Glenburn Street, Maryhill, 14th March 1941
I am indebted to Jeanette Burns for bringing this incident to my attention and to Michelle Blunn for supplying further information; Michelle, in turn thanks the Twitter account Target Clydeside (Marc Patrick Conaghan) for supplying information to her.
On the night of 13th - 14th March the Luftwaffe targeted Glasgow and Clydebank with 439 planes sent to the target. They flew a common course, probably up the east coast of England and then turning in site of the Firth of Forth, and again over the clearly visible Loch Lomond, so they were flying in from the north or north-east. They did not fly as massed formations, which would have been impossible at night without collisions, but individually or in very small groups.
So how did the crew of one of the last - if not THE last - of the 439 planes come to bomb Glenburn Street, on the very northern edge of Glasgow, with no military significance. I imagine local people speculated they must have been aiming for the factories on the west side of Maryhill Road, or the railway station or even rather distant Maryhill Barracks. It's possible that they were aiming for a secondary target of this type but my speculation rests on a much more human angle. Coming in to their bomb run at 5.30 in the morning, the crew knew they had a 3-hour journey home to northern France in lightening skies with an alerted air force to hunt them down. They were nervous, wanted to get home and dropped their bombs pretty well anywhere over a built-up area, then skedaddled.
This map from the 1930s shows how far Glenburn Street, ringed in red in the bottom right, was from anything of military significance.
This was the night of the great blitz on Clydebank and Glasgow starting from just after nine o'clock in the evening - there had been numerous major incidents and almost a thousand people were dead. Trams had kept running to shuttle people about but by this time they were returning to their depots, such as the one in the photo at the start of this post, at Celtic Street on Maryhill Road. From there, Joseph Young, a tram driver, made his way home, no doubt to the relief of his family: wife Agnes and daughters Agnes, 19, and Margaret, 17. They lived at 26 Glenburn Road.
I believe that number 24 was in the same property (would 24 have been the downstairs?) and in the 1940 Valuation Roll this was occupied by the Forsyths. William Johnston Forsyth was recorded as the head of household and his job was ironmoulder. He married Mary Arnot Strang in 1937; she was a domestic servant. By March 1941 they had a 10-month old daughter, Isabella (named after Mary's mother). There's a small mystery here as their home address in March 1941 was recorded as 28 Stratford Street, yet here they were back in Glenburn Street. Perhaps William was away from home, either working nights or in the armed forces and Mary was good friends with the Youngs who invited her to stay with them?
While it was probably a single bomb that fell on Glenburn Street, it would have been one of a 'stick' of perhaps 6 or 8. The others probably fell in the fields round about. I speculate that a crater recalled by Brian Rodden in the cornfield north of Duncruin Road after the war could have been another one of the bombs in the stick. The German plane was probably flying towards the Clyde and the site described by Brian is to the west of Glenburn Street, so it was probably later in the stick. (Thanks to Brian for posting this memory.)
The approximate site of the crater from a later bomb.
The bombing of Glenburn Street was reported at 05.35 and at 05.50 the first police arrived at the scene. But with so many major incidents in the city, rescue and first aid parties may have been sent to help other areas and it was not until 7 clock, around 90 minutes later that the first practical help arrived.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission register of civilian war dead lists the four Youngs and two Forsyths as having died at the scene. the Youngs had two adult sons (Joseph and Thomas) in the armed forces who would have come home to bury their parents and sisters; William would have had the task of burying his wife and baby.
All are buried in the Western Necropolis:
Joseph Young
There are some great resources available online (mainly at a fee, unfortunately) to find out more about people in the 20th Century including the national Census records of 1901, 1911 and 1921; records of births, marriages and deaths (Scottish records show more detail than those for England); and valuation rolls (prepared by local authorities each year to show, well, who to send the bill to i.e. the head of household, including their job. While we can do a lot with these sources, it still leaves gaps: take Agnes, 19-year old daughter of Joseph Young - all we have for her is a record of her birth and death. this is just to explain why my footnote is about Joseph as we have the most sources to find a little more about him.
What other glimpses of Joseph's life do we have? On 30th April 1915 he married Agnes Henderson, then a laundry maid, at 72 Montgomerie Street (now Clouston Street). A major surprise to me researching people married in the first half of the 20th century has been to find how few were married in church; richer people could hire a hotel or restaurant but most people got married in a domestic setting.
Kirklee Bridge is in the centre of the map - on the east side it leads into Montgomerie Street (now Clouston Street). Number 73 was the second property along on the north side (by what is now North Kelvinside Meadow).
James's occupation is given as iron moulder but at the time (this was during the First World War, of course) he was a private in 5th Battalion Highland Light Infantry. The battalion must have been in training because he gives his address as Bain Hall, Foreman Church, Leven, which was presumably being used as a temporary barracks.
James's parents were John Young (deceased) and Margaret, born Addison. John's occupation is recorded as "saw repairer". Agnes's father was an iron dresser, but he had also died before this date.
James gave his age as 22 and Agnes gave hers as 23.
A second glimpse comes from papers completed when Joseph enlisted (attested, as it was called) as a soldier, joining what we now call the Territorial Army in March 1910, four years before the First World War started. He gives his age as 17 years, 9 months (in March 1910, implying he was born in June 1892) and his place of birth as Govan (which at the time extended north of the river into what we call Partick). He lived at 12 Campbell Street (off of today's Sandbank Street, also the address for his next-of-kin, his mother) and worked as an iron moulder for John Shaw of Maryhill:
The records of the company are held by the archive service of Glasgow University and their description of the company includes this (link):
A special business was done in manufacturing cast iron pipes for gas, water or steam, with different kinds of joints: plain, turned, bored and flanged. A lot of time and attention was also dedicated to manufacturing pipes according to engineers' special designs.
Joseph was 5 feet, 4 inches, had a chest size of 34 inches and his physical development and vision were described as good.
Between 1910 and 1914 Joseph would have attended events with his battalion but the main one was two weeks at a training camp in the second half of July each year - locations included Stirling, Troon and Gailes.
When war was declared he was called full-time on 5th August 1914 and served in A Company of 5th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry until April 1917 when he was transferred to the Royal Engineers. During that time he was in the UK when war broke out in August 1914 but is recorded as being in the MEF i.e. the Mediterranean sector from 24th May 1915. The timing can be linked to the date of his wedding just over three weeks earlier - he would have known he was going away (maybe not where to) and he and Agnes decided to marry.
He would then have been evacuated when it was admitted the campaign had failed and taken back to Egypt. On 26th February 1916 it is recorded he was deducted two days pay for eating his iron rations! This was at "Ballah", a strip of land west of Alexandria that would become famous 26 years later as the site of the Battle of El Alamein.
Around this time he was transferred to the Machine Gun Corps within his brigade
It was 17th March 1917 before he is recorded as returning to the UK so only a few months short of two years. He then transferred to the engineers and was sent to France on 12th June 1918 and even though the war ended in November 1918 it was May 1919 before he could return to the UK and the following month since he was discharged.
The army seems to have lost track of him at some point in 1917 as his papers include a letter from his wife, Agnes, telling them where to find him!
The branch of the engineers he joined was the Railway Operating Division specifically the 70th Wagon Erecting Company - despite its strange name this probably worked on maintaining and developing railway infrastructure serving the front line.
In his discharge papers in May 1919 he asks for pay to be forwarded to 184 Church Street, Maryhill. It is recorded he had hurt his back and had "VDH" which stands for valvular disease of the heart. Note however that VDH may not have been a very accurate diagnosis (link)
In the 1921 Census Joseph is on his own at 184 Church Street, occupation tram car conductor for Glasgow Corporation.
184 Sandbank Street, then Church Street, just a few doors away from 12 Campbell Street, home of Joseph's mother
Their first child, Joseph, was born in 1916, followed by: Thomas Henderson Young 1920; Agnes Henderson Young 1921; Margaret Addison Young 1923. Joseph was born at "Maternity Hospital, Glasgow" - in the margin it says the district was St Rollox so I assume this was Rottenrow. Thomas, Agnes and Margaret were all born at 184 Church Street.
The only other area of Joseph's life we can hope to describe are his birth and life up to 1914. He was born on 2nd June 1892 in 26 Mansfield Street in Partick. His mother was not married at the time so on the register it gives his name as Joseph Addison. His mother married John Young, 33 years her senior, in 1895 and Joseph took John's surname. The family lived in a house that came with John's job as a saw sharpener at Temple Saw Mills and they had three children before John died in 1902.
Cottages close to Temple Saw Mills ringed in red - note the road appears to have been realigned since this map from 1896. The modern Bearsden Road is virtually straight between the bridge over the canal and the railway bridge so the site of the cottages may be under the modern road.
Joseph's mother would have lost her husband, the family income and her home, leaving her with four children under the age of 13. We don't know how she coped, but she did and in the 1911 Census she was living at 12 Campbell Street in Maryhill as housekeeper to Frank Coyle and his son, aged 5:
Note two adults, two boys aged 18 and 15, and three younger children all shared a two-room flat.
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