Overview
This Burns club was of a (purposefully) moderate size, limiting its membership to 40 in 1894, and expanding this only slightly to 50 in 1897. According to the 1904 Annual Burns Chronicle and Club Directory, it was a ‘social’ club that met on the ‘last Friday of February, March, April, September, October, November, and December, at 8 o’clock’.
The group changed the venue for their meetings several times in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: in 1895, they met at the Cobden Hotel (87 Argyle Street), two years later at Mr [Malcolm] M’Culloch’s (wine and spirit merchant, 13 Maxwell Street), in 1904 at M’Culloch’s Argyle Street premises, in 1908 at the National Burns Club (93 Douglas Street), and finally, in 1914, at Ferguson and Forrester’s (purveyors and wine merchants, 36 Buchanan Street). All of these were centrally located in the city.
Date of Existence
1872-present. Federated 1886
Source of Information
1. Memorial Catalogue of the Burns Exhibition. Held in the Galleries of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, 175 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, From 15th July till 31st October, 1896 (Glasgow: William Hodge & Company and T. & R. Annan & Sons, 1898), p. xv;
2. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies, for 1892’, in BC, ed. by John Muir, No. I (Kilmarnock: D. Brown & Co., 25 January 1892), p. 130;
3. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1894’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. III (Kilmarnock: D. Brown & Co., February 1894), p. 194;
4. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1895’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. IV (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1895), p. 175;
5. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1897’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. VI (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation; January 1897), p. 151;
6. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1904’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. XIII (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1904), p. 138;
7. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1908’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. XVII (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1908), p. 131;
8. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1914’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. XXIII (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1914), pp. 202-3;
9. Glasgow Haggis Club <https://www.facebook.com/glasgowhaggisclub> [accessed 23/09/15];
10. ‘Glasgow Haggis Club’, Glasgow and District Burns Association <http://www.robertburns.plus.com/Association.htm#Haggis> [accessed 23/09/15];
11. ‘Donations’, Jean Armour Burns Trust <http://www.jeanarmourburnstrust.co.uk/Donations.html> [accessed 23/09/15]
Repository
Mitchell Library Special Collections (MLSC)
National Library of Scotland (NLS)
Reference Number
Mitchell (AL) 14A MEM 472108 (MLSC) (Memorial Catalogue)
BNS19BUR (MLSC) (Annual Burns Chronicle)
General Reading Room (stored offsite), Y.233, available no. 1-34 25th Jan. 1892-Jan. 1925 (NLS) (Annual Burns Chronicle)
Additional Notes
‘BC‘ refers to the Annual Burns Chronicle and Club Directory, which was published yearly since 1892. Hard copies are available at the Mitchell Library Special Collections and the National Library of Scotland. Many of them have been digitised and are available through the Robert Burns World Federation website: http://www.rbwf.org.uk/digitised-chronicles/.
This list of Burns chronicles as sources of information gives the first year the club was included in the chronicle, and thereafter only for the years where the information is different from the previous year’s listing. In keeping with the scope of this study (1800-1914), only the chronicles published between 1892 and 1914 are included.