GLASGOW IN THE ’SIXTIES—THE SOCIETY FORMED—MEN WHO WROUGHT—THE FIRST BAKERY—STARTING BUSINESS—A DISASTER AVOIDED—BETTER PROSPECTS—A MANAGER APPOINTED—LARGER PREMISES WANTED—SOMETHING ATTEMPTED, SOMETHING DONE. In the ’sixties of last century Glasgow was not a pleasant place for working men to live in. The city was contained in the four parishes of Barony, City, Govan, and Gorbals; only a small proportion of its population being resident in the last-named parish, however. The conditions of life for the workers were not good. Houses were small and inconvenient, disease was rampant, and poverty the common lot. There were 87,604 inhabited houses in the city in the year 1864, and of these 35,788 were rented at £5 per annum, or under; the average rental being £3, 7s. 3d. Other 35,393 houses had rentals of between £5 and £10, the average rental being £6, 17s. 3d., and the average rental of these 71,181 houses, forming 81·75 per cent. of the total housing accommodation of the city, was £5, 5s. per annum. Further light is thrown on the housing conditions by the fact that, while the aggregate rental for these 71,181 houses was £373,441, the aggregate rental for the remaining 16,423 houses was £502,687; an average rental per house of £30, 10s. The proportions of these lowly-rented houses were fairly equal in all four parishes, and even when allowance is made for the fact that rents were much lower in those days than they have been in recent years for similar accommodation it is evident that the housing conditions left much to be desired, and that the “homes of the people” must have been veritable hotbeds of disease. In the statistics consulted the proportion of one-apartment houses is not given, but in view of the whole-hearted condemnation of such houses voiced by Dr Russell, Medical Officer of Health for Glasgow, twenty years later, and the large proportion of Glasgow’s citizens who were then living in houses which were kitchen, parlour, bedroom, and washhouse all in one, it is easy to believe that the houses of the earlier period were no better than the low rentals would warrant.