During the Victorian era, Glasgow became the workhouse of the empire as the industrial revolution saw heavy industry such as shipbuilding introduced to the River Clyde.
The Victorian period constitutes the 64 year reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901. Life in Glasgow was incredibly different from life today in the city - class disparity was even more apparent than it is now - as the descendants of merchants and industrialists lived in comfortable new privately built homes, while workers on the shipyards, warehouses and factories survived in rudimentary tenement slums.
Working and living conditions were harsh for the lower classes in Glasgow - the stark disparity between the upper and lower classes is no more visible than in the great and terrible buildings they created. Workers in Templeton’s Carpet Factory would arrive for a shift in a workplace resembling a Venetian Palace, and then go home to a crumbling over-crowded East-End or Gorbals tenement infested with vermin without a toilet or running water.
The following 26 pictures aim to show aspects of life in Victorian Glasgow - through the leading industrialists, living conditions, and events that shaped the age and the culture of Glasgow at the time.
1. Great Western Road (1875)
Great Western Road around 1875
2. Paddle Steamers on the Clyde (1885)
Moored at Broomielaw, Glasgow in the foreground the steamer Chancellor (1880) behind which is Buchanan’s ‘Vivid’ and then ‘Eagle’ both dating from 1864.
3. James Watt’s workshop (1858)
The workshop of Scottish steam engineer and inventor James Watt (1736 - 1819) in Heathfield, Birmingham, where he spent his time from 1790 until his death. Watt was born in Greenock and went to Glasgow to learn the skills of a mathematical instrument maker before setting up his own business in London and working on his own engineering researxch. He improved the existing Newcomen steam engine by adding a separate condenser, and went on to revolutionise the design which went into production at the manufacturing plant he owned with Matthew Boulton near Birmingham. He continued to patent his new ideas but never realised his description of steam locomotion. The metric unit of power ‘watt’ is named after him and he was the first to coin the term horsepower.
4. A bridge over the River Clyde (1870)
A bridge over the River Clyde as seen from the Sailors’ Home, Glasgow.