Annie and The Gorbals of Glasgow

Gorbals' shop sign in Yiddish [1]

In 1904, at the age of 19, Betty's eldest sister, my great-grandmother, Annie, came to Scotland to start a new life. With four siblings and almost a generation between them, Betty was only two years of age when Annie left home. The story goes that Annie left her village, Svintsyan in Lithuania, on a horse and cart with only the belongings she could carry. She left Svintsyan as Annie Lulinska and arrived in Britain as Annie Cohen. Many Ashkenazi Jews changed their names when they emigrated from Eastern Europe to the 'New Worlds', often to make their names locally more understandable or acceptable. After a brief stay in England, Annie moved north to settle for good in Glasgow. Jews first came to Glasgow in the early 19th Century. When Annie arrived in Glasgow there were about 8000 Jewish inhabitants [2]. Glasgow had become the second city of the British Empire and was a thriving place of work and opportunity. Consequently there was an influx of immigrants in the 19th and early 20th Century from the Scottish Highlands, Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe and Asia as a result of this industrial boom [3]. Additionally the anti-Jewish legislation and violence in Tsarist Russia in the late 19th Century initiated a huge wave of Jewish immigration to the USA, Canada, Australia and South Africa. Thousands of Ashkenazi Jews travelled via Scotland to the USA. As a result many ended up staying in Glasgow because of economic opportunities and the presence of family and the growing Jewish community. In this period Glasgow had the fourth largest Jewish community in the British Isles after London, Manchester and Leeds[4]. Jewish Glasgow at that time had three synagogues, a newspaper in Yiddish, Di Yidishe Tsaytung (The Jewish Times), a number of Zionist organisations serving different groups, various youth and sporting organisations, philanthropic and charitable organisations, cultural societies including a choir, and a number of educational institutions, both secular and religious [2, 4, 5].

Annie came to live in the Gorbals, an area of Glasgow on the south bank of the River Clyde. Accommodation in the Gorbals was cheap and community-forming created a social network for newcomers to rely on while they got started. Annie worked there as a tailoress in one of the many tailoring shops.

A young Annie Cohen

During my visit to Glasgow in March 2014, Harvey Kaplan of the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre (SJAC) very kindly gave me an overview of the history of the Jews in Glasgow and particularly the Gorbals.

Garnethill Synagogue interior

After showing me around Garnethill Synagogue to which the SJAC is attached Harvey took me to the Archives Centre itself and gave me a tour of the permanent exhibition there which tells the story of the Jews in Scotland.

Harvey Kaplan of the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre

Using the databases of the SJAC, Harvey Kaplan traced where Annie and her husband Abie Taylor's, my great-grandfather's, final resting place is. They are buried at Cathcart Cemetery in the Southside area of Glasgow. Many Jews of the Gorbals moved to the more affluent suburbs of Glasgow as their economic situation improved[3]. When Betty arrived in Glasgow for good in 1937, Annie and Abie had already moved out of the Gorbals and into a villa in Pollokshields, also in the Southside of Glasgow.

Gravestone of Annie and Abie Taylor at Cathcart Cemetery

I went to the Gorbals to film whatever there still might be standing from that time. However, there was practically nothing left. From the late 1950s right up until the 90s, in a programme of urban regeneration, most of the Gorbals as it was in the first half of the 20th Century was destroyed[6].

A building in the Gorbals under demolition [7]

The Chevra Kadisha Synagogue in Oxford Street, where Annie and Abie were married, is also no longer standing.

Chevra Kadisha Synagogue on Oxford Street photographed in the Seventies [7]

Annie Douglas grew up in the Gorbals and remembers the Chevra Kadisha Synagogue well.

She has many fond memories of the community spirit which was characteristic of that area, despite the hardships of what for many was a poor existence: "the Catholics were called the Billies, the Protestants were called the Dans and the Jewish people were called the Old Tin Cans. But they all got on with each other". I interviewed her at her residence in a home for the elderly in Glasgow. She is blind but her face and her voice truly exuded an enthousiasm for Jewish life in the Gorbals as she rewound a film of her childhood in her mind's eye.

Sources:

[1] Reproduced with the kind permission of the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre.

[2] Dr. Kenneth E. Collins, Second City Jewry, Scottish Jewish Archives Committee, Glasgow, 1990

[3] Ben Braber, Jews in Glasgow 1879-1939 - Immigration and Integration, Vallentine Mitchell, Middlesex, 2007

[4] Harvey L. Kaplan, The Gorbals Jewish Community in 1901, Scottish Jewish Archives Centre, Glasgow, 2006
[5] Kenneth Collins, Harvey Kaplan and Stephen Kliner, Jewish Glasgow - An Illustrated History, Scottish Jewish Archives, Glasgow, 2013
[6] Eric Eunson, The Gorbals - An Illustrated History, Richard Stenlake Publishing, 1996
[7] http://urbanglasgow.co.uk/archive/glasgow-in-the-1970s-last-days-of-the-old-gorbals__o_t__t_1236.html