Floor cloth factory opens doors as Stirling soup kitchen folds

A factory manufacturing floor cloths was about to start operations in Stirling’s Abbey Road in premises vacated by Morton Carpet Manufacturing Company which had been taken over by Hayford and Cambusbarron Mills. The floor cloth company had received many applications for work from women recently discharged from the Army Ordnance Stores where staff numbers had been cut drastically.

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After being in existence for nearly half a century, Stirling Soup Kitchen Committee was dissolved and funds of almost £46 handed over to the town council to be used for the relief of the poor. The Observer of January 1920, said: ‘The soup kitchen committee did much good work in the old days when a hard winter rendered outdoor workers idle and caused considerable destitution. But state insurance against unemployment, high wages and other improved conditions have brought about a new order of things and done away with the need for soup kitchens.’

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Mr John Scott won £50, almost £2250 in today’s money, in a weekly ‘guess the football results’ competition. It was only the third time he had entered and he admitted knowing nothing about football. Mr Scott had served during World War One and was wounded three times. He was in Canada when the war broke out but returned home in 1915 and enlisted in the Gordon Highlanders with whom he fought in France.

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Thomas Kaney, a slate worker for Messrs William Milne and Co, 5 Upper Craigs, Stirling, and living in the town’s Bow Street, was taken to hospital after suffering abdominal injuries and shock following an accident at work. He was working on the roof of a building in a close at 18, St Mary’s Wynd, Stirling, when the ladder he was on slipped. He fell 12 feet into the close. At Stirling Royal Infirmary, he had two stitches in his right eye and was detained after complaining of severe abdominal pain.