The past in the post – a special delivery from yesterday!

The Tenement House archive holds these letters along with many others. We preserve them with care, thanks to the generosity of the National Trust for Scotland’s members and donors. These letters offer a unique window into the changes that Agnes’s generation saw during their lifetime.

Letter of 5 December 1910

In 1905 Agnes attended the Athenaeum Commercial College in Buchanan Street and learned shorthand typing. Women were slowly starting to be accepted into the office work environment, and shorthand typing was considered a good option for well-educated ladies looking to pursue a career.

In 1909 her mother’s health began to decline and they decided to take in lodgers to make ends meet. Agnes earned 14 shillings a week, which is perhaps why she decided to draft an application letter to the Herald’s office looking for another job. Agnes states in her application that she could write shorthand at an impressive rate of 120 words per minute and operate the typewriter at 60 words per minute. I wonder how fast she would be with today’s keyboards?

By 1911, 125,000 women were employed in clerical jobs in Britain, and this number would rise substantially when war broke out a few years later. Agnes ended up working for the same employer from 1914 until 1960.

Postcard of 11 April 1915

William Wood was a former colleague of Agnes during her first job as a shorthand typist at the shipping company Miller and Richards. The company moved to London in 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War, and so Agnes found a new job working for Prentice, Service & Henderson (another shipping company). By the time Agnes received this letter she would have been relieved to hear from him. We don’t know the exact nature of their relationship, but from the letters that she kept we can see that they were close.

During the First World War, soldiers used field service postcards to reassure family and friends they were still alive. These were a form of quick communication and did not have to go through the lengthy censorship process like other letters.

William enlisted in the London Scottish Regiment and was stationed in France. He was reported missing in action in July 1916 at the age of 24. He’s listed on the Thiepval memorial in France and remembered amongst those who died during the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Letter of 17 October 1940

These letters from Agnes’s friends in London give an important insight into how the Second World War affected the everyday lives of British people.

Mr and Mrs Collins were former work colleagues of Agnes at Miller and Richards, and she continued corresponding with them throughout her life. They moved to Kent in 1914 and continued to work for the company.

In this letter her friends express sympathy for the loss of her mother, who passed away at the Tenement House on 25 May 1939. What makes the letter especially interesting is that it was written from an air raid shelter, and reflects on the hardships people endured during the war.

‘We had a piece of metal over 4oz in weight come through the glass of a window upstairs. We don’t know if it’s a bomb or shell splinter but these are the bits flying about that make it so dangerous to be out in.

‘We are thankful we have this shelter as it feels more safe than the house. It is in the garage and is built of 2,000 bricks and cement and has 6 inches concrete roof. We stay here all night. Ena and Dorothy have a mattress and they lie head to feet and John has another small mattress. I sit on a deck chair and snooze off and on. I haven’t had a night-dress on for about 8 weeks as I think it’s about that time since the all-the-night raids started.’

Letter of 11 January 1945

On 5 and 9 January 1945, the town of Beckenham in Kent was heavily bombarded by V1 bombs (‘doodlebugs’) and V2 rockets, killing 138 people. Mrs Collins tells Agnes in this letter that the recent bombing damaged their front door and blew out their windows, but that they were luckily not hit. Agnes would have understood her friend’s anxiety, as she would have remembered the Clydebank Blitz in Glasgow during March 1941. It killed over 500 people and injured over 500 more. Instructions for how to adequately black out and protect windows were distributed to civilians; Agnes’s copy is still kept in our archive.

Agnes was able to reunite with her friends once the war had ended. She visited Mr and Mrs Collins in Kent in December 1946 and even had a day out in London.

Letter of June 1953

This letter written by Agnes gives us a snapshot of her later life. Elsie was a former colleague who had emigrated to Montreal, Canada, and they kept their friendship over many years. As a shorthand typist, Agnes was very organised and she often kept carbon copies of the letters she sent. Today, this allows us to see both parts of the conversation.

This letter is filled with interesting things. Agnes tells her friend that she watched the Queen’s coronation at a friend’s house. The coronation of Elizabeth II took place on 2 June 1953 at Westminster Abbey and was a key date in the history of television, as it was seen by more than 20 million people at the time.

During the 1950s the centre of Glasgow was going through a period of rapid change, with large department stores growing and changing the way Glaswegians shopped. Agnes tells Elsie about these changes and the loss of independent shops on the high street: ‘Next time you come to Glasgow, you’ll need a guidebook!’

In her letter, Agnes also wonders about whether or not to change to electric light, which she eventually decided upon 7 years later in 1960!

Letter of 28 June 1953

This last letter just shows how lucky we are at the Tenement House, as it is Elsie’s reply to the letter above! In this letter, Elsie thanks Agnes for the coronation newspaper supplements that she sent over to Canada.

‘yes I am afraid I burned some “midnight oil” over them when I had intended going to bed early that night!!!’

Elsie’s reply also highlights the fact that many Scots were emigrating to Canada, looking for better futures for their families:

‘So that other couple with family are all coming to Canada! There is certainly lots of opportunities over here for men if they are prepared to work really hard and I don’t blame young couples with families deciding to come across here when they have a position already in place.’

Between 1955–58, an enormous number of people emigrated from the UK to Canada, as a result of the post-war policies and the Canadian Immigration Act of 1952.