Youthfulness of yesteryear

The experiences of people growing up in Dundee over the past century feature prominently in a new BBC Scotland documentary. Michael Alexander reports.

Youngsters in Scotland have had a lot to contend with over the past 100 years, including poverty and war.

Now, a new three-part BBC Scotland documentary – Growing Up in Scotland: A Century of Childhood – reflects on how childhood itself has changed remarkably since the dawn of the last century.

Using archive footage, old pictures and contributions from a range of people, the series explores how children went from being “seen but not heard” to the modern day, when they are the very centre of their parents’ lives.

It also looks back on how Scottish politicians, churches and charities treated youngsters, in particular the country’s most vulnerable children.

And memories of old Dundee are peppered throughout the series along with contemporary footage and the first episode, being screened on Thursday, features a section devoted to the city’s Morgan Academy, where the English department has incorporated the Scots language in its lessons.

It features contributions from Newport-based broadcaster and Scots language expert Billy Kay.

Dundee will also figure prominently in the second episode, which has its emphasis on home.

In the first decades of the 20th Century many Scottish children lived in poverty but enjoyed the freedom to roam as far as their imagination – and the local trams – would take them.

Central to this were the comics of the 1930s, particularly DC Thomson’s Broons. However, it also features the deprived living conditions in Scotland’s inner cities.

Historian and author Eddie Small pays testament to that before a class of children at Blackness Primary in Dundee. Eddie said: “The mothers were going back to work within certainly a fortnight of having babies and they were working 12 hour days, so they couldn’t go home to feed the baby.

“So the baby would be fed by a neighbour possibly or a hard-pressed grannie or even fathers who had taken on the job.”

The moral welfare of many children in poor conditions was seen as a role for the Scottish churches. Scotland’s largest religious youth organisation was the Boys Brigade.

Stuart Cunningham was with the fifth Dundee Company of the Boys Brigade. Now a pipe major, who leads a band in Bellfield, he tells the programme he believes those early years with the brigade instilled discipline in many of the local children.

Welfare is the focus of the third and final episode, which reveals a growing concern during the Second World War about criminality among children. It features a film, shot entirely in Dundee, to address the problem.

Commissioned by the Scottish Office, Children of the City was made in 1944 for an international audience by pioneering left wing director Bridget – or “Budge” – Cooper.

At the time one out of every 10 crimes in Scotland were committed by under17s and the narrator of the film declares: “The work of war makes it a hard job to keep children out of mischief.”

The fictional film opens with three lads breaking into a pawnbroker’s shop and larking about, trying on clothes and hats until they are discovered by the police.

It then follows them to juvenile court, with one of the younger ones being sent to one of Scotland’s new guidance clinics, while another older boy, who has been in trouble before, is taken out of his home to an approved school.

Above left: Four stills from Children of the City, filmed in Dundee during the Second World War. Top right: Eddie Small and below, Stuart Cunningham, who feature in Growing up In Scotland.