THE final years of the 18th century were tumultuous for Glasgow and indeed the whole of the United Kingdom because the British state found itself at war with France.
As we shall see, Glasgow’s growth was temporarily halted, but it is worth reflecting on just how spectacular that growth had been.
To the astonishment of many, the city’s first proper census carried out in 1792 found that greater Glasgow had 66,183 inhabitants, with 10,291 inhabited houses within the curtilage of the central city itself. Of that population, more than 20,000 lived in the suburbs of Anderston, the Calton, the Gorbals and Grahamston.
Unemployment was low for most of the second half of the 18th century and indeed there was demand from people to come to Glasgow from elsewhere in Scotland to work in the city.
Many of the newer residents had come from the Highlands seeking jobs in the rapidly expanding manufacturing industries. One incident in 1792 is worth recalling – a ship carrying hundreds of Highlanders who had been cleared from their lands on Barra was wrecked as it headed across the Atlantic.
The survivors were taken to Glasgow where a Catholic priest, Father Alexander Macdonnell, despite being officially an outlaw, set about finding jobs for his people – hundreds had already immigrated from his home territory of Lochaber. He was so successful that Glasgow’s merchants and manufacturers eventually employed 800 of them.
Fr Macdonell would later help form the famous regiment, the Glengarry Fencibles, consisting mainly of Highlanders who had gone to live in Glasgow.
He personally made the case for the regiment to King George III and was appointed the regimental chaplain – the first Catholic chaplain in the British Army. The Fencibles saw action during the 1798 Rebellion, or Rising as it should be known, in which the Fencibles and the priest himself gained a lasting reputation for their humanity towards the Irish Catholic population. We’ll find out next week what happened to Glasgow’s Glengarry Fencibles.
King George III
The French Revolution had inspired hope among the working people of Glasgow that there might be a better future, but equally it caused utter dread among the ruling classes of Scotland and England.
One Glasgow lawyer, Thomas Muir of Huntershill in modern-day Bishopbriggs, came to symbolise what became one of the great lost causes in Scottish history, namely the demand for political reform led by the Society of the Friends of the People and then the Society of the United Scotsmen which was particularly successful with its calls for a republic and the repeal of the Acts of Union.
Muir was already famous in Glasgow because he had led a campaign against the suspension of Professor John Anderson from Glasgow University.
He then began his legal practice in Glasgow while simultaneously demanding law and political reform.
In 1793, his opponents in the ruling classes, led by judge Lord Braxfield and Henry Dundas, the Uncrowned King of Scotland, struck against the reformers.
After a show trial in Edinburgh, Muir and four colleagues were found guilty of sedition and sentenced to be transported to Australia as common criminals.
Muir famously gave what he thought might be his final speech at the conclusion of the trial – death and not transportation seemed a more probable sentence.
He told the High Court: “I have devoted myself to the cause of the people. It is a good cause. It will ultimately prevail. It will finally triumph.”
Escaping from Australia in 1796, the man who is now widely acknowledged as the Father of Scottish Democracy made his way to France where he was acclaimed as a Hero of the Revolution.
He had been badly injured on his journey to France, however, and though the Society of the United Scotsmen wanted to make him head of the Scottish Republic they were planning, Muir died on January 26, 1799, at the age of just 33.
Muir’s problem in 1793 was that Revolutionary France and Britain were at war and would remain so for a decade. Even people who disliked the Union joined in the war fervour which saw Britain join Spain and the Dutch Republic, and later Russia and Prussia, in a bid to smash the French Republic.
It started well for the Allies, but when a general called Napoleon Bonaparte took charge of the French forces in 1796, the war took a different turn.
Not even the omnipotent Royal Navy could save Britain from the privations caused by the war.
Napoleon Bonaparte
The effects on Glasgow in the latter half of the 1790s were disastrous as trade with Europe virtually ceased and factories were closed.
Unemployment soared, and bankruptcies of individuals and businesses became a commonplace occurrence – they included three of Glasgow’s banks, Thomson’s, the Merchant and the Glasgow Arms Bank.
The collapse of the Merchant Banking Company in 1798 was particularly disastrous as credit facilities for firms in the city virtually ceased overnight.
Now so heavily dependent on trade, Glasgow suffered the almost total loss of its ability to export to the USA and Europe, and the tobacco and rum manufacturing industries collapsed.
The mighty Houston company went bust owing £1m in 1795, but that was partly their own fault as they had invested heavily in the purchase of slaves for their West Indian businesses which promptly collapsed.
All the while prices were rising, and in 1799, the harvest failed across Scotland. The Town Council and those prominent businessmen still able to make profits got together and organised a truly impressive relief system that imported grain and meal in particular.
It was not a disinterested project as the authorities were only too aware that the French Revolution had been partly caused by rising food prices making the people starve.
In Glasgow, the poor were saved from starvation, but not for long as the sheer shortage of foodstuffs led to mass hardship across the city and its suburbs.
Eventually the people took to the streets and in both 1799 and 1800 there were so-called ‘Bread Riots’ in Glasgow.
The city had seen riots before, the weavers’ protests of 1787 ending with three protestors killed, but the Bread Riots were of a different order due to the numbers of people involved.
There was violence, particularly on February 15, 1800, when there was considerable damage to both people and properties though no deaths were recorded.
Glasgow thus entered the 19th century in less than happy circumstances.
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here