Shawfield School

Shawfield is an industrial/commercial area of the Royal Burgh of Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, located to the north of the town centre. It is bordered to the east by the River Clyde, to the north by the Glasgow neighbourhood of Oatlands and the adjacent Richmond Park, to the south-west by Glasgow's Polmadie and Toryglen districts, and to the south-east by Rutherglen's historic Main Street and its Burnhill neighbourhood, although it is separated from these southerly areas by the West Coast Main Line railway tracks and the M74 motorway. A road bridge connects Shawfield to the Dalmarnock, Bridgeton and Glasgow Green areas.

Shawfield is a familiar name to many Scottish sports fans, as the stadium of that name is the national venue for greyhound racing and the former home of Clyde F.C.

Early history

Documentation states that in 1611 the estate of Shawfield was in the hands of the family of Claud Hamilton. His grandson James Hamilton was forced to sell the estate and it was later possessed by the Member of Parliament and tobacco lord Daniel Campbell in 1707. He built a mansion in the centre of Glasgow also named Shawfield, but this was destroyed in a tax-related riot in 1725. Campbell received compensation from Glasgow for the mansion as city officials were found to have encouraged the rioting mob. He used this money to buy the entire island of Islay which his family held for over a century. Shawfield in Rutherglen also remained a possession of the Campbell family (including Walter Campbell of Shawfield) until 1788.

In 1821, Shawfield House was listed as the place of death of noted chemist Robert Cleghorn, who may have been there in connection with the fledgling business of that nature described below.

J & J White Chemicals

J & J White Chemicals, also referred to as Shawfield Chemical Works, was established in 1820 by brothers James and John White (each suffixed hereafter with 'I' for clarity as there were various 'J Whites' connected to the family enterprise) after a soap business on the same site, in which John White I was a partner from 1810, had failed. John White I had also purchased Shawfield estate and its policies including Shawfield House and Hayfield, and in the following years the business flourished, particularly in the manufacture of bichromate of potash, with their premises expanding over the previously rural estate.

Subsequently John White I’s sons, John White II and James White II, took over. With the family’s homes in Rutherglen now part of the chemical processing facility, in 1859 James White II purchased land near Dumbarton for a grand new mansion far from the atmosphere of the works: Overtoun House was built in 1862. By the time of James White II's death in 1884 the works employed 500 in Rutherglen and had an output similar to all other such businesses in Britain combined.

The ownership thereafter passed to the son of James White II, John White III and his cousin William James Chrystal.

Lord Overtoun and Keir Hardie

John White III was strongly religious and involved in numerous philanthropic concerns. He also became involved in politics and in 1893 became a peer in the House of Lords as Baron Overtoun, alternatively "Lord Overtoun", taking the name from his family’s estate. However his reputation for godliness and upstanding generosity was tarnished in 1899 by the figurehead of the Labour Movement, Keir Hardie, to whom the employees had turned for help regarding their situation after appeals to management and an attempted strike had proved unsuccessful.

Hardie produced a series of pamphlets entitled ''White Slaves: Chrome, Charity, Crystals and Cant'' describing in scathing terms the terrible working conditions and the demands on the workforce at Shawfield works – the pay was far lower than in comparable occupations of the time, and the owners demanded 12-hour shifts without a meal break and a seven-day working week (although in his other guise as a prominent churchman, Lord Overtoun campaigned for strict Sunday observance including the cessation of public transport for recreational purposes).

However the most damning evidence was linked to the effects on the workers’ health. Safety regulations introduced in 1893 had been ignored, and ineffective protective equipment in unventilated sheds left the employees exposed to the harmful chemical dust at all times. In the short term this led to widespread perforation of the septum in their noses and ‘chrome holes’ (ulcerations burnt into the flesh), as well as lung cancer, digestive disorders and skin diseases over longer periods. The exact number of workers affected is unknown due to unreliable figures and reluctance among authorities of the time to acknowledge and document any direct link between the chrome dust and the health dangers. The exposure to the dust was such that the workers were referred to locally as ‘White’s Dead Men’ or ‘White’s Canaries’ due to their bleached faces and yellow chrome dust-covered clothing. The pamphlets proved very popular and exposed the conditions at Whites works to the wider public. Another Glasgow tycoon of the day Thomas Lipton received similar treatment from Hardie in response to practices at his facilities.

According to the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'': "There was no effective rebuttal of the charges and Overtoun stood accused of hypocrisy, not least because his passionate sabbatarianism did not extend to closing his chemical works on Sundays. While Overtoun was somewhat distanced from the daily running of the Rutherglen works, it was impossible for him to escape some of the odium for conditions in a third-generation family firm of which he was sole proprietor."

Soon afterwards, improvements in the works were introduced, including baths and recreational facilities on-site, although the sanitary issues were addressed to a satisfactory standard only after a further damning report into Whites by the Medical Inspector of Factories Thomas Morison Legge