Agnes and Tommy went to town. They presented me with a scarf for my Christmas. Long life to them.
Sunday, 23 December
My father here in the afternoon. British armed steamer Stephen Furness sunk by U-boat in the Irish Channel. 101 lives lost.
Monday, 24 December
Agnes consulted her doctor and got another bottle. Presented Tommy with Dometo building blocks.103 A. Baxter Junior presented me with a new pipe today.104 British advances in Palestine.
Tuesday, 25 December
I got away today at 11 a.m. I took a walk round Rutherglen in the afternoon. Had a talk there with Alice Fraser. We got a few Xmas cards today. Tommy got from Coatbridge a pair of stockings [socks] and a brace of handkerchiefs.
Wednesday, 26 December
Got away at 5 p.m. I went straight out to Sam’s for my tea. Agnes and Tommy there before me. We all then went to the church and listened to Sam’s choir’s rendering of the divine Messiah.
Thursday, 27 December
Was speaking to Frank Ruth in town today. He says he goes into the army on 4 January. My oh my. No butter or margarine to be got anywhere today. Agnes in the wash-house today and at night she went to baths and was akin to godliness. She saw a fire in Allison Street so I went out to see it, but it was out by this time. Sir John Jellicoe, First Sea Lord, ‘retires’105 . In his place, Admiral Wemyss.
Friday, 28 December
Agnes, being favoured of the gods, got ½lb of margarine and ½lb of butter. Western Front snow bound. Three British destroyers sunk by mine or torpedo off Dutch coast. 193 lives lost.
Saturday, 29 December
Agnes called to see Nellie Hamilton at night and had to get doctor for her. The great event is coming. Tommy got a new pair of slippers from Mrs Carmichael tonight for his Ne’erday.
Sunday, 30 December
After tea Agnes went up to see how Andrew’s wife was getting on. The event was over. A son born at 2 a.m. British advance in Palestine.
Monday, 31 December
On holiday today. Took a walk out to Ruglen. Into Sam’s shop and from thence gave Greenlodge Terrace a look up. Josephine gave me a cake of shortbread and some chocolates. Saw a lot of whisky queues, and butter queues. Great French victory in Italy. 1,300 prisoners.
* * *
1 ‘First-footing’ is a Scottish custom, ensuring that the first person over the threshold in the New Year arrives with good wishes, and pieces of cake and coal, representing a steady supply of food and warmth.
2 Until relatively recently, Scots celebrated New Year far more than they did Christmas. Here, Tommy was given a scarf for New Year day (Ne’erday).
3 The pen would have been a wooden shaft with a metal nib. The pen wiper was for removing excess ink, and the piece of India (‘injy’) rubber for erasing pencil errors.
4 Two trains belonging to the North British (NB) Railway Company collided head-on at Queensferry Junction, near Edinburgh. Twelve people were killed and 48 injured.
5 Representatives of the British, French and Italian governments met in Rome from 5 to 7 January.
6 William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, brought his Wild West show to Glasgow on two occasions: a long engagement in Denniston during the winter of 1891-2 and a shorter stay in Govanhill in August 1904.
7 The government asked the public to invest in this scheme, which was used to fund the war, and which promised to return investor’smoney with interest after hostilities were over.
8 A military expression meaning war until the last weapon.
9 Around 50 tons of TNT exploded in a munitions factory in Silvertown in West Ham, then in Essex. A total of 73 people were killed and more than 400 injured.
10 There was a tradition of public speaking on or near Glasgow Green on Sundays. Jail Square, now called Jocelyn Square, stood opposite the main entrance to Glasgow Green, next to the High Court building. Alexander Petrie was known as the Glasgow Clincher from the title of the newspaper he wrote, edited, published and sold. He was an outspoken critic of Glasgow Corporation and other authorities.
11 As well as diverting grain for food use, this was intended to reduce alcohol consumption, which was seen as reducing the efficiency of workers.
12 Thomas is making fun of the long list of medical complaints, and has inserted a number of spurious categories, including DTs (delirium tremens, an affliction of alcoholics).
13 Olive oil was a popular home remedy for colds.
14 William Power, ‘Glasgow To-Day’, The Book of Glasgow (Glasgow: Alex Macdougall, 1922), p.82. ‘Pleasaunce’ or ‘pleasance’ is used to mean a pleasure ground or pleasantly laid-out garden with trees and ornaments. Power is referring here to planned suburbs with tree-lined streets and small parks.
15 James Willock, ‘Glasgow’s Municipal Services’, The Book of Glasgow (Glasgow: Alex Macdougall, 1922, p.165.
16 The government announced that from 1 March the coalfields would be taken over for the duration of the war and run by a Coal Controller in the Coal Mines Department of the Board of Trade.
17 Tauben were German planes with translucent linen wing coverings, which made them very difficult to spot. The wings were curved back, like a bird’s, and controlled by warping their shape, giving them the name of dove (Taube in German).
18 On 9 August 1907 Thomas joined the Scottish Clerks Association. Agnes may have visited the offices of this association, or a friendly society of which Thomas was a member, to claim sickness benefit.
19 From the poem ‘Edinburgh after Flodden’ by William Edmondstoune Aytoun, published in 1864.
20 The front room or parlour, which would generally only have been used if guests were present.
21 The Latin phrase ‘pro tem’ (pro tempore) means ‘for the time being’ or temporarily.
22 ‘To my dinner’ is a Scots idiom meaning ‘for my dinner’.
23 To ‘improve the shining hour’ is to make the best use of time. The phrase comes from the children’s poem ‘How Doth the Little Busy Bee’ by Isaac Watts, written in 1715.
24 Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich Graf (Count) von Zeppelin died 8 March 1917.
25 Black South Africans were to fill the jobs left by French men called into the army.
26 For his drill.
27 To reduce Britain’s reliance on imported food, the government encouraged people who did not have gardens to rent allotments where they could grow vegetables.
28 In this instance, boy means boyfriend.
29 The Alhambra Theatre, at 41 Waterloo Street in central Glasgow, specialised in variety and music hall acts, particularly Scottish ones.
30 Whisky. A gill is a quarter of a pint.
31 An example of Thomas using the language of the military for domestic events. He is a great believer in what the Victorians called ‘elegant variation’, using a rich variety of phrases rather than repeating a common one.
32 This Latin phrase means ‘the highest point’ or ‘the most profound degree’. Thomas seems to mean that there could be no better news than this.
33 The Savoy Picture House, in Hope Street at its junction with Renfrew Street, in the city centre of Glasgow, opened in December 1916. The Savoy Centre and Tower, on the same site, retains the name.
34 This was a rumour that gained global currency from April 1917. Reports, first in the French press and then worldwide, stated that the Germans were distilling glycerine from corpses and using it in both munitions and margarine.
35 NFF Georgetown (National Filling Factory Number 4), also known as the Scottish Filling Factory, was near the village of Houston, Renfrewshire, to the west of Glasgow. The factory employed around 12,000 employees in April 1917, most of them women.
36 They played card games. A reference to the Presbyterian antipathy to gaming.
37 Thomas seems to be looking back through earlier diaries which, alas, have not survived.
38 Possibly to view the allotments in Queen’s Park.
39 Thomas’ ‘thick black’ was pipe
tobacco. Alfred Dunhill, for example, marketed a Best Scotch Thick Black Twist until 1918.
40 C. A. Oakley, The Second City (Glasgow, Blackie, 1967), pp. 1-2.
41 Govanhill Public Baths and Wash-house opened in Calder Street in 1917, designed by Glasgow Corporation’s own architect, A. B. McDonald. There were hot baths upstairs and three swimming pools on the ground floor. In addition, there was a wash-house or ‘steamie’ at the rear of the building. The baths closed in 2001.
42 Another example of women moving into jobs that had been the preserve of men.
43 Thomas McGuiness was hanged in Duke Street Prison for the murder of Alexander Imlach. The previous execution was on 14 November 1905, when Pasha Liffey was hanged in the same jail for the murder of Mary Jane Welsh.
44 Sanatogen was a ‘tonic food’ sold in powdered form and taken in water. In 1916 it was advertised under the slogan ‘There is nothing like Sanatogen for your nerves.’ The Sanatogen brand is still healthy, and offers a number of vitamin supplements.
45 The five funnels of the ship reminded people of five cigarettes sticking up from a packet of ten. Woodbines were a popular brand of cigarette.
46 Partick and Finnieston are two districts on the north bank of the River Clyde. The Toll is probably Paisley Road Toll, a road junction on the south side of the river, near the landing point of the ferry from Finnieston.
47 The kitchen walls were likely painted for the first five feet, and whitewashed above. A painted black line would have been the border between the two finishes.
48 Thomas travels home for his dinner each day. At this time, he was using an early version of a bus, driven by an internal combustion engine, rather than the tram.
49 It is great.
50 James Willock, ‘Glasgow’s Municipal Services’, The Book of Glasgow (Glasgow: Alex Macdougall, 1922), pp. 161-2.
51 Agnes was being fitted for her new outfit.
52 A knut was, in the slang of the day, a well-dressed young man about town.
53 The River Cart flows through the south side of Glasgow. It features in several district and street names, such as Cathcart and Cartvale Road.
54 Rouken Glen, on the southern outskirts of Glasgow, was given to the people of the city by Cameron Corbett, the Liberal MP for the Tradeston district of Glasgow (later Lord Rowallan), in 1904. It opened as a public park in 1906, and in the same year the Glasgow Corporation extended the tram system to its gates.
55 The Palace, which advertised itself as a ‘Theatre of Varieties’, was the principal music hall on the south side of Glasgow. It opened in 1904 in Main Street, Gorbals, and by 1917 was also showing films. At the time of Thomas’ visit, it offered two shows a night, at 7 and 9.
56 The Bungalow was one of a number of tearooms serving visitors to the park.
57 Cadder is a district five miles north of Glasgow, just north of the town of Bishopbriggs.
58 Thomas had been classified as CIII by the military doctors, and regarded as unfit for service. C was defined as ‘free from serious organic diseases, able to stand service in garrisons at home’ and the subcategory III indicated ‘Only suitable for sedentary work’.
59 The canal was the Forth and Clyde Canal, which crosses central Scotland.
60 St Enoch Station, one of four main-line stations in Glasgow at the time, was operated by the Glasgow and South Western Railway. It also owned and operated the paddle steamer Glen Sannox, which was built at J. & G. Thomson’s Clydebank shipyard in 1892. She was the largest railway-owned pleasure steamer in Britain.
61 The annual Glasgow Fair holidays.
62 There have been entertainments on Glasgow Green during the annual Glasgow Fair holidays for many years.
63 Crookston Castle overlooks the Levern Water, in the Pollok district of Glasgow, five miles south of the city centre. It dates from the fourteenth century and was owned by the Maxwells of Pollok from 1757 until 1931.
64 George V issued an Order-in-Council on 17 July 1917 that changed the name of the British royal house from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor.
65 The walk along the banks of the River Clyde from Dalmarnock, in the east end of Glasgow, to Cambuslang, in Lanarkshire, is about five miles.
66 By 1917 Charlie Chaplin was working in films in America and was no longer a music hall artiste. Thomas most likely saw Chaplin in the film The Immigrant, which was released in June 1917.
67 The Women’s Battalion of the Russian army were all-female combat units formed after the February Revolution in 1917 in a last ditch effort to inspire weary soldiers to continue fighting.
68 The phrase may come from the poem of the same name by the Australian comic poet Henry Lawson, published in 1893. One of the verses ends ‘We’ll laugh an’ joke an’ sing no more with jolly beery chums, / An’ shout “Here’s luck!” while waitin’ for the luck that never comes.’
69 The ASC was the Army Service Corps, which was responsible for transporting food, equipment and ammunition from Britain to the various theatres of war. They were nicknamed Ally Sloper’s Cavalry after a popular comic-strip character of the time.
70 Mr Carmichael’s ‘estate’ was, in fact, his allotment garden.
71 Langside Library, in Sinclair Drive, opened in 1915.
72 The windows.
73 Founded in 1886. Some of its records are preserved in Glasgow University archives.
74 Glasgow Corporation’s Gas Workshops and Maintenance Depot was at 24-32 Walls Street, in Glasgow city centre.
75 French for ‘sometimes’, though Thomas’ meaning here is clearly ‘at some point’.
76 The driver of Tramcar Number 20 lost control of his vehicle while descending Crabble Hill, and the tram smashed into a wall, killing 10 and injuring 59.
77 The rocking chair.
78 The Officers Training Corps was founded in 1906 to train young people in public schools and universities for careers as officers in the Militia, the Volunteer Force, the Yeomanry and the Reserve of Officers.
79 They are messing up the war, but Thomas is writing in Scots or Ulster Scots.
80 Compared to Govanhill, a district mainly composed of tenement buildings, Pollokshields, which has many detached and semi-detached villas, was aristocratic.
81 A churchwarden pipe has a much longer stem than a regular one.
82 Ballagioch is near Newton Mearns, a town to the south of Glasgow. Eaglesham is a village nine miles south of the city. The route is currently a favourite with racing cyclists.
83 Because of a shortage of imported petrol, motorbuses were adapted to run on coal-gas, which was stored in large bags on the roof.
84 Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was the second prime minister of the Russian Provisional Government. General Lavr Kornilov, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army, was dismissed by Kerensky after a series of misunderstandings.
85 William McLaren & Company Ltd was a firm of warehousemen in South Hanover Street, in central Glasgow.
86 Kate Cranston ran four tearooms in Glasgow, all with interiors or furnishings designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, with decorative work by his wife, the artist Margaret Macdonald. The Glasgow Hippodrome was attached to Bostock’s Zoo in New City Road, north of the city centre. It offered both circus and cinema entertainment.
87 Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, was a son of Queen Victoria. After a distinguished military career, he was Governor General of Canada from 1911 to 1916. He was elected Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England annually from 1902 to 1939.
88 A common superstition.
89 The government planned to add more potato flour to the recipe for the War Loaf, to supplement the flour from imported wheat.
90 These were also known as ‘war cakes’.
91 To ‘take a sitting’ is to ‘occupy a pew’. Thomas may have paid to reserve a seat.
92 Robert James Fitzsimmons was an English-born New Zealand boxer, who made boxing history as the sport’s first three-division world cham
pion.
93 The Gotha was a twin-engined bomber with a range of 500 miles and a bomb load of up to 1,100lb.
94 The Pavilion Theatre, in Renfield Street in Glasgow city centre, opened in 1904 as a music hall. It still presents a variety of musical, theatrical and other entertainments.
95 Thomas has depicted his stomach, which is full of dumpling, as AI, mimicking the army medical code for fully fit, while his chest is still CIII.
96 Andrew’s wife believed her baby was about to be born.
97 Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, the British commander who captured Kut and Baghdad in the spring of this year.
98 The Royal Engineers Signal Service was formed in 1908 and provided communications during the First World War. This included motorcycle dispatch riders, semaphore and wireless operators.
99 Cassino is a card game played with a standard deck, for two or more players. The object is to score 21 points by taking cards.
100 On 5 December 1917 Glasgow Corporation Tramways Car Number 157, travelling from Netherlee to Kirklee, was turning into Victoria Road opposite Queen’s Park gate, when it left the rails and overturned. Three passengers were killed and 56 were injured.
101 This may have been the Glasgow Hippodrome in New City Road.
102 The French munitions ship Mont-Blanc collided with the Norwegian Imo in Halifax harbour, starting a fire that led to the largest man-made explosion until the atomic age. The town of Halifax was devastated.
103 Dometo was a construction kit with wooden interlocking bricks, which had a tongue and groove connection between the rows.
104 One of the partners in the business that employed Thomas.
105 Former Admiral of the Fleet and First Sea Lord Sir John Jellicoe was dismissed on Christmas Eve by Eric Geddes, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, after three years in command of the British fleet. He went on to serve as Governor General of New Zealand from 1920 to 1924.
Tommy's War: A First World War Diary 1913-1918 Page 23