of which exceeds 70 million cub. ft. a day. In 1893 the supply
of electric light was also undertaken, and since that date the city has
been partly lighted by electricity. The corporation also laid down
the tramways, which were leased by a company for twenty-three
years at a rental of £150 a mile per annum. When the lease expired
in 1894 the town council took over the working of the cars, substituting
overhead electric traction for horse-power. One of the most
difficult problems that the corporation has had to deal with was the
housing of the poor. By the lapse of time and the congestion of
population, certain quarters of the city, in old Glasgow especially,
had become slums and rookeries of the worst description. The
condition of the town was rapidly growing into a byword, when the
municipality obtained parliamentary powers in 1866 enabling it to
condemn for purchase over-crowded districts, to borrow money and
levy rates. The scheme of reform contemplated the demolition of
10,000 insanitary dwellings occupied by 50,000 persons, but the
corporation was required to provide accommodation for the
dislodged whenever the numbers exceeded 500. In point of fact they
never needed to build, as private enterprise more than kept pace
with the operations of the improvement. The work was carried out
promptly and effectually, and when the act expired in 1881 whole
localities had been recreated and nearly 40,000 persons properly
housed. Under the amending act of 1881 the corporation began in
1888 to build tenement houses in which the poor could rent one or
more rooms at the most moderate rentals; lodging-houses for men
and women followed, and in 1896 a home was erected for the
accommodation of families in certain circumstances. The powers of the
improvement trustees were practically exhausted in 1896, when it
appeared that during twenty-nine years £1,955,550 had been spent
in buying and improving land and buildings, and £231,500 in building
tenements and lodging-houses; while, on the other side, ground
had been sold for £1,072,000, and the trustees owned heritable
property valued at £692,000, showing a deficiency of £423,050.
Assessment of ratepayers for the purposes of the trust had yielded
£593,000, and it was estimated that these operations, beneficial to
the city in a variety of ways, had cost the citizens £24,000 a year.
In 1897 an act was obtained for dealing in similar fashion with
insanitary and congested areas in the centre of the city, and on the
south side of the river, and for acquiring not more than 25 acres of
land, within or without the city, for dwellings for the poorest classes.
Along with these later improvements the drainage system was
entirely remodelled, the area being divided into three sections,
each distinct, with separate works for the disposal of its own sewage.
One section (authorized in 1891 and doubled in 1901) comprises 11
sq. m.—one-half within the city north of the river, and the other in
the district in Lanarkshire—with works at Dalmarnock; another
section (authorized in 1896) includes the area on the north bank
not provided for in 1891, as well as the burghs of Partick and Clydebank
and intervening portions of the shires of Renfrew and
Dumbarton, the total area consisting of 14 sq. m., with works at Dalmuir,
7 m. below Glasgow; and the third section (authorized in 1898)
embraces the whole municipal area on the south side of the river,
the burghs of Rutherglen, Pollokshaws, Kinning Park and Govan,
and certain districts in the counties of Renfrew and Lanark—14
sq. m. in all, which may be extended by the inclusion of the burghs
of Renfrew and Paisley—with works at Braehead, 1 m. east of
Renfrew. Among other works in which it has interests there may be
mentioned its representation on the board of the Clyde Navigation
Trust and the governing body of the West of Scotland Technical
College. In respect of parliamentary representation the Reform
Act of 1832 gave two members to Glasgow, a third was added in
1868 (though each elector had only two votes), and in 1885 the city
was split up into seven divisions, each returning one member.
Population.—Throughout the 19th century the population grew prodigiously. Only 77,385 in 1801, it was nearly doubled in twenty years, being 147,043 in 1821, already outstripping Edinburgh. It had become 395,503 in 1861, and in 1881 it was 511,415. In 1891, prior to extension of the boundary, it was 565,839, and, after extension, 658,198, and in 1901 it stood at 761,709. The birth-rate averages 33, and the death-rate 21 per 1000, but the mortality before the city improvement scheme was carried out was as high as 33 per 1000. Owing to its being convenient of access from the Highlands, a very considerable number of Gaelic-speaking persons live in Glasgow, while the great industries attract an enormous number of persons from other parts of Scotland. The valuation of the city, which in 1878–1879 was £3,420,697, now exceeds £5,000,000.
History.—There are several theories as to the origin of the name of Glasgow. One holds that it comes from Gaelic words meaning “dark glen,” descriptive of the narrow ravine through which the Molendinar flowed to the Clyde. But the more generally accepted version is that the word is the Celtic Cleschu, afterwards written Glesco or Glasghu, meaning “dear green spot” (glas, green; cu or ghu, dear), which is supposed to have been the name of the settlement that Kentigern found here when he came to convert the Britons of Strathclyde. Mungo became the patron-saint of Glasgow, and the motto and arms of the city are wholly identified with him—“Let Glasgow Flourish by the Preaching of the Word,” usually shortened to “Let Glasgow Flourish.” It is not till the 12th century, however, that the history of the city becomes clear. About 1178 William the Lion made the town by charter a burgh of barony, and gave it a market with freedom and customs. Amongst more or less isolated episodes of which record has been preserved may be mentioned the battle of the Bell o’ the Brae, on the site of High Street, in which Wallace routed the English under Percy in 1300; the betrayal of Wallace to the English in 1305 in a barn situated, according to tradition, in Robroyston, just beyond the north-eastern boundary of the city; the ravages of the plague in 1350 and thirty years later; the regent Arran’s siege, in 1544, of the bishop’s castle, garrisoned by the earl of Glencairn, and the subsequent fight at the Butts (now the Gallowgate) when the terms of surrender were dishonoured, in which the regent’s men gained the day. Most of the inhabitants were opposed to Queen Mary and many actively supported Murray in the battle of Langside—the site of which is now occupied by the Queen’s Park—on the 13th of May 1568, in which she lost crown and kingdom. A memorial of the conflict was erected on the site in 1887. Under James VI. the town became a royal burgh in 1636, with freedom of the river from the Broomielaw to the Cloch. But the efforts to establish episcopacy aroused the fervent anti-prelatical sentiment of the people, who made common cause with the Covenanters to the end of their long struggle. Montrose mulcted the citizens heavily after the battle of Kilsyth in 1645, and three years later the provost and bailies were deposed for contumacy to their sovereign lord. Plague and famine devastated the town in 1649, and in 1652 a conflagration laid a third of the burgh in ashes. Even after the restoration its sufferings were acute. It was the headquarters of the Whiggamores of the west and its prisons were constantly filled with rebels for conscience’ sake. The government scourged the townsfolk with an army of Highlanders, whose brutality only served to strengthen the resistance at the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Brig. With the Union, hotly resented as it was at the time, the dawn of almost unbroken prosperity arose. By the treaty of Union Scottish ports were placed, in respect of trade, on the same footing as English ports, and the situation of Glasgow enabled it to acquire a full share of the ever-increasing Atlantic trade. Its commerce was already considerable and in population it was now the second town in Scotland. It enjoyed a practical monopoly of the sale of raw and refined sugars, had the right to distil spirits from molasses free of duty, dealt largely in cured herring and salmon, sent hides to English tanners and manufactured soap and linen. It challenged the supremacy of Bristol in the tobacco trade—fetching cargoes from Virginia, Maryland and Carolina in its own fleet—so that by 1772 its importations of tobacco amounted to more than half of the whole quantity brought into the United Kingdom. The tobacco merchants built handsome mansions and the town rapidly extended westwards. With the surplus profits new industries were created, which helped the city through the period of the American War. Most, though not all, of the manufactures in which Glasgow has always held a foremost place date from this period. It was in 1764 that James Watt succeeded in repairing a hitherto unworkable model of Newcomen’s fire (steam) engine in his small workshop within the college precincts. Shipbuilding on a colossal scale and the enormous developments in the iron industries and engineering were practically the growth of the 19th century. The failure of the Western bank in 1857, the Civil War in the United States, the collapse of the City of Glasgow bank in 1878, among other disasters, involved heavy losses and distress, but recovery was always rapid.
Authorities.—J. Cleland, Annals of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1816); Duncan, Literary History of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1886); Registrum Episcopatus Glasgow (Maitland Club, 1843); Pagan, Sketch of the History of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1847); Sir J. D. Marwick, Extracts from the Burgh Records of Glasgow (Burgh Records Society); Charters relating to Glasgow (Glasgow, 1891); River Clyde and Harbour of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1898); Glasgow Past and Present (Glasgow, 1884); Munimenta Universitatis Glasgow (Maitland Club, 1854); J. Strang,
