National Anthem

I've been quite bad at keeping this blog up-to-date lately, neglecting to write about recent discoveries, our Thanksgiving gathering with my Scottish cousins, and all the fascinating things we've learned about Jessee's family tree.  But I just returned from a visit home where I had a really moving interaction with Machute, my Lithuanian grandmother.

For about as long as I can remember, there has been a tapestry hanging in my grandparents house with a few short verses of Lithuanian writing.  Actually, I believe Tevukus brought it home from his first return visit to Lithuania after the 1990 restoration of independence.  I've been curious in the past about what it says, so when Machute began to explain it on this visit, I quickly switched on my audio recorder.  This is what she said:

download mp3
According to the wikipedia entry, the poem was written in 1898 when Lithuania was still a subject of the Russian Empire, right around the time that my Lithuanian ancestors emigrated to Scotland.  I know the Czar had forbidden the Lithuanian language and culture, so it must have been viewed as subversive.  It was adopted as the official national anthem in 1919, after the collapse of the Empire and shortly before my branch of the family returned to Lithuania.  That was only a couple years before Machute was born, so she would have grown up knowing the song, and it certainly would have had significant meaning to her.  When the Soviets annexed and re-occupied Lithuania in 1940, the song was banned again.  Machute was there when that happened and lived under it for at least a few years (I'm quite sure she was still there in 1943).  Until the 1990 independence, the song would have represented much of what had been lost, nationally, but also personally for my grandparents.  It's no wonder that it has such significance and is so emotional for her to read.

These are the lyrics:

Lithuanian Lietuva, Tėvyne mūsų, Tu didvyrių žeme, Iš praeities Tavo sūnūs Te stiprybę semia. Tegul Tavo vaikai eina Vien takais dorybės, Tegul dirba Tavo naudai Ir žmonių gėrybei. Tegul saulė Lietuvoj Tamsumas prašalina, Ir šviesa, ir tiesa Mūs žingsnius telydi. Tegul meilė Lietuvos Dega mūsų širdyse, Vardan tos, Lietuvos Vienybė težydi!

Official English Lithuania, our homeland, Land of heroes! Let your sons draw their strength From our past experience Let your children always follow Only roads of virtue, May your own, mankind’s well-being Be the goals they work for May the sun above our land Banish darkening clouds around Light and truth all along Guide our steps forever May the love of Lithuania Brightly burn in our hearts. For the sake of this land Let unity blossom.

And with those words, we are both very excited to be Lithuanian.

Disappointing Records

The records that I mentioned in the last two posts turned out to be somewhat disappointing in terms of information pertinent to the group of us looking.  There apparently was not a list of deportees (of either the men prior to the end of the war, or of the dependents after the end of the war).  Although, I wouldn't mind having a look through them myself at some point.

One thing of interest was a letter referring to the "Lithuanians now in Lithuania who desire to rejoin their families in the United Kingdom".  That would probably include my great-grandfather Kazimiras.  Images of the letter are below:

Page 1 of 2

Page 2 of 2

Other Deportations

After writing the last post, I realized that the records description says they of deportations taking place after the revolution of 1917.  So they may not be of the 1100 Lithuanians deported to fight with the Russians.  They may, however, contain the names of the women and children that were deported later on (in 1920).  These people were the dependents of the men who were not allowed to return (what an injustice!), and they likely include my great-grandmother Zose and my great-uncle Kazimiras Jr.  One of the other forum contributors is planning to go check them out at Kew next week.  Can't wait to hear what he finds!

There also appears to be a second batch of documents that may be relevant:

Home Office: Registered Papers, Supplementary. Nationality and Naturalisation. ALIENS (see also Nationality and Naturalisation): Repatriation of Russian political refugees and deportation of undesirable Poles and Russians after the revolution of 1917.
Collection: Records created or inherited by the Home Office, Ministry of Home Security, and related bodies
Date range: 01 January 1919 - 31 December 1931
Reference: HO 144/13340
Subjects: Nationality, Refugees

Deportation

I've been keeping an eye on an online forum of people attempting to track down the 1100 Lithuanians that were deported from Britain to Imperial Russia in 1917 under the Anglo-Russian Military Convention:  http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=168247&pid=1810171.

As I've written before, I believe my great-grandfather Kazimiras Kisielius was one of those deported under the treaty.  Now it seems that the records that say who was sent away might well have been located.  They're held at the British National Archives in Kew.  This is the reference posted by one of the forum contributors:

Reference: HO 144/13339
Description: ALIENS (see also Nationality and Naturalisation): Repatriation of Russian political refugees and deportation of undesirable Poles and Russians after the revolution of 1917
Date: 1917-1918
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Former references: in its original department: 332758/1-121
Legal status: Public Record
Access conditions: Closed Until 2005
Record opening date: 23 September 2005

Copying Process No. of Units Unit Cost Process Cost
PaperMonoA3 317 £1.00 £317.00

It costs a fortune to have them copied, but another forum contributor might go there, where they are (presumably) free to view.  If he doesn't go, I certainly will.

Info from Buffalo

As I mentioned, I've been really short on time.  So my updates here are more in the form of notes than anything else.  I just wanted to make sure I got this information recorded.  Most of it is coming from the work that was done by Geraldine Swift in the 1980s and 90s.

Helpful pieces of information:

• the McPherson tree that was passed along contained quite a few exact birth and death dates and locations, presumably from first hand knowledge.  These will be very useful in tracking down other records (the census records aren't as precise).
• Mary Ann Burke (the one associated with the school for the deaf), was born as Bridget Burke.  I've seen records for both, but was really confused about how to connect them to the family.  Now that I know they're the same person things will probably make more sense.  She lived from 1842 to 1927.
• Anne Stanton (also known as Mary Eloise) also worked at the school for the deaf 1910-1927, and later at a Catholic hospital in Lackawanna 1929-1967.  I'm not sure yet where she fits into the tree.
• Joseph Aloyisius Stanton (1899-1972) is a great uncle of Karen and was also part of the Catholic Church.
• Much of the family is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Lackawanna, NY
• Mary Jane Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland on 26 June 1838 and died in Buffalo on 6 Oct 1914
• Margaret Stanton (born 1860) was the sister of William A Stanton.  The information I had found didn't list Margaret.  It listed Agnes.  Margaret's married name was Laranger.
• Anna Stanton (1866-1941) was also the sister of William A Stanton.  I hadn't found record of her either.  According to Geraldine's notes, she settled in Omaha, Nebraska and has descendants in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Married name was Weppner.
• Frances Stanton, my great-great-grandmother, had a twin brother, Joseph.  But he died before he was 1 (on 11 April 1868).
• Frances was buried at Mt Olivet Cemetery on 20 November 1920.
• An article about Joseph McPherson says that he kept touch with "his 120 nieces and nephews".  Wow, there's a lot of us!

Some amazing old photos:

Front:  William A Stanton, Mary Eloise (Sister St Anne), Johanna Connors Stanton
Back:  Kathryn Rita Stanton, Rev. Joseph Aloyisius Stanton

Mary Jane Burke Stanton (dated 5 Jan 1879)

Mary Jane Burke Stanton (1838-1914)

William J Burke and wife Margaret Moore

Margaret Stanton Laranger (born 1860)

Anna Stanton Weppner (1866-1941)

The Home of William Burke, 1888
Virginia Street, Buffalo, NY

Rev. Joseph A Stanton (1899-1972)

Sister St Anne Stanton (1890-1967)
(aka Mary Eloise)

Geraldine Devine and Derrick Rowland Swift
6 August 1949

Frances Stanton (1868-1915)

Visiting the Rolwichs

Last weekend we also had a meetup with the Rolwichs.  They made the steak pie that they promised when we saw them last Easter, and it was excellent.  We also got to meet a few new people from the group, including Ellen, the matriarch.  It was a really nice time.

Back:  Brian, Kate, Matthew, Martin, Therese, Paul
Front:  Ellen, me, Jessee

Clan Macpherson

For about 60 years now, the Clan Macpherson Association has been putting on an annual gathering for its members.  It is one of the biggest that gets held on a regular basis.  Last year I was passing through Newtonmore, where the clan museum is located, just by chance on the weekend after the gathering.  They explained what it was and insisted that I join them the following year.  I gladly obliged.

It's quite an elaborate affair, running from Friday all the way through Monday.  We were only able to be there for Friday and Saturday, as it was a little bit pricey for us to stay for the whole weekend, and we had plans with the Rolwichs on Sunday (more on that in a moment).  We still got a pretty good idea of what it was all about.  And we really packed in a lot:  a welcome meeting, dance practice, museum library re-opening, the Chief's reception, an absurdly large dinner, highland ball, a clan march, and highland games!

"Cluny", the Chief, Sir William Macpherson addressing the guests.

Everybody in full highland dress.

Feast!  I'm pretty sure I counted an (excessive) nine
different types of meat!

Scary Fish

I thought the dessert table was a little sparse.

Dining

All the people we met were exceptionally friendly and welcoming.  It really was, as they referred to it, sort of an extended family reunion, albeit with people I'd never met.  Members of the Clan came from all over the world - the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Netherlands, England, South Africa.  And of course, there were a good number of locals.

The weekend was also a very interesting inside look at social hierarchy as well.  Nobody treated us as if we were from another class (in fact, quite the opposite!), but the whole event was a bit of a throw back to the old feudal system, where titles are passed down through first male heirs and your social position is based on land ownership.  There were several levels in the hierarchy (chief, chieftain, something else, and then the rest of us).  The whole weekend was something of a re-enactment this old system - there were strict positions for each member (men only!) in the march.  I couldn't help but think about the reason my McPherson ancestors had gone to America was because their McPherson ancestors had found it more profitable to raise sheep than to lease their land to human workers (that's the basis of the highland clearances).  How a system like this could have been sustained for so long is beyond me.

The March

The skies are blue here every once in a while.

While these things are still in memory (and probably not just mine), they really don't seem to have much bearing on the present day gathering.  Like I said, we felt very welcome all weekend long.  Even in spite of a few breached social protocols!  The worst was at the Chief's reception.  The Chief, Sir William Macpherson (a retired High Court judge), his wife Lady Macpherson, and a few other members of his family lined up at the entrance to the reception and greeted us as we walked in.  To our unfortunate luck, we were standing right next to the entrance at the time to go in, so we ended up going first.  By the time we'd figured out what was going on, it was too late.  I went down the line shaking hands, saying "pleased to meet you", but it was in a "hey, how's it going?" sort of way.  Jessee had a water bottle and a jacket in one hand.  When I noticed the person behind us bow and kiss the hand of Lady Macpherson (like you'd do to royalty!), I realized what we'd done.  Savage Americans.  There wasn't any real harm done.  Or, if there was, they let us stay anyway.

McPherson Pipe and Drum Band

Haggis Eating Competition

Busy Weekend

It seems like the times when I have the most to write on this blog are always also the times when I'm the most busy.  Last weekend I attended the Annual Gathering of the Macpherson Clan and met up with the Rolwichs for the second time.  On top of that I got some really excellent information from Karen in Buffalo about the Burkes and Stantons.  I'll try to get caught up over the next couple days.

Geraldine's Records

Got an email from Geraldine's daughter today!  She's got the records of research that her mother did a few decades back.  None of it is digital, of course, so it'll be a bit before she sifts through it and forwards on anything relevant.  But I'm really looking forward to what she might have!

Scottish-Born McPhersons

At this point, I'm ready to say that I've located the right McPherson family in the Scottish records.  When I was at the Archive yesterday, I did a fairly thorough search to be sure I wasn't confusing them with the many other McPhersons in the record.  I even searched the Old Parish (Protestant) records, even though I was confident they'd be in the Catholic ones.

My strategy was to locate possible birth records for the children (James and Mary) and match the parents across them.  I had to find two records:  one for a James born to John and Mary and one for a Mary born to John and Mary.  However, since the US census records I found had been inconsistent in reporting ages, I had to search more broadly than just single years.  I chose a 5 year span for each.  If several matches existed, I would still be able to narrow things down because the age gap between the children had been consistent enough from census to census:  James was about 2 years older than Mary.

There turned out to be fewer matches than I expected -- only one for each of them to parents with the correct names.  Fortunately, the age gap matches so I'm can say with relative certainty, it's them.

Results for "James McPherson"

Results for "Mary McPherson"

So, as it turns out, the records I had found previously (in a somewhat less rigorous search) were in fact the correct ones.

I also decided to search for other children born to the couple, since they had married several years before James was born.  Sure enough, there was a match:  Jessie McPherson was born in 1849 (another Jessie in the family!).  She doesn't appear in any of the US records, so I also searched to see if there was a Scottish death record.  I only found a couple, but they weren't until 1905 and 1920.  If she didn't die as an infant, why didn't she go with them to America?  Or, maybe she did, but didn't survive the journey.

Jessie McPherson:  born 1849

The last thing to note is that I've started to question whether or not the census record I found earlier is actually them.  There are a lot of John and Mary McPhersons on the 1851 census, and without other family members listed, it's hard to be sure.

Kisielius / Valaitis

On my last visit the National Records, I found the first bit of evidence that there might still be a branch of the Kisielius line living here in Scotland.  Yesterday, I traced that a little bit farther and found that is indeed the case!  Marrie (Marijona), machute's first cousin, my first cousin twice removed, had one daughter with Juozas Valaitis named Anele.  She married Louis Tracy and had two sons.  Both of those families are still living.

Anele Valaitis, born 1926

Louis Tracy and Anele Valaitis, married 1952

It wasn't until I'd traced down through most of those families that something occurred to me.  The name that Chute initially gave me when she told me to look for the Scottish part of the family was "Helen Tracy Louis". I'm quite sure, now, that was her foggy memory trying to recall "Anele Tracy & Louis".  Which, I'm pretty sure, means that Chute has been in contact with Anele previously!  She'd be about 86 by now but, very hopefully, still living.  I'd really be interested in what she knows about her American cousins, particularly if she knows something more about the missing Kisielius brothers (still no trace of them remaining here).  Now I've just got to track down a current address.

Chute's Note

The previous post on Marrie showed that Juozas was her second husband.  As it turns out, they were both widows at the time that they married.  I searched but found no death record for her first husband, Konstantinas Adomaviczia, which makes me believe he was also deported under the 1917 Anglo-Russian Military Convention, but was not as fortunate as my great-grandfather Kazimiras.

Juozas Valaitis and Marijona Adomaviczia (Kisielius), married 1936

I did find, however, that they had one surviving son, Juozas Adomaviczia (later, Joseph Adams).  Unfortunately I ran out of time before I could search much further than that.  He could very well lead me to more living relatives, however.  Next time.

Juozas Adomaviczia, born 1915

Ona Adomaviczia, died as an infant, 1918

The Ives

I've made contact with more of the Raulinitis Clan!  I managed to track down a few from the Ives family.  They're a sub-group from the Flanagans, which branches off from Margaret Raulinitis, my great-grandmother's youngest sister.  Over the last day there's been a flurry of Facebook messages going between us.

Tracing through a female lineage can be tricky, as there are so many name changes, but luckily they've got contact will all the other Flanagan descendants, so it will make the job of getting to the others quite easy.  What's more is that they know something of what happened to Annie Raulinitis, my great-grandmother's other sister!  As I wrote previously, I managed to find record of her having been in the US, but nothing of much detail.  I suspected she had married and taken a new name, but without some clue of knowing what it was, finding her could be really difficult.  Fortunately, Jane Ives has told me that she thinks she married a sailor with the name Graham.  I'm confident we'll get more about her because, Jane tells me, her aunt Annie Flanagan, the niece of Annie Raulinitis, also emigrated to New York and was taken in by her.  Annie Flanagan apparently married someone named Raymond, but he died young, and she became a nun (I'm discovering an awful lot of nuns in the family!).  But she's still living, so she will certainly know more about her aunt.


I've also been messaging with Jane's brother Rob.  He had done a bit of genealogy work himself.  I'm really looking forward to hearing more about what he know of us, because he'd even gone to the extent of traveling to Lithuania in search of leads!  I'm not sure if he was looking for us (i.e. if he knew Zose and Kazimiras had returned there) or if he was looking for record of Motiejus and Eva's families.  But I told him he wouldn't find us there, being that Kazimiras Jr was killed by the Russians and the rest of the family fled to the US.


It's really great to make this contact and to find that they seem just as curious about us as we are about them.  I don't expect every one of them to care that much either way, but it's nice that I moved here with only Jessee and I've amassed more family than I ever knew I had!

Mary McCourt

Recently, I've been talking with my grandmother's cousin, my "first cousin, twice removed", on the McPherson side, Mary McCourt (born Mary Spencer).  I had my uncle David show her a copy of the McPherson tree I've reconstructed so far to see what she knew of it.  Of course she knew her aunts and uncles, all 8 of them!  But he had no idea that her grandfather was one of 8 as well!

She recalled meeting her great-uncle John McPherson (the one born in 1865) once when she was very young, but she didn't remember ever meeting any of the others.  As she remembered it, any of the others (she didn't know who or how many) had "gone west".  That is, "West", with a capital 'w', as in the Wild West!

That really got me interested, as they could have gone out there in the time of the Deadwood, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, the frontier and all the rest!  Tracing their move out there won't be easy, but hopefully I can dig up something.  It would be fascinating to be connected to that history in some way.
From the census records, it looks like James, Mary, William, and Joseph disappear after 1880.  I'd be surprised if Mary would have gone out there on her own (not many women did that in those days, unless of course she became a prostitute! - unlikely in such a pious Catholic family), so I suspect she probably married and took a different name.  The three men, however, may well have gone.  The other four, Agnes, John, Alfred, and my great-great-grandfather Henry appear on the 1892 NY state census, but Alfred may have joined them later because he doesn't appear on the 1900 census.  I've been limiting my search to the City of Buffalo, thus far, so I'll need to extend things to get more information - it's always possible they just moved out of the city but stayed relatively local.  For now, I'd just like to believe that they were in the thick of the Old West, which is not improbable given the story relayed by Mary.

Mary also told me that a distant ancestor of ours was quite well regarded in the Buffalo (and wider) community for starting a school for the deaf.  She was a nun, Mother Mary Anne Burke, who Mary McCourt said was always a respected member of the family for her charity work.  Since Jessee's sister is a sign language interpreter in New York, I asked her if she'd ever heard of the school.  Apparently it's pretty well known in the deaf community, St. Mary's School for the Deaf (presumably named for the Virgin Mary, not my ancestor).  She pointed me to their website, which sure enough indicates that Mary Anne Burke was involved in it's early days!  She was sent to Philadelphia for deaf education training in 1861 and had become the principal of the school by 1863.

Mary also said we're related to "Cluny MacPherson", or rather Ewen Macpherson of Cluny, a significant figure in Scottish history.  He aided Bonnie Prince Charlie's (failed) attempt to reclaim the British Throne in the Jacobite Rising of 1745.  He was a fugitive for almost a decade after Prince Charlie was defeated and famously was paid a penny by his would-be captors for watching their horses, since they didn't recognize him.  Whether or not there is a direct blood relation to him, as Mary suggested, isn't clear, but it's unlikely.  The MacPherson Clan is massive and it's doubtful most members can be connected to his particular family unit.

Ewen Macpherson of Cluny, painting in the
Clan Macpherson  museum in Newtonmore.

Me.  Can you see the resemblance?

The last thing she told me was that Geraldine Swift, a relative from the Stanton/Burke line, did quite a bit of genealogy research years back.  According to Mary, she had discovered that one of the Burkes in the family was a murderer!  I immediately thought of William Burke, one of the infamous serial killer duo, Burke & Hare.  They notoriously killed vagrants and sold their bodies to the anatomy lecturers at the medical school of my very own University of Edinburgh.  Hare turned "King's Evidence" (i.e. he squealed) and Burke was publicly hanged in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh.  Burke's body was then dissected in the same anatomy lectures to which he had so faithfully supplied bodies.  In, what seems to me, the sickest turn of all, they then made a leather pocketbook out of his skin, which is still on display at the Surgeon's Hall Museum, just up the street from where I live!

As dark as this story is, I almost hope I'm connected in some way.  It might be my one chance at a claim to fame (or infamy, rather).  Again, I think it's improbable, but I'll certainly look into it.  Specifically, I'm going to try to track down who might have Geraldine's papers today - she has since passed away.  That could be a real gold mine of information, since she's several generations closer to those she would have been researching.

A "portrait" of William Burke,
housed in the Surgeon's Hall Museum, Edinburgh

UPDATE:  I wrote earlier that Mary was one of the children of John and Mary McPherson that disappears after the 1880 census and that I suspected that she had married and taken a different name (rather than move west and become a prostitute!).  I had forgotten that I'd already found a notice of her death in 1881.  That's a good reminder that I'll need to be sure the others were still living before I go on a big search for them in the West.

Death Notice for Mary McPherson (1853-1881)

Death Certificate

Recently, I wrote that I was pretty sure I'd located records of my McPherson ancestors in Scotland.  I found two birth records and a marriage record that fit the names and ages of the four that originally emigrated.  The records showed that Mary McPherson had been Mary Johnston before marriage and that they lived in Paisley.  Since all the names were so common, though, I wanted to locate a record to corroborate what I had found.  Mary's US death record, I suggested, would indicate her maiden name and confirm the connection.

I managed to track down a death record, but it was lacking the information I needed.  Apparently the person who reported the death did not know Mary's parents' names.

Death Record:  11 June 1887

This was quite disappointing because it can't confirm what I had hoped it would.  Of course, it doesn't refute it either.  In fact, there's nothing on the death record to know that is actually the correct Mary McPherson either (it's not signed by John or any of the children and the address isn't the one that shows up on the US census records, although it is just around the corner).  An obituary for the same date would have more information, but I haven't located one yet.  All I managed to find was a Report of Death that is rather unhelpful for such common names.

Report of Death:  11 June 1887

On further consideration of the Scottish birth and marriage records, however, I am fairly certain they are the correct ones.  The names and ages of 4 people match, which despite the common names would be rather unusual.  I'm confident it's them, so I'll pursue it further, but I'll still keep trying to find more evidence to support it.

As just a start, I've already found John and Mary on Scotland's 1851 census.  John was a "Draper's Assistant" and born in Linlithgow, not 20 miles from where I currently live in Edinburgh.  He must have moved to the Glasgow area and met Mary because the census puts them at 25 Gauze St in Paisley.

1851 Census

Machute

Just came across this old photo. It's a good one.

The Gorbals

Two weekends ago I took a walk around The Gorbals in Glasgow, where my Lithuanian relatives first settled after arriving in Scotland.  Nothing of the neighborhood they would have known remains.  The area has been the target of urban redevelopment, twice now.  Only a small part of the street they lived on still exists.  The rest is buried under fairly new looking apartment buildings.

By my estimation, this building sits on top of where my family once lived.

They lived at 178 Rose St, which became 178 Florence St while they were still
 living there, and eventually was mostly built over with new apartment
 buildings.

I found an old map, dated 1896, that shows the neighborhood largely as it would have been when they arrived, around 1900.  It's incredible to see just how dramatically the place has been altered.  The old tenement buildings have been completely removed and some of the street names have been changed.

South Glasgow, 1896

Gorbals, 1911

Side-by-side, 1896 and 2012.  Notice that not just physical human histories
(buildings, etc) were erased in redevelopment, but also cultural ones.
Shamrock Street was re-named Pine Place, undoubtedly in an attempt to
remove all traces that this used to be a hotbed of Irish Republicanism.

In visiting this place, I couldn't help but feel a sense of injustice in the way it looked.  The neighborhood had been unsafe and filthy, by all accounts, but it was all they had.  It was a working class neighborhood filled with immigrants, mostly Irish Catholics and "Russian" Jews, but also a fair number of other eastern Europeans like my ancestors.  These people came to Scotland with virtually nothing, leaving their homes and their families behind.  They labored in the factories and mines for dismal pay and often in deadly conditions.  But at the end of the day, they had little to show for it.  Fortunes were made, but the workers saw none of it.

Gorbals, 1950s

Gorbals

In boom times, they could survive, but each time bust inevitably came, they lost everything.  Factory and mine owners could weather the storms on accumulated wealth, but the workers were abandoned.  Without a daily wage, desperation comes quick.  Urban decay leads to violence and crime and, soon enough, a place like the Gorbals gets a reputation.

The greatest injustice of all, however, is that it is the people themselves - including my ancestors - that shoulder the blame for it all.  The Lithuanian immigrants were described in this way in a newspaper editorial from 1900 (cited here):

They are most filthy in their habits of life, being a source of danger to the health of the community with their primitive ideas of order and cleanliness... They are fearfully intemperate in their habits [and] appeal to the knife... They are in short a most barbarous people and ... we seem to have the very scum of their nation.

But I just can't accept that the blame was attributable to the people themselves being somehow intrinsically different from everybody else.  In reality, the problem is rooted in unfair pay and uneven distribution of wealth.  It is a social problem stemming from broader inequity, not the result of personal failings and individual shortcomings!  They are the victims of social injustice, not simply the perpetrators of crime.

But this understanding is too complex, too nuanced for it to be picked up readily by those without some knowledge of the longer history of a place.  It is far easier to fault those most immediately associated with the problem.  So those in power sell the solution of redevelopment:  move the people out, tear down their crumbling homes, and put something clean and productive up in their place.

Injustice is what I see when I look at a place like the Gorbals.  Human histories have been wiped away.  Hard working people have been exploited and abandoned, and worst of all, they have been blamed for all that has happened.  I only wish the older generations of my Lithuanian-Scottish relatives were still living so that I could hear from them, firsthand, about what happened there.