Victorian Dundee

|Victorian Dundee | | ||Jute, Jam & Journalism | | ||[pic] | | |

Towards the end of the Victorian era, Dundee was famous for its three Js –Jute, Jam and Journalism.

Factsheet • Jute

In the 18th century the city was already an established centre of textile production, mainly in linen, and made huge quantities of sail cloth for Europe. By the 1830s, jute was produced to supplement linen production and gradually took over until the city became known as ‘Juteopolis’. The rapid rise in the industry was matched by the growth in population: Dundee expanded fourfold in the 19th century and 50,000 people were employed in the mills and factories at its height. Jute production declined in the 1920s mainly due to fierce competition from the Indian jute industry. The Dundee industry is now completely gone and the city has suffered badly as a result.

• The Verdant Works is a restored 19th century jute mill and a living history

museum preserving Dundee’s long association with the Jute Trade. Find out

about the beginnings of the jute trade in India, experience the harsh

conditions workers were subjected to in the mills through film shows and

interactive computers, and discover why the industry fell into decline.

• Jam

The story goes that it was a Dundee woman, Janet Keillor, who discovered

marmalade in the late 1700s. She came upon the recipe through trying to

find a use for bitter Seville oranges. Her recipe was developed by her son,

James Keillor, who opened Keillor’s factory, famous the world over for

producing jams and marmalades.

• Journalism

DC Thomson, publishers of The Beano, The Dandy, The Sunday Post and the People’s Friend, was established in 1905 and still employs around 2000 people to this day. The home of Dennis the Menace and the Bash Street Kids is the Courier Building, headquarters of DC Thomson on the

west side of Albert Square.

• Albert Square itself has the grandest Albert Memorial outside London, built by the city’s merchants and industrialists in 1867. Beside the memorial is the McManus Galleries, the city’s main museum and Art Gallery.

• Dundee was also a major centre of the whaling industry in Victorian times and whale oil was used in jute production to soften the jute fibres before weaving. This became less viable by the late 19th century when excessive hunting exhausted the Arctic’s whale stocks. • Dundee’s expertise in constructing whaling ships that could withstand extreme weather conditions led to it becoming the ‘City of Discovery’. In 1899 the National Antarctic Expedition Committee commissioned the Dundee Shipbuilding Company to construct an adapted whaler: the Royal Research Ship, Discovery. In March 1901 the ship was launched, taking Captain Scott on his first voyage to the Antarctic. The ship is still in Dundee today at Discovery Point, where the story is told of Captain Scott’s polar expeditions, including the ill-fated attempt of 1910.

• The other landmark which dominates the city of Dundee is her bridge over the Tay. The Tay Rail Bridge was opened in 1878 and was the longest bridge in the world on completion at over two miles long. It was a mammoth undertaking and cost a massive £300,000 to build. However, in December of the same year, the centre of the bridge collapsed during a storm while a train was crossing – 75 people were killed. An enquiry found the bridge had serious design faults. Incredibly, girders from the collapsed bridge were salvaged and used in the construction of a new railway bridge, which was completed in 1887. You can still see the piers of the original bridge beside its replacement today.Dundee, Scotland

Scotland’s fourth-largest city is tied to the nation’s mythic charactersincluding William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and Mary Stuart, Queen of

Scots. The town’s fame is defined as “The Three Js”: jute, jam andjournalism. Jute was milled here and an award-winning museum memorializesits heyday. Jam refers to Janet Keiller’s famous marmalade created in 1797after a ship laden with Seville oranges wrecked here. The company stillmakes marmalade in white-glass jars. Journalism also still thrives in theD.C. Thomson publishing firm. In the 19th century, ship-building andwhaling were important industries. Captain Scott’s Antarctic ship RRSDiscovery was built here and is now a museum

Dundee

The City of Discovery

Dundee was historically famous for three things: Jam, Jute and Journalism.Whilst the first two remain a mere memory and the third is now onlyrepresented by D.C. Thomson, there is much more to this city now, whichwill spark interest for the visitor.

You can approach the city from the south passing Perth and through centralScotland, or from the East over one of the two impressive bridges whichspan the “Silvery Tay”. One is a road bridge built in the 1970’s and theother is a rail bridge which was rebuilt after the famous rail disaster of1879. Using either of these bridges will expose you to a impressive firstlook at the city. Having travelled through the rolling and windingcountryside of Fife, your first sight of Scotland’s fourth largest citywill show up against the dramatic backdrop of the twin hills of Balgay andLaw. These hills provide not only an impressive backdrop but are probablyone of the first places you should visit, providing as they do, a stunningpanoramic view of the city below.Once you have entered the City, you will notice that whilst the greatindustrial days are now gone, the City still celebrates its bygone era. No

visitor to the city can leave without hearing the term “3 Js” used orwithout visiting or seeing evidence of this former glory. The associationwith jute is all around, the mighty chimney “stacks” tower over you,serving as a very clear reminder of the heavy industry which was widespreadin the city. You can visit one of these former mills – the Verdant Works.Or you can just marvel at the remaining architecture which clearly showsthe former mill sites.The jam reference started when James Keiller (a Dundee grocer) bought acargo of Seville oranges very cheaply from a Spanish ship sheltering from astorm in Dundee harbour. However they were so bitter that he couldn’t sellthem and his wife, Janet, very cleverly made them into a jam rather thanwaste them. International fame and fortune for her family and descendantsfollowed, who still make it today.The final “J” is that of journalism. The City is home to a great traditionof journalism and two of its most famous “residents” – Desperate Dan andDenis the Menace – were created for Dundee-based DC Thomson’s comics andpapers. D.C. Thomson is still in business and you can still buy theirnewspapers such as the Dundee Courier, the Sunday Post and the Weekly Newsall around the world.This Victorian industrial boom not only created a rich industrial heritagebut left the city’s public art collections and museums generously endowedwith gifts from wealthy citizens. Again there are relics of this today andif you visit one of the many museums and galleries around the City you willfind a wealth of interesting and historical exhibits.One of the most famous museums is in fact an old sailing ship. The RRSDiscovery was built in Dundee around 1900 and its claim to fame was when ittook Captain Scott on his Antarctic expedition. The ship has now returnedto where it started its journey and after restoration, it is now open tothe public for viewing. The ship and its history is well documented on itsquite magnificent ,but the sensation of actually standing on the ship isquite magical.This history apart, the modern Dundee has much to be proud of – a recentquality of life survey among UK cities ranked Dundee head and shouldersabove many of the rest, despite some unfair criticism and “jokes” from someof Scotland’s comedians. Its clean air renowned to be low in pollution,“sunshine hours” and drier climate provides quite literally a breath offresh air for visitors.The City centre it could be argued is a shopper’s paradise, where majordepartment stores co-exist with specialist shops tucked away in sidestreets. You will be seduced by the tempting aromas emanating from some ofthe UK’s finest bakers and if you step inside you can sample deliciousbridies, speciality pies, tempting butteries and the famous “Dundee Cake”.The City also has a major student population and because of this if you arelooking for nightlife you will be well catered for with a lively pub andclub scene.If “clubbing” is not really your thing then you also have choices that anymodern city will provide you with. There is “The Rep” theatre and othersmaller theatres producing an extensive programme of high calibre events.The newest addition to this cultural side is the Contemporary Arts Centre,which opened in 1999.Sport is also a major contributor to entertainment in the City. Whilst thefootball teams may not be as well known as say Glasgow Rangers or Celtic,the rivalry (although relatively friendly) is almost as bitter. If you can,soak up the atmosphere in a local derby game. Other sports are well cateredfor with a large municipal sports centre and a plethora of local golfcourse of a good standard.Taking everything into consideration Dundee is certainly a city worthdiscovering.

|[pic] ||Dundee from the East |

Dundee is Scotland’s fourth-largest city and lies on the north bank of theTay estuary. A city with an ancient history, Dundee has had to rebuild andreinvent itself three times in the last 350 years. It sees in the thirdmillennium as it emerges from its most recent period of regeneration, andwith a confidence not felt since the end of the 1800s.|[pic] ||Discovery Point ||[pic] ||Desperate Dan ||[pic] ||Dundee & the River Tay |

Dundee was probably used as a supply base by the Romans during their briefspell in Northern Scotland after AD 83 (see our Historical Timeline). Itcertainly seems to have existed as a port the following century under thename Deeuana.By 1180 a town was well established on the north bank of the Tay here, andin the 1200s a small harbour was built. In 1239 a school was established inDundee, with an early pupil being William Wallace. Wallace returned in 1297to capture Dundee Castle, built on Black Rock, just to the west of the endof the modern Tay Road Bridge. The castle was repaired by Edward I, only tobe completely destroyed by Robert the Bruce in 1312.The 1300s and 1400s saw the steady growth of Dundee, fuelled largely bytrade with Baltic ports. Town walls were built in 1545, but they did littleto protect Dundee from the English fleet, who bombarded the town in 1547,destroying much of it. The town suffered again in September 1644 when theMarquis of Montrose and his Royalist forces besieged it.

Worse followed during the Civil War. General Monk, commanding Cromwell’sforces in Scotland, captured Dundee on 1 September 1651, and his troopsspent a week pillaging the town and killing up to 2,000 of Dundee’s 12,000inhabitants. Most of Dundee was destroyed in the process, as were 60 of theships owned by the town’s merchants.It took a century for Dundee to rebuild and recover, and its population in1755 was little more than it had been in 1651. Meanwhile it was common tosee buildings in Dundee in which gable ends and stair towers from destroyedbuildings projected well above the poorly rebuilt structures attached tothem. The second half of the 1700s saw the city start to grow again, andthe population more than doubled as imported flax started to fuel a linenindustry. Meanwhile the harbour was improved, and four whaling ships beganto operate from Dundee.The city is known for being built on “Jute, Jam and Journalism”. 1797 sawJames Keiller & Son set up a jam factory in Dundee, while in 1801 theDundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser was established.|[pic] ||Ornate Stone Stairs ||[pic] ||Clydesdale Bank ||[pic] ||Claypotts Castle |

By 1835 Dundee had 36 steam powered flax spinning mills, employing asignificant proportion of the 40,000 population. Meanwhile life expectancyin this heavily polluted city had shrunk to 32 years, just two-thirds ofthe average in Scotland at the time. 1835 also saw the first imports ofjute from India, which then started to replace European flax for carpetbacking and for sacks: important in a world in which almost everything wascarried in sacks.Railways and trams arrived in the mid 1800s, and by 1860 Dundee wasproducing vast quantities of linen for sailcloth and jute for sacks. Inthat year the textile industry employed over 35,000 people out of a totalpopulation of just over 90,000. Meanwhile James Keiller of Dundee was

successfully selling marmalade made from Seville oranges in the Londonmarket.By 1870, Dundee was a chaotic and squalid city that had grown to no centralplan. Its second reinvention came with the 1871 City Improvement Act, whichswept away most of what had gone before and replaced it with an imposingVictorian city centre, much of which remains on view today. 1878 saw thebuilding of the Tay Rail Bridge, which collapsed with the loss of 75 livesthe following year and was replaced in 1887. And by 1870s Dundee was themain British whaling port, being home to 10 steam whalers.Jute went into a long decline from 1914, mostly because it could beprocessed more cheaply in India. Its final demise in Dundee came in the1960s. Meanwhile a shipbuilding industry that had produced, amongst manyothers, the RRS Discovery, finally came to an end in 1961. In the same yearthe steamer service from Dundee to London ceased.Dundee’s third regeneration probably began in the 1960s, with thecompletion of the Tay Road bridge in 1966 and the opening to the public in1968 of HMS Unicorn, the oldest British built warship still afloat. Andalthough the 1980s saw the final demise of jam and marmalade manufacturingin the city, they also saw the return of Scott of the Antarctic’s ship, RRSDiscovery, to the city of its birth. And also on the bright side, D.C.Thomson has remained in the city as a force in newspaper and magazinepublishing.Today’s Dundee has a great deal to offer the visitor. The city centre hasan excellent range of shops and some fine buildings. And the city’s past iscelebrated in a number of ways. These include Discovery Point, where RRSDiscovery is on view, and the Verdant Works, one of Dundee’s best know jutemills recreated to reflect the everyday experience of so many pastDundonians.