The man who provided the ‘beating heart of Glasgow’
WHEN I am asked what my favourite building is in the centre of Glasgow, I never hesitate to reply, the Mitchell Library.
Dating from 1911, it is both an iconic piece of magnificent architecture and a repository of knowledge like no other, and for old-fashioned romantics like myself it is the beating heart of Glasgow, keeper of the city’s memories and guardian of Glaswegian culture.
It is also a mecca for those who want to know about so many great Scots such as Robert Burns, while it also holds the archives that tell the tales of many citizens of Glasgow and their often-inspiring activities down the centuries.
The library is named after the man who left a colossal sum of money to Glasgow specifically for the purpose of creating his eponymous library – and he insisted his family name be used.
Stephen Mitchell was a visionary who believed a library should be for public usage so that people could educate themselves, just as he had largely done throughout his long life.
Mitchell was born on September 19, 1789, to a tobacco merchant in Linlithgow.
He was educated at the town’s grammar school but did not go on to university.
Instead, he was apprenticed to a merchant in Leith for four years before joining the family firm in 1809, which he took control of when his father died in 1820. Mitchell moved the expanding firm to Glasgow in 1825 and he became one of the city’s most successful tobacco merchants, amassing a considerable fortune before he retired in 1859 to live in Moffat where he died from a fall at the age of 84 on April 21, 1874.
Having never married and with no children, and his brother Nelson also having gained the hand of his great love Isabella Cameron, in his will Mitchell left provisions for his family and friends and charities he supported, but the vast bulk of his estate went to a trust deed for the establishment and maintenance of a large public library in Glasgow. Canny negotiator that he was in life, Mitchell said in death that Glasgow Town Council had to accept the astonishing bequest of just shy of £67,000 – more than £8 million in today’s terms – within six months or else the money was to go to Edinburgh. In swiftly accepting the donation, Glasgow Town Council agreed to Mitchell’s legal terms: “That the library was to be known as The Mitchell Library; that the amount of the bequest was to be allowed to remain at interest until it amounted to £70,000, or if thought necessary a larger sum, before a commencement was made; that in the selection of books to form the library, no books should be excluded on the ground that they contravene present opinions on politics or religion; that the library should be freely open to the public under suitable regulations; that contributions of money or of books might be accepted; and that collections of books might be kept together and known by the donor’s or other distinctive name.”
The council rapidly set up a committee and for once the municipal officers really rose to the task, recommending a “classless” library for all the people, and a scheme that would enable many more books to be bought, while envisaging a large building to house it.
Pledges of donations of entire collections of books poured in and the first Mitchell Library was opened in Ingram Street in 1877 by Lord Provost Sir James Bain.
It was soon clear that a bigger building was needed as its collections expanded quickly, and Liverpool-born Mitchell librarian and later overall city librarian Francis Thornton Barrett was in charge when the Mitchell moved to 21 Miller Street, being opened by the Marquess of Bute on October 7, 1891.
Glasgow’s library service was rapidly expanding under Barrett, and he also knew the Mitchell Library needed a much larger home. Glasgow Corporation, as the council had become, was up to the task and a competition to design the new library was won in 1905 by William B Whitie.
His first design did not include the great dome and TJ Clapperton’s statue Literature – not Minerva as she is often called – but Whitie added these to complete his masterwork.
Dunfermline-born Andrew Carnegie, the world’s richest man, was then in the library-providing phase of his philanthropy, and he made a sizeable contribution to the
The library is the keeper of the city’s memories and guardian of our culture
costs of the new building on North Street near Charing Cross, laying the foundation stone in September 1907.
After four years of construction and the transfer of hundreds of thousands of items, the Mitchell Library was opened by former prime minister, the 5th Earl of Rosebery, on October 16, 1911.
Popular from the outset, with its collection of more than 1.2 million items, the Mitchell Library remains one of the largest public libraries in Europe and is the hub of Glasgow’s library service to this day.
The thorny issue of the library being linked to slavery has been aired many times in recent years.
There have even been suggestions that the library, in common with other streets called after merchants who made their wealth from slave labour, should be renamed.
I maintain that changing names is changing history. You cannot do that and we should not even contemplate it.
Furthermore, because Mitchell legally ensured it would be called the Mitchell Library, it would take a massive court case to overturn that provision.
Instead let’s make sure that people know exactly how Scotland and Glasgow benefitted from slavery, not least because oppression of people for economic gain in many forms of slavery still continues to this day across the globe.
I would argue that no public institution in Glasgow, with the possible exception of the university, has done more to educate people about the city’s links to slavery than the Mitchell Library.
It should continue this service and its name should remain, but people must be told the truth about its origins.
As I stated, the library opened in 1911, and that was a seminal year in the history of Glasgow. Find out why next week.