Why a Booktrail?
Largest city in Scotland, city of culture and also a city with a dark side
Glasgow’s Black Heart: A City’s Life of Crime
What you need to know before your trail
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland. It is a city of culture, of impressive architecture, enterprise and endeavour, and is one of warm-hearted, generous people. But it also has a dark side.
Beneath the busy streets, the Victorian sandstone and urban trendiness lies a black heart that beats in rhythm with the roar of the traffic and the echo of footsteps on concrete. It is a black heart pumped by greed and lust, violence and murder. And it has beaten since the city first sprang up on that dear, green place on the banks of the Molendinar Burn. This is the epic story of Glasgow crime.
Travel Guide
This is a true life tour of the city’s criminal background
In 1624 Glasgow’s Tolbooth was built at Glasgow Cross to house the courts and town jail. Since then the city has seen its fair share of crime and criminal activities.
Douglas Skelton has painstakingly traced the city’s criminal past from when the first paid police force in Britain was created to the formation of the city’s own High Court of Justiciary.
Some dates on the tour:
1811 – the first Great Bank Robbery in chapter one
1765- 1800 – The greatest growth in the city and with it a wave of crime in the Tolbooth area of the city. The Tolbooth buildings were erected in 1626. All that is left of them now is the 113 ft high steeple with its four dial clock. Impressive today, imagine what it could have been like in the seventeeth century!
1818 – Glasgow Green hides a grim past.
Streetview Maps
C) Glasgow - Glasgow Green and People's Palace
C) Glasgow - Tolbooth Steeple
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Glasgow’s Black Heart: A City’s Life of Crime
Author/ Guide: Douglas Skelton Destination: Glasgow Departure Time: 1600s onwards
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