A unique, augmented reality experience will soon be available to experience in Glasgow. Audiences will be invited to download a bespoke app, to plug in their headphones, and immerse themselves in this poetic storytelling experience, where a young man in 18th Century Glasgow, leads us on an atmospheric journey of over 500 years of resistance through the streets of the Merchant City down to the … Continue reading Ghosts: an impassioned call to remember
Many objects in Glasgow Museums’ collection bear witness to Scots’ participation in slavery during the 1700-1800s. A copy of the Grenada Free Press and Public Gazette, published on 27 August 1828, is one such example. The pages are faded and yellow now, but the words printed on the back page speak loud and clear. Among adverts for handkerchiefs, crackers, socks, candles, hams and horses, two … Continue reading A Free Press but not a Free People
In the summer of 1770, a sixteen-year-old enslaved boy named Boyd escaped from his master in Glasgow. This advertisement was placed in the Glasgow Journal by James Kippen, who had been the master of a ship named Lady Margaret which had left Greenock for Virginia in January of 1770. It was not uncommon for ship captains and officers to own enslaved boys and men who … Continue reading Boyd, an Enslaved African in Glasgow
In February 1727 Dr Gustavus Brown placed this advertisement in The Edinburgh Evening Courant: RUN away on the 7th Instant from Dr. Gustavus Brown’s Lodgings in Glasgow, a Negro Woman, named Ann, being about 18 Years of Age, with a green Gown and a Brass Collar about her Neck, on which are engraved these Words [“Gustavus Brown in Dalkieth his Negro, 1726.”] Whoever apprehends her, … Continue reading Gustavus Brown’s Runaway Slave
In 1750 a Scottish merchant in Virginia named Robert Shedden purchased an enslaved boy named Jamie for £56. Two years later Shedden sent the young boy back to Scotland where he would be apprenticed to Shedden’s brother-in-law, a carpenter named Robert Morrice who lived in Shedden’s home town of Beith, Ayrshire. Shedden intended to profit by this, for he would eventually have Jamie sent back … Continue reading Jamie Montgomery, Runaway Slave
The portrait of John Glassford and family in the People’s Palace Museum in Glasgow is the most famous portrait of one the city’s most successful tobacco merchants. It also attracts attention because of the rare image of the Glassford’s enslaved black boy. Glasgow Museums has never attempted to cover him up, but without knowing more about him what should he be called? What should similar … Continue reading Enslaved Black Boys
Legacies of Slavery in Glasgow Museums and Collections 