What makes Glasgow remarkable is not its buildings. It is its people |
Walking past the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, I did a double take and stopped in my tracks. I had come from Boston to present a scientific paper at the SEC Armadillo and had been asked to chair one of the conference sessions. The sign outside the library read simply: Moir Auditorium. Family curiosity pulled me through the door.
While waiting for the librarian to bring James Moir's papers, I leafed through a book of famous Glaswegians. One name immediately caught my attention: Alexander Somerville. I live in Somerville, Massachusetts, and no one back home can say with confidence why my city bears that name.
Alexander Somerville was a starving journalist who took the King’s shilling to serve as a private in the Scots Greys. A generation after the Napoleonic Wars, young working men were demanding that all men - not just property owners - be allowed to vote. Somerville and fellow troopers were appalled by an order they assumed had been issued by the Duke of Wellington to rough-sharpen sabers to better tear flesh and quell the protesters. This was an order never given in battle against the French. As a matter of conscience, Somerville wrote to a newspaper: the Scots Greys “would be the last to degrade themselves below the dignity of British soldiers, in acting as the tools of the tyrant.”
Glasgow radical and Chartist James moir (Image: Mitchell Library)
Soldiers were permitted to write letters to newspapers. Furious, the government ordered Somerville to mount an unsaddled horse. He refused to obey and was discharged. The order to whip Somerville 200 lashes was unprecedented. He took the lashes like a good soldier. The Quarter Master stopped the whipping at fewer than 70 lashes to save Somerville’s life. Somerville was the toast of every working man’s pub. He refused to be identified or to take any credit. His action had been a matter of conscience. The published letter was anonymous. However, when suspicion fell on others, he took responsibility rather than allow an innocent comrade in arms to suffer. To Somerville, courage was not an act of........