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"IN the year 1848,"states Mr. Daniel
Frazer," I witnessed from the doorway of No. 113 (Buchanan Street), a
procession of a large body of ill-fed, ill-clad, and half-armed Chartists,
men, women, and boys, enter Buchanan Street by Royal Bank Place. After
marching from the Green and Gallowgate, by East George Street and Queen
Street without much interruption, the procession turned sharp down the
street, and when passing Gordon Street fired two shots in the air. At this
moment I saw a Glasgow gentleman, a medical man, if my memory serves me
right, rush into the procession and disarm one or two of the men who had
fired the shots, and who were thus trying to overawe our civic
authorities.
"Happily for law and order, nothing
tended more to restore both than the speedy enrolment of a large force of
special constables, composed greatly of our merchant princes. These
gentlemen were all provided with substantial batons, and were for a time
subjected to daily drill. They were stationed in the Royal Exchange, and
elsewhere during the night."
An old Glasgow merchant and Sabbath school teacher,
who himself acted as a special constable, and underwent daily drill as
such, communicated to Mr. D. Frazer the following particulars
:—
"This outbreak soon assumed an alarming aspect.
The mob had rapidly increased while
passing towards the west of the city; the streets got blocked, and shops
were entered and robbed by the hungry people. Among others the premises of
a gunsmith in Exchange Square were entered, and guns and ammunition
carried off. The shots fired in Buchanan Street greatly alarmed the
inhabitants, who hurriedly shut the doors of their shops. Many windows
were broken, and their contents carried off. A set of silver-plated dish
covers, and an epergne were taken from the window of Findlay & Field,
jewellers, 72 Buchanan Street. A porter’s hand-barrow— stolen from a
grocer’s door in George Street—was drawn in the procession by a young
woman well-known to the police for her lawless habits as
Biddy.
On it was a sack of meal, a box of tea, some loaves of
bread, etc. The silver plate was at once put on the top of this heap, and,
carried off in triumph by Biddy, till she and her booty were lost sight of
in Argyle Street.
Through the enrolment of hundreds of
our merchant princes as special constables, order was soon re-established
in the western districts; not so in the east, and it was only after (the
military including) the old pensioners and the militia had been called
into requisition, that disorder was ultimately repressed there, and only
after some lives had been lost in a fatal encounter between the pensioners
and the mob. I was," continues Mr. Frazer’s informant, "one of the special
constables who escorted the wounded up the High Street to the Royal
Infirmary. I was also afterwards applied to, as the Sabbath school teacher
in St. Enoch’s Wynd district, to assist the police in finding out Biddy’s
plunder. Knowing her to be of weak mind, and that she must have been used
as a tool by others, I only consented to aid the police in the matter on
getting their assurance that she should not be punished.
"Armed with this assurance I entered
Biddy’s home, in a building well known as the Ark in St. Enoch’s
Wynd, and which had once been used as a malt-barn. Here, in a miserable
attic room, I found Biddy’s mother. She at first stoutly denied her
daughter’s complicity in the robbery, but on getting my assurance that no
punishment would follow the acknowledgment of the crime, I was asked to
look out a skylight window, and, on doing so, I saw the tea, the silver
plate, etc., spread out on the roof. These were duly returned to their
owners, and Biddy was allowed to go free."
The present writer, who was then a
lad, has a vivid recollection of much that is above related and more, as
in company with the late Mr. Robert S. Shearer, bookseller, Stirling, who
was then a lad with Mr. David Bryce, bookseller, Buchanan Street, he
walked down the street named, and along Argyle Street, where we fell in
with the infantry, police, and special constables,—Bailie, afterwards Sir
Andrew Orr, whom we well knew, being at the head of the military. Nothing
occurred to obstruct the onward march until the head of the Saltmarket had
been reached, and there it was found that a barricade of furniture, etc.,
had been erected. This was coolly, quietly, and deliberately cleared away,
but ere this had been done, the rioters who had been there had vanished
with their stolen guns. The conflict between the east-end rioters and the
pensioners occurred on the second day. A special police assessment was
levied to make good the damage and loss. |
