marriage declined in the rest of Europe.  Children were reared for emigration; that would fund further emigration; and in turn send home badly needed money to help with rates, rents, and shop debts.  The Christmas 'American Letter' supported the economy of the rural west.  It is reckoned that a milllion pounds sterling were sent home annually from America alone; nearly two and a half million dollars.  Investment on rearing, outfitting, and transporting emigrants, was seen as worthy of the end dividends.  At the same time the marriage institution became increasingly rigid, making the aquisition of a farm and a spouse almost inseparable.  This facilitated the transferance of property which would not have been tolerable without the option of overseas emigration and marriage.

      This emigration, although heavy, could not cope with the surplus unmatched population.  In 1911 we see a quarter of 50-year-old women and men never having married.  Ireland maintained, for most of the century from 1870, a unique blend of infrequent marriage, high marital fertility, and a heavy emigration factor.  The human side of these statistics is demonstrated by this family of four boys and two girls.  Francis, who emigrated, was the only boy to marry and both girls married local farmers.  Half of the family lived and died on the farm; unmarried men.

      At the time Francis knew, by the age of his parents, that it would be a long time before the farm came to him so his prospects of marriage and a family were slim.  This, and the pressure of the tradition of one son forming the base for future family emigration, would have been the exigency that swept Francis to Scotland on the Laird Line steamer pictured below, or her identical sister ship.  

 

    The Glasgow, Dublin, & Londonderry Steam Packet Co.

"Laird Line"

Derry to Glasgow every Tuesday,Wednesday,Friday,

and Saturday, at 6PM

Typical ship of the Laird line of which there were two on the route at the time of Francis

sailed to Glasgow.

Cabin 17/6,  Steerage 10/-

 

  After the harvest of 1911; at the age of eighteen; Francis boarded the steamer, leaving behind the quiet isolation of the farm for the noises, smell, and city bustle of Glasgow.  It was not his parents wish that he should leave, in fact they were opposed to it.  It was his aunt Frances Quinn and her husband who provided the money for the fare without the knowledge and against the parents wishes.  Arrangements would have been made for meeting him on arrival at the Broomielaw by family friends from his own area, who would lodge him until he found work.

      Francis found work labouring and moved to Merchison St. in South Carntyne, to lodge with Mr and Mrs Breslin who were another Donegal couple.  Whilst staying with the Breslins he met Mary Green, the sixteen year old niece of Mrs Breslin, who had arrived seeking work as a domestic servant.  Maggie Breslin kept in contact with the family until she died and often visited, as can be seen in the photogragh of 1946 (rear of this section) taken at Thornton St.  It is not difficult to image how two young people; far away from their friends and family in the quiet Donegal countryside; alone in an alien city, became friends.

      Mary Green was the shy and pretty daughter of Catherine Green, a farm servant from Ardsbeg.  She was born on the 31st of August 1896 at Ardsbeg, Gortahork, as a twin; the other being stillborn.  This was before Catherine was married and became Kate Rodgers.  I cannot trace the father but she appears to have grown up doing chores on a farm, rather than attending school.  In her fifties she could still not read well or write more than her name.  She was sent overseas to find employment and the opportunity of marriage which would have been denied her if she stayed in Donegal.  It is interesting and I don't know the reason but, in the 1901 census she was shown living at a different Green house from her mother and she never seems to have attended school.

      Mary went into service, living below the stairs in a room only large enough to hold a single bed and a washstand, in a semi-detached house at 39 Calderwood Road to the south-east of Rutherglen.

      Meanwhile, Francis moved labouring jobs and lodgings to 238 Main Street  Maryhill.  They would not have been able to see each other very often with Mary working, just outside the city boundary at the opposite side of Glasgow, for 10/- a month with little time off.  As their relationship blossomed, so did opportunity for Francis.  The Great War broke out and policemen, alongside the rest of Britain's manhood, flocked to enlist in the armed forces to defend king and country. 

      Francis joined the Glasgow Police as a probationer constable, Reg' No C433, on the 12th of May 1914 and promptly proposed marriage.  He moved to 100 Nabury Street in Hutchesontown, at the edge of the Gorbals, off Caledonia Road.

      They were married on the 11th of August 1914, three weeks before Mary's eighteenth birthday; in the old St Columkille's Church, in Main Street, Rutherglen; when he was twenty-one.

 

        The old Saint Columkille's was built in 1853, and it was before the alter shown above, that they were married by the Very Reverend Canon Toner.  The present St Columkille's dates from 1940 on the same site.

 

 

      After the wedding they lodged at 48 Rosebery Street, again in the Hutchesontown area, near Richmond Park.  The room was in a comfortable red sandstone tenement, fairly modern at the time.  Although very few of these were owner-occupied, the Electoral Rolls show them rented by small businessmen, artisans, police, and firemen.  In the August of that year, 1914, Francis transferred to 'D' Division, after completing his three months probationary period, working in the Gorbals.

      In those days policemen walked the beat, two constables to each area, every three shifts.  At 10pm they would fall-in outside the Southern Police Station in Nicolson Street under the night shift sergeant, roughly about twenty men strong, and the beats would extend as far as the Rutherglen boundary at Oatlands.  The squads would march off like a platoon of soldiers, to be halted at Gorbals Cross where two men would fall out and take up duty.  On they marched towards the boundary at Oatlands, two dropping out at each beat, until they reached Oatlands Toll.  Whilst this was going on the reverse was taking place by the men going off duty.  The Oatlands beat men walked to South Wellington Street Station and were joined by four other beat men under a sergeant.  The formed up and marched to Nicolson Street, picking up the other beat men on route.

      This was a favourite time time for 'gang fighting' with a fifteen to twenty minute window while the police marched in opposite directions.  Although this was the day of  the 'cuff on the ear', the police were hard on the boys at street corners.  They were booked, taken to court, and fined.

      A common source of jokes were the many Highlanders and Irishmen enrolled because of their height and build.

      A constable walking the beat in the Gorbals saw a man lounging at a street corner.  The policeman shouted out.

   "Hey you!  If you're going to be standing there for a while, you'd better move on."

   The man called him a big Irish so-n-so and was 'lifted'.

   The constable gave evidence in court and the magistrate asked him how he knew who the accused was referring to.

   "Sure Yer 'Onour, was I not the only big Irish so-n-so standing there at the time."

   There are many variations on this theme.

      It was at 48 Rosebery Street that their first son was born on the 10th of January 1916. He was christened John.  At this time Francis was a constable 1st class, and in the June of 1916 his pay was increased to 32/8d.  This was not Mary's first pregnancy as the previous one had ended with the child, to be called Denis, being stillborn.

      Later, on the 12th of October, Francis transferred to 'H' Division from where he retired after two years and eight months, on account of ill-health.  The chest complaint that had prematurely retired him in January 1917 did not prevent him from getting work, and the family moved to Maryhill. 

 

 

 

      Francis moved into 45 Hill Street, which later became known as Duncruin Street, when he started work at Saint Kentigern's Cemetery.  It was here on the 3rd of November 1917 that Mary was born.  The church that Mary was baptised in was built in 1851 and was dedicated to the honour of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the first in Scotland to be given this title since the Reformation.  It stood between Duncruin St. and Kimun St., until damaged by the blast of a landmine on the 14th of March 1941.  It is notable that in 1900, due to the increase in population, an addition aisle was added to the church and it was known as the Donegal Side.

      Maryhill, like the Gorbals, was an area with large immigrant Irish numbers; many from Donegal.  Frances did not become a base for emigration for his brothers and sisters because, as in the Great American Depression of 1870, the Great War virtually stifled emigration from 1915 till 1920.  His sisters were fortunate in that they married, but his brothers remained on the farm, never marrying.

      In 1920 Mary had the only one of her children born in the country of their forefathers.  While staying with her mother in Ardsbeg, she had Frank on the 7th of November 1920, the night that the 'Black and Tans' burnt the local 'Paddy the Co'.  This was the term for the co-op stores which was a very important part of the community in the far west.  The local people took their produce here to sell; such as wool and knitting, and received credit for it.  Without this, life was difficult in the poor farming areas where the crofts barely kept them; even when nature chose to give them a good year.  This, of course, made it a prime target for the malice of the 'Tans'.  Also in that year the 'Black and Tans' burnt the Colaiste Uladh in Ardsbeg, that the patriot Padraig Pearce had visited in 1907.

      Frank was born in Kate Rodger's cottage in Ardsbeg which was obviously a hotbed of Republicanism.  He was called Frank Don.Fan. beag (wee Frank) as his father was known as Frank Don.Fan. mor (big Frank).

      The next move puts the family at 1808 Maryhill Road; known as the Pen; and this was in 1922.  A Pen, of which there were a few in Glasgow, was an alley through the tenements and off the main road; just tall and wide enough to take a van.  This opened into an enclosed courtyard with all the tenements facing inwards, and was a close community not unlike a village.  It was here that Charles was born on the 18th of March 1926.

      In the latter part of 1926 Francis, who was foreman at Saint Kentigern's, moved his family to Archibald Place in the town of New Stevenston where he had the job of laying out the new Saint Patrick's Cemetery; of which he would become the first super-intendant.  Permission was given for the blasting out of large boulders and work began on the new lodge.  That was a particularly severe winter, and New Stevenston was hit by a hurricane which blew off roofs and caused widespread damage to property all around the Motherwell area.  The heavy snows of the following Saturday saw a third of all inhabitants homeless, when they could not prevent the ingress of water through the battered roofs.  It was during the following year, 1927, that most of New Stevenston was demolished, due to the state of the old two-storey houses, to be rebuild looking much as it does today.

      The first interment in March 1927, written in the old brown ledger in Frank's hand, did not merit a single line in the local Motherwell Times.  This is not a surprise when reading the pages that are filled with the sermons from the local kirks about the population of Catholics, "extracted cheerfully from Ireland" that is "active and growing".  This is the 'verbatim et literatim' of Christian bigotry at its best.  They are portrayed as a threat, taking over the area and jobs; especially by the local Protestant Party Member of Parliament.  Lanarkshire has not changed a great deal even to this day.

      The local paper carries adverisements for rooms to let with a mention of electical lighting as an added luxury.  In the prevailing conditions, the family were very fortunate to move into the newly completed lodge at the cemetery.

      During the family's stay here the house was exorcised on a couple of occasions after strange events.  Reluctantly the stories were told by both Frank (E3) and May (E2) and are recorded as told.  Neither are superstitious, believe in ghosts, or can explain the events.  The bare facts are related to allow you to make up your own mind.

      One evening the children, John, May, and Frank, were returning after 'pinching neeps' when an apparition garbed in a white gown appeared near the cemetery.  They did not wait to see if this was the New Stevenston ghost, but ran!

      Mist at twilight? Children's collective imagination? It could be either of these.  Charles, when living at Thornton St., wrote a story concerning the New Stevenston Ghost and had it published in the Weekly News.

 

 

The Lodge at St. Pat's, New Stevenston.

      The next incidents fall into a different category and are quite inexplicable. 

      One night when Frank was ill in bed with pneumonia, having had the Last Rites, his mother came into the room in her night-dress with a candle to check that the children were sleeping.  Both Frank and May had been awake and both saw her.  Next morning May asked her mother if the electricity had been off, and that was why she had been in the bedroom with a candle.  Her mother and father both said that she had not been into the room with a candle or in a nightdress.  The only door into the bedroom was from the living room where their mother and father had been sitting............

      An exorcism, that was not carried out by the local priest, happened after an automobile accident at the New Stevenston roundabout when a priest had his right hand severed.  It had to be buried in consecrated ground, so it was placed in the office to the right of the lodge; with no internal door; for burial in the morning.  During the night banging was heard on the wall between the house and office, and in the morning there were traces of plaster on the hand and desk......

      A last remembered event was when Francis himself was out attending to his goats.  He kept two, in a wood and tarpaulin shed at the rear of the lodge, for milk.  He heard a knocking on the shed and came out to investigate.  He walked round and, finding nothing, put it down to another of these strange and inexplicable happenings.

      Mary gave birth to two children during the stay in New Stevenston, both boys.  On the 18th of October 1927 Stephen was born.  This was not a family name, and one wonders (because of the next name) if it had anything to do with New Stevenston.  On the 20th of February 1930, Romuald was born.  Mary had noticed the name on a headstone in the cemetery and liked it

      Francis now took promotion to superintendant of Saint Kentigen's Cemetery and the family returned to Maryhill in 1930.  The family now moved into their last home at 41 Thornton St., which again was a new house.  The house was a 'four in a block' upper flat, consisting of two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and living room.  It was here that the last of the family was born on the 25th of October 1931, and called Theresa.

 

The original sash-windows were replaced by Rommy.

      The family, on arrival at Thornton St. were, John (15), Mary (13), Frank (10), Charles (6), Stephen (3), Romuald (1), and Theresa still to be born.

      Thornton Street, the longest residence of the family, was on the edge of Glasgow and about ten minutes walk by country road; over the old North British Railway; from St. Kentigern's Cemetery.  There the family was raised, as in New Stevenston, close to the countryside.  Each year they would still spend their summers on the farms at Ardsbeg and Kingarrow.

      Francis was not a man to show emotion, in fact he was quite a stuborn man who wished things to go his way; as demonstrated by his leaving home, and the marriage of his daughter Mary(E2).  The only time he was remembered to have shed a tear, according to Frank(E3), was here in the 1930s after he had heard of his mother's death.  He met an Irishman from home, in a pub in the Maryhill Road, who had attended her funeral.  It was the first that Francis had heard of it.  Hughie and John, who wished to stay on the farm but knew that Francis was heir, had thought to keep it from him.  There was a rift for a while which eventually healed.

      It was at home, on the 2nd of February 1943, that Francis died from the chest complaint that had prematurely retired him from the police.  Chest complaints were endemic in a lot of children raised in the wet west of Ireland, in poorly heated cottages, in a damp climate.  He was buried at St. Kentigern's on the hill over-looking his cemetery, or because he did not want buried in the swampy hollow.  The grave is next to the southern perimeter, on the hill to the right as you enter the cemetery.  Charles, when he worked there, erected a headstone using the side off an old fallen sarcophagus.  The price of a packet of cigarettes ensured an inscription.

 

 

 Francis(D2) taken in Ireland in the early 1940s a couple of years before he died at the age of fifty.

      Picture is (approx' X12) from an old snap, and is

the only known likeness of him.

 

      Mary emigrated with Theresa in 1952 and lived with her in Long Beach, part of the suburbs of Los Angeles.  She died on the 11th of August 1980; which was her sixty-six wedding anniversary; at the age of eighty-four.

 

 *******     

      Francis and Mary sent their children out from Thornton St. with expectations as different from their own; leaving rural farms in Donegal; as their children would have a generation later.

 

 

        John (E1) [1916-1983], the eldest, was born on the 10th of January 1916 at 48 Rosebery Street, Hutchesontown, Glasgow.  Educated at St Pat's, New Stevenston and St Mungo's Academy, he went on to Blairs College to train for the priesthood.  John left Blairs before his Final Vows and joined his father, working as a gravedigger, at St. Kentigern's.  On the 31st of May 1937 he married Margaret Craig at Saint Aloysius church in Garnethill, Glasgow.

      Margaret was the daughter of the local general store/pub owner in Malinbeg, Donegal; who came to Glasgow to train as a nurse at the Western Infirmary.

      During the war they moved to Ireland where John obtained a permit to work in the shipyards of Belfast.  A Catholic required a permitto be allowed to work, in order to guarantee the status quo of the small percentage minority of them employed in the Protestant industries of Northern Ireland.  When the war ended in 1945 they returned to Glasgow where John was called up for his two years National Service, which he spent in Dumfries-shire.

      At this point John is shown on the Service Register for the Voter's Role with a home address of 244 Cumlodden Drive, whilst Margaret is shown resident at 41 Thornton Street.  The house in Cumlodden Drive seems to have passed on to May (E2) and Luke in 1939, then back to John and Margaret in 1945; after May had left Luke and moved to Duncruin Street.  After his service in 1947 they obtained a prefab' house in Knowetap Street, also in Maryhill.  They combined their talents for a while and took over the Funeral Parlour at the corner of Fingal Street, where Margaret dressed the bodies while John worked as the undertaker.

      They had moved to a new flat in Scapa Street, Cadder, when the marriage broke-up after twenty-three years.  John left his daughter Mary, just before her wedding to Kit Mulvanney, and his other daughter Theresa.  Mary was born c1940 and Theresa, who later married Hugh Ferguson, was born c1943.  Mary and Theresa both moved to Ayr in the late 60s, Margaret living with Theresa.  Margaret died after a short illness, in Ayr Hospital, on the 2nd of July 1994.  Mary had three daughters, Christine, Jill, and Margaret whilst Theresa had a son, Richard and a daughter Lynn.

      John worked for Scottish & Newcastle Brewers as a manager and later as a trouble-shooter, before taking over as superintendant at St Kentigern's Cemetery in his 50s.  He was killed by a hit-and-run driver, on a Sunday night in September 1983 at Maryhill Cross, on his way to meet his brother Rommy.  Rommy was in the public house waiting for him when he heard of the accident, not realising that it was his brother.

 

      Mary (E2) [1917-1992] was born on the 3rd of November 1917 at 45 Hill Street, Maryhill.  May, as she was known all her life, worked for about fifteen years before emigrating; latterly as a personal nurse in Stratford-on Avon.  In 1937; at the age of twenty; she married her childhood sweetheart, Luke Ryan, in St Mary's Church.  Francis, her father, did not think that it was a suitable match for his daughter and refused to give her away, or even attend the service.  The emnity was to last all their lives.  They set up home and had one child, Catherine, born c1939 in the flat at 244 Cumlodden Drive, who was always known as Rene.  May left Luke in 1945, moving with her daughter to Duncruin Street.  Later Rene stayed with her Gran' at Thornton Street while May went to England to work.

      May emigrated to America from Southamton, on the SS Washington, and landed at Ellis Island on the 11th of November 1947.  She never became a citizen of the USA, but held a permanent resident's 'Green Card'.      During the years from 1948 till 1952 she worked as a personal nurse for three different people in New York.  May returned to Glasgow in 1952 to collect her daughter who was staying at Thornton Street.  In those austere post-war days, when rationing was just finishing, she was a very elegant visitor to Maryhill.

      May returned to America to be married to Vernon Wittiker in New Jersey, with her sister Theresa as bridesmaid, in 1952.

  

      The following year they had a son and called him Gary.  Her mother Mary, sister Theresa, and daughter Rene had all returned with her as emigrants.

      May also had a daughter called Verna.  After her husband's death, she re-married to Warren Crosby and moved to Hoquiam, Washington State.  May; who with her daughter Verna became Jehovah's Witnesses; died after a short illness at the age of seventy-four, on the 11th of June 1992.

      Rene, her eldest, married Vernon Jones, and living in New Jersey, they had one son called Danny.

 

                   Frank (E3) [1920-1991] was born at Ardsbeg, Donegal, on the 7th of November 1920.  He was educated at St Pat's, New Stevenston, St Mungo's Academy, and Glasgow University. During the war, 1939/45, he served in the Royal Navy, and was honourably discharged in the rank of lieutenant.  He married Hilda Mee, a WAF parachute packer, in St Mary's, Leek, Staffs.,

England, on the 18th of November 1944.  After the war he became a teacher of mathematics and science and eventually Principal of Maths.  He retired as Headmaster of St. Columba's of Iona and died of a sudden heart attack on the 18th of June 1991. 

 

 

                  Charles (E4) [1926-2001] was born at 1808 Maryhill Road on the 18th of March 1926.  After an education at St Mary's primary school and St Mungo's Academy he joined the army in 1941.  Charlie's war service was spent in India, and he returned from there as a sergeant in the artillery.              

      After the war Charlie worked in St Kentigern's Cemetery before becoming co-owner of the famous Benny's Bar on the north-west side of Gorbals Cross.  On the 18th of October 1949 he married Elizabeth English of Maryhill, in the church of the Immaculate Conception.

      Their first home was a flat on Glasgow Road in Clydebank, before moving in the early 1950s to Hotspur Street; overlooking the play-park.  They moved shortly after that to a flat in Garrioch Road, overlooking the Kelvin and park, where they remained.

      In the late 50s, after Benny's Bar, Charlie worked at a variety of jobs before becoming a manager with Scottish and Newcastle Brewers.

  

Charlie and Betty 1949, Thornton St

 

      After working in many public houses, Charlie retired in 1990.  Charles their son was a Civil Servant and Anne a nurse.  Charles died on St Patrick's day 2002 with cancer of the brain.

 

   Stephen (E5) [1927-     ], the fifth child, was the first born in the lodge at New Stevenston on the 18th of October 1927.  After the move to Thornton Street, he attended school at St Mary's and St Mungo's before serving his apprenticeship as a mechanic at a garage near the canal bridge on Maryhill Road.

 

  

      Stephen was an apprentice from 1943-45 and a mechanic, with the exception of his National Service from 1946-47, until he emigrated at the end of September 1952.  After a 'send-off' in Charlie's Wellington Bar in Argyle Street, he took the overnight train from Glasgow Central to London Euston, and then on to Southampton.  Here he took assisted passage on the Largs Bay, of the Aberdeen & Commonwealth Lines; to Melbourne, Australia.  Stephen spent his twenty-fifth birthday; half-way round the world; in Columbo, Ceylon.  Here he met Ann Fitz-simmons (Rommy's wife's sister) who was a missionary nun in the local hospital.

      Leaving Ceylon it took almost a month to reach Melbourne.  After working in the Melbourne area, Stephen drifted to the Snowy Mountains; along with many other Scots and Irish immigrants; and eventually on to Sydney.  It was from here that he first sailed to New Zealand to work for a year before returning to Australia.  He had another spell in New Zealand before ending his five 'free and easy' years in 1958.

      Whilst in Sydney he met Janette Warmaan, and his carefree days were numbered.  Janette was born in Bundan, Indonesia, in 1926 of Dutch parents.  Her father, a colonial plantation manager, died with her mother in an Internment Camp after the family were caught by the Japanese during the war.  After the war Jan and her brother were repatriated to Holland but, after she heard that her older brother; who was thought to have died as a prisoner building the infamous Burma Railway; was alive and living in Australia, she emigrated to join him in that area of the world where her heart lay.  Stephen and Jan were married on 'Anzac' Day, 25th of April 1958 and settled down in Sydney.  It was here that they had their first child, Daniel, on the 10th of April 1959.  The family later moved to Minginini, New Zealand in 1961, and on the 11th of April 1962 Catherine was born.

      Dan graduated from Massy University and became a Health Inspector in Wangananui, whilst Kitty graduated in 1987 in Civil Engineering and became a civil engineer with the Works and Developement Service Corp' of Wellington.  Kitty was married in February 1992 to Oscar Maghorn, and set up home in Wellington.

 

      Romuald (E6) [1930-1994], was born in the lodge at New Stevenston on the 20th of February 1930, and the unusual name came after his mother had taken a 'fancy' to it on a headstone in the cemetery.  He was educated at the same schools as Stephen and joined him in Patterson's Garage as an apprentice mechanic.  After his National Service he married Elizabeth Fitzsimmons in the Immaculate Conception Church on the 3rd of January 1951. 

Rommy and Betty 1949

         Rommy, like his father joined the Glasgow Police Force, serving in Govan, Drumchapel and eventually: promoted to sergeant; in Easterhouse.  He retired in the early 1980s, working as a barman in the Barlinnie Warder's Club.

      Betty left in the early 80s; with the children Christine, Maurine, Pauline, and Romuald; while Rommy lived on in Thornton Street.  He died after a protracted illness, and heart attack, in Stobhill Hospital on the 20th of February 1994; his 64th birthday.

 

      Theresa (E7) [1931-2007], born on the 25th of October 1931 was the only child to be born in Thornton Street.  She spent the war in Ireland and returned, only to emigrate in 1949 with her mother to America.  On the 20th of June 1953 she married in the Church of Saint Monica's in New York to Patrick McNiff and eventually became an American citizen in 1966.  Mary, her mother, lived with her in Los Angelos and she had one son called Kevin Barry. Theresa was buried with her mother, after a protracted stay in a residential home. - Mar 2007. 

   

Top: Rommy(E6), Stephen(E5), Charlie(E4), Frank(E3), John(E1)...1950.

 

  

 

 

 

 

FRANCIS (D2) = Mary (nee Green)

 

 

(Denis)               MARY(E2)             CHARLES(E4)         ROMUALD(E6)

       JOHN(E1)                  FRANK(E3)             STEPHEN(E5)              THERESA(E7)

 

*********************

 

 

Frank McGlynn [142] (E3): 1920-1991.

 

      Frank was born on the 7th of November 1920 in his grandmother's cottage at Ardsbeg, Donegal.  Francis(D2) had wished to have a son born on the 'auld sod' so Mary returned to Ireland to have their third child.  John(E1) and Mary(E2), the first two, had been born in Scotland due to the restrictions that were imposed on travel during the 1914/18 War.

      He was born to a land in turmoil as Irishmen fought to form a nation free from England's dominance.  The hated Black and Tans, mostly unemployed soldiers from the Great War, were burning the land and abusing the ordinary people.

 

      Francis had chosen to call the first born in Ireland after himself; and with the family name; so Mary accordingly told the Registrar that he was to be called "Frank, after his father".  The certificate of birth shows this with the wrong address and the wrong occupation of the father.  At this time Francis was not a farmer but a foreman gravedigger at St Kentigern's.  Certificates of Birth or Baptism are not always reliable sources.  Frank was baptised the next day in Saint Mary's at Gortahork with Grace Green as sponsor.

 

 

      Again the Baptism Certificate shows the christian name that they expected to give him, not what was entered on his Birth Certificate.  Frank was known as Frank Don' Fan' beag which was to differentiate him from his father who was known as Frank Don' Fan' mor.  In Glasgow Francis was known as 'Big Frank'.

      Frank attended St. Pat's New Stevenston before secondary education at St. Mungo's Academy, Parson St., Townhead; which he travelled to by train from the old Maryhill Central Station.

                                                                    I       The family returned each year to Kingarrow and Ardsbeg, where they helped on the farms.  As this was a primarily Gaelic speaking area, he learned the language and kept it up on subsequent visits.  The picture left shows Frank with his uncle Hughie(D5) starting the upland hay harvest at Denis's farm in Kingarrow, which traditionally began on the 12th of July.  This picture, taken in 1935, shows Frank with a long-handled Donegal sythe which was still used into the 1950s.  Both are barefoot, this being normal in the summer. 

      Frank was a diligent student and after taking his Highers, including Art in his last year, he passed on; in the summer of 1938; to the University of Glasgow to study Maths and Science.  The photograph below is a studio picture taken in April 1937, just before his seventeenth birthday.

 

t was whilst he was at university that the Second World War broke out in 1939.  Frank, a keen tennis player, was playing when the first bomb was dropped within earshot of Maryhill; although it was not until he returned home that he found out what the explosion had been.

      It was decided that Frank would take his younger brothers and sisters to Ireland for safety, and it was then that he applied for the Irish Passport which helped him join the Royal Navy in the following year. 

      They left after Christmas that year on the 28th of December 1939 and, after seeing them settled, Frank returned to his studies.  He attended university during the terms 1938/39, 1939/40 and 1940/41, when he passed out with a Master of Arts degree.  His interests at the time varied from badminton and tennis to dancing and an involvement in the politcal and debating clubs.  While in Ireland he liked walking and taking landscape photographs of Donegal, which all sadly vanished to the US.  As a young man at a time of war and most people in uniform, he applied to join the navy.  After returning from Gortahork in the January of 1941, he was called before a Panel that would decide which branch of the services he could be most suitably used.  When he requested to apply for the Navy they told him that they had no authority for naval recruitment, but with his Maths and Science, they decided that he would be posted into the RAF.  When eventually told that the choice was not his he showed them his Irish Passport and pointed out that, as an Irish National he was not covered by the Conscription Acts, but would be available to join the Navy on completion of his studies in three months.

            Later there was an interview and medical at another office which accepted him for the Royal Navy.  Frank joined on the 15th of July 1941, four months before his twenty-first birthday, as an Ordinary Seaman.

            Frank completed his Basic Training at HMS Glendower on the 20th of September and Passed Out on the 7th of October 1941.  His educational qualifications on entry ensured that he was marked 'PO', and as such was promoted to Articifer on the 14th of February 1942 and Ldg Articifer on the 24th of February in the same year. 

   April 1943

               Frank attained the rank of Petty Officer on the 24th of April 1943 at Donibristle, and returned to HMS Daedalus (Wroughton) that June.  He served mostly with his squad fitting and maintaining Radar, which was still a secret  weapon at this time.  Frank was promoted to Schoolmaster Cadet and taught Radio and Radar, moving to HMS Condor in Arbroath on the 3rd of August 1945.  He became an Instructor Sub Lieutenant RN on the 1st of July 1946, getting his School-master RN Warrant on the 3rd of August that year which made him up to instructor Lieutenant RN from that date.

      Frank served out the rest of his time as a Lieutenant at HMS Condor, from August 1946 till the 25th of January 1947, when he was released, but ordered to keep his uniform intact as he was considered on the Reserve Lists.

 

Lieutenant Frank McGlynn RN, 1946.

 

           When Frank returned to Daedalus in '43 he met a young RAF Parachute Packer called Hilda Mee, who was one of two who were attached to the base in case any 'chutes required re-packing.  They married on the 18th of November 1944 at Saint Mary's Church, Leek, Staffordshire; after Hilda had completed a course of 'Instruction in the Faith'.  They returned to Wroughton but, because of the War, no married quarters were available.  Hilda was discharged on the 11th of September 1945, and returned home to have twin sons, Peter and Patrick, on 8th of November.  Neither survived and were buried in Leek.

      Hilda stayed on in Leek, as Frank had been posted north to Arbroath in the August of 1945.  Due to numbers, officers had to be 'billetted-out' and Frank stayed with another three officers at 58 Fergus Square, Arbroath.  In the summer of 1946 Hilda spent two weeks holiday in Arbroath and returned to Leek; returning to live at Thornton Street with Frank's mother later in the year.  Frank was home at Thornton Street in November of that year as he was due 56 days 'Resettlement Leave' before his discharge in January.  His bounty on leaving amounted to 84 pounds 14/-, for serving King and Country.

      Frank attended Jordanhill College for Chapter IV Teacher's Training and started in St Bede's Primary School in Aug 1947.  They stayed in Thornton Street for approximately nine months before renting a single room in Cranbrooke Drive; near two other Donegal McGlynn families; for a couple of months.  They eventually rented a room at 63 Duncruin Street from November 1947.  Hilda returned to her mother's, at 49 Wellington Street in Leek, to have her next child.  David was born on the 19th of May 1947 and baptised at Saint Mary's.

      While living in Maryhill Frank moved on to St Roch's Junior Secondary School in August 1948, and then to St Columba's Junior Secondary in April 1949, teaching Maths and Science in both.  Miss McGarry's house in Duncruin Street was too small after Hilda had twins, Robert and Patricia, on the 27th of February 1950, so they moved to a rented house at 4 Belmont Street in Clydebank.

      The family moved into Belmont Street in the June of 1950 and the unfurnished first floor flat consisted of two rooms, with outside toilet on the landing, which they rented for One pound 19/1d per month.    

       The Black Range was a caste iron fire and cooker on a concrete base with a large chimney.  Washing of clothes had to be done in a Wash-house in the 'back court', with the only hot water available in the flat supplied by a small gas geyser on the wall above the sink.  Furniture was also in short supply with the bedside tables being made out of apple boxes.  Clydebank was dominated at that time by John Brown's Shipyard, which was just across Glasgow Road from Belmont Street.  Every morning the town was awakened by a short sharp blast on the horn, and a longer blast to denote that it was clocking-in time.     

 was just across Glasgow Road from Belmont Street.  Every morning the town was awakened by a short sharp blast on the Horn, and a longer blast to denote that it was clocking-in time.

      Singer's Sewing Machine Factory was the other main employer and both had been prime targets for bombing during the War.  Remarkably they came off unscathed but great swathes of Clydebank were destroyed in the process, and ruins remained a predominant feature of the town into the 1960s.  The buildings that remained were in general old blonde sandstone tenement stock, with some red sandstone.  The colours were hard to distinguish under the black covering of grime and smoke.  The town portrayed the part it had played in the monotonous drudgery of the workers who fuelled the factory and yard gates.  Ruled by the sound of the Horn; blasting in the morning to start and in the evening to finish; they lived out their lives up the dingy closes in conditions that can only be described as primative, or in Pubs which were packed from opening at five till closing at half past nine.  The Public Houses offered the workers not only a place to escape the daily grind, but to escape the overcrowding of the 'single-end' and two-room flats where people slept in every room and recess.

       It was while the family stayed in Clydebank that the last child was born, Rosalind.  She was born in hospital; which was now becoming the normal place for childbirth since the start of the National Health Service; on the 31st of October 1953.  The following year the family left the bleakness of Clydebank for a new house built on a 'green-field' site annexed to Glasgow for the purpose of cutting down Waiting Lists rapidly.  The schemes mainly consisted of three and four storey flats, built to a fairly high density, with no amenities save an inadequate number of shops scattered around.

      At the end of July 1954 Frank took his family to their new home, a five apartment top flat at 73 Inchfad Drive, in the second phase of the building of Drumchapel.  It was a brand new home with a modern kitchen; which had two large sinks with a cross-beam in the middle to fit the 'wringer'; three bedrooms, living room, but most importantly, an internal bathroom.  The hall, or lobby, had a cupboard for coal which also opened to the landing reducing dust and dirt on delivery day.  Coal was still the main source of heating, and remained so until the late sixties, into the early seventies.  Each apartment had a space allocated at the rear for a small garden, and the ground floor flats had a large garden to the front.  This particular part of the drive backed to the farmer's fields and country walks as far as the Old Kilpatrick Hills and beyond. 

      The family on arrival at Inchfad Drive consisted of David (7), Robert and Patricia (4), and Rosalind aged nine months.

      The planning had been so rushed that in the beginning there were no schools and fleets of buses took children to schools all over the west of Glasgow; David's being St Paul's Whiteinch.  Eventually they converted some blocks of flats into schools as a temporary measure before work was completed on custom buildings in 1956.  Romuald(E7) as a young policeman of twenty-four served in Drumchapel for a couple of years on 'land rover' patrol duty. 

      In August 1958 Frank left St Columba's to teach Maths at a new Comprehensive school at Jordanhill called St Thomas Aquinas.  During his time there he was also Careers Master and a Special Assistant for Maths.  Seven years later, in the August of 1965,  Frank took up the post of Principle Teacher of Maths in Saint Cuthbert's Comprehensive School, being later promoted to Deputy Head of St Columba's of Iona Secondary School in 1969.  The following year, due to the Head's illness, he took over the roll of 'Acting Head', until confirmed in the post in 1979.