Poems & Thoughts About Housing in the 1870s.

This weeks ASDAN class at St Columba's involved a group discussion on housing conditions in the 1870s, around the time when Morton was formed, in Greenock and Inverclyde. The young people of S3 ASDAN class were then asked to write a short paragraph, or a poem about how they would feel about living in such conditions. Here are a few examples of what they had to say.


The Old Streets of Greenock were not at all nice,
Mostly everyone was riddled with lice.


From the slaughterhouse, blood would flow down the street,
Who only knows what would be stuck to your feet?


One man was hung in the Old West Kirk,
While immigrants were shipped in, looking for work.


I wouldn't like to live here and neither would you,
I mean would you like to have an outside loo?


By Shannon Docherty


In the olden days I don't think that it would be a good place to live because they were very poor places and there was very little technology. It was smelly, disgusting, dark and there were a lot of fights and sometimes they would drink alcohol because it was even cleaner than the water.


By Michael C


Old Days were hard
There was waste in the yard


Dirty old houses
Filled with mouses


Sewers in the street
All over your feet


Toilets made of card
Old Days were hard


By Connor King


I think it would be so different to live in the houses in 1874 because the things we take for granted are the things these people had to live without, like no electricity, sharing the same bath water, there could be up to fifteen people sharing a room with even just one bed. If I had to live in these conditions that I was not used to I really don't know how I would survive because everything is so different now in the modern days than from they were in the eighteen hundreds. Dirty, dark and smelly conditions are not what I would like to be living in.


By Gemma McConnell


As clean as a horse
As dirty as a rat
In Greenock you wouldn't
get better than that


Bogin wee waines
Jumping on trains
Getting to work
And back again
Smashed in the windows 
by bottles and bricks
little boys getting with sticks


Doing the toilet on the street
No shoes on your feet
Nothing to eat
So take nothing for granted
Be grateful and proud 
Of Old Greenock Town


By Reegan Kelly