Upon a Lane that Never Was.

 

“Some view, eh?” Connor asks.

It is indeed some view. Looking North we see the East-End of Glasgow below us. Closest is the old Mount Vernon Train station, but we can see across the dark slate rooftops of Broomhouse, Baillieston, Barrachnie, further, even out to the Campsies, behind which Stirling hides. To the South it stretches past Drumsagard all the way to East Kilbride. And over in the east the great white wind turbines rotate, like pale, relaxing totems. Below to the south east something catches my eye. I point at it, a strange symmetrical pattern like some kind of masonic symbol cut into the green with concrete.

“What’s that?” I ask Connor. He’s wearing a face mask -we both are- but I can see him smile as he follows the direction of my fingers and answers.

“Daldowie Crematorium. The whole area used be the grounds of Daldowie House. Family home of, get this, The Bogles.”

I laugh, thinking it’s a joke, but his eyes widen, daring me to tell him he’s taking the piss. I’m not that brave. Connor may be in his sixties, but he’s a bear of a man. A good three inches taller than me but built like a barrel. He looks like a cross between Santa and Schwarzenegger. Instead I scribble Daldowie and Bogle into my notepad, for future reference.

We skirt around the issue. We’re both here to find out what each other knows. “So are you going to tell me what you found out?” He asks. He’s been patient, waited long enough, but I’m not going to let him off that easy.

“You first. You said something was strange about this place, so what happened?”

He looks at me with suspicion in his eyes, weighing up whether I’m going to believe him or laugh at him. “I wis a wean,” he starts, his words apologetic and dismissive, as if he’s trying to convince himself as much as me. “you know how kids are, they like tae wind each other up and, well yer imagination at that age...”

I nod. I don’t say anything, I know he’ll either tell me or not, and I don’t want to influence anything he might tell me more than I already have. “C’mon,” he says and leads me to the north of the hill.

We reach an area which feels different from the rest, there is no grass amongst the rubble, just dark bare earth, I notice the air feels flat here and realise there are no ambient sounds, no birds, or traffic can be heard, just the cooling autumn wind in my ears. It is quite eerie. He walks over to the end of the hill near the north east and pointing to the ground says “there, look at that.”

I do. The ground here is a different colour, almost totally black, like it has been stained with oil, but the earth is dry, hard, cracked and the stain is almost totally square, about 40 feet by 40. I bend down and touch it, it doesn’t feel like soil, it’s harder, more brittle, as if it had been scorched. “This is where number 29 was. Was here right up until the council tore the whole district doon. 29 wis the place.”

“The place?” I ask.

“Aye,” he sighs. “Everyone knew that the place wis haunted right? So we aw used tae dare each other tae go in. I wis whit? Nine? Ten? An’ it wis this roastin’ summer night and some of the bigger boys were daring each other tae go in. So, Speedy Watson, he takes the bait, Speedy wis always a bit daft but wan o’ those guys that always had tae prove himself how hard he wis. We’re aw playin’ kick the can or somethin’ but we stopped when word got around he was gaun’ intae number 29.”

This phenomenon, by the way, is known by anthropologists as legend tripping, it happens all over the world. Perhaps one day I will tell of my own experiences with it when I was a kid, but this is Connor’s tale, not mine.

I first met Connor back in February, just before the Coronavirus bloomed and the Government decided to take a liberty with our liberties. It was at a meet up in Blackfriars Bar for “Ghastly Glasgow” a small, but welcoming group into “true crime” and the city’s violent history. It was a Tuesday night, I was bored and uninspired and needed a night off from trying to find something eerie to write about. Most of the dozen or so people there were middle aged, there was a couple of Goths (which seem to be mandatory at every meeting under some arcane city ordinance, like drunks on buses or old Chinese men smoking outside bookies), but even they were on the approach to 40.

The youngest by far were the couple who had organised it, Hector and Allison, who were a lovely young couple from Milngavie who had originally intended it to be a book club apparently. It had mutated into more of a general discussion group, sharing tales and books and comparing the reality and fiction of the last half century of the stories. That night they were discussing another book about the Glasgow Gangland, that had recently hit the presses. Connor was very vocal about how it was, to quote “a romanticised load of shite, just lifted oot the papers and memoirs”

Right there, I liked the guy.

As the five or so regular readers of my work will know, I am not interested in providing a simple narrative to events. I originally started investigating the “paranormal” with a cynical but open mind, which left me persona non gratis among both the sceptics and the ghostbusters. Both groups had preconceived notions, a narrative they had personal investment in what was most boring for me, a set of tired “cases” they all wrote about over and over again. Providing new exclusive evidence that it was all true or completely false. Depending on who their audiences were, obviously.

Connor on the other hand seemed to have no axe to grind or story to sell. He was just a man, who grew up on the Grimy estate, upon which remains we stand as we look over the city. He takes a deep breath and continues his story.

“So in goes Speedy, tryin’ tae look cocksure and no’ as if he’s aboot tae shite his pants. At that time the story wis the place wis haunted by a deid tramp called “Tam the Hatchet. Which wis a load a shite, we aw knew Jimmy McPhee hid made that up, but that’s whit everyone kept sayin’ tae him ‘if ye see Tam the hatchet, Speedy, run like fuck!’ Anyroads, aff he goes, aw the way tae the front o’ the close. He turns and looks at us aw, and its plain that he’s no longer as bold as he was five minutes previous. Paul Hamilton shouts at him ‘go in ya shitebag’ an’ we’re aw laughin’ so Speedy slowly walks intae the place. Up the wee set of stairs at the front and then inside. Course we expect him tae bolt straight back out, but that’s no’ whit happened. Couple of minutes pass, then ten, then people start shoutin’ fur him but there’s nae answer. The whole gang of us move up the street, staunin’ outside the close, at a distance, but we can still see in. Nae Speedy.”

That night in Blackfriars months before, as we piled into the pints, I had confessed to him that I wasn’t really that much into true crime, but mysteries in general. He had nodded at that. “Aye, you might look like a normal bloke, but I clocked it in your eyes, you love all that weird spooky shite, eh?”

I admitted as much, told him that I’d written several articles about the ‘spooky shite’ and was looking for something that no-one had touched. We continued our conversation, but it wasn’t until I left him at Central Station that he told me that I should “check oot Keller Row” as he climbed into the back of a hackney.

I told him I would.

March happened though, and the lockdown and all the craziness that came with it. I spent most of the rest of the spring watching TV and putting on weight. It wasn’t until mid-June that I began to feel unsettled and while looking through my notes I was reminded of Connor’s advice. Since I was still stuck in the house I checked online for Keller Row and found very little. I have to admit, my search wasn’t particularly thorough and so dropped it. That was until a couple of days later I was on the phone to my friend William. I hadn’t heard from him for months and so we were chatting for ages when he asked me what I was working on, I told him nothing much but mentioned Keller Row and how I couldn’t find much about it.

As I was speaking to him he stopped me and had a short conversation with his wife, Olivia, who happens to be one of the keyholders and librarians at the Mitchell Library and, as it happened, said since the place was shut, she would be quite happy to let me spend my days in there on the conditions that I told no one, didn’t make a mess and chucked a few hundred into their charity box. Obviously I agreed. Some people might like climbing mountains or lying on beaches, but to me, the freedom to be alone, at large, and not on the clock in a reference library is paradise.

And so began my investigation into Grimry and Keller Row.

Grimry was “set apart from the Barony Parish. A hill of mere 40 acres upon which was established, in 1884, the Church of St Michael. Thereafter followed the housing to serve the already overcrowded areas surrounding the township” according to “The Glasgow Statistical Account”, a Church of Scotland publication from 1905.

Geography of Glasgow (University Press 1922) claimed that

“Grimry, formerly Grimreagh Hill, was at the edge of the lands owned by the Stewarts of Minto and was unclaimed until the late nineteenth century when industrial works in the surrounding area rose up. The Kirk provided evidence of ownership in the form of a deed going back to 1531. Hastily building a church in order that the rule of eminent domain as it applied to the area was at least profitable.”

How like the Church.

The district was small, an uneven circle of five roads filled with tenement blocks that surrounded the old St Michael Church, those roads were Adams Street, Western View, Hill Road, Carlin Street and Reynolds Street. The place was just an intake estate. Each of the tenement flats was one room and kitchen, three per floor, three floors. 9 families per close, 66 closes in total. They really packed them in, back in the day. The had communal back areas, with middens and a wash-house and toilets. However, at the end of Reynolds and Carlin, there was another set of houses slightly off at an angle from the rest of the estate. The north of which hung right at the edge of the slope. Though it was not named on any of the official records, this was Keller Row, with the closes numbered 1 to 30. Given there were nine flats per block, I’ll allow you to work out why that is weird.

That’s not all that was weird though. Back to Connor’s tale.

“Inside the close was filthy and we can see his fitprints in the dust, headin’ up the stairs. McPhee and a couple of others who were windin’ him up as startin’ tae look concerned. Again they start shoutin’ fur him ‘Aye Speedy, ye proved yer point!’ “C’mon Speedy, stoap fuckin’ aboot’. Nothing, pure silence. An hour goes by, the aulder boys are discussin’ whit they should dae, I mean none of them want tae get intae trouble an’ the sun’s goin’ doon. Panic starts tae set in, imaginations run riot an’ then, oan the tap floor, up tae the right, a light comes oan in the windae, through boggin’ red curtains. Everybody’s shoutin’ Speedy’s name, still nae answer. A few of my pals had fled, but I stay there, even past the time I’m meant tae be goin’ home.We’re lookin’ up at that windae an’ it’s filthy, but behind it we can see whit looks like a gang of kids, shadows, y’know?”

What is also strange is that Keller Row was never named such, officially at least. The road was never listed, but this not entirely without explanation. Research is time consuming work, and copying is much easier. So the road was probably excluded from the original plans and no-one in any official capacity ever did the leg work, just copied the source material. It would amaze you how common things like that are. Still, according to all the official city records, up and including the most recent I could find in the library, 2012, Keller Row did not exist. Which must have been convenient for the City Elders if not the poor souls who lived there.

Grimy suffered a cholera outbreak in 1893…

“Given the unenviable task of attending, on the behalf of Father Peter McAdam of the local parish, the district of Grimy and in particular, the inhabitants of Carlin Street, I was granted opportunity in observing the passage of the disease among the residents. The following observations refer, in the main, to the disease as it spread within that district, but include details of both specific cases and the living conditions which, no doubt played a great part in the progress of this particularly severe malady.

The extraordinarily unsanitary conditions of this district are remarkable, even by the common standards of deprivation in the surrounding areas, for which the city has some notoriety. What sewers there are, are mere drainage ditches that collect both in the central communal areas in the back of each closes, and to a lesser extent on the streets themselves. As such large piles of human and animal waste accumulate and fester within yards of all their homes and are moved only when it becomes intolerable for the inhabitants, at which point the local church hires several itinerants to remove the waste. This happens twice a year, shortly before Easter and Christmas.

All of the houses are of a squalid disposition, most with three generations of one family over-crowding them. What little furniture they possess is often rife with fleas and lice. While illness is endemic due to the extreme poverty and surroundings, I was called to investigate a suspected case of Cholera at the end of Carlin Street.

It was first diagnosed by myself upon the morning of 9^th of July 1893, in the second floor flat of number 29 Carlin Street. The patient, a female of thirty eight years, showed signs of advanced symptoms of the malady, including bilious diarrhoea, which was collected in pails and emptied out of the window by the younger members of the family. While I attempted to negotiate a removal of the patient to hospital the family would not consent, claiming that I had come to ‘saw her bones and feed her to the Reechies, the Mawkits and the Raggies’. Upon my insistence they grew hostile and demanded that I treat her best I could on the premises.

Two further cases occurred in the same house the following day. A man in his late fifties and a boy of eight. While I was called by Father McAdam, the family would not let me in and were actively belligerent, even despite his assurances. I later learned the first patient had died the previous evening and they would not consent for her, nor any of the family, removal to hospital.

Tragically, the pernicious rumour spread as quickly as the disease, and despite several deaths over the following week, Father McAdam could not convince the locals that I was there to try and help curtail the disease and treat them as best I could. As such I, and several other Doctors who had attended the area were threatened and chased away. By the 4^th of August there were over 86 deaths from the malady throughout the district.

Of curious note is that the small lane that stood at the edge of the North of the district was completely unaffected by it. I wished to interview the families that lived there but was warned off by Father McAdam who told me they were the most venal people, three extended and intertwined families that were dangerous criminal gangs with, and I quote, ‘their own rituals and laws, an affront to this parish’. They were reviled by the church, the City Police and the locals who referred to them as the ‘Reechies, Mawkits and Raggies’ though their family names were Richards, Morton and Raglan.”

From: The Medical Journals of a City Doctor, by Doctor Douglas Flint-Montgomery. 1902 Glasgow Hospital Printing.

Quite the ugly little scene that but it wasn’t uncommon for people crammed into the filthy tenements to be sick. Even when I was a kid in the 70’s we still had outside toilets. Seems like a million years ago. Still I did find the mention of lane which was Keller Row was unaffected by it rather curious, though what struck me more was the names of the families. The Richards, Mortons and Raglans. They’ll become significant in different ways over the next few pages.

I hadn’t told Connor any of this as he continued his tale, I wanted to let him finish. I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t embellish his memory with anything, but I was uneasy nevertheless. I let him carry on.

“The light goes oot and we aw still staun’ there. Hard tae describe that feelin’, worry, anxiousness, dread, somethin’ like that. The older boys, they’ve been lookin’ round for makeshift weapons and decide they’re goin’ intae find him. They rip the torch fae Mick Robertson’s Chopper and tooled up, in they go. They don’t even get tae the close stairs before there’s this horrible scream and out shoots Speedy, his face looks like he’s ran through barbed wire. The lad’s terrified, but everyone crowds around him askin one of two questions ‘you awright Speedy?’ and ‘whit happened Speedy?’ Takes him a while to calm doon, though it was obvious he wis still in shock or somethin’.”

In March 1899 a child went missing in Grimry. From the Herald Monday 6^th of March 1899. Page 6. “City Police Look For Missing Girl. Police are still investigating the disappearance of nine year old Mary Margaret O’Hara, who has not been seen since Friday afternoon. The child was last seen playing in the Grimy district in the east of the city.”

I checked the archives for the following several weeks but there was no follow up, nor could I find much else about the case. Except for a couple of lines in “Wicked West Coast” an anthology book about the notoriety the city earned in the 20^th Century. 

“The City Police were both underfunded and incapable of dealing with most of the crime in the city in those days, murder was commonly swept under the rug, and even several abducted children, like Mary Margaret O’Hara who vanished in the street known as Keller Row, were barely investigated.”

What did make the newspapers was Seamus O’Hara -Mary Margaret’s father- who three months after his daughter disappeared was arrested for grievous assault upon Father McAdam and arson of the St Michael’s church which was delightful reported as “Tinker Burns Church.”

Glasgow Herald: June 27^th 1899. “Police arrested one Seamus O’Hara, an Irishman, for a vicious assault on a minister of the Church and arson yesterday. The tinker was well known in the South East of the city as a “fenian troublemaker” and described by officers as a “violent drunkard”. He has been remanded in custody.”

The press there, showing their usual objective non-partisan reporting we’ve come to know and love. Luckily I was able to get my hands on the police report from the time which isn’t much better but at least gives Seamus’s supposed reasoning.

“The suspect was caught outside the premises cursing and swearing where he was apprehended by myself and Constable Mitchell. After putting up a fight, we subdued Mr O’Hara who was clearly inebriated, which was a state we have often found him in previously, especially since his daughter’s disappearance. He grew agitated as we tried to find out why he had beaten the Minister with a shovel and set fire to the front door of the church. He claimed that we, like the minister, had done nothing to find his daughter and that were in his words “friends of the devil himself”. He made no attempt to deny his actions and so we arrested him at the scene.”

It’s easy to infer from this that O’Hara’s daughter was still missing at the end of June that year but sadly Mary Margaret disappeared not only from Grimy, but also any history at that point. As for Seamus’s suspicions, like those of the cholera victims, we can put down to superstition and ignorance as much as grief, if we were to discard his accusations. According to the Barony Parish records Father McAdam left the church in the July that year, wherein he was replaced by one Peter Richards (NC). I checked what the NC meant, which, as it turned out was Non Conformist. I couldn’t discover any reason why a Presbyterian Parish would hand over a church to such a fellow, nor could I find out much about Peter Richards, though the name struck a chord, “reekies, mawkets and raggies.”

Was Richards part of the Richards Clan that dwelt in several of the tenement flats of Keller Row? I have no evidence to suggest such. Sadly we’ll have to leave that there and get back to Connor.

“‘Weans,’ he says, ‘fuckin’ demon weans, loads of them’ McPhee gave the lad a fag, tae calm his nerves a bit more. ‘How do you know they were demons?’ somebody asks, ‘They aw hid big metal horns on their foreheids” he says, ‘said they were takin’ me tae see Peter,’ and then he burst oot greetin’ an’ said somethin’ else, but I never heard. See I looked up at the windae where the light had come on, and there wis somethin’ there, somethin’ lookin’ right back doon at me, wisnae a man or some demon kids either, it wis big, could hardly make it oot in the dark, but it stared right at me, I swear. It wis pressed up against the glass, huge bulgin’ eyes, bloodshot and dark.”

November 1911. The Herald, the Daily Record and The Evening Times all report the disappearance of Donald Hoey (age 11) from Mount Vernon.

February 1912. Another child vanishes in the area. Geraldine Murray (age 9) last seen on Carlin Street in Grimry.

November 1912. Caitlyn Hendrie (age 13) of Carmyle, goes missing. Carmyle was to the West of Grimry.

From “Wicked West Coast:An Anthology of Cruelty. Barratt Publishing 1974.”

“By the spring of 1913, more than nine children were missing from around the Parish and the Press, Parish Councils and Government started to put some pressure on the Glasgow Police to resolve the matter. This they did, though it took them until the July of that year in which time two further children has disappeared. Quite by chance, an officer, who had been working the beat in Grimry saw The Reverend Peter Richards, force a young girl into the back of the church just after the wedding of two of the local families. Constable Hugh Abernathy, was concerned by this and so entered the church. In the private rooms behind the altar, Abernathy confronted Richards, who attacked him with a hammer but the officer managed to thwart his assailant. There was no sign of the child. He noticed a fold in a rug, which he pulled back to reveal a cellar. It was in here that the full horror of Peter Richards crimes were hidden. According to reports by both police and at Richards trial. Peter Richards had kidnapped and murdered fifteen children in total, each one had been crucified against the wall, and had large spikes nailed into their foreheads. Richards confession was enough to condemn him and he was hanged in the December of that year.”

I was shocked by that, having thought I knew more than most about Glasgow’s notorious serial killers. This led me to see what more I could find out about Richards. Depressingly I found that for some reason his confession along with all evidence at his trial was sealed for 100 years, which meant the records were bereft of literature. They were due to be unsealed in 2012, but were not, and The Editor of “Wicked West Coast” Thomas D. Crawford, put in a FOI request to the Law Lords to find out why. I had contacted him to find out anything I could about Peter Richards but he told me that he was unable to say much because not only did they reject his Freedom of Information request but he received a cease and desist letter from a lawyers firm who then had an injunction placed on any reporting of the Richards Case. Given the wilfully censorious, tiresome reactionary and gleefully authoritarian nature of our current Government I have decided it best to refrain from repeating even the small amount of information I gleaned regarding Richards and his antics, which is not already in print.

He pauses. “I hid nightmare for weeks efter that.”

I have to ask. “So what happened to Speedy?”

Connor shrugs. “No’ much. Finished school two years later, last I saw of him. Course every noo an’ then somebody would say it was all bullshit, but I never heard of anyone ever gaun’ back in. Place wis condemned anyway so the council put up a big iron door tae stop anyone goin’ intae the place. Junkies would OD in there fae time tae time but, I swear tae ye Jim, there was something evil aboot that place.”

He was convinced and quite convincing was Connor but as ever, I remain ambivalent. Certainly Grimry and especially Keller Row had a lot of bad things happen around it, and who knows perhaps these tales got passed down and took on a life of their own around in the subconsciousnesses of the people who lived there. I’ve seen first hand, experienced the uncanny coincidences and inexplicable occurrences that happen when kids (and not just kids) reinforce and escalate strange narratives, it’s how we end up with conspiracy theories and moral panics. Did Speedy see something? Who knows? demon kids with metal horns does remind me of what Peter Richards did to his victims, but were they really there, or just a folk memory hallucinated through terror? What did Connor see? I can’t say.

In return for his story I tell him what I found out about Keller Row, he puts two and two together, and concludes that Speedy along with him and the others did see the victims of Peter Richards. He stares at me for a while. “Are you serious?” He asks.

I don’t know what to say, but I nod. A cold wind cuts between the two of us. “I wish I’d never fuckin’ mentioned it, if I’m honest.”

I tell him I’m going to write an article, he’s fine with it, as long as I change his name. That I agree to but I sense he’s uncomfortable, spooked. I decide it’s time to make some excuse to go. He’s fine with that too.

* * * * *

Annoying that there are no answers here, I know. Perhaps some further investigation may shed light upon what happened in that place, but for now, it has to remain a mystery. I may return to this at some point, if I find anything new, until then, Keller Row remains as it always did, somewhere imagined into being by the residents. A place never officially named, a street that never existed.

Jim Weaver.

29^th September 2020.