With so many stories of hardship, unemployment and extreme poverty often told on Blantyre Project about times in Blantyre during decades gone by, I’m often reminded how lucky we are to live in the times we do. The world isn’t perfect and poverty still rife for many, but the lack of world war calling upon our duty, not enduring economic collapse, living with no healthcare or welfare and having at least a dry roof over our heads is a reminder that things were much, MUCH worse in historic times in Lanarkshire.
I’m not the only person who reflects on this. Blantyre Project reader JJ messaged me a few weeks ago with a similar sentiment, adding, “Paul, hope you are keeping well, you do such great work on my hometown. I love reading your information and stories. My mother worked in domestic service when she left school, that would be aged 14 in 1934. She worked for the Doctor who lived in a big house up Auchentibber Rd from High Blantyre. I have often wondered who he was and if my mother had to live in?”
“Her family lived in School Lane and my grannie Jeannie Dalton was a cleaner at the school in Hunthill Rd. My mother told me that the early morning she was born, 25th February 1920, my grannie had given birth in front of the fire, wrapped my mother in a shawl, and handed her to her older sister, Jeannie, aged about 11. Then my grannie, having just given birth went out to the school to do her cleaning shift! “
“My mother was Elizabeth Dalton, father Michael was a miner. Her sister was Jeannie Hamilton as my grannie’s first husband had died in a mining accident with dynamite in Pittsburgh, circa 1913 USA, leaving her with 4 young children. She met my grandfather 1919 just after WW1 when he had returned from that abomination. He was Michael Dalton.”
“We are just not made of the same stuff nowadays. I am proud to have been born in the wee timber hoose in 125 Auchinraith Rd, how lucky was I? I am 72 now and every day I thank God to be alive, when you think what our forefathers went through….. so we could have a great life! Mum was a chippie during Clydebank Blitz, Dad a POW who did the Death March. I am so lucky to be here at all!”
It does make you think about what parents, grandparents and great grandparents went through. I wonder what’s in store for our children and grandchildren as the world becomes yet again a more dangerous place with invasions, unregulated technical advancement and growing political and economic uncertainty? Cheery thought!
