Fifty years ago Glasgow based Strathclyde Theatre Group created a landmark theatrical production which is to be celebrated this year with an exhibition at the Edinburgh Festival.

Archives and Special Collections hold the archive of the Strathclyde Theatre Group. Copies of items from The Golden City production files feature in the Edinburgh exhibition to tell its story. Originals can be seen in our latest archive exhibition on level 3 of the library.

Strathclyde Theatre Group was an initiative of the Department of English Studies and more broadly the University of Strathclyde; it was active from the 1970s until the early 2000s. 
The archive collection includes: posters; leaflets; production photographs; scripts; and correspondence and covers productions dating from 1969 – 2009.

The anniversary exhibition in Edinburgh will be open from 1-31 August 2024 in St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Palmerston Place, Edinburgh - the venue for the original production's Edinburgh run.

Discover more information about the exhibition and the celebrations on the Golden City 50 Exhibition website.

The University of Strathclyde and its antecedents have always had a thriving assortment of student clubs and societies. One of the earliest was the Andersonian Chemical Society, which was founded in 1886 as Anderson’s College Science Society but changed its name to the Andersonian Chemical Society in 1887.

With an initial membership of just seven, the Society met regularly to read and discuss papers on chemistry and related subjects.

Syllabus list for the Society’s lectures in the 1889-1890 session.

The Society, which is still in existence today, is thought to be the longest running student chemical society in the UK. 

Charles Giles was a Research Professor in Colour Chemistry and Dyeing from 1946 to 1983. He was an active member of the Society, who documented his time at the University in several photograph albums. They provide a fascinating peek into University life in the mid-20th century including the celebrations for the Andersonian Chemical Society Diamond Jubilee in 1946.

Photograph album showing chemistry students and an exhibition on colour and technology of dyeing for the Diamond Jubilee of the Andersonian Chemical Society in 1946.

Archives references: 

OK 5 Andersonian Chemical Society records (including OK/5/3/1 Syllabus, 1889-1890)

OP/4/171/2 Photograph album: Pure and Applied Chemistry, 1946-1974

The diary of Miss Mary Pinkerton of Glasgow (1855-1912) offers a fascinating insight into transatlantic travel in the Edwardian period. Mary’s uncle, Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884), had worked his passage from Glasgow to America in the 1840s, where he discovered a natural talent for investigative work and established the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Allan’s two sons, William (1846-1923) and Robert (1848-1907), followed him into the business and inherited the agency upon his death. Mary Pinkerton’s small notebook records her first trip from Glasgow to New York in the summer of 1903, where she met her cousin Robert for the first time.

On 11 July 1903, Mary and her three travelling companions, Miss Train, Miss Cleland and Mrs Young, left Glasgow on the Allan Line steamer, S.S. Mongolian, waved off by friends who threw pennies onto the vessel for luck. Her diary entries on board ship reflect the romance and unhurried pace of an early twentieth-century sea voyage, but also certain practical challenges posed by the ladies’ sleeping quarters. She writes, for example:

'… could any one have peeped into our State room and have seen four ladies dressing in that little Cabin, and heard their remarks [such as] where’s my this, and where’s my that, they would have been amused, though it was no laughing [matter] to us. I sleep in a top berth, so I had taken the precaution of tucking my stockings under my pillow, [and] hanging up my Skirt and blouse and the rest at the foot of the bed, which saved me a deal of trouble.'

After overcoming an initial bout of seasickness, Mary greatly enjoyed her thirteen-day voyage, describing the S.S. Mongolian as ‘a good Ship where you get more food than you are fit to take, and all the officers excell [sic] in Kindness to their passengers.’ Indeed, meals or refreshments were served every two hours, and as an extra treat, the officers sometimes made toffee and handed it round to the passengers.

When not at the dining table, Mary and her companions whiled away the hours by taking brisk walks along the deck, playing billiards, and watching the whales, sharks and porpoises that occasionally swam alongside the ship. More formal entertainments were organized for the evenings, including concerts, a debate, a tug of war competition, and the mock trial of a gentleman for the theft of a silver matchbox, in which the passengers took full part. Miss Train served as a member of the jury, Mrs Young as a witness for the prosecution, and Mary as a witness for the defence. She noted with pride: ‘I was told by the Judge that I gave my evidence very clearly, that even the Pinkerton detectives would have been quite pleased with me if they had heard how I stuck to my evidence amidst all the cross questioning’. Notwithstanding Mary’s performance in the witness box, the accused was found guilty and sentenced to three kisses!

Mary’s diary also highlights the contrasting experience of passengers who were travelling steerage class and did not have their own cabins. When shown round the steerage accommodation, she discovered that ‘their quarters … are very comfortable, but not so retired [as ours], and they get the full swing of the boat’. Also, as the S.S. Mongolian approached New York, the Customs officers came on board to ask all the cabin passengers their age, place of origin, destination, the amount of money they were carrying, whether they had anything liable to duty, and to examine their luggage. However,

'Steerage passengers are not put through their questions on board ship or [allowed] to land with the Cabin passengers, they are taken to Ellis Island, and are examined there, and put through their questions, and have to shew [sic] what money they have got, if they have not got thirty dollars, they are not allowed to land, but are sent straight back home again, unless they have a friend that will become a guarantee for them, so that they will not become paupers on the Country.'

The S.S. Mongolian docked at New York on 23 July 1903. Mary and her party spent the next six weeks enjoying the hospitality of American friends in the surrounding towns of Paterson, Weehawken and Schenectady, and doing a great deal of sightseeing. They visited Grant’s Tomb (‘it is very grand, it stands high, we had to go up one hundred and sixty five steps to get to it’) and Jersey City, which Mary likened to ‘the slums of London, the very people seemed different, some of the factories were coming out, and they were thronging up from the ferries, the girls mostly looked sickly … and the men … had not the stalwart healthy appearance of our [Glaswegian] sons of toil’. The ladies also spent one day in Albany, where they toured the splendid Capitol building, and another in Saratoga, where ‘the Hotels are magnificent, I felt as if I was back in Paris and Switzerland, and the people were so gay’.

Leaving her three companions behind in Paterson, Mary then accepted an invitation to spend a few days with the Raymond family in Wollaston, Massachussetts. There she enjoyed an outing to Boston, taking in the State house, Bunker Hill, and Keith’s Theatre, which she pronounced:

'the most beautiful one ever I was in, it surpasses the one I was in in Genoa … the walls were polished marble, with elegant mirrors all along the walls, marble floor with lovely matting, mirrors on the ceiling, when you looked up you saw the people standing on their heads, a large number of exquisite plants in lovely jars and a large number of lovely lights, it was like fairy land.'

Another day brought a trip to the beach at Wollaston, where Mary remarked upon the differences between Scottish and American bathing etiquette:

'I was quite amused seeing the ladies and gentlemen going in bathing at the same place, they were finely dressed, and had shoes and stockings on their feet and legs, everything so different from home … I could not resist the water myself, but having no dress with me, I was content with a wade in a retired part of the beach.'

Mary’s primary purpose in journeying to America was to make the acquaintance of her cousin, Robert Pinkerton; but on arriving at his Broadway office on 1 September, she found that Robert had been called away on business, and his brother, Willie, was there to meet her instead. Robert’s son, Allan, who also worked at the Pinkerton Agency, then arranged for one of their employees to take Mary on an all-expenses-paid sightseeing tour of the city, including the New York Stock Exchange, Macey’s store, a three-hour pleasure boat trip, and an elegant lunch at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Mary finally had the pleasure of meeting Robert two days later, just a few hours before she sailed home to Glasgow. She confided to her diary: ‘what a nice man he is, he said he was so delighted to see me [,] kissed me right away, and denied admittance to many of his employees so as he could have a long talk with me.’ After sharing reminiscences of Robert’s mother, Joan, Mary presented Robert with a photograph of herself and Joan and a letter that Joan had written to her. In his turn, Robert informed Mary that he and his brother Willie would be paying for her passage home, leaving her touched and mildly embarrassed by such unexpected generosity.

With considerable sorrow at parting from their American hosts, Mary and her companions left New York on 3 September, and arrived back in Glasgow 12 days later. She enjoyed the return passage just as much as the outgoing voyage, and, as she was the only passenger to notice that the ship briefly ran aground in the fog at Bowling, even congratulated herself on being ‘a bit of a Sailor’!

While the entries describing Mary’s meetings with her two cousins are undoubtedly interesting, it is the wealth of social details contained in the diary that most fascinate the reader. Mary Pinkerton’s journal evokes the luxury, excitement, and romance of transatlantic travels in the days when the only way to reach America was by ship, and when fog and icebergs, rather than delays or cancellations due to industrial action, were the likeliest hazards for holidaymakers. However, some of her holiday experiences, such as a bad case of sunburn after a sweltering day in Wollaston, and the loss of a bag on the train from Wollaston to Boston (fortunately recovered at the last minute), are still experienced by many travellers today. 

Archives reference: T-PIN/1 Diary of Mary Pinkerton.