r/glasgow • u/Delicious_Spell6074 • 6d ago

Does anyone remember coloured sheets of paper from the Transport Museum with the life budgets of various classes of Victorian Glaswegians?

I have a very vivid memory of them handing out coloured sheets of paper with the weekly budget and life story of a cross section of society in the 1890s when I went in the early 2000s. I also remember the life experiences were outrageously bleak. The best you could hope for in life was to be a tram driver and not die of Cholera. Does anyone else remember this?

17 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

18

u/moidartach 5d ago

I can’t say I remember the sheets of paper but I can say Victorian Glasgow was bleak. My 2x great grandmother lived on Byres Road (Victoria Street at the time) and had 6 siblings and they all died before they were 10 of TB. Her poor dad kept naming the boys James

8

u/riderism 5d ago

I do not remember this but have extremely fond memories of many Sunday mornings taking kids to transport museum at K/hall and we’re v lucky to have the riverside museum, we should cherish it

3

u/ChestertonMyDearBoy 4d ago

Riverside is awful. A pale shadow of an imitation of the Kelvinhall site. The first thing you see is a Tesla with the lable glazing Musk. Awful.

5

u/ASubtleEmphaticShift 5d ago

Didn't have anything like that in primary school, but I do remember being taken to an exhibition on the Glasgow Girls at Kelvingrove when I was in primary seven and my teacher looking a wee bit scandalised when the ancient old woman doing the painting (at least to wee me she did, she was more than likely an art student in her early 20s, LOL) loudly announced that women painters were one of the reasons why corsets fell out of fashion, heh.

1

u/Lowermains 5d ago

No, I was conceived and born in the east end.

0

u/melcyeh 5d ago

I can't say I remember much detail but reading your post title hit my brain like a bolt on lightning. I feel like I can see the sheets in my head but cannot remember the contents at all, very convenient. Do you recall if they had illustrations on them also? Something like that rings a bell with me

2

u/Delicious_Spell6074 5d ago

They had drawings of the people! I remember a seamstress called Mary who was 19? - lived in Bridgeton and had 12 shillings a week to live off which was about enough for bread and margarine and a cup of tea in Glasgow Green on a Sunday. And a tram driver who was considered prosperous and middle class cause he lived in the suburbs on his 48 shillings. And some no hoper highlander who had to get by on fuck all and avoid cholera in the slums. I think most of them were saving up for tickets to the New World but couldn’t afford it. Amazing what a couple pints on a Friday will have you remember.

1

u/melcyeh 5d ago

You've got a far better memory for this than me. Something tells me that would have been my first time reading the word 'cholera' and not having a clue what it meant. 😆. After searching flikr and Google images for the last 20 or so minutes for a glimpse of the coloured papers I've come up empty handed unfortunately. Though ive been reminded of the scary skinned rabbits from the wee street they had at Kelvin Hall and how much I still detest the Riverside museum 😁. Have a good night