Appendix 1

 

 

      The Electoral Rolls are the primary source for tracing where people were living year to year, depending on who had the vote.

The spelling of names on these lists may be idiosyncratic or phonetic depending on the Enumerator.  The lists were compiled in October for publication in the following February.  The year 1832 sees all adult leaseholders with property worth ten pounds a year and tenants at will paying fifty pounds per annum rent, but by 1884 it includes all males over twenty-one years of age.  In 1918 women over thirty were given the vote and the property qualification was removed, allowing those with six months residency to vote.  In 1928 women over twenty-one were allowed to vote and in 1950 the lists included those reaching the minimum age of twenty-one during the year of publication. 

There are other interesting though selective, and not accurate, sources which may be used as guides, Valuation Lists, GPO Directories, American Immigration Lists, and Mormon Family Details.  The General Census was taken in 1881, 1891, and 1901.  The 1901 Census is not available until after 2001.  Appendix 1 splits the Electoral Rolls:-

 

 

      Part 1 - Glasgow from 1870 till 1895, plus 1925 and 1950.

 

 

      Part 2 - Maryhill from 1892 till 1950.   

 

 

 

 

 

PART 1.

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Glasgow 1870-1895.

 

      The first McGlynn that we can show living in Glasgow is a John McGlinn (ii) in 1856; who was sixty when the census was taken in 1891 but had an unmarried son of thirty-four born in the city; although he does not appear on records till 1871 when he fulfilled the conditions to allow him the vote.  This is not to say that others did not live here before that date, and obviously the Electoral Rolls are not a complete list of male adults until 1884.

      The first recorded McGlynn in Glasgow appears in 1861 on the Valuation Lists but not on the Electoral Roll, indicating that he owned property valued¹ at less than ten pounds.  His name is Michael and he is shown living at 93 High Street without a listed occupation.  High Street at this time was a warren of single apartment tenements, mostly occupied by immigrants living in the most primitive conditions imaginable.

      Glasgow in the early and middle part of the Nineteenth Century is not recognisable from the buildings and spaces of today, although as early as the 1820's middle class families were moving out of the dirt and smoke to take advantage of the prevailing westerly winds and live along the Great Western Road axis.  The city's slums had a recognised notoriety even by 1840 and the intensity of the decay was exacerbated yearly despite the work of the City Improvement Trust. The scales were tipped against their efforts at improvement by the continual stream of poor from Ireland, the Highlands, and after 1880, Jews from Russia and Poland.  The immigrant's view of these airless single rooms off a dark, narrow, open 'close' with communal water and sanitation, must be set against black houses of the Highlands and Islands, the cabins of Ireland, and the ghettos of Eastern Europe.

      The conditions to many would have been an improvement², while others would have perceived little difference.  In general their transplant to the city gave them the opportunity of work that made them independent of nature and therefore removed the annual cycle of hunger, or in bad years, famine.

      The City Improvement Trust had cleared more than twenty five thousand houses by 1876, but even up till 1901 single room units were being built at the rate of over a thousand per year.  In 1914 the building of single room units had sharply declined, but Glasgow was still the most heavily populated central area in Western Europe with three-quarters of a million people in three square miles.  From 1875, with the continued prosperity of the city, a tremendous boom in tenement building was in progress.  The favoured type of housing was the 4/5 storey terraced tenement which was economic of space and allowed minimum rents, also saving on travel to work.  The budgetary family pattern of spending little on housing meant that; by 1900; although the city suffered from severe overcrowding and congested slums, there was a steady increase in the number of unoccupied houses³ which in turn curtailed building.

      In an attempt to curb the deterioration, in 1890, the Police (Amendment) Act and the Consolidating (Housing of Working Class) Act were passed which governed the situation until after the Great War.  A plate was affixed to the doors stating the number of persons that were allowed to live in each flat. The Acts also laid down regulations on air space, ventilation, lighting, ceiling height, enclosed beds, common lobbies, and building of backlands⁴,with access for Inspectors between midnight and four in the morning.  In 1891 two-thirds of Glasgow's population were living in very overcrowded⁵  conditions, while the figure for London was one-third.  This is not shown to have improved in the figures of surveys carried out in 1903 and 1911.  The Royal Commission set up in 1917 found 11% of houses with more than four people to a room, 28% more than three, and a staggering 56% with over two persons per room⁶.

      The years between the Great War and World War II were a turning point in Glasgow's history.  The city's success, built on heavy engineering and shipbuilding, relied on the prosperity of world trade and the worldwide movement of goods by British shipping.  In the 1930's world trade virtually collapsed and the effect on the West of Scotland was unemployment of more than 25% of the workforce.  Sustained incomes had up to now masked the unfavourable housing conditions and held labour militancy to a minimum, but the boredom and poverty caused by unemployment changed this; and Glasgow's reputation; to one of political radicalism and labour unrest.

      Glasgow's Corporation had no facilities to change her industrial base and revive the failing economy that was the root cause of the social problems, nor did Central Government have any experience in this field.  The Corporation's answer was to tackle the social problems by providing subsidised housing in schemes such as Knightswood⁷ for those higher up the the social scale, which would release stock for the less fortunate.  They also built inner-city areas in the old tenement style that had the effect of localising those with lower aspirations and income.  The inter-war years; 1919-1939; saw the building of just less than ten thousand privately owned houses out of more than seventy-six thousand completed, pushing the ownership of housing well into the public domain.

      'Green-belt' policies and depopulation of the city had been put forward towards the end of the Second World War, but waiting lists⁸ forced them to build new tenement schemes rapidly, and to a fairly high density.  Five of these peripheral estates were constructed, with minimal facilities, to house between twenty-five and thirty thousand people each.  'Overspill', 'New Towns', and the changing economic climate in the late 1960s and early 1970s, finally reduced Glasgow's population to about three-quarters of a million.

 

¹  Weekly rents in the North West of the city for a one room house were 1/6d (7pence) in 1866, and had increased to 2/6 by 1902.  Ten pounds in the 1860s would buy a reasonably appointed, two room flat.

² Proper floors and ceilings, stand pump for water, toilet.

³  About 5,000 in 1902 and reaching almost 20,000 in 1910.

⁴  Courtyards or open spaces to the rear of the building.

⁵  Defined as two or more persons to a room.

⁶  Corresponding figures for English cities were 0.8%, 1.5%, 9.4%.

⁷  Knightswood was built between 1923 and 1929 as a show-piece scheme of four-in-a-block flats, terraced, and semi-detached cottages in generous open space, for the 'deserving'.  It had library, parks and shopping parades. It was the largest of several of these schemes built on greenfield sites at the edge of the city.

⁸  Estimated at between 80-90,000 families in the early 1950s.

  

 

 

Extract of Glasgow Electoral Roll:-
Date	Ward	Name	Address	Occupation	1891
					Census
1870/71		Nil
1871/72	4	McGlin, John	109 Great Hamilton St.	labourer	pos'(ii)
	9	McGlin, Daniel	77 McAlpine St.	slater
1872/73	4	McGlin, John	109 Great Hamilton St.	labourer
	9	McGlin, Daniel	77 McAlpine St.	slater
1873/74	4	McGlin, John	109 Great Hamilton St.	labourer
	9	McGlin, Daniel	77 McAlpine St.	slater
	15	McGlinn, Edward	48 South Coburg St.	slater
1885/86	2	McGlynn, Patrick	13 Burger St.	forger
	3	McGlinn, John	240 Castle St.	joiner	(ii)
	3	McGlinn, John	45 Villiers St.	labourer
	5	McGlinn, James	33 Fountainwell Rd.	labourer
	10	McGlinn, John	20 Gladstone St.	traveller
	14	McGlin, Hugh	249 So Wellington St.	mason	(v)
	14	McGlynn, Edward	358 Mathieson St.	slater
	14	McGlynn, Hugh	113 Crown St.	labourer
1886/87	2	McGlynn, Patrick	57 New Rd.	steelworker
	3	McGlinn, John	240 Castle St.	joiner
	3	McGlinn, John	45 Villiers St.	labourer
	5	McGlinn, James	253 Springburn Rd.	labourer
	10	McGlinn, John	20 Gladstone St.	traveller
	12	McGlynn, Thomas	23 Bishop St.	labourer
	13	McGlinn, Patrick	47 Piccadilly St.	labourer	(iv)
	14	McGlinn, Hugh	249 So Wellington St.	mason
1887/88	3	McGlinn, John	240 Castle St.	joiner
	3	McGlinn, John	45 Villiers St.	labourer
	4	McGlynn, John	82 London St.	boilermaker
	5	McGlinn, James	253 Springburn Rd.	labourer
	10	McGlinn, John	20 Gladstone St.	traveller
	12	McGlynn, Thomas	23 Bishop St.	labourer
	13	McGlinn, Patrick	47 Piccadilly St.	labourer
	14	McGlinn, Hugh	249 So Wellington St.	mason
1888/89	2	McGlinn, Patrick	35 Chapel Ter.	provision dealer
	3	McGlinn, John	240 Castle St.	joiner
	3	McGlinn, John	45 Villiers St.	labourer
	4	McGlynn, John	82 London St.	boilermaker
	5	McGlinn, James	253 Springburn Rd.	labourer
	10	McGlinn, John	20 Gladstone St.	traveller
	12	McGlynn, Thomas	23 Bishop St.	labourer
	13	McGlinn, Patrick	47 Piccadilly St.	labourer
	14	McGlin, Hugh	249 So Wellington St.	mason
	15	McGlinn, Patrick	5 Bedford Lane	labourer
1889/90	2	McGlinn, Patrick	35 Chapel Ter.	provision dealer
	3	McGlinn, John	240 Castle St.	labourer
	3	McGlinn, John	45 Villiers St.	labourer
	4	McGlynn, John	82 London St.	boilermaker
	5	McGlinn, James	253 Springburn Rd.	labourer
	10	McGlinn, John	20 Gladstone St.	traveller
	13	McGlinn, Patrick	47 Piccadilly St.	labourer
	14	McGlin, Hugh	249 So Wellington St.	mason
	15	McGlinn, Hugh	22 Portugal St.	labourer
	15	McGlinn, Patrick	5 Bedford Lane	labourer
1890/91	2	McGlinn, John	385 Gt Eastern Rd	labourer
	2	McGlinn, Patrick	35 Chapel Ter.	steel smelter
	3	McGlinn, John	240 Castle St.	labourer
	4	McGlynn, John	82 London St.	boilermaker
	10	McGlinn, John	20 Gladstone St.	traveller
	12	McGlynn, Thomas	28 Bishop St.	labourer	(2 years ago at 23
	13	McGlinn, Patrick	47 Piccadilly St.	labourer
	14	McGlin, Hugh	249 So Wellington St.	mason
	15	McGlinn, Patrick	5 Bedford Lane	labourer
1891/92		No Roll. See Census entries Appendix 2
1892/93	2	McGlinn, Patrick	35 Chapel Ter.	smelter
	2	McGlinn, John	35 Westmuir St.	labourer
	3	McGlinn, John	7 Bright St.	labourer
	4	McGlynn, John	82 London St.	boilermaker
	10	McGlinn, John	37 Scotia St	traveller
	14	McGlin, Hugh	249 So Wellington St.	mason
	14	McGlynn, Hugh	176 Rutherglen Rd.	labourer
	15	McGlinn, Patrick	5 Bedford Lane	labourer
	24	McGlyn, Dominick	1 Hill St. (Maryhill)	labourer	(vii)
	24	McGlynn, James	1 Hill St. (Maryhill)	labourer
	24	McGlinn, John	200 Main St. (Maryhill)	labourer	(vii)
		three McGlynns in ward 24 all are same family and spelling varies year to year
1893/94	2	McGlinn, John	387 Gt Eastern Rd	labourer	(3years ago at 385)
	2	McGlinn, Patrick	35 Chapel Ter.	steel smelter
	3	McGlinn, James	41 Bright St.	labourer
	3	McGlinn, John	11 Gourley St.	furnaceman
	4	McGlynn, John	82 London St.	boilermaker
	5	McGlinn, James	2 Huntingdon Pl	labourer
	13	McGlinn, Patrick	47 Piccadilly St.	labourer	(return)
	14	McGlinn, Edward	297 So Wellington St.	slater
	14	McGlin, Hugh	249 So Wellington St.	mason
	15	McGlinn, Patrick	5 Bedford Lane	labourer
	24	McGlyn, Dominick	1 Hill St. (Maryhill)	labourer
	24	McGlynn, John	1 Hill St. (Maryhill)	labourer
1894/95	2	McGlinn, Patrick	35 Chapel Ter.	steel smelter
	3	McGlinn, John	7 Bright St.	furnaceman
	3	McGlinn, James	41 Bright St.	labourer
	4	McGlynn, John	82 London St.	boilermaker
	5	McGlinn, James	7 Kennedy St.	labourer
	12	McGlynn, Thomas	28 Bishop St.	labourer	(return again)
	13	McGlinn, Patrick	47 Piccadilly St.	labourer
	14	McGlinn, Edward	297 So Wellington St.	slater
	14	McGlin, Hugh	249 So Wellington St.	mason
	14	McGlinn, Hugh	75 Rose St.	labourer
	15	McGlinn, Patrick	5 Bedford Lane	labourer
	24	McGlyn, Dominick	1 Hill St. (Maryhill)	labourer
	24	McGlynn, John	1 Hill St. (Maryhill)	labourer

Extract of Glasgow Electoral Roll:- 1925
Ward	Name	Address
SHETTLESTON
1	McGlynn, Patrick	120 Denbreck St.
	McGlin, Daniel & Mrs Isabella	689 Shettleston Rd
CALTON
4	McGlynn, Charles & Mrs Hannah	492 Gallowgate
	McGlynn, Grace, James, Mary	168 Gallowgate
	McGlinn, Alexander & Mrs Sarah	7 Lanark St
CAMLACHIE
6	McGlinn, Bernard & Mrs Joan	157 Bellfield St
7	McGlinn, Daniel & Mrs Jeannie	97 Dunchattan St
CENTRAL EXCHANGE
12	McGlinn, Mrs Ellen, Sarah	132 Bridgegate
	McGlynn, Patrick	132 Trongate
ANDERSON
14	McGlynn, John	32 Clyde St