Glasgow Primrose Burns Club

Overview

In 1910 (the earliest year for which we have any details on this club), members met in the Arcade Café (possibly Sloan’s Arcade Café, 109 Argyle Street), before meeting in the Alexandra Hotel (148 Bath Street, in the city centre) for the next two years. It is currently unknown how frequently they met or how many members there were for these years.

While in 1911, members met to enjoy ‘[m]usical evenings with Scotch readings, and [an] anniversary dinner to celebrate the Poet’s birthday’, interestingly, in 1914, the Annual Burns Chronicle and Club Directory records they met ‘[t]o promote the intellectual improvement of the members by means of essays, debates, and such other means as may be agreed upon’. The use of the term ‘improvement’ to describe a group’s activities had largely passed out of fashion by this point in time; it was more likely to be used to describe the activities of literary groups in the early to mid-nineteenth century.

(‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1911’, in Annual Burns Chronicle and Club Directory, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. XX (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1911), p. 178; ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1914’, in Annual Burns Chronicle and Club Directory, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. XXIII (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1914), pp. 223-24)

Date of Existence

1901-? Federated 1909

Source of Information

1. (Mentioned in Minutes of Glasgow and District Burns Club: Minute entry, 11 December 1907, Glasgow and District Burns Club, Minutes, 8 November 1907-5 September 1912, p. 9 (MLSC, 891709));

2. ‘Club Notes’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. XIX (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1910), p. 191;

3. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1911’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. XX (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1911), p. 178;

4. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1912’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. XXI (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1912), p. 182;

5. ‘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. 223-24

Repository

Mitchell Library Special Collections (MLSC) (Minutes, and Annual Burns Chronicle)

National Library of Scotland (NLS) (Annual Burns Chronicle)

Reference Number

891709 (MLSC) (Minutes)

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

See also Glasgow and District Burns Club.

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.