The Rise of Glasgow
Urban Growth in Victorian Scotland
As
Scottish industry flourished and more people were drawn towards
urban areas, overcrowding became a serious problem. In Dundee, the
jute boom of the 1850s led to a sudden, huge increase in the population
of the city, and the housing stock simply couldn't keep apace. The
result was overcrowding and slum areas, which were to become the
scourge of Scotland's cities for many years. Conditions in the slums
were appalling - at one point there were only five water closets
in the whole of Dundee, three of which were in hotels. In Glasgow
the problem was just as acute. In the High Street, Gallowgate and
Saltmarket an estimated 20,000 people were crammed into dilapidated
housing where sanitation was virtually non-existent:
As one Victorian
commentator put it, 'In the very centre of the city there was
an accumulated mass of squalid wretchedness unequalled in any
other town in the British Dominions. There was concentrated everything
wretched, dissolute, loathsome and pestilential. Dunghills lie
in the vicinity of dwellings, and from the extremely defective
sewerage filth of every kind constantly accumulates.'
Overcrowding
was only part of the problem - dirt bred disease. While Glasgow
was no stranger to typhus and typhoid, the city's trade connections
with the Empire soon brought a new plague: cholera. The first
Cholera epidemic in 1832 killed 3000 in Glasgow alone, and two
hundred years' worth of progress in public health went into free-fall
as death rates spiralled back towards 17th century levels. Infectious
disease spread easily and it knew no class boundaries - everyone
was at risk. Although Glasgow's doctors had first demonstrated
a link between dirt and disease in 1842, it wasn't until the cholera
epidemics of 1848 and 1853 that minds were focused on the issue.
In 1855 the government made the registration of births, deaths
and marriages compulsory. Among the information gathered was the
cause of death. James
Burn Russell, one of Glasgow's pioneering medical health officers,
realised that the filthy environment was promoting the spread
of disease and he used the new registration information to help
persuade Glasgow's City Fathers and reluctant rate-payers to fund
an ambitious engineering scheme to bring a clean water supply
into the city from Loch Katrine. This scheme combined with Glasgow's
new sewage system, of which nearly 50 miles was laid between 1850
and 1875, began to ease the health and sanitation problem in Glasgow;
however, other smaller Scottish towns were more reluctant to pay
for such huge enterprises and were characterised by an overpowering
stench for much of the 19th century. It was the cities who, through
necessity, led the way in public health issues. Sanitary Departments
and Medical Officers were appointed who forced a reluctant populace
into vaccination and forcibly 
removed
middens or dunghills from under people's noses.
The Victorians
of urban Scotland did take a modicum of civic responsibility
and searched out new ways to deal with these problems - refuse
collection, the widening of dark and narrow streets, huge public
buildings and parks were all genuine attempts to create a beautiful
urban society. This was often done through local government, as
in the City Improvement Acts of the 1860s, when a great deal of
Scotland's worst slum areas were publicly bought and cleared.
It became regular practice for public bodies to provide when the
private sector failed to do so and, whether in water management,
the creation of new housing, or the supply of gas and other fuel,
Victorian Scotland did attempt to provide a basic standard of
living through public bodies. The Glasgow Corporation, for example,
took on much of this responsibility and, by the mid-20th century,
owned over 80,000 houses, had 46,000 people on its payroll and
had 33 departments watching over the city.
In Glasgow
today much of the best and most durable housing was built during
Victorian times - the legacy in city management and planning
is ever-present.
