"My family is broken up. The children are crying their hearts out for their mammy and she is pining for them, and I am powerless to do anything"

PC James Robertson’s actions, it is claimed, led to two large-scale outbreaks of disorder, on May 26 and June 9, 1934, which in turn led to court cases and convictions for several Garngad residents.

Three witnesses who, in court, criticised Robertson’s actions during the second riot were convicted of perjury. This was followed when another eight people, who had testified on the trio’s behalf, were themselves convicted of perjury and sent to prison.

Campaigners who took up their cause argued strongly that there had been a miscarriage of justice, and the actions of the sheriff in the Garngad perjury trial were severely criticised in the House of Commons.

One of the women was released after three months of her sentence because she was pregnant, but her child was subsequently still-born.

Today, as the academic who has investigated the story prepares to give a talk on the subject in Glasgow next weekend, the granddaughter of one of the women convicted of perjury has spoken about the impact of the jail sentence on her family.

Linda Connor said: “Helen Dempsey was a mother of eight at the time of her conviction, but her family was scattered as a necessary consequence of her conviction.

“Policing in the area was tough at the time but this increased with the arrival of a particularly aggressive beat constable, PC Robertson, who wanted to show the local people who was boss.

“My grandmother had 10 children and at that point, eight of them were still alive. Harry, the oldest of the eight, was 13, the youngest was a baby of six months, who was still being fed by her mum.

“My dad John was eight at the time, and several months before, he had been knocked down in the Garngad Road and his arm had been amputated. So there was a whole range of things going on with the family. Life was tough enough without their mother being sent to jail for six months.”

Helen and the others served their time in Duke Street prison, in the east end.

“Six months was a very long time, and Helen’s family had to be split up,” Linda adds.

“My aunt Agnes, one of Helen’s daughters, later wrote her memoirs, and she wrote a very moving description of how the whole house was in uproar and everybody was crying and upset. They had to work out where everybody was to go.

“My grandfather’s mother lived in Kilsyth and she came down and took away all of Helen’s youngest children – my dad, my aunt Agnes and my uncle Philip. Five of the children ended up living with relatives.

“I recall Helen as being on the quiet side, but I think life back then was so hard that you just had to get on with whatever blow it dealt you.

“She had already lost two children, including Harry’s twin sister, and a son who died with measles when she was six or seven.

“Another of her daughters died of tuberculosis in 1939.

“It was tough, but no different for the life of many other families at the time.”

Dr Andrew Davies, of the University of Liverpool, has uncovered a newspaper story, by a reporter at Thomson’s Weekly News who interviewed Helen’s husband, John.

Dempsey described how his eight children had been “scattered” as a result of his wife’s imprisonment. He was caring for their three eldest at the family home in Bright Street.

“My family is broken up,” he lamented. “The children are crying their hearts out for their mammy and she is pining for them, and I am powerless to do anything.”

He said Helen had recently had an operation for a serious bout of appendicitis, from which she had never really recovered.

“Now my wife, who was never in any kind of trouble with the police before, has been imprisoned for six months.”

He added: “My wife and I have been particularly happy during the 14 years we have been married. I feel her absence very deeply, not only for my own sake but for that of the kiddies.

“It is really heartbreaking to hear the kiddies crying for their mother.”

Helen Dempsey passed away in 1981. “I do know that Helen never really spoke about her experience in prison, but it did have a lasting impact on her,” says Linda. “She would have carried the memory of her experience all of her life.

“It would have been hard for her as everybody would have known what had happened. Local people knew the truth of the matter but there was probably still something of a stigma attached to having been in prison.

“But as a family we are really pleased that the matter has resurfaced after all these years, and that it has been acknowledged as something of an injustice.”

“The impact on the women who were jailed for perjury was devastating,” Davies said. “Their families were torn apart, and the women were adamant that they’d told the truth.”

In a paper, he has argued that poorer, working-class people in the 1930s were subjected to "aggressive and frequently violent policing along with systematic hostility from the judiciary and the press in Britain".

In Glasgow, he writes: “Attempts to challenge police methods and police officers’ courtroom testimonies met with a highly punitive response from the city’s legal establishment. Despite enjoying the rights of citizenship, working-class people found it difficult to find politicians to take up their complaints about police incivility and brutality, embodied in the conduct of a police constable known locally as ‘Hitler’."

Davies’ talk, Garngad Stories: Police Violence In The 1930s, A Miscarriage Of Justice, And Family Histories, will be held at the Blythswood Room, Mitchell Library, Glasgow, on Saturday, July 13, 2pm. Admission is free but booking is essential – phone 0141 287 2999 or go to reception at the Mitchell.

JAMES Robertson, a physically imposing character, joined the City of Glasgow Police in 1933, and was just 23 when he was appointed as a beat constable in the Garngad area.

A paper by Dr Andrew Davies, an academic at the University of Liverpool, says that Robertson’s arrival in the run-up to that year’s Orange Walk was the catalyst for a significant increase in local hostility towards the police.

He writes: “The posting of such a physically intimidating recruit to the district during the build-up to the Orange Walk fitted with [Chief Constable Percy] Sillitoe’s policy of meeting force with superior force. However, Robertson’s intimidating manner, inflammatory language and undisguised disdain for Catholics [he was a Protestant] caused considerable disquiet. Within weeks of his arrival, local residents nicknamed him ‘Hitler’.”

On August 22, two of three local men who allegedly tried to throw Robertson over a bridge parapet into the Forth & Clyde canal were jailed, for 60 and 30 days. The men denied the charge, one of them declaring that it would “need a crane” to throw a huge figure like the constable into the canal.

Other residents complained or testified about Robertson and the language he used towards them, though some Garngad residents gave their full backing to Robertson.

In January 1934, two Garngad men were charged with assaulting Robertson and another PC: Roberson was off duty for 12 days.

Two key turning-points in the district’s relationship with ‘Hitler’ came in large-scale outbreaks of disorder, on May 26 and June 9, 1934. Many arrests were made, but civilian witnesses at the subsequent trials made allegations of police brutality, some of which were directed at Robertson.

Three witnesses who spoke of Robertson’s actions during the second riot were convicted of perjury. Later, eight people, including Helen Dempsey, who had testified on the trio’s behalf were themselves convicted of perjury, and imprisoned.