Stuart Ian Alexander Laidlaw 1902-1955

Dr Stuart Laidlaw’s grandfather William moved down to Hampshire in the early eighteenth century from Midlothian where the family had been established for over 200 years. William’s family of ten children were born and brought up In Winkton near Christchurch in Hampshire where his wife Elizabeth ran the post office from the family home “Ochiltree” and he was the letter carrier.

His youngest child Ernest had a significant career in the early days of telecommunications and became a senior engineer with Siemens Brothers involved in the mechanization of long-distance telephone traffic and in the installation of automatic switchboards world-wide. One of the earliest patents in voice-frequency signalling was his.

Ernest Laidlaw married Isabella Adams in 1898 and Stuart, who was born at 49 Nithsdale Road in Glasgow whilst his father was working there, was the eldest of their three surviving children, a fourth having died in infancy. His sister Gretchen died in 1940 and his unmarried youngest sibling, Ursula in 1988, when the family home on the banks of the river Avon that she had for long shared with her father was eventually sold on.

Stuart was consistently known as Ian throughout his life and his school report at Christmas 1908 from the Kindergarten at Elson House High School, Leytonstone reports his conduct as “Very good indeed. Ian has worked well this term and has made excellent progress”. He was absent 14 times but never late. His singing report states “Does not always sing in tune.”

Stuart attended the City of London School and then in 1920 he returned to Scotland to study agriculture at Glasgow University. There he met an attractive fellow student called Marion Gray, who was starting a degree in medicine at the same time. Stuart then took up a medical degree to be near to Marion, but also continued with his degree in agriculture graduating with an Honours BSc in 1924 and winning the prize in Organic Chemistry in 1922. Having previously played rugby union for the Blackheath club he went on to represent Glasgow University in athletics, specialising in the half mile event.

Stuart and Marion both graduated with dual degrees in surgery and in medicine in 1926 (Ch.B., M.B.). Stuart obtained distinctions in Public Health, Forensic Medicine and Surgery; was the Cullen Medallist for Medicine and won the RAMC Memorial prize for the best aggregate marks in Surgery, Medicine and Midwifery for 1926. The other top prize winner that year was Marion. They then set up in medical practice together and were married in Stranraer in 1927.

Marion had enjoyed poor health for many years and after her death Stuart visited his younger sister, Ursula, who was teaching divinity at Bournemouth School for Girls. There he met Ursula’s colleague Caroline Blenkinsop who was head of Geography and, after a whirlwind romance, they married in Southampton in 1951. Caroline had never even been to Glasgow and Dr Laidlaw, who had a good sense of fun, drove her deviously through the countryside to their new home in Pollokshields so that she believed that it was in a rural location, rather than just a few miles from the centre of the city. They had two sons, Ian and Stuart, the later being posthumous.

Dr Laidlaw thrived on academic study and was awarded a Diploma in Public Health in 1929, graduated again with a M.D. (a research doctorate) with commendation in 1934, a D.P.A. in 1940 and a B.L. in 1944 all from Glasgow University. He obtained a second D.P.A. from studies at London University in 1940. His PhD in 1955 was again awarded by Glasgow University.
In parallel with his academic studies Stuart had worked as a House Physician at Swansea General and Eye hospital and then at Glasgow Royal infirmary before becoming the Senior Assistant to the Professor of Public Health at Glasgow University for two years. He then became an Assistant Medical Officer in the Glasgow Public Health Department in 1929. In 1934 he was promoted to Divisional Medical Officer for the Northern Division and by 1939 he had risen to Senior Assistant Medical Officer of Health. In 1945 he was appointed as Medical Officer of Health for Glasgow, a post he fulfilled with credit until his death in 1955.

He published widely in journals including the Lancet and the British Medical Journal but also wrote extensively for the more popular dissemination of his ideas. He was very effective in using the Glasgow press and they loved him for his preparedness to comment on all medical and social matters.

TUBERCULOSIS
One major issue that Dr Laidlaw addressed in his professional life was the prevalence of Tuberculosis in Glasgow. He noted that tuberculosis had been recognised since Neolithic times and was described as “phthisis” by the Greek philosopher Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, in the fifth century before Christ. The term phthisis describes the wasting or emaciation which rapidly overtakes the sufferer. At the end of the nineteenth century it was estimated that one in seven of all deaths in Europe were caused by this dreadful disease and it was the chief killing disease in Scotland at that time. Even just after WWII tuberculosis was the largest killer in the 15 to 40 year age group in Scotland and its incidence had actually increased by 50% in relation to the pre-war years.

Dr Laidlaw had studied Phthisis in East Glasgow for his MD thesis and continued his work as Medical Officer of Health. His 1949 publication “Modern Methods of Prevention and Treatment of Tuberculosis” emphasised the effectiveness of mass radiography of which Glasgow was the first in Scotland to introduce this in 1944. This work disclosed that some 6 persons in every thousand of the 140,000 examined between 1944 and the end of 1948 had active unsuspected tuberculosis.

He commented “resistance to infection may be lowered by many factors, such as debility after illness, especially measles and whooping cough in young children, overwork, overcrowding, undernourishment, and ill-spent leisure.”

Dr Laidlaw had been in complete charge of Glasgow’s tuberculosis schemes from 1939. In 1948 he noted that there were still 12,000 notified cases of tuberculosis in Glasgow and the implementation of the National Health Service Act of that July had had the unfortunate negative effect of dividing responsibility for tuberculosis treatment between the various Hospital Management Boards which hindered the coordinated actions needed to combat this disease.

One initiative that he was strongly and vocally supportive of was the introduction of the BCG vaccine. He declared “BCG vaccination should be available to all susceptible doctors, nurses, students and domestics attached to sanatoria or tuberculosis clinics.”

Dr Laidlaw noted in a letter published in The Lancet of May 1953 that the deaths in Glasgow from pulmonary tuberculosis had fallen steadily from 1093 in 1949 to just 556 deaths in 1952.

SMALLPOX

Dr Laidlaw was made an officer (brother) of the Venerable Order of Saint John of Jerusalem by the Duke of Gloucester at a ceremony in Edinburgh for his work is combating the 1950 Smallpox outbreak in Glasgow. During the three weeks of this smallpox outbreak Dr Laidlaw had held daily press conferences which only ceased when the city was judged “free from infection”.

Working up to 18 hours a day Dr Laidlaw had supervised the very vigorous tracing and vaccination of some 2,000 contacts within the first 24 hours which prevented the dreaded wave of secondary cases. The smallpox sufferers were identified and isolated in hospital. Two dozen brave medical workers, 15 women and 9 men, went in to the smallpox compound at Robroyston Hospital to provide the nursing support required. Two of the nurses, who had not been previously vaccinated, had volunteered to help and caught smallpox and died. In all only six people died in the outbreak.

It was suggested at the time that the new National Health Service administrative structure had actually delayed the initial identification and subsequent control of this smallpox outbreak.

It reflected well on the magnanimity of the Glasgow people that patient zero, Moosa Ali, from Madras who was the first person to be confirmed with the disease, was actually cheered by the waiting crowd when he eventually was discharged from hospital. He had been infected on his way to Port Glasgow from Port Said and had only fallen ill after he landed in Scotland. He was initially thought to have had chickenpox even after having been examined in hospital by at least three doctors. After news of the outbreak broke extensive vaccination for smallpox had taken place in Glasgow with 1,000s of people queuing to be vaccinated.

AIR POLLUTION

A summary of his thoughts on air pollution is clearly laid out in his 1952 paper The Menace of Polluted Air given to the Annual Conference of the Scottish Division of the National Smoke Abatement Society. Here he comments on issues of dust and soot in the atmosphere and reminds us that before the imposition of stricter controls on the burning of coal for heating that “mountains” of dust could be swept up from around Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square.

He noted that “if irritant substances in the air we breathe might, if inhaled long enough, damage the lungs and so set up cancerous conditions. A host of substances have been suspect, including the tar and arsenic in the atmosphere, the smoke from tobacco or cigarette paper, benzpyrene and radioactive particles” p.10. He specifically cites Richard Doll and Bradford Hill’s seminal 1950 paper on smoking and lung cancer and supported this association with a summary table showing the very dramatic increases in lung cancer deaths in England and Wales in the twentieth century.

He commented that the beneficial effects of sunshine were reduced in the smoky urban areas to the detriment of the health of the city dwellers. He discussed the risks of benzpyrene, arsenic and radio-active materials and expressed his awareness of environmental influences on cancer development. He also summarised issues associated with sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, fluorine and radioactive gases such as beryllium in the air we breathe.

In conclusion he noted that monarchs such as Edward I in 1306 and Elizabeth I in the sixteen century had attempted to deal with smoke pollution without success. Much of this smoke emanated from domestic heating. He concluded with a comparison of heating costs of different fuels showing that in 1952 an electric fire would cost 29.5d, a gas fire 25d, an old fashioned open fire 18.5d and a closed stove burning anthracite at £6 per ton just 6.8 d per useful therm of heat. (d being an old penny, 240d being £1)

COMMON LODGING HOUSES

Dr Laidlaw was awarded a PhD for his work “Glasgow Common Lodging Houses and the People living in them” by Glasgow University which was based on some 700 visits to “models” and working men’s hotels over three years from 1951. In June 1955 Glasgow Corporation agreed to publish the 100,000 word thesis as a book after his premature death.

Dr Laidlaw’s widow, Caroline was reported in the Sunday Dispatch of 11th November 1956 that
“Apart from our honeymoon, all our married life was spent on this. He worked terribly hard and gave up all his leisure. I used to go with him to the lodging-houses to interview the inhabitants and give help where necessary. Sometimes we would go straight from a dance still wearing evening dress to see people in these places. At all hours of the night and morning we were visiting lodging houses, talking to men in their cubicles and getting people into hospital where necessary.”

The printed book was sold for 30 shillings by the Glasgow Corporation’s Health and Welfare Department and provided much interesting material for social historians. The 3600 regulars included professional footballers, Salvation Army Officers and a schoolmaster together with the work-shy, alcoholics, vagrants and jailbirds that might have been anticipated. Only about 720 were in employment and Dr Laidlaw commented that they should have left their bed-spaces for people who could not afford an economic rent.

One resident was an heiress whose first action on inheriting a fortune was to repay all the money that she had received from the government in National Assistance. Seven residents were living on their savings and another claimed that he was living in the lodging house just to collect material for a book!

One of the youngest addicts aged just 34 had deserted from the army and after a few years as a labourer had taken up robbery as a profession. In between prison sentences he had stayed in lodging houses, but latterly slept in the brick kilns and consoled himself with cider laced with methylated spirit. Another woman escaped periodically from a respectable family and drank methylated spirits on Glasgow Green, sometimes sleeping in a nearby lodging house. Her husband and daughter would rescue her and take her back home by limousine.

In the early 1950s the nightly charge in the 19 Glasgow Common Lodging houses, four maintained exclusively for women, was typically 1s. 6d. to 2s. per night including bed, bedding, cooking facilities, locker accommodation and laundering facilities. Staff were employed to attend to the beds and cleanliness of the premises, at charge similar to that levied by the Youth Hostel Association at the time. The floors were bare, loose chairs were not provided in case they were used as weapons and the “modellers” saw their cubicle as offering a satisfactory level of privacy and independence.

POSTSCRIPT

Dr Laidlaw was put forward for a knighthood, but was held back in committee as being “too young”. He died at the age of 52 having just taken a youngster from a deprived area for a “joy ride” in his official car. His funeral was held in Glasgow Cathedral.

His widow, Caroline, contracted tuberculosis, probably from her many interactions with lodging house residents or from the patients that Dr Laidlaw sometimes took into his own home over the years but eventually made a full recovery. Their younger, son, Stuart, named after the father who never knew of him, died in 2019.

An editorial comment:

Marion had enjoyed poor health

And a personal comment:
I lived with my dad for what proved to be his last eight years. He was able to tell me all sorts of tales from throughout his life. When he died it seemed intolerable that those memories should die with him, so I wrote a memoir of sorts, to keep his memories fresh for his children and grandchildren. The nice thing is that the process of writing the memoir has almost turned his memories (or at least my version of them) into my own. For this alone I'm very glad I made the effort. As you've seen here, I frequently draw parables from them. I hope your working on your father's biography does the same for you.

Iantanyrallt, thanks for this thread. Lack of comments, I suspect, does not equate to lack of interest. There's just not a lot to add, not from me, anyway.

May 13, 2020 at 8:44 AM Iantanyrallt
(Copied from Unthreaded)

Thank you, educational stuff!

"Now the accepted terminology for the often alcoholic, work-shy, and sometimes verminous residents of these specific lodging houses is “modelers”."

I had heard "modelers" used (by a Glaswegian) as a derogatory term, and though i got the meaning right, got the origin wrong!

May 13, 2020 at 12:37 PM golf charlie

Very interesting and informative. I’m sorry my Miss Blenkinsop had so little time with him..
I think “endured “ poor health would be better!
Thank you for this information. I hope some others who were at BSG at this time will see and respond to this.

Model Lodging Houses and overcrowding issues in Glasgow

At the time of the Act of Union in 1707 Glasgow had a population of 12,500, by 1800 there were 80,000, the increase being largely due to the immigration of poor people. The ongoing influx of Irish labourers associated with the building of the Union canal in 1818 drove out the native labourers in Edinburgh who found it impossible to live in the midst of the “filth, vermin, quarrelling and fighting to which the immigrants were addicted”. The taverns and public houses thrived but housing improvement was not progressed.

Irish immigration continued apace in the nineteen century and up to 50,000 were arriving annually by the “Forties”, packed “like cattle into filthy boats at four-pence apiece”. In the early 1840s Edinburgh pioneered the building of “model” lodging houses, the first one opened in 1844 was still operating in 1956. Initially it had accommodation for 70 persons at 3d per night, this had escalated to 1s 6d or 8s 6d per week by the 1950s.

The distress in Glasgow during the “Hungry Forties” focussed on the conditions of the very poor and brought about efforts to relieve overcrowding. Glasgow householders of the early nineteenth century who packed their houses with lodgers without regard for hygiene and decency must bear a large part of the responsibility for the social conditions for which the city was to achieve notoriety.Lord Shaftsbury wrote

“I have seen human degradation in some of the worst places in England and abroad, but I did not believe until I had visited the wynds of Glasgow that so large an amount of filth, crime, misery, and disease existed in one spot in any civilised country”.

It was against this backdrop that lodging houses were established. They were not intended as charitable organisations although some were taken over by the Corporation and subsidised from the rates.

The Model Lodging-house Association was formed in 1847 by a group of philanthropists. By 1954 Glasgow still offered 19 Common lodging houses or “Models”, four restricted to females only, with a total capacity of 3600 people, offering cubicle type sleeping accommodation together with laundry and cooking facilities for just 1s 6d or 2s per night all included. Six of these were owned by the Glasgow Corporation.

Now the accepted terminology for the often alcoholic, work-shy, and sometimes verminous residents of these specific lodging houses is “modellers”. So bear that image in mind in any future discussions when I choose to describe modellers.

The bare floors, tired paintwork and lack of portable chairs in these “models” (in case they would have been used in fights) was associated with a death rate amongst the residents some four times higher than the national average.

Dr Stuart Laidlaw’s 1956 book “Glasgow Common Lodging Houses and the People living in them” was sold for 30 shillings by the Glasgow Corporation’s Health and Welfare Department. Every councillor at the time was given a personal copy.

Overcrowding in nineteenth century Glasgow was associated with “fever factories”. In a letter of 6th July 1863 Mr John Carrick the Master of Works wrote to Dr (later Sir) William Gairdner, Glasgow’s first Medical Officer of Health, of the teeming tenement of “single-ends” in Argyle Street “p.s. One person died of fever this morning in the Argyle Street Fever Factory.” A copy of this letter, in the copperplate penmanship of the time, is contained in the Master of Works record books.

One notorious set of tenements was known as the “Drygate Rookery”. Here a six storey tenement contained 48 separate dwelling houses, the average space was 497 cubic feet per house. With seven foot high ceilings this would give an average size of a “house” as 8ft 6in square! The average occupancy was three to five persons but the records show one such house with six adults. Mr Carrick noted over 1000 houses smaller than the 700 cubic feet statutory minimum size.

In 1863 there were 13,007 “ticketed houses” in Glasgow where the number of occupants of such small houses could be restricted in relation to space. This application of this ticketing system proved useful in helping the extinction of typhus fever in these overcrowded houses. The corporation eventually replaced these houses in the narrow wynds and closes in the Saltmarket and High Street areas around Glasgow Cross where the death rate was particularly high. The ill effects of overcrowding were greatly aggravated by defects of sanitation, water and milk supplies and amenities generally.

The “ticketing” system was formally abandoned in the 1930s due to shortages of accommodation. In the early 1950s the then Medical Officer of Health, Dr Stuart Laidlaw noted that the metal discs which were affixed to the doors of ticketed houses had not actually been removed. These discs indicated the total space in cubic feet and the number of occupants permitted.

Dr Laidlaw recounted a story of the days when nightly inspections of ticketed houses were made. The inspectors visited one of the houses beside Janefield Cemetery, were admitted after some delay, and found that the number of adult occupants did not exceed the limit.

“But” they asked, “What about the family?” “They are a’ in the cemetery” was the householder’s reply with a sad shake of the head. The inspectors expressed sympathy and departed. Before they left the vicinity they saw “the family,” numerous and very much alive, scrambling over the wall from the cemetery where they had hidden while the inspectors were in the house.

The late Stuart Laidlaw, passed 2019, was my father - I am keen to see more info. His spouse is HC, an editor and researcher and he left two children, Francesca (nee 1993) and Isabelle (1997). He worked as an Archaeologist and Photographer for most of his life, was a lecturer and mentor. He also danced amazingly

Three Comments

Chess
You will find a tribute to your father produced by his colleagues at UCL is now on the Institute of Archaeology Web Site.

I have now contacted the Scottish Society for the History of Medicine with a view to offering this material to them

My thanks to Andrew Montford for allowing this "Discussion" to be hosted on his blog. I have had several useful feedbacks.

Clearly he was a most remarkable man. I wonder if any person has earned more degree level qualifications from the University of Glasgow?

A great man.

I am biased, of course, being his only surviving son.

Ian

This is my last post on this topic.

I have been asked by The Scottish Society of the History of Medicine to present this material as a talk in their autumn meeting this year.

It will then be published by them.

Thanks to you all for the helpful comments and corrections.

Ian