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Patrick Macgill, 1890-1963: an Alternative Vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Bernard Aspinwall
Bernard Aspinwall*
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

Some attribute their pauper condition to a wrong disposition; others lay their misfortunes to a cruel fate; but it is evident that the passion for drink is at the bottom of ninety per cent of the vagrancy of England’ wrote Josiah Flynt, the brother of the American temperance campaigner Emma Willard.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 28: The Church and the Arts , 1992 , pp. 499 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992

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References

1 Flynt, Josiah, Tramping With Tramps (London, 1909), pp. 250 and 264 Google Scholar. He died an alcoholic. His glossary is borne out by Macgill’s characters. Glasgow was ‘the best kip town we found’ in his transatlantic travels. ‘No Hoboland can ever be completely depopulated … As long as there are lazy people… criminals, drunkards and boys of wanderlust, Hoboland will have its place in our social geography and a jargon more or less exclusively its own.’

2 See my ‘Half-Slave, Half-Free: Patrick Macgill and the Catholic Church’, New Blackfriars, 65 (1984), pp. 359-71. Edwards, Owen Dudley, ‘Patrick Magill and the making of a historical source’, In R, 37 (1986), pp. 73–99 Google Scholar has a full list of his writings.

3 Wiseman, Nicholas, Fabiola (London, 1855)Google Scholar; Newman, J. H., Loss and Gain (London, 1848).Google Scholar

4 Benson, R. H., Come Rack! Come Rope! (London, 1912), new edn (London, 1959)Google Scholar; MrsWard, W., One Poor Scruple (London, 1916)Google Scholar; Chesterton, G. K., The Father Brown Stories (London, 1947)Google Scholar. Unlike Belloc, Macgill mentions Jews twice as sellers of religious devotional aids, once as a moneylender, one group as war profiteers, and defends Jews against the Fascist-minded businessman. The House at World’s End (London, 1935), pp. 126, 134; The Rat Pit (London, 1915), p. 292; Carpenter of Orra (London, 1925), pp. 26,199.

5 For example, My New Curate (London, 1901).

6 For example, Hatters Castle (London, 1931); A Song of Sixpence (Boston, 1964).

7 On the background see Handley, James E., The Navvy in Scotland (Cork, 1970)Google Scholar; Sullivan, Dick, Nawyman (London, 1983).Google Scholar

8 ‘A Navvy’s Philosophy’, in Songs of The Dead End (London, 1983), p.24.

9 Black Baron (London, 1928), p. 35.

10 ‘The Slum Child’, in Songs of the Dead End, p. 36.

11 Children of the Dead End (London, 1914), p. 5.

12 Glasgow Herald and London Times, 29 Nov. 1915. I am indebted to Macgill’s twin daughters, Patricia McGowan and Chris Macgill for hospitality over the last ten years in Glasgow, Fall River, and Miami.

13 Songs of Donegal (London, 1921), p. 25, Carpenter of Orra, pp. 230, 251; The House at World’s End, pp. 217-18;and Black Bonar, p. 363.

14 Carpenter of Orra, p. 216.

15 Children, p. 173. Songs of The Dead End, p. 14, sustain E. P. Thompson’s ideas of the changing rhythms in an industrial order: The Making of the English Working Class, repr. (New York, 1964).

16 The House at World’s End, p. 253.

17 The Red Horizon (London, 1916), p. 160. Also Glenmornan repr. (London, 1983), pp. 21-2; The Rat Pit, p. 279.

18 ‘A Soldier’s Prayer’, in The Diggers (London, 1919), p. 97. Also in Soldier Songs (London, 1916), p. 115.

19 ‘The Faith of A Child’, Songs, pp. 25-6; The Rat Pit, pp. 108, 265; Glenmornan, pp. 130, 214, 262, among many references.

20 The Revd Nolan had served as chaplain to Moleskin Joe’s battalion: Moleskin Joe (London, 1921) repr. (London, 1983), pp. 87, 92, 123.

21 The Rat Pit, p. 30. Cf. Horace Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century (London, 1904), pp. 107, 115; L. Paul-Dubois, Contemporary Ireland (London, 1908), p. 477 on conspicuous clerical consumption.

22 Also The Rat Pit, pp. 91-2.

23 Maureen (London, 1920), pp. 70-8. The Revd James McFadden (1842-1917), a forceful parish priest, who enforced his will with a blackthorn stick. Also a defender of the evicted. In 1889 he was acquitted at his trial following the death of a policeman in an affray at an eviction. He wrote on land ownership: Boyle, Dictionary of Irish Biography.

24 Children, p. 256.

25 Ibid., pp. 246-7.

26 Ibid., pp. 214, 257.

27 Ibid., pp. 120, 80.

28 Glenmoman, p. 31; Carpenter, p. 115. Also The Rat Pit, p. 31; Children, p. 110; The Diggers, p. 98.

29 Children, p. 209.

30 Lanty Hanlon (London, 1921) repr. (London, 1983), pp. 10-11.

31 Lanty Hanlon, p. 18; Songs of Donegal, p. 24.

32 Songs of Donegal (London, 1921), p. 33.

33 Children, p. 30.

34 Carpenter, p. 253; also pp. 55, 68, 75, 199.

35 The Rat Pit, pp. 20-8; Children, p. 3.

36 Glenmornan, p. 17.

37 The Rat Pit, p. 273.

38 Carpenter, p. 16.

39 Carpenter, p. 42.

40 Carpenter, p. 100.

41 Songs of The Dead End, p. 16; Carpenter, p. 120.

42 Glenmornan, p. 215.

43 Lanty Hanlon, pp. 7–8.

44 Children, p. 89; also pp. 93-4.

45 Ibid., p. 77.

46 Black Bonar, p. 12; Glenmornan, p. 25.

47 Black Boar, pp. 52-3; Lanty Hanlon, pp. 202–3.

48 The House at World’s End, pp. 11, 202; Glenmoman, p. 23; Carpenter, pp. 203, 226.

49 The Rat Pit, p. 272.

50 Black Bonar, p. 384; Lanty Hanlon, p. 33; Moleskin, p. 371.

51 Children, p. 145.

52 Glenmornan, p. 200.

53 The Great Push, p. vi; Children, p. 166.

54 The Rat Pit, p. 160.

55 Ibid., p. 154.

56 Tulliver’s Mill (London, 1934), p. 133.

57 The Rat Pit, p. 255.

58 Glenmornan, p. 105.

59 Sid Puddiefoot (London, 1926), p. 300.

60 Lanty Hanlon, pp. 180-1, 209.

61 The Rat Pit, p. 203; Children, p. 98.

62 Lanty Hanlon, p. 202.

63 Children, pp. 103, 149; Moleskin, p. 132.

64 The Broum Brethren (London, 1917), p. 19.

65 Children, p. 115. Maguire ironically was the then archbishop of Glasgow.

66 Children, p. 245. A Glasgow-born navvy, John Young, who was working with the Preston Gas Co. in 1914, volunteered, was wounded, gassed, and then won a VC and returned to die from his wounds in 1916. Information from Miss Kathleen Aspinwall, Preston.

67 The Brown Brethren, p. 167; The Amateur Army, pp. 15, 20-1.

68 The Red Horizon, p. 306; The Amateur, p. 15.

69 The Diggers, p. 60.

70 The Great Push, p. vi.

71 Carpenter, p. 251.

72 Ibid., pp. 199, 221.

73 Moleskin Joe (London, 1946), pp. 42, also pp. 14-47.

74 Moleskin, p. 42; also pp. 14-47.

75 Carpenter, pp. 56-7.

76 Ibid., p. 57. The dying soldier’s long outburst is on p. 26.

77 The Glen of Carra (London, 1934), p. 137.

78 Ibid., pp. 128-9, 230-57.

79 Black Bonar, p. 200.

80 Ibid., p. 363.

81 Ibid., pp. 162, 104.

82 Black Bonar, p. 53.

83 Children, p. 177.

84 Glenmornan, p. 189.

85 Carpenter, p. 258.

86 Black Bonar, pp. 229, 311. Also Helen Spenser (London, 1937), pp. 18, 38, 55, 75 (Mrs Frith).

87 Black Bonar, p. 130.

88 Carpenter, pp. 40, 199.

89 Tulliver’s Mill, pp. 246-7.

90 Glenmornan, p. 131; Carpenter, p. 165.

91 Black Bonar, p. 52; Glenmoman, p. 31.

92 Black Bonar, p. 136; Lanty Hanlon, p. 93.

93 Cf.Kennedy, Robert E. Jr., The Irish, Emigration, Marriage and Fertility (Berkeley, 1973)Google Scholar. Macgill may have been influenced by George Moore’s fears of increased evils from procreation and reacting against the eugenics of Yeats. See Herbert Howarth, The Irish Writers: Literature and Nationalism, 1880-1940 (New York, 1958), pp. 48-9, 81,163.

94 The Rut Pit, p. 183. Peter Gardella, Innocent Ecstasy: How Christianity Gave America an Ethic of Sexual Pleasure (New York, 1985), gives an excellent theological insight on Catholic sexual attitudes.

95 Children, p. 12.

96 The Carpenter, p. 7.

97 The Rat Pit, pp. 125, 162, 176, 298.

98 Children, p. 251.

99 The Rat Pit, pp. 95, 4. John Ferguson, the dynamic Protestant Irish nationalist, was also killed by a Glasgow tram in 1905. See my ‘Glasgow Trams and American Politics, 1894-1914’, ScHR, 56 (1977). PP. 64-84.

100 Songs of The Dead End, pp. 30, 33-5.

101 The Rat Pit, p. 256. See also Kishlansky, Khalid, The Prostitute in Progressive Literature (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Connelly, Mark Thomas, The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill, NC, 1982)Google Scholar; Pivar, David J., Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868-1900 (Westport, Conn., 1973)Google Scholar. Contemporaries like James Connolly, G. B. Shaw, Theodore Dreiser, and David Graham Phillips wrote on the subject.

102 Children, p. 165.

103 Ibid., p. no; Glenmoman, p. 105.

104 Children, pp. 110, 47. Also see Glenmornan, pp. 17, 194–5.

105 Maureen, pp. 168-77.

106 Margaret in Carpenter, p. 209. Also her ‘Marriage is a sacrifice which the very saints will not make’, p. 243.

107 The Rat Pit, p. 56; Children, p. 15.

108 Glenmornan, p. 124.

109 Oiney in Glenmornan, p. 116; also The Rat Pit, pp. 122, 279.

110 Helen Spenser, p. 75.

111 Black Bonar, pp. 78-9.

121 Helen Spenser, p. 26.

113 Maureen, p. 23.

114 Helen Spenser, p. 93.

115 Ibid., p. 112.

116 Ibid., p. 116.

117 Ibid., p. 202.

118 Black Bonar, p.327.