No Mean City: The Classic Novel of the Glasgow Slum Underworld

by A. McArthur, H. Kingsley Long

No Mean City is a 1935 novel by Alexander McArthur, an unemployed worker, and H. Kingsley Long, a journalist. It is an account of life in the Gorbals, a run-down slum district of Glasgow (now mostly demolished, but re-built in a contemporary style) with the hard men and the razor gangs.Whatever its literary or other merits, for many years it was regarded as the definitive account of life in Glasgow, and its title became a byword.Its title is a quotation from the Bible, where Paul the Apostle says that he is a citizen of Tarsus, which is "no mean city".This tale of Glasgow gang lands is set in the inter-war period (1920s) and is a depiction of working class life for young and old, male and female and gives insight into both the private and public issues faced by the dwellers of the city.

Genres: Fiction, Scotland, Historical Fiction, Thriller, Historical, Classics, Crime

316 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mother and father emigrated from Glasgow, Scotland after the end of WWII, and when I was a child in the 1970s, I recall going back to the "old country" every year or so to visit relatives. Through my preadolescent American eyes, Glasgow looked like something out of another era. Coal was still being used for household heating, milk was still delivered in glass bottles, everybody smoked either pipes or cigarettes, and dirty-faced little boys ran around the streets selling papers. My grandfather, a veteran of WWI whose face bore disfiguring scars from a gas attack, lived in the Posilpark neighborhood. I recall feeling as though the area was quite safe and generally friendly. On our visits, my grandfather would take me on long walks all around Glasgow that would go on for hours and hours. I would complain, like the lazy, chubby little American boy that I was, but I nonetheless enjoyed accompanying him as he stopped and chatted with the people around the city and shared his days with me.

Despite my fond memories of visiting Glasgow as a youngster, I never became truly fascinated by its history and culture until the death of my mother a few years ago. Since then I have traveled with my wife to visit surviving relatives, and I have begun to develop an interest in literature and movies set in this city. It has been a bit of a surprise to me to find that my childhood memories bear very little resemblance to the image of Glasgow as it appears in a whole group of popular books and films. Whereas the Glasgow I remember was a quaint, safe, friendly and homey place, Glasgow as it is depicted in literature and film is typically vicious, gang-infested and dangerous. The book No Mean City is a prime example.

Written in 1935, No Mean City takes place in the notorious Gorbals neighborhood of Glasgow. The story chronicles the lives of Johnnie and Peter Stark, two brothers following divergent life paths, who nonetheless are fated by social circumstance to meet tragic ends. Johnnie becomes "Razor King" of the slums, fighting and slashing his way to fearsome notoriety among the local gangs. Peter, on the other hand, tries hard to work his way to respectability and to enter the middle class as a manager at a local warehouse. The book's message is quite nihilistic: no matter how hard these brothers try to distinguish themselves and to rise above their circumstances, they will ultimately fail and be swallowed up by the overwhelming forces that drag all "slum dwellers" back down to their place.

In many ways this book seems like a typical example of exploitative pulp fiction. It is filled with scenes of sex and violence and is written with a pronounced moralizing tone. There is very little subtlety in this novel, and the two authors make no secret of how pathetic and abject they think the main characters in the story really are. Take for instance this passage:

There is a twisted sense of 'fair play' among the lowest slum dwellers. The gangster who flaunts his mistresses cannot seriously blame his wife for taking a lover. He may cling to his rights; he may expect 'service'; but he cannot and does not expect fidelity.(p. 209)

The book's "slum dwellers" are depicted as people who waste their lives drinking, fornicating and fighting. They have become so cynical that they don't even experience feelings of jealously when their husbands or wives are unfaithful. This is all just part of life in the Gorbals slums. Even those characters like Peter who attempt to achieve respectability through hard work ultimately end up succumbing to their socialization, resorting to violence and drunkenness when things don't go their way. Everyone in this book is doomed either to be destroyed by others or to self-destruction.

Having made this observation, it is however true that No Mean City does have flashes of authentic psychological and existential insight. These insights, I think, transform the book into something more than mere exploitation.

Psychologically, the authors have successfully given voice to certain fears and struggles that all human beings encounter, whether slum dwellers or not. In particular, the issue of how a person cobbles together a sense of self-respect and establishes a social identity is given a patient and extended treatment in this novel. We are granted honest access to the inner thoughts of both Johnnie and Peter as they make the decisions that end up molding who they become over the course of the story. These decisions don't come easy, and in them I think any reader will be reminded of turning points in his or her own life. There is something very truthful when, for instance, Johnnie considers the consequences of ignoring his ex-girlfriend's attempt to publicly humiliate him (Chpt. V.), or when Peter struggles with himself over the risks and benefits involved in leading his fellow workers in a strike (Chpt. XVI.) The internal dialogues presented in these and other sections of the work feel very real and familiar, and at such points the characters appear complicated, vulnerable and authentic.

On an existential level, No Mean City is also a parable that illustrates the concept of "being-toward-death." Chapter XVIII begins with the following insight:

Every creature begins to die when it is born, and none can confidently declare when decay first sets in. But, sooner or later, it becomes visible. (p. 255)

Johnnie is the character that most dramatically illustrates this concept as, over the course of the story, his physical form is transformed by heavy drinking and the beatings that he endures in gang fights. It is as if he is a concrete exemplar of the more general truth that nothing human lasts. We are all finite, thrown into the world to suffer, struggle, decay and die. As the story progresses, Johnnie becomes more and more aware that his scarred and battered appearance is a verification of the reality of his life and its fated trajectory. His body is like a canvass that visibly displays where he has been and where he is headed. Others also recognize this, and finally this is his undoing when he is overwhelmed and murdered by a gang of younger toughs. Those who are young and strong will soon become old and weak, and the cycle will continue. "And Gorbals life goes on its way -- just as if nobody could help it." (p. 313)

My aunt, who grew up in Glasgow, and who is now in her late 80s, tells me that she remembers reading this book when she was a youngster. With a laugh, she told me that she herself danced with a few "razor kings" as a teenager in prewar Glasgow. This is not the Glasgow that I experienced as a kid, but it apparently is a Glasgow that really did (and still apparently does) exist for some people.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book as a 15 year old schoolgirl, preparing for my Highers and I was hooked instantly ! It describes the gritty Gorbals slums of the pre-war era (1920s/ 30s) and the razor gangs therein. The struggles of those who live in the slums and their desire to move onto better things and how they seem to be thwarted by the collective consciousness that you’re somehow a ‘snob’ if you want to get on in life. The only other choice for some is to ‘protect’ their territory and ‘prove’ their worthiness by branding faces with razors and hanging round the old dancehalls of bygone Glasgow and terrorising people to gain respect. I’m a child of the 80s Thatcher era, which had it’s own fair share of struggles for some, but this book still hugely appeals to me and I have read it several times and will continue to do so throughout my life. It really is an all-time favourite of mines !

[JK · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book primarily deals with the poverty in the slums of pre-war Glasgow. I found it to be quite horrendous in places, particularly in the gang mentalities and how difficult it was for people to get into an education or a career which would be good enough to allow them to escape the slums. It made me wonder whether I would be able to better myself in such a situation, and the answer was - probably not.

The lives of all of the inhabitants of this novel just seem so incredibly depressing, and filled with violence and hardship. Very few people have ambitions; many are content to just soldier on with what they have been given.

I didn't find this to be well written, but I think it overcomes this with its brutal and frank social observations.

This is definitely worth a look, particularly if you are familiar with the Glasgow area. I found it interesting to be reading about streets and places I know with a historical slant placed on them, and I also enjoyed the use of Glasgow slang to project pieces of realism. It's harrowing in places, and definitely cutting edge, but I’d recommend it.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the Razor King…

Johnnie Stark is the son of a violent drunk who beats his wife so badly he nearly kills her and then dies in jail. Although Johnnie hated and feared his father, he is just like him, drunkenness and violence being the norm for the men, and often the women, living in the Gorbals in Glasgow in the depression years between the wars. This is the story of Johnnie’s rise to become the Razor King, a gang-leader and violent fighter, feared and admired in equal measure, and of his eventual fall.

The book was written by A McArthur, himself a Gorbals man, who wanted to show what life was like in the deprivation of one of the worst slum areas of Britain. The publisher Neville Spearman was interested in the story but thought it badly written, so brought in a journalist, H Kingsley Long, to work with McArthur to polish it up. It became a massive bestseller, reprinted many times over the decades. Its brutal, violent depiction of gang culture is in a large measure responsible for the persistent reputation of Glasgow as the city of gangs – a reputation still exploited by many contemporary Glaswegian crime writers, although it is in reality long out-dated and was in fact already becoming so when this book was first published in 1935. The book is also often credited with having turned things around – forcing those in authority to recognise the squalor in the slums, and the danger this represented to social order both in terms of violence and in the growth of Communism in these areas, and therefore to act to improve conditions for the slum-dwellers. Again, not quite true, though it did bring the question to a wider public. Gang violence peaked in Glasgow around 1929 and was declining somewhat by 1935, and the authors recognise this themselves in the final chapters when they talk about the changes that were already being put in place by a worried establishment. Although the book is specifically about the Gorbals, gang culture was a feature of the slums of most of the big urban centres of Britain at the time, making this Glaswegian a little annoyed that one book should have given Glasgow a reputation so much worse than other cities with just as serious problems.

As a novel, it’s somewhat better than I was expecting. Again it has the reputation of not being very well written but, while it’s certainly no literary masterpiece, I found the writing quite acceptable and the dialect feels authentic throughout. It’s considerably before my time, of course, but I still recognised most of the language although there were some expressions that had disappeared by my childhood. Where the authors felt that pieces of dialect might not be comprehensible to a wider readership, they include an English translation in brackets, so despite all of the speech being in dialect it should still be accessible to most readers, I think. Overall it gave me the impression, in fact, of having been written for an outside audience rather than for Glaswegians – there is a feeling throughout of it being anthropological in style, and I couldn’t help feeling the characters were being displayed like animals in a zoo, a lower species than the likely readership, intended to amaze and terrify “decent” people.

Johnnie’s story is one of violence throughout, but he is shown as merely being the most violent among a community where violence was the norm. Male unemployment was at record figures, and the men are shown as living off the meagre wages of their wives, drinking, whoring and fighting, while the women struggled to feed their children. There is an astonishing amount of violence towards women, and this is shown again as an accepted feature of life, with the women often admiring the violence of their men even when directed at them. Was this true? Possibly, though I felt it was (not surprisingly) a rather male view of how women viewed male violence towards them, if that makes sense. I wondered if the women were really quite so admiring, when the men weren’t around to hear them. Perhaps. (I was reminded of Their Eyes Were Watching God, about another poor and marginalised community far away, where Thurston also shows male violence towards women as something the women admired and even envied.) Certainly domestic violence continues to be at unacceptably high levels today in Glasgow, though to nothing like the same degree, and without the social acceptance of it shown here.

The general violence and gang-fighting I could readily believe in – I grew up just three miles from the Gorbals, though decades later than this, but the area still had a bad reputation in my time and was a place for “respectable” people to avoid. I had more of an issue with the portrayal of routine sexual promiscuity within marriages, which again is shown to be largely socially acceptable, even having its own set of rules. Call me sexist, but I easily believed in the promiscuity of the men, but had more difficulty in believing that married women openly had affairs and even children to men other than their husbands. Not because I feel the women would necessarily have been more “moral”, but because I would have expected their husbands to kill them, literally, if they’d been openly promiscuous.

So the question is, would I recommend it? Hmm, not as a novel, really. But it’s certainly of interest to anyone who’d like to learn something about the slums and gangs of the era, or who would like to see the genesis of the reputation that has produced so much gang-obsessed Glaswegian fiction over the intervening decades. As a Glaswegian, it both interested me and irritated me – I don’t like people being displayed like animals in a zoo, and I don’t like how the book still adversely affects the reputation of my city, which in reality is neither significantly worse nor better than most other major urban centres. But the book is socially important in the history of Glasgow and as a record of the slums, and has influenced generations of writers for good or ill, so for those reasons I’m glad to have read it.

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[David Mclaughlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having grown up in Maryhill In Glasgow and spent 25 years in the city I recognise the culture but not the time. Glasgow has moved on but you could still find this aspect if you so wished. I love Glasgow it' is a hard city but with a big heart.

[Aggy Delvulij · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book first read it almost 40 year ago takes you into the Glasgow of that era and gives a sense of the poverty and despair that the people must have felt at that time, it could have been based on the real life person called Billy Fullerton leader of the Brigton Billy Boys

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorite reads.

[Oleh · Rating 3 out of 5]

W końcu historia o biedzie i chuliganach bez zbędnego romantyzowania, gangsterzy to zwykli patusy i na tym wszystko. Ale brakowało wprowadzenia w klimat miasta

[John Moulton · Rating 3 out of 5]

No Mean City is a 1935 work of fiction that tells of life in The Gorbals district of Glasgow, Scotland. Written at much the same time that the novel depicts, it pulls few punches about the district's street urchins, gangland thugs and the few with ambitions to move on. The main character, Johnnie Stark, sees no future beyond The Gorbals and instead fashions his life around being 'top dog' in the dank and miserable arenas that are the tenement buildings and miserable public houses. Johnnie's keeps himself fit to fight hard and soon becomes known as the 'Razor King', carrying cut-throat razors in each of his waistcoat packets (see book cover) which he wields and slashes at the slightest provocation—and often at provocation of his own.
The book is quite engaging, though personally, I think Johnnie gets way to much of his own way, even given the various beatings he does suffer as things progress. I waited for a worthy adversary and thought several times that I was going to get one, but instead read what often feels more like an education in Gorbals life of low-level crime, hooliganism and down-trodden women. The books insights into Gorbals life in the 20s and 30s make it an interesting but not an exceptional read.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the Gorbals of Glasgow in 1920's, this is a quite horrendous insight into the gang mentallity especially of their leader, the Razor King, truely a product of his environment. A few tried to escape through education and hard work. A few managed oddly enough via their skills in the city's many dance halls but most sunk into the absolute poverty of the slums. The 'solution' was ultimately to demolish the Gorbals and send the inhabitants to the sprawling housing estates like Easterhouse in the 1950s or the high-rise flats of the 1960s -a whole new set of social issues including gangs and knives!
Johnnie the Razor King and his wife Lizzie must have been the 'neighbours from Hell' with their gang who could put 2000 men on the street for the 'big fight' and yet his eventual end brought a feeling of 'there but for the grace of God goes I'. Would we have escaped their fate any better?

[Derek Beaugarde · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is quintessentially the novel that gave Glasgow its label of being the most violent, crime-ridden, destitute city in the world at that time in the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was very evocative of the poverty in the single-end tenements of the slum-ridden Gorbals and even I can remember flats with outside toilets and bed recesses shared by whole families. I would say it is a book of its time and although it has stood the test of time, it is sometimes quaint and old-fashioned in its language structure. Still a worthwhile read.

[Haylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another look into my home city as my Gran and Granda’s family would’ve known it.

While it’s a window into a different time, I do wish people* would read books like this and realise poverty, drugs, and violence are a much more accurate portrayal of parts of (current!) Scottish culture / society than the romanticised Outlander pish.

Super interesting to see different cultural norms and how much has changed vs how much has clearly derived from working-class life back then.

* Some Americans who claim Scottish heritage, for example

[Emma Hendrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up. Finished this a wee while ago but forgot to do the review.

Really wanted to read it as it’s such an iconic Glasgow book. I think the plot is quite an interesting one but the actual writing leaves a lot to be desired. Would say more interesting from a historical point of view rather than it’s literary merits. All that being said I did enjoy reading it and seeing what would happen to the various characters

[Miriam Smith (A Mother’s Musings) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not finish this book, not because of the story line or writing because what I did read of it was very good, I just could not understand or get away with the very broad Scottish dialect which made the continuity of reading very difficult. I may come back to it one day - it's a shame because the story was rolling along quite nicely.

[Peter]

Love to review it......if only you'd let me READ IT.

[Artemis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a hard one to review.

I am not from the Gorbals nor is my family. I picked up this book because I heard it would tell me more about what being from Glasgow meant. I was eager to learn and see the similarities and differences between my upbringing and that of this new city that I love.

I know how it looks amongst those who are "hopeless". They are people, who lost most of their hope. They love, laugh, care for each other, and feel the whole range of emotions. Yes, people can get aggressive but that's part of the whole range of emotions.

Not so in No Mean City. The best part of the book honestly was the Appendix. It's like if you took Les Miserables, made it pulp fiction, and only allowed a small range of negative emotions into the story (namely: fear, anger, contempt, disgust, lust, pride). There are moments where you could see a glimmer of a positive emotion but it's infantilized and quickly passed.

This is advertised as being "authentic", and maybe it is... But I can't shake the feeling that it's more exploitative. The gaze feels wrong. It defies what I know about humanity.... But maybe the reality of the Gorbals is different from what I've seen before, elsewhere. Until I learn that, though, 2*... much as I'd rather rank higher.

[Pauline Butcher Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book for research with my own novel set in Stirling in the same period. Yes, I found the descriptions of the bars and the shipyard revealing, but I kept thinking - where is this going, what is the story? But I found none. My other complaint is that both wives are bitterly painted - one an English spendthrift with little time for her much older husband, and the other, although it is not clear why, is a verbally abusive and negligent wife - quite horrible. Unsurprisingly, the love interest is a sweet, kind, gentle woman. Dear me!

[W. Nicol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book as a young teenager despite warnings from my family that this was a travesty of the Glasgow from which they moved in the late 1940s. I remember being fascinated and discovered in my later years that it was the realism which had appalled my grandmother.
This because in the early years of her marriage, my grandfather had chosen to serve as a chemist in a poor locality of the city where his shop became the sole source of medical treatment for many in pre-NHS days.

[Jamie Bookboy Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

My great granda Eddie Miller was born in Gorbals in 1920s before he moved to Dunoon. Kinda mad that he lived in this kinda environment, his sister is actually still alive aged 101.

The book is first class in providing an insight into how the poor lived in Glasgow at that time. Fulla class commentary anawl, the labour dispute sub-plot is good. It is a bit gratuitous but I kinda like it.

Can be read in about 7/8 hours. Read it 👍🏼

[Lucille · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book that kept me captivated throughout. Although it was a heavy read at some times, it was hard to put down at others. Having moved to Glasgow from Edinburgh just over a year ago I’ve always been interested in stories from poorer areas like the infamous Gorbals. This book really puts into perspective how difficult the living conditions were at that time and how insular the lives of many living in the tenements were.

[Aidan Curran · Rating 3 out of 5]

wow i was not expecting how rampant the misogynistic violence would be in this! as a reader i genuinely found it difficult to tow the line between giving the author the benefit of the doubt that this was an accurate portrayal of the abuse women faced in 1920s deprived areas of glasgow and just the abhorrent (sometimes unnecessary) prevalence of it throughout this book. genuinely well written and so many merits in the way it reflects on glasgow urban life

[Shawlands Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of truth is written in fiction. While this is a fiction book, it’s very much a historical fiction book. Sadly an all to accurate historical fiction book. The violence of the razor gangs happened. The way poverty grinds you into dust is accurate.

It’s fascinating read, but not a happy read.

Nevertheless I highly recommend.

[Alison Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed the book, written in a journalistic style and eager for the reader to understand how life was in the time and place the story is set. Not a light read by any means but I read it very quickly. I fully understand why it sold so well both at the time and since

[Karl Goodwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because it was described as an accurate description of life in the slums in Glasgow. If this is accurate, it is amazing the difference between my life and theirs. It gives me a new perspective on how things could be for me, making me very grateful for what I have.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, it creates an atmosphere which makes you feel like your actually there and provides an insight into what the life of someone in a rough area back then would have been like.

[K · Rating 1 out of 5]

read paperback

[George]

Great read; illustrative of life in Glasgow lower class neighborhood, the day to day, the values

[John Somers · Rating 5 out of 5]

18/20.

[Sylvia Doughty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb book and so glad heeded a recommendation to read it. Would advise it for anyone interested in Glasgow's history.

[Nick Winkle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very engaging and interesting view into the lives of Glaswegians in the pre war Gorbals.