On Tuesday 16th January 1894, a curious mystery had people talking in Low Blantyre.
That afternoon, as the Hamilton to Blantyre horse pulled ‘bus’ travelled through Burnbank, a woman with a shawl wrapped closely around her head hailed the vehicle. It stopped at the boundary between Hamilton and Blantyre and the tearful woman asked a female passenger to take her 2 and a half year old boy on to Blantyre. The unusual request seemed acceptable as the woman explained another woman would be waiting at Kelly’s Buildings at the corner of Auchinraith Road, Stonefield to pick the boy up.
The passenger reluctantly took the child and the tearful woman with the shawl ran off. Fifteen minutes later as the ‘bus’ arrived at Stonefield, the female passenger was alarmed to see nobody waiting for the child at Kelly’s Buildings, herself being forced to get off the vehicle and wait in case the person was late.
An hour passed and the woman had to accept nobody was coming, taking the child to the nearby police station. In the days which followed, the Parochial authorities and police took up the case, but no trace was made of any woman at Kelly’s nor indeed any news of the woman who had been in Burnbank! Sadly, the newspapers reported that with the hardships of 1894, this was likely a case of child desertion or abandonment in the hope that some other family could provide better for them. Very sad indeed.
The child would have been 22 or so by WW1, certainly fighting age and I wonder what other trauma he went through in his life.
