RAISED in Springburn, Glasgow, Jean Roberts had been an active socialist since her youth. “I lived through lock-outs, strikes, and unemployment, and early on I realised the terrible hardship and misery that can be caused in any home by unemployment,” she said in May, 1960.

The occasion was her election as Glasgow’s first female Lord Provost, the successor to Sir Myer Galpern MP.

Shocked by the squalor she had witnessed in the city, Mrs Roberts, who had originally been a teacher, was elected in November 1929 to represent the Kingston ward on Glasgow Corporation.

She was the first woman to become convener of the electricity committee, first to be deputy chairman of the corporation, first to be city treasurer, and the first to be leader of the Labour group. She had also served as a senior magistrate.

Mrs Roberts always believed that women should have equal opportunities with men in the public arena.

“I have never found myself at a disadvantage in being a woman in public life,” she said. “But if in the course of my duties as Lord Provost I am advised that my presence at a stag party is not desired, I will take serious cognisance of such advice".

She also said she wanted to make a special point of emphasising Glasgow’s importance as a cultural centre. “I don’t think there is another city in the United Kingdom where the cultural needs of the citizens are so fully met”, she added.

During her time in office she did much for the city. She persisted in asking when Glasgow would get a new concert hall to replace St Andrew’s Hall, which was destroyed by fire in 1962. That same year she was photographed enjoying an exhibition at Kelvingrove art gallery and museum (main image).

She also welcomed various members of the royal family: Princess Margaret (above, in 1961); Princess Alexandra, in 1963, and the Queen, whom she accompanied round the Gorbals in June 1961, enabling the monarch to see both the old and the new Gorbals.

Mrs Roberts retired from Glasgow Corporation in 1966, four years after having been created Dame of the Order of the British Empire. In 1965 she had become chairwoman of Cumbernauld Development Corporation, of which she was a founding member; in December 1970 she would become chairman of the then Scottish National Orchestra.

When she died in March 1988, the city’s Lord Provost at the time, Robert Gray, spoke of “the passing of a piece of this city’s history”.

Noted the Glasgow Herald: “Few people can have done more for Glasgow during the ‘hungry years’ of the 1920s and 30s, through the grim days of war-time to the prosperous ‘You’ve never had it so good’ era of Harold Macmillan.

“It was perhaps appropriate that the last of her 92 years coincided with Glasgow’s new renaissance.”

Read more: Herald Diary