A look into the family history section of Glasgow’s Mitchell Library

National World - LocalTV

We visit the Family History department at the Mitchell Library.

Transcript

00:00In terms of the city, it has started to really grow.

00:04It becomes lots of migration from Ireland and across the Highlands,

00:08all crowned in places like High Street.

00:12It is a really enterprising city, so everything was run by Glasgow.

00:18Obviously they started the water, the locating,

00:21they ran the gas, the electricity, the telephone services,

00:24all of which we have records of.

00:26The other thing is public health, because there's a huge issue about public health.

00:30All these people crowded into these small areas.

00:33Huge issue about disease and everything, public health,

00:36which they did a lot of work to try and combat.

00:39Sometimes they did, because some of their medical officers

00:42of health are all renowned, so sometimes they managed to do that.

00:46But it's a very much changed city.

00:48It's becoming very large in all of these Irish and Highlanders

00:51and others coming into the city.

00:54They are very enterprising.

00:55One of the first things they started was the police force in Glasgow,

01:00which was founded in 1800.

01:03We have police records in terms of individual policemen.

01:07There's always been a dispute between the Metropolitan Police Force and Glasgow

01:12about which one was the biggest, until not that long ago,

01:16a member of the public complained to the Advertising Authority,

01:19and the Metropolitan Police were told that on no account could they claim to be the oldest police force.

01:24So victory for the citizen there.

01:27What we have here is, in terms of family history,

01:30we have lists of all the policemen from about the 1840s, 50s, right up to 1995,

01:37including the whole of Strathclyde.

01:38We've got names here of individual policemen.

01:45There's about 20% of these Irish, but the biggest amount of people are Gales from the Highlands.

01:51So really, really, lots of people coming in to join the police force here.

01:56And if we look at some of them, if you look at some of their records, there's a lot of people

02:01found drunk, they get reported for being drinking, or bringing in a civilian without due caught,

02:09but all of this about drunk, drink, drink, you can read pages of them.

02:13So I would always say, if you're doing your family history and you think the policeman's going to be

02:18very respectable, you may need to think again.

02:21To be fair, as it becomes later on, the Metropolitan Police is the same.

02:25As it becomes more professional, you get less of that.

02:28But a lot of people look to see when they see their family member,

02:31who they think they must be really good.

02:34They've in fact been fine drunk for a lot of things, in a lot of places,

02:38and bringing in civilians without due caught.

02:41Very popular, we have databases for all of these things up to 1932.

02:46So it's very easy for people to find their policeman ancestor.

02:49But a really important source in terms of that migrant community as well.

02:54Because that's, and people are always looking for their Irish or their Highland ancestors as well.

Recommended

Category

Transcript

Recommended