by Munkie » Fri Jul 11, 2014 8:27 am
Thanks for the responses - and for the welcome! I've been a lurker for a while....
I'm glad a couple of other people are interested.
It's a bit odd, isn't it? But this might because I'm misunderstanding the nature of halfway houses...I certainly thought that these might refer to some kind of reintegration project, but the only time I've come across the term, today, has been with regard to prisoners and/or people who've been in rehab. But these tend to be one or two houses in a particular area - we've got an addiction rehabilitation centre near us, which is often referred to by local people as a 'halfway house'. But whole streets, as in the case of Jura Street?
I wondered about the area, too, but some streets have the brackets whereas adjacent streets don't - which doesn't make sense. Also Kelly's Directory, for other areas, just lists these after the street, with a comma - no brackets. The formatting certainly doesn't make sense, but perhaps I'm crediting Kelly's with a degree of consistency it doesn't have.
Another thing that's niggling - more! - is that the occupants of a 'halfway house' don't fit with the rest of Glasgow's citizenry, as detailed by Kelly's. I don't know exactly how Kelly's gathered it's data in Glasgow in the 1920s and 1930s.There is too little written about directories in general, but almost nothing about the 20th century. Archivists have said it was just on a subscription basis, which certainly makes sense for the shopkeepers and others advertising, but it's patterns in recording residents make little sense if so. For instance, residents in some tenement blocks seem to be recorded in full, whereas for many numbers there are none listed. In fact, some streets have no residents entered at all. I know there is a tangible socio economic dimension to Glasgow's geography at this time, but one might expect, if it was subscription based, for results to be more sporadic - it would be, after all, a matter of individual choice. I wonder whether they're using the valuation rolls somehow...
Anyway, digressing, my main point is that these residents of halfway houses are all listed. They join the commercial, retail, professional and otherwise 'public' citizens that form the backbone of these enormous directories. Which doesn't make sense if they're all on their way out of some institution or other....unless I suppose the house valuation was actually enough to get them in, if the valuation rolls were being used....
Or....perhaps these streets were much more connected to the 'homes for heroes' project than we tend to think. And the I've read (somewhere!) that this particular area was reserved for what was considered to be the 'better sort' - ie. skilled working classes (but they also mentioned 'professional' - why would these need council housing?) - but service in the war was a sort of filtering system in the selection of these candidates. Maybe it was the driving reason for selection, which might explain why there are so many of them and why they've got such nice housing. Why would you bother making 'halfway houses' so nice for people in the 1920s otherwise?
It wasn't a question I was particularly concerned with when I was researching (in fact, it's not vital to my thesis - I'm just interested now) so I didn't see if Glasgow archives had something that might illuminate the matter, i.e. in the Corporation minutes at least. But if I get to go in again I might try digging around.
Man, history is difficult. Thought for the day.