Pets And The City: The furred and feathered friends that built Glasgow

But the change in recent decades has been remarkable. Animals of all kinds were once central to Glasgow’s expansion and success and for centuries the horse was the main mode of transport. However, as the city changed and modernised, so most of the animals disappeared. The pigeons still patrol George Square, the dogs still stroll in the park, but that’s about it.

Historian Barclay Price has seen the changes up close, having grown up above his family’s stables in the west end of Glasgow. His great-grandfather looked after the horses of the well-to-do at the stables, and before that his great-great grandfather was a coachman. But Price also remembers seeing the horses of the rag and bone men and the milk deliveries in the 1950s and 1960s. All gone now.

Price thinks it’s important to remember it all and is keen to show us in his new book how things used to be. The book, Beastly Glasgow, is also a reminder of how important animals were in creating and shaping the city. He also doesn’t shy away from the problems that sometimes arose, for humans and the animals themselves. Here, he speaks to The Herald Magazine about some of the stories he uncovered.

Horses

Price’s first memory is from the 1950s. He was a little boy and he remembers exploring the loft of his family’s garage and stables just off Byres Road in Glasgow. All the horses were gone by that time but up in the loft there were old saddles and other horsey paraphernalia left over from the old days. It was a reminder for young Barclay of how things used to be – of the old days.

There were still a few horses about in the 1950s of course. Price remembers the rag and bone man and the deliveries of milk, beer and coal but by and large horses had disappeared off the streets and the family business, which had stabled the horses of the well-to-do, now looked after cars instead.

Price says people often forget how important horses were to Glasgow and its growth and success. “Horses powered the city and there were thousands of them,” he says. “That’s why the family stables was successful because the wealthy people who had coach and horses couldn’t look after them themselves and needed a stables where they could be fed and watered.”

Not only were horses common, and their sight, sound and smell an integral part of city life, it had been that way for hundreds of years. The first stagecoach service between Glasgow and Edinburgh, the ancient version of the M8, was established in 1678: drawn by six able horses, travellers were told that it left on Monday morning to return again (God willing) on Saturday night. By the late 1700s, there was also a passenger service to London which left from the Saracen’s Head Inn (the journey took four days).

But with horses came problems and Price’s book highlights some of the those that arose: older versions of some surprisingly modern issues such as hit-and-run drivers and boy racers. “I read lots of reports of children being injured because kids were running around the street and they would try to jump on the back of horse-drawn carts and so on,” says Price. “Horses were dangerous things.”

In one case in the 1800s, a little girl was playing on Pollokshaws Road when she was thrown down by two equestrians who rode forward at such a furious pace that it was impossible for her to get out of the way. Most shockingly, the riders “who in external appearance were gentlemen, unfeelingly and recklessly rode on”.

There were similar problems in Finnieston, then a village on the outskirts of the city and a place where servants and stable-boys took their masters’ horses to exercise. A notice demanded: “The inhabitants of Finnieston request of servants not to ride through the village in such crowds and at such speed, as has been done for some time past. The lives of the inhabitants have been often in danger.” They were, in a way, the boy racers of their day.

Another unavoidable problem caused by horses also raised concern. An article in The Times in 1894 entitled The Great Horse Manure Crisis predicted that within 50 years the streets would be buried under 9ft of dung. And by 1914 people were worrying about the conflict between horses and the increasing number of motor vehicles. An article in The Daily Record complained that the passing and re-passing caused a “state of congestion”. Again, an old version of a modern problem.

But despite the problems, Price is keen to emphasise just how important horses were to Glasgow’s rapid expansion. The building boom required vast amounts of stone and other materials to be moved about from quarries and ships and it was the horses that did it. The growth of the suburbs also meant deliveries of food, coal, and furniture, and again it was the horses that did the work. Glasgow was also one of the first cities to develop a network of trams and the first of them, drawn by horses, was introduced between St George’s Cross and Eglinton Toll in 1872.

Dogs and other pets

There’s a fabulous picture in Price’s book of a Glasgow chimney sweep. The sweep, face blackened with soot, stands by his ladder, one hand holding his brush, the other holding the paws of his pet terrier. The picture was taken around 1920, by which time the ownership of pets had become common in the city. The earliest information on dog ownership in Glasgow comes from the records of the dog tax that was introduced in 1797.

Price says that the idea of dogs being owned by the working class of Glasgow, such as chimney sweeps, was not universally popular. “It’s a classic,” he says, “The upper classes thought dogs were bad and people should be feeding themselves, not their animals. And dogs were valuable and were regularly stolen, as they are today – there were lots of adverts for lost or stolen dogs.” However, there certainly wasn’t the range of breeds we know today: “In 1900 there would have been about six types of dog kicking around in Glasgow,” says Price.

Another popular pet in the city was the racing pigeon and pigeon fanciers who lived in the tenements would often attach small lofts to their windows. Talking birds were also popular and some of them were tutored in Glasgow humour. At a 1940 bird show a breeder called Sammy Campbell had a bird that said “gie wee Sammy a gun tae shoot Hitler”. And in the 1960s, a parrot stolen from Edinburgh Zoo turned up in Castlemilk where it had apparently been taught to say “the polis are a shower of b******s”. (This tale may be apocryphal.)

Circus stars

Like any child born before the 1980s or so, Price remembers the animals of the circus and like many other Glaswegians he was taken to the circus at Kelvin Hall every year. From the 1820s until the mid-1980s, the Kelvin Hall Carnival and Circus took place over Christmas and New Year and offered a variety of animal acts.

One that was especially popular in the 1960s was “Helmbrecht Hoppe and his Unrideable Mule”. A seemingly docile mule was introduced into the ring and a prize offered to anyone who could ride him. A succession of young men out to impress their girlfriends would volunteer only to discover that the seemingly docile mule was in fact a savage bucking beast. It was the days before health and safety.

The circus at Kelvin Hall and in other parts of the city was essentially a relatively modern version of a tradition that went back much further. One of the earliest performing animals to be seen in Glasgow was a “learned horse” brought to the city by William Banks in 1596. The horse, named Marocco, could walk on two legs, distinguish between colours, count coins and indicate numbers on a dice.

Over the years, many other learned and talented animals appeared in Glasgow; there was a Learned Pig , for example, which was exhibited in King Street in 1787. The Glasgow Mercury reported that the animal could spell names using letters written on postcards. It was a wonderful and astonishing performance, they said.

In 1894 the People’s Palace in Watson Street, Gallowgate also announced the appearance of “Professor Henri’s Boxing Kangaroo”. One minister blamed such attractions for people no longer attending church. “How could a man who had been watching the boxing kangaroo on Saturday night enjoy a discourse by a minister on Sunday morning?” he asked.

By the early 20th century, Glasgow was a hugely popular destination for travelling circuses. In 1935 The Glasgow Herald reported on the excitement of Bertram Mills Circus: “Six baby elephants went through their exercises; sea lions balanced balls, walked the tightrope and even played the national anthem on a series of trumpets, and tigers leaped through hoops and rolled over on the word of command.”

But from its early days, there was concern about the conditions in which the animals were being kept. “People had always been concerned,” says Price. “I think for a long time people argued that the animals were being kept properly and looked after – that wasn’t always true.” In 2008, Scotland became the first country in the UK to ban the use of wild animals in circuses.

Celebrity animals

One of Price’s favourite stories from his book is about Wallace the dog, who came to prominence in the 1890s. He had apparently become fascinated by the Glasgow Fire Brigade and would follow their horse-drawn wagon back to Central Fire Station. He was eventually adopted by the brigade as a mascot.

Eventually, Wallace liked to go out with the fire wagon on its calls. He would run ahead of the wagon and stories spread that he had special powers and knew the way to a fire. In fact, the truth was that Wallace kept one eye on the driver, who would use his whip to signal a right or left turn.

One lady, noticing that Wallace had a sore paw, made him four little rubber boots to help protect his paws on outings. When Wallace died in 1902, the fireman paid to have him stuffed and he resides today at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Heritage Museum in Greenock.

Dogs don’t get all the fame though. In 1979 the People’s Palace obtained a black and white cat called Smudge to deal with its rodent problem and he soon became a popular attraction. In 1990 when Glasgow was chosen as European City of Culture, Smudge was declared Glasgow’s “Kitty of Culture”. He was also admitted as a member of the General, Municipal and Boilermakers Union and became a “picket cat” when he made an appearance at a 1989 strike at Kelvingrove gallery.

Other famous animals in Glasgow have been visitors rather than residents and at the time none was more famous than Trigger the horse and his human companion Roy Rogers, who came to Glasgow in 1954 for an appearance at the Empire Theatre. The horse was put up at the Central Hotel and Desmond Lynne, a bellboy in the hotel at the time, recalls in the book trying to accommodate the horse.

“Roy Rogers came over to talk to me about getting the horse into the elevator,” he says. “I said, ‘You’re kidding me on, this is a passenger lift, but you might get him into the luggage lift’. But that was still too wee. Trigger had to be taken up the stairs. He spent the night there but the following night, the horse stayed at the police stables.”

The menagerie

You would never know it if you walked past the building on the Trongate today, but imagine the old Panopticon Theatre in 1908. A showman called Albert Pickard had just opened a menagerie there called Noah’s Ark and had created a horse-drawn wagon, topped by a model giraffe, to advertise it around the city. The advertisements promised bears, baboons, porcupines, wallabies and monkeys and there was also a guarantee to all customers: “no stuffed animals or white mice”.

Go inside the Panopticon today and you can still imagine Pickard’s show – in many ways, the building hasn’t changed much since 1908. But the truth is that Noah’s Ark only lasted a few years, possibly because there was so much competition but also because attitudes were starting to change – Parliament introduced an act to prevent cruelty to captive animals in 1900.

“Menageries were about showing the strangest animals and they were valuable when they were sold, there was a huge amount of money taken,” say Price. “The early botanic gardens in Edinburgh had a menagerie but the poor animals were trekked about in not very good conditions.”

As Price says, the emphasis was often on the strange and weird. For example, a menagerie on the Gallowgate showcased a two-headed cow and The Glasgow Herald reported on a visit to see it. “The animal was very mild and gentle,” said the reporter, “and when I patted its fully formed head it took this very kindly and seemed pleased with my attention.”

The zoo

Glasgow was fairly late in acquiring a permanent zoo but Calderpark eventually opened in 1947. There were 160 animals on display and more than 100,000 people visited it in the first three weeks, putting the city’s tram service under considerable strain. It lasted until 2003 when it was forced to close down with debts of £3.5million.

But let’s end on a happy story, shall we? In 1971 a young elephant called Kirsty arrived at Calderpark Zoo and was looked after by a keeper called Peter Adamson. Amid concerns that she might be lonely, in 1987 she was given to Chester Zoo where she was housed with other elephants.

Many years later, in 2019, Peter Adamson decided to see if Kirsty was still alive and tracked her down to Neunkirchen Zoo in Germany. He arranged to visit her and to his delight she instantly recognised him even though it had been almost 40 years since they had last been together.

Beastly Glasgow by Barclay Price is published by Amberley at £15.99