Tag Archives: Alexander McKay

A Glasgow Boy: Part 2

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Like most children, I believed my grandfather had been put on this earth solely for my pleasure and had arrived in the world possessing white hair, false teeth, horn-rimmed spectacles and a thickening waist. The idea that he was once a boy or a young man was impossible to countenance. Even the fact that he was my mother’s father was a struggle to imagine, although in my mind I managed this great leap by picturing him as looking and acting the same, only behaving much more strictly. I knew that he had not indulged my mother as much as he did her children because I was always being told how lucky I was that I could get up to much more nonsense yet not be scolded. However, my mother also said that in relation to my grandmother her father had always been more easy going as a parent, and so it was not so difficult for him to segue into the archetypal grandfather role. 

My Grandparents with my mother, holidaying in Dunoon, c1946

Yet now I can see from the photographs of my grandfather as my mother’s father that his physical change over the decades was actually more of a gradual one. In the above image, he is clearly at the half-way stage between the young man of his courting days and the elderly one who crawled around on all fours, imitating a bear and allowing me to ride on his back (until my mother put an end to the game for fear of Grandad ‘doing himself a mischief’). 

Although my grandfather was often in a playful mood when he assumed the role of Grandad, I was aware from an early age that he liked order too, keeping busy in the house and garden in an attempt to maintain this. Once when I was about seven I designed a series of  illustrations focusing on different facets of my grandfather’s life which I stuck to the door of the living room press (a Scottish recessed cupboard) like a prototype of a poster presentation. Only one of these pictures survived the post-childhood cull of our drawings, and was recently found among the family photographs, and an embarrassing reminder of how rudimentary my writing skills once were.

My ‘poster presentation’ on Alex McKay cleaning shoes (no. 5)

Cleaning everyone’s shoes was a job that Grandad took seriously and there was a low wooden stool in the kitchenette used for this task (which I’ve obviously illustrated in the above drawing). This little green chair was like a link to another imagined world inhabited by tiny people and was a complete contrast to the new, mid-century modern furniture in my parents’ house. Along with Grandma’s mincer and a small, blue tray, it was one of my grandparents’ household items I loved the most and sought out soon after our arrival on each holiday at their house. I wonder now if Grandad enjoyed this weekly shoe cleaning task because it was a link to his own Glasgow boyhood when his father used to line up the children on the coalbunker and polish their boots while they were wearing them.

Alexander McKay in the Boys Brigade, 1915

The McKays were a tightknit, relatively religious family and all were involved actively with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. My father and his younger brother (who eventually became an ordained minister) were also keen members of the popular Boys Brigade, a Christian organisation based on semi-military lines whose use of dummy rifles seems rather incongruous today. However, it is telling to note that, as my Grandfather was born in May 1901, the above photograph – styled like the images of new recruits before they went to the front – must have been taken in March 1915, only a few months into the First World War.

The McKays were also part of the Scottish Temperance Movement and for that reason they rarely drank. As I child I remember being surprised that my grandfather only allowed himself a small glass of sweet sherry or an Advocaat on holidays and high days. I found this habit rather unmanly as I associated such ‘disgusting’ drinks with my elderly female relatives and considered beer and whisky to be the choice alcoholic drink for men. This was probably because my father drank both of these in moderation and scoffed at the sickly drinks my grandparents kept in their sideboard. The religious side to my grandfather also explained why swearing was not allowed in the house and why (in the manner of the UK parliament) even the word ‘liar’ was banned, as I once discovered to my chagrin.

Alexander McKay’s School Leaving Certificate, 1915

My grandfather left Oatlands Secondary School at 14, shortly after the Boys Brigade photograph was taken, and took up a five-year apprenticeship to become an electrician. This was a job  which suited his pedantic nature, even though it was not one he chose for himself, but was a position his mother saw advertised in the local newspaper which she applied for on behalf of her son. Grandad’s school leaving certificate is very vague about his academic achievements, putting more emphasis on his attendance than the subjects he studied, and has the ominous line Alec McKay has attended this school for one year and was studying in the supplementary class when he left. However, I feel sure this is more of a reflection on the public education system for working class boys than any indictment on my grandfather’s prowess. Years later he told my mother that he had not particularly excelled at school but had loved to tell and write stories and had been especially interested in history for that reason.

From what I gather, Grandad never questioned his mother’s choice of apprenticeship and just knuckled down to doing what was expected of him for the next five years. When he finally became a journeyman in early 1921, I was heartened to note that his Apprentice Discharge Certificate (below) from Anderson and Munro described him as Thoroughly satisfactory and reliable. I would not have expected anything less!

Alex McKay’s Apprentice’s Discharge Certificate

Grandad presumably would have felt lucky to have been kept on by such a prestigious company, which by the 1920s was the oldest firm of electrical engineers and contractors in the United Kingdom. The 1921 census shows that he was still living at home and working for Anderson and Munro at a time of high unemployment. A glance through the census records shows many men out of work, including electrical engineers (electricians), although by 1922 the economy had begun to pick up, ushering in the ‘roaring twenties‘. It was around about that time that my grandfather moved to Edinburgh for work, lodging with his maternal aunt, Mary Ann Garvie in Cumberland Street, where he was to remain until he married my grandmother in 1931.

Alexander McKay c1921

The Garvies were used to having a full house: the 1921 census shows them living with four of their children, ranging from 20-30, as well as two paying boarders (apprentice horticulturalists from the nearby Royal Botanic Gardens). So the arrangement was possibly a very practical one, with both parties benefiting. This was also during the period when my grandfather’s uncle had a breakdown and had to spend time in an asylum, so having another family member in the house may have been some support during this period. My mother tells me that this sad state of affairs came about when Alexander Garvie was no longer able to carry his work out as a bookbinder satisfactorily due to an increased tremor in his hand that prevented him from applying the gold leaf accurately. 

My Grandparents’ Wedding in 1931

In 1931, at the age of thirty, my grandfather married my twenty-five year old grandmother, Catherine Neilson, after eight years of ‘courting’. He was finally able to move out of his aunt’s house – much depleted of family by then – and into a nearby rented flat with his new bride. However, he would never return to live in Glasgow again, despite having dreams of retiring to his home city.

As a child, my grandfather never let me forget that he was proud to be both Scottish and a Glaswegian, and when my grandparents visited us in Ayr, trips to the Gaiety Theatre to see the Alexander Brothers were a staple of my 1970s childhood. Yet, as much as he was happy and settled in his adopted city of Edinburgh, like me, my grandfather always harboured the belief that west is best.

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year!

The Incidental Genealogist, January 2023

A Glasgow Boy: Part 1

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My Scottish grandfather would have been the ideal candidate for one of those You Can Take the Boy Out of Glasgow, But You Can’t Take Glasgow out of the Boy type t-shirts, except that such things were not around in Alexander McKay’s day. And he certainly never possessed a t-shirt – which was a later American invention – but simply wore a seasonal variation on the archetypal vest (sleeveless for summer, thermal for winter). However, in retrospect my grandfather’s sartorial choices were very much in line with his age and the decades. Browsing through old photographs shows this development from his ‘bright young thing’ era in the 1920s to the maturing family man of later years. But by the time I knew Grandad, he had moved on to knitted waistcoats, tweed coats and soft hats which he still tipped when passing females in the street.

The twenties ‘look’: my Grandparents ‘courting’ on the West Coast

When this Glasgow boy was courting my grandmother in the 1920s, he was certainly making an effort to impress her. They met at ‘the dancing’ when my grandfather was working as a newly qualified electrician in Edinburgh and lodging with his maternal aunt. While Edinburgh and Glasgow are today so closely connected that commuting between the two of them is a fairly regular occurrence, moving from Scotland’s largest city to Scotland’s capital was much more of a wrench a century ago. Grandad certainly never forgot he was a Glaswegian at heart and had even hoped to return there once retired. Well, you’ll be going back on your own then! my grandmother quipped. Given the stubborn nature of my grandmother, there was certainly no imminent move planned to the friendly city on the Clyde with its proximity to the islands and lochs of the west coast, even though it would have been closer to our own family home in Ayr.

As a child, I loved Edinburgh for all the things that I believed Glasgow did not possess: a castle, an old town, a mountain, a palace, a zoo on a hill, a beach. When I did finally get to know Glasgow on my own terms during its later renaissance, which started with the 1988 Garden Festival and culminated in the 1990 title of City of Culture, I realised it was a mistake to try to compare the two cities. Glasgow had many fascinating parts, albeit more scattered, but because my grandfather had few living relatives, there wasn’t the familial connection we had with Edinburgh. The capital also had the excitement of being farther away from our home on the west coast and thus regarded as being more exotic, although secretly I preferred the wild damp landscapes of the west. 

A rare image of my McKay Great-Grandparents c1920

Grandad was unfortunately the sole survivor of his direct family, bar one older sister, and all that was known about the McKays was that most had died relatively young. Neither of his parents was alive by the time of his marriage to my grandmother in 1931. Perhaps that was why Grandad had a thing about graveyards (see last month’s post here). In fact, he grew up on the edge of the Gorbals, just down the road from the large Victorian Southern Necropolis, so possibly the graveyard was a place he visited as a boy. Yet none of the McKay family was buried there, although an infant sister, Mary, was placed in an unmarked communal grave at the Eastern Necropolis, on the other side of the city, when she died from meningitis in 1906. This might have been because there were no communal graves in the Southern Necropolis, with families having to pay several pounds for a ‘lair’ as opposed to the several shillings for a simple burial.

However, two decades later, when the family were obviously better-off, Grandad’s parents and some of his siblings were buried in a family plot at the newer Riddrie Cemetry on the northern outskirts of the city. I discovered this fact when I came across the ownership certificate for the ‘lair’ that my great-grandfather had purchased in 1924 at the time he was burying his wife. Perhaps he’d always felt guilty that he could not afford a plot for his little daughter all those years ago. 

Riddrie Park Cemetery ‘Lair’ Certificate

Despite his love of cemeteries, Grandad was a cheery soul who did not dwell on past misfortunes and never seemed to be grumpy or angry. His placid nature sometimes irritated me, but I see now that my mother has inherited his temperament and how much easier her life is because of this tendency to focus on the positive. The few stories my mother heard about her father’s childhood paints a picture of a happy, stable and loving one, albeit in a crowded sandstone tenement flat in Rosebery Street (demolished in 1997, and one of the last in the district to remain).

Rosebery Street, Glasgow, prior to demolition in 1997

Similar to my grandmother’s tenement childhood in the Dumbiedykes area of Edinburgh, the children in my grandfather’s family mucked in together at home and spent their free time playing outdoors in the street. My grandfather was one half of the first set of twins born to his parents in May 1901. Alexander and his twin sister Margaret were exactly in the middle of the mostly female family: they had three older sisters and later two younger sisters who were also twins. This second set of twins was born two and a half years after the first and must have been quite a surprise to them all. A year after the infant twin Mary died, leaving Edith twin-less, a little brother finally arrived, and was adored by the whole family.

However, on searching through the records, I was surprised to discover that Mary’s place of death was not actually the family home, but at a nearby address that did not appear to be a hospital of any shape or form. Perhaps she had been sent away because her parents wanted to avoid the risk of the other children becoming ill. It was at least a comfort to read on the certificate that her father had been present at her death.

The First Twins: Alexander and Margaret McKay, age 16 (1917)

When we think of 19th century tenements today, it is often in conjunction with the post-war ‘slum’ clearances and associated ideas of poverty and squalor. While this is not to deny that such areas existed, many of Glasgow’s sandstone tenement flats – like their counterparts in Edinburgh – were places where ordinary working-class families lived quite happily, enjoying a community spirit which was lost in the modern high towers which replaced them.

A trip to the National Trust property The Tenement House in Glasgow certainly helps to dispel some of these myths. When I first visited the museum in the 1980s, I was fascinated in particular by the recessed bed as I remembered my mother’s stories about sleeping in one at her grandparents’ flat in Edinburgh, and her telling me how safe and comfortable it felt. So I was excited to find an extremely rare informal photograph of my grandfather and some of his family sitting at the table of their two-roomed apartment in Rosebery Street, a recessed bed behind them. No one in the family knew who took it or why – inside photographs were rare occurrences in the days before instant flash photography (which explains why all those Neilson relatives had to step out onto their Dumbiedyke’s balcony to be snapped at home).

Alexander McKay (aged about 5) and family at home in Rosebery St. c1906 

Not only does this image show my grandfather and his twin sister Margaret, and the remaining second twin, Edith, in his mother’s lap, but behind the table set with dishes is clearly an unmade bed. My surmisal is that it was a Sunday morning breakfast and that they were eating their morning porridge as there appears to be a sugar bowl and a milk jug on the table. The children might be dressed for Church or Sunday School – the McKays were active members of The Church of Scotland – as they look relatively smartly dressed and the girls have ribbons in their hair.

It is such a remarkable image and is possibly the one I treasure most in the collection due to its window on a domestic setting from another time. I feel I can always scrutinise it anew and find something else I hadn’t noticed before. That is what I find so interesting about the research that my Scottish family albums ‘forces’ me to undertake. Only once I started searching the Glasgow burial records did I realise that this photograph must have been taken shortly after the twin Mary had died. Then I wondered why my great-grandmother was smiling so naturally, while at the same time the three children look so serious (just as the unknown photographer is presumably telling all the family to lift their spoons).

Such a rare glimpse of real family life in a working-class home from 1906 is a treat to behold but slightly unsettling, too. Perhaps this is because I already know that there are some unexpected and unpleasant events lying in wait for the McKay family over the next few years.

To be continued next month in Part 2.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Xmas!

The Incidental Genealogist, December 2022