BOOK REVIEW by BILL HEANEY
You have to know where you came from in order to know where you are going, it is often said at a time when studying local history and creating family trees have never been so popular.
Who do you think you are? Are you somebody? and Who are your parents and where did they work? are questions people ask regularly here in West Dunbartonshire.
What is really surprising is that so many local people haven’t a clue when it comes to their personal history and heritage.
A new book by Charlie Docherty, pictured right, a retired school teacher, may have the answers you seek, if not exactly all of them.
I found it fascinating from the moment I opened and started reading Neither Here nor There and the names of local people, familiar street names, landmarks and places of work came tumbling out.
If you have a fondness for Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven then this book is for you.
It should be in every local home and every local school.
If learning the date of the Battle of Hastings is important – and it is – then knowing about the people and the places in Dumbarton and the Vale is knowledge worth its weight in gold to every local person born in the shadow of The Fountain and The Castle.
Chapter 9 of Charlie’s excellent book deals with immigration from Ireland on the one hand and the Scottish HIghlands and Islands on the other.
He tells us that Dumbarton’s industrial success made it strongly attractive to migrants at a time when the Irish were leaving home in ever increasing numbers.
In contrast, the Vale’s longer established industries, did draw both Scottish and Irish immigrants, but not to the same extent because there were few jobs for men.
In addition, immigrants coming directly from Ireland and landing on the Clyde, were most likely to pass through Dumbarton.
As was common, intervening opportunities could have put paid to any planned onward journey to the Vale. Not all arrived with a plan in mind and went where circumstances took them.
If West Dunbartonshire has a housing crisis now it is nothing to what it was in the early 1900s.
There was no “sofa surfing” then, but “the phenomenon” of lodging or boarding with friends or relatives was commonplace and there is a whole fascinating chapter devoted to this.
Neither Here nor There by C.G. Docherty is published by Levenford Publishing and costs £12.99. It is available in good bookshops and on line.
Top of page: Irish navvies working on the West Highland railway line.
Some local scenes from Dumbarton at the beginning of last century.