Gorbals
The Real Gorbals Story: True Tales from Glasgow's Meanest Streets
. The Real Gorbals Story. Colin MacFarlane was born in the Gorbals in the 1950s, 20 years after the publication of No Mean City, the classic novel about pre-war life in what was once Glasgow's most deprived district. He lived in the same street as its fictional 'razor king', Johnnie Stark, and subsequently realised that a lot of the old characters represented in the book were still around as late as the 1960s. Men still wore bunnets and played pitch and toss; women still wore headscarves and treated the steamie as their social club. The razor gangs were running amok once again, human waste ran down the tenement stairs, and filth, violence, crime, rats, poverty and drunkenness abounded, just like they did in No Mean City. MacFarlane witnessed the last days of the old Gorbals as a major regeneration programme, begun in 1961, was implemented, and, as a street boy, he had a unique insight into a once great community in rapid decline. He witnessed drunken fights, gang battles, police corruption and even the occasional stabbing, slashing and murder. But the Gorbals had another side: one where ordinary hard-working people were trying to survive in what was arguably once the most notorious area in the world.
Heart of the Gorbals
. Heart of the Gorbals. A popular history of the Gorbals, covering the years from 1900 to 2004. Full of famous people, local characters, heart-warming stories, crime, gang fights, sectarian conflict, bizarre tales, the tragic effects of poverty and much more.
The hundreds of true stories include: battle at the Orange Walk, gangster Jimmy Boyle's reign of terror, the gang fight that ended in murder, the man who scalped his best pal, little big men (boxers Lynch, Clark and McCormack), UVF bomb Catholic pub, the Gorbals vampire, great Jews (Wolfson, Glasser, Ralph Slater), from the slums to Hutchie E, what the Queen thought of the Gorbals, war heroes James Stokes VC and Joseph Hughes GC, the superstars who never got the chance to play for their beloved Celtic, eccentric Gorbals characters, famous Gorbalonians like Lorraine Kelly and Sir Thomas Lipton.
A Gorbals Legacy
. A Gorbals Legacy. This work is a testimony to the spirit that is the Gorbals; an examination of its tenacious grasp and how it shaped Glasser's life and work. When he began his journey away from the Gorbals, setting off on his bike with the letter from Oxford in his pocket, Glasser was moving away from the squalor, hardship and constraints of life in the slums. His subsequent life was a continuation of that breaking free. Or so he thought. In Glasser's heart there was a constant beckoning, a distant drum sounding from the past. He came to realize that the presiding genius of the Gorbals would, in fact, never leave him.
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