Wednesday, 4 February
Doctor up. We are to get Tommy’s tonsils cut. Holy Moses.
Saturday, 7 February
Hetty came here shortly after 3, so we all had a pleasant evening. Saw her away by 9.12 from Central.9
Tuesday, 10 February
Chased a mouse at night. Nobody hurt but myself.
Wednesday, 11 February
Agnes at doctor with Tommy arranging about the amputation of his tonsils. He is coming on Sunday to do the dismal deed. Agnes bought a mousetrap so set it at night with great expectations.
Thursday, 12 February
Looked at the trap this morning. The mouse had eaten the bait but left the trap as it couldn’t eat it also. Better luck next time.
Friday, 13 February
A small mouse was in the trap this morning. Agnes most melancholy. Sad times. It’s getting near Sunday. Poor wee man.
Saturday, 14 February
Caught another mouse. Weeping skies today. Doctor up at night saying he could not come tomorrow as his assistant doctor would be away, so we have put it off for a week. Another weary week. This is St Valentine’s Day.
Sunday, 15 February
Nell Ruth up for a little, also Lily and John.10 Agnes just about done up, with the anxiety and worry, and then to wait another week. Still sad times.
Thursday, 19 February
Stuffed up the hole where the mice come in to see us, in case we are devoured.
Friday, 20 February
Wee man very restless during the night, so we slept not, perchance a flea was chewing him, or perhaps it is some new trouble. ‘Mon père’ here at dinner time, and Mrs and Miss Gordon in the afternoon.
Saturday, 21 February
It’s getting nearer tomorrow. My hair is getting grey.
Sunday, 22 February
Wild morning and wet. Mrs Gordon came up about 10.45. Doctor Drevor came up about 11.30 and then Dr Gardiner shortly after. We got shaky then. Poor Wee Tommy stretched on the table, chloroformed, and his tonsils cut and adenoids removed. It lasted about 10 minutes but left a poor wee sick sore boy. Mrs Gordon went away about 4.15. Andrew came in for a little, also Mrs Cormack, then Lily and Mrs Carmichael. Mrs Brown came to the door and wee John McCort was up.11 Sad times.
Monday, 23 February
Wee man had to be nursed all day, his throat very sore. Nell Ruth up in the morning. Mrs Gordon and Nannie here in the afternoon.12 Josephine here at night.13 Wee man a little cheerier at bedtime. Mrs Cormack came up for a little at night. Agnes nearly all out.
Wednesday, 25 February
Wee man still finds it difficult to swallow and has a stiff neck.
Thursday, 26 February
Mrs Gordon up in the forenoon, also the doctor. Tommy got a very bad cold and his neck has to be rubbed with olive oil. Lily up for a little in the afternoon. Tommy very wretched at night. Not well at all.
Friday, 27 February
Agnes washed the stairs. Tommy’s cold much the same, but he is fearfully cross. Agnes ‘fed up’.
Saturday, 28 February
Doctor up in the forenoon. Thinks Tommy all right now except for his cold. He is not coming back ‘grâce à Dieu’.14 Went to the library in the afternoon. Pouring wet day. Tommy behaving like a little fiend. Agnes got a sore back and shoulders. She is having her doubts about the operation now. Extra melancholy.
Sunday, 1 March
Very wet day (of course). Tommy seems in better spirits. Poor Agnes in a state of collapse today. Took a walk around the ‘100 Acre Dyke’ after dinner.15 Agnes had to lie down for a little today.
Monday, 2 March
Cold, windy, wet day (again, of course). Wee man fine today. Did a little joiner work at night. Got my hair cut. Trout fishing begins today.
Tuesday, 3 March
Weather same as yesterday, only worse. Agnes washed the stairs. Tommy’s neck seems to have more joints in it now.
Thursday, 5 March
Weather beastly, heavy rain, the quintessence of cussedness. Tommy quite well now.
Tuesday, 10 March
Chased a mouse in the scullery last night, but caught it not.16
Wednesday, 11 March
Agnes very ill during the night and not at all well today.
Thursday, 12 March
Agnes in the wash-house in the afternoon.17
Saturday, 14 March
Agnes very ill at night, sick and vomiting and wild sort of pains inside. Am greatly alarmed.
Sunday, 15 March
Agnes very ill during the night and vomited a lot. It is the bile. Feeling a little better during the day. Jenny Roxburgh here about 2 p.m.18 She brought Agnes a nice white shawl. Jenny left about 8.30 p.m. and I saw her on to a Dalmuir car at Glasgow Cross.19
Wednesday, 18 March
Agnes in good form today. She broke the teapot and broke a bowl at night when she was baking, and spilled treacle all over the carpet. Glad I didn’t do it.
Sunday, 22 March
A very nice day. Tommy got a bad cold and Agnes got a very sore head. Before dinner I took a long walk. Pollokshaws, Cowglen Road and Crookston. Took the car back from there as I was late.
Monday, 23 March
We got no sleep all last night. The wee man saw to that. He complained of a sore head, a sore tooth, a sore belly, a sore ear, a sore knee.
Saturday, 28 March
Slave trade abolished 1807. I entered into bondage 10/6/10.
Sunday, 29 March
All of us at Clydebank, nestling in the bosom of the Roxburgh family.
Tuesday, 31 March
Nannie Henderson here in the forenoon, saying goodbye as she is going to Australia.20 I did not see her, so I shed tears (je ne pense pas).21
Wednesday, 1 April
Agnes has got a very sore head. I have got a most cussed cold in my head. I want to kill somebody.
Saturday, 4 April
This is the ‘International’, so in the afternoon I took the wife and family to the vicinity of Mount Florida and watched the folk coming away from the match.22 I counted about three million of them. England 1, Scotland 3.23
Friday, 10 April
Cleaned all the windows tonight, and Agnes polished the marble staircase.
Saturday, 11 April
Dull sort of day. Coldish. Took Agnes and Tommy in the afternoon to see the Barrows and then we went to Bow’s and bought a new pot (2/3).
Monday, 13 April
This is the spring holiday, so it rained and it rained and it stormed. John came about 10 a.m. to take me a walk of about 30 miles.24 Being quite ‘compos mentis’ I firmly but gently declined.25
Wednesday, 15 April
Agnes cleaned out the room and we rearranged the furniture and shifted the piano to make folk think we had a lot of new stuff.
Thursday, 16 April
Agnes at Ibrox and then at Kingston Halls with the Gordons to a ‘Kinderspiel’.26 She got home 11 p.m.
Saturday, 18 April
Delightful day. After dinner we took car to Pollok Estate and recreated ourselves and then walked to Dumbreck Terminus and got car home.27 Took a walk out myself at night and bought myself a new pipe (1/–).
Sunday, 19 April
Took a walk this morning to Queen’s Park before breakfast. After breakfast had a seat in Toryglen Golf Course. After dinner had Tommy out for a brace of hours in Queen’s Park. Mrs Livingstone not out at all. Weather couldn’t be better.
* * *
Walking routes
Walking has long been a Glasgow way of life. Car ownership has always been lower within the city boundaries than in the richer suburbs and countryside beyond. Even today, the 2001 census shows that Glasgow has the highest percentage of car-free households of all local authority areas in Scotland. This is partly because of the high levels of public transport in the city and partly because of the high levels of relative poverty. Neither of these factors has changed significantly since Thomas’ day.
Necessi
ty aside, most Glaswegians enjoy the communal aspects of public transport and the street, where chance encounters and opportunities for conversations and exchanges of news abound. Just as Glasgow in the early twentieth century was a great city for teashops and public houses, it was also a great city for ‘windae hingin’, the practice of leaning out of tenement windows, forearms crossed on a blanket or pillow, taking part in the life of the street from one’s window on the world. Times have changed, but Glasgow remains a friendly city – this aspect of city life has even been enshrined in a tourist marketing slogan – and life in the fresh air, however bad the weather, seems to encourage and nurture this.
Thomas seems to find solace, strength and inspiration in his walks. When his family are away from him, he writes that he feels unsettled, then takes to the open countryside. He walks to visit his father in Bridgeton, his brother in Rutherglen and other family members and friends across the city. But primarily he walks for pleasure, whether it is his regular turn around Queen’s Park before breakfast on Sunday mornings in the summer, his frequent trips through Pollok Estate or over Cathkin Braes, or his solitary rambles to East Kilbride or Barrhead.
Many of his walks were in public parks. Glasgow may have had horrendous overcrowding problems in some inner-city areas (see ‘Housing and Factors’,), but the ‘Dear Green Place’ was well-served with parks and green spaces. It has often been said, but never quite proved, that Glasgow has more green space per capita than any city in Europe. In Thomas’ day, the city had 31 parks, several outside the city boundaries. The outlying recreational areas included Ardgoil, a ‘Highland ridge of a wild and picturesque nature’ between Loch Long and Loch Goil, according to one guidebook of the period; Balloch Castle and its estate on the shores of Loch Lomond; Cathkin Braes Park; Rouken Glen; and the Linn Park. Thomas mentions walking over Cathkin Braes and having tea in Rouken Glen, but he would be aware of the other parks and estates, even those beyond the reach of the tram network.
Queen’s Park was opened in September 1862, on the 143 acres of Pathhead Farm that the Glasgow Corporation (the city council) purchased five years earlier. English architect and garden designer Sir Joseph Paxton advised on the layout, and much of the work to turn the farm into a park was carried out by the unemployed. The queen of the title is not Victoria but Mary Queen of Scots, whose forces were defeated in 1568 at the Battle of Langside, on the southern boundary of the park.
Rouken Glen was gifted to the city by Archibald Cameron Corbett, later Lord Rowallen, in 1906. Its celebrated features include a ‘Highland Glen’ complete with falls, cliffs and crags. The picturesque waterfall, which is surrounded by steep woodland, was formed from a smaller natural waterfall, which was doubled in height in the early part of the nineteenth century to feed a reservoir that supplied a print works on the Auldhouse Burn at Thornliebank.
Cathkin Braes, a large expanse of natural hillside, is sited five miles south of the city centre. It includes one of the highest points on the south side of the city and affords spectacular views over greater Glasgow and as far north as Ben Lomond and Ben Ledi. The natural environment of the park includes ancient woodland, grassland, heath and scrub, with many long-established paths through the park giving a constantly changing environment and view. What is now the eastern portion of Cathkin Braes Country Park was gifted to the city in 1887 by James Dick, who had made his fortune in rubber soles, with the condition that it should be kept in a natural state and open for public enjoyment. The western portion was added in 1940.
Pollok Estate, although not gifted to the city by the Maxwell family until 1967, was a popular haunt of the citizens of Glasgow’s south side in Thomas’ day. Sir John Stirling Maxwell, whose family had owned the estate since the middle of the thirteenth century, gave the people of Glasgow access to the enclosed parkland around Pollok House from 1911. Ramblers such as Thomas would have been attracted by the natural woodlands, farmlands and the activity along the White Cart Water, which flows through the estate and was used to power a sawmill in Thomas’ time. Pollok
Postcard of Queen’s Park Gates and Victoria Road.
Postcard of Rouken Glen Park bandstand.
House, the stately former family home, is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland. This is singularly appropriate, since the informal meeting that set up the trust was hosted by Sir John Stirling Maxwell here in 1931. The district of Cowglen, through which Thomas walked on his way to Barrhead, was part of the Pollok estate.
Barrhead, in Thomas’ day a thriving industrial town, sits eight miles south-west of Glasgow on the slopes of the Gleniffer Braes. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries its industries included iron founding, tanning, making porcelainware and carpet weaving. The road between the outer suburbs of Glasgow and the town travelled through farms and open countryside, with fresh winds blowing from the west and south-west, free from industrial pollution.
Thomas talks of sitting in the parks and listening to music. The Glasgow Corporation had Parliamentary powers to spend £4,000 each year on providing music in its city parks, although the annual bill often amounted to more than £10,000, with the difference coming from the sale of reserved seats. The city fathers no doubt thought this was money well spent on ‘civilising’ the population, just as the city libraries offered ‘improving literature’. Thomas seems to derive as much pleasure from walking as from music and reading, all of which he enjoys several times a week.
* * *
Tuesday, 21 April
Men up today to sort our ‘lum’. They took it away.
Wednesday, 22 April
Tommy cracked his skull in the back green today, fell off the kitchen table and again cracked his skull on the door. We were glad to get his remains safely to bed. Got Tommy a jar of ‘Virol’ as he is not as well as might be.28
Thursday, 23 April
Got our lum put up today.
Monday, 27 April
Went out to Ruglen at night to consult my tailor for a new suit. Bought four clay pipes and broke three of them on the way home.
Monday, 4 May
Got the doctor’s little bill today.29 £2 14s 0d.
Wednesday, 6 May
Factor here and got his blood money.
Saturday, 9 May
In the afternoon Agnes and I went out to the green fields and beat the room carpet.30 Great fun. And then I laid it well and truly.
Sunday, 10 May
This is the day the Aquitania leaves the Clyde, so I met Andrew at 9 a.m., walked into the town and managed to get on to a Renfrew car and walked from there to Langbank and watched the boat passing.31 And then we walked back to Renfrew. Rained all the time. About half a million folk helped us to watch.
Monday, 11 May
Agnes at Ruglen in afternoon. Josephine and Small Lily here at tea time and after that Lily and John and Pa arrived.32 We played whist.
Saturday, 16 May
Agnes up nearly all last night with toothache, jaw-ache, earache etc., and has it all day today.
Sunday, 17 May
Agnes still got neuralgia, and I took a very sore throat and sore head. Wonder what’s going to happen.
Monday, 25 May
Agnes got a very sore head. Says it will be the bile. ‘Ora pro nobis.’
Thursday, 28 May
This is the day we all flit but I didn’t.33
Friday, 29 May
Pubs don’t open now till 10 a.m., which does not affect me.34
Saturday, 30 May
Empress of Ireland CPR rammed yesterday. 1,024 lives lost.35
Wednesday, 3 June
Thought we were in need of a little amusement so off we went to the Cinerama.36
Thursday, 4 June
At 10 India Street, Rutherglen, on this date 1882 T. C. Livingstone was born.
Sunday, 7 June
We noticed burglars had been at work opposite us. A policeman came up and interviewed us on the matter but we had no clue.
Friday, 12 June
Ver
y busy tonight packing up, as we go our holidays to Rothesay tomorrow. Hallelujah. Agnes got a new pair of corsets today.
Saturday, 13 June
Beautiful day. Very warm, sunshine. Agnes and Nannie Gordon sailed by Lord of the Isles at 11.30, which was too crowded for comfort.37 Mrs Gordon and Ella helped them on with the luggage. I followed in ease and comfort by 4.3 GSW and arrived Rothesay 5.55.38 Agnes and the boy and Nannie met me. After tea we all had a look round.
Tommy's War: A First World War Diary 1913-1918 Page 5