Springburn Burns Club

Overview

Springburn is a district in the north of the city. (For more information on this area, see Gilbert T. Bell’s, ‘Second City of The Empire: 1830s to 1914. Neighbourhoods: Springburn‘ on The Glasgow Story website.)

There is very little currently known about this Burns club. The only information we have to date comes from a mention of the group in the Memorial Catalogue of the Burns Exhibition (1898), and a record of the President of the club attending a meeting held in London in 1885 to launch the Burns Federation.

The Annual Burns Chronicle and Club Directory offers few details. The 1893 issue only lists the then current office bearers. Later issues add only slightly to this. The group was of a relatively modest size, with 37 members on the roll in 1898, and 40 members in 1904, making it a rather stable club. In 1905, the club met at T. D. Wilson’s Rooms (this may have been a pub), located at 771 Springburn Road.

Date of Existence

1885?-? 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 (MLSC, Mitchell (AL), 14A MEM 472108);

2. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies for 1893’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. II (Kilmarnock: D. Brown & Co., Glasgow and Edinburgh: J. Menzies & Co., January 1893), p. 191;

3. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1898’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. VII (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1898), p. 137;

4. ‘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. 137;

5. ‘Directory of Burns Clubs and Scottish Societies on the Roll of the Burns Federation, 1905’, in BC, ed. by D. M’Naught, No. XIV (Kilmarnock: Burns Federation, January 1905), p. 148;

6. ‘The Burns Federation’, Grand Lodge of Scotland <http://grandlodgescotland.com/index.php/masonic-subjects/masonic-articles/376-the-burns-federation> [accessed 23/09/15]

Repository

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

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

Reference Number

(See Source of Information, and below for Annual Burns Chronicle)

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. Copies are available at the Mitchell Library Special Collections and the National Library of Scotland. Many of these 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.