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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Glasgow Printing Industry
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Part Four - The Era of
Industrialisation
Further growth of printing in the centre of Glasgow came about in
1831 when James Bell and Andrew Bain founded the firm of Bell &
Bain. This is another firm which still continues in business under
the same name. It originated with the firm of Curll and Bell founded
in 1822, when James Curll took over the printing business upon which
James Heatherwick had embarked in 1807, and assumed James Bell as
a partner. The origin of the house thus dates from the very early
years of the century. Initially, the firm was near Glasgow Cross,
then in St Enoch Square, then Mitchell Street. Work was produced
on platens and hand presses and later by the Anglo-French and Brown’s
Kirkcaldy perfectors. Bell & Bain were printers to Lord Brougham,
whose name was associated with Shepherd Tartan Trousers, and a printed
speech delivered in the House of Lords in 1831 bears the imprint
of the firm.
Despite difficult trading times in the mid 1840s — the period
of long depression with poor harvests, high prices, failure of the
potato crop, and violence in Europe, when factories closed, there
were bankruptcies, barricades at the factory gates and the military
was called out — firms made progress. William Collins (Printers,
Publishers, Booksellers & Wholesale Stationers), now based in
South Frederick Street, had offices for distribution in Paternoster
Row, London. Relationships with Dr Chalmers became strained and
he took his work to another publisher. Collins published their first
novel: Ready Reckoner. In 1846 William Collins retired to Rothesay
and started a mission for the poor. In that year William III (grandson)
was born and William II at age thirty took over the firm.
Another long-lasting firm, J. & J. Murdoch, had its origin in
Glasgow in 1844. It was started by Mr Robert McAulay at 37 Glassford
Street, and in 1856 the business was sold to Mr William Murdoch,
uncle of the two Murdoch joint managing directors at the time of
the centenary in 1944, and Mr John Porter. Seven years later Mr
John S. Telfer replaced Mr Porter. When Telfer resigned in 1865
James Murdoch joined William, thus making the firm Murdoch-owned.
William died in 1869 and James, who remained in control for forty-six
years until his death in 1911, developed the business into a major
force, producing high-quality labels for mineral water firms and
tradework for the letter-press printers and stationers. In 1844
the plant consisted of only three or four hand presses, but before
William Murdoch died in 1869 he had installed six more of these
presses, as well as one of the earliest litho cylinder printing
machines. This became known as ‘The Mangle’ because, before
it was adapted for power, the flywheel was turned by hand in the
way a mangle is turned.
Few records are available about the source of supply for the essential
materials for printing, namely paper and ink. Edward Collins, referred
to earlier, from England, had established papermaking in Dalmuir
as early as 1756. Whether his name has connections with the Edward
Collins paper mill at Kelvindale in the twentieth century is not
known. The Story of Glasgow (1870) records papermaking in operation
in Cathcart as early as 1685. The streams and villages around Glasgow
provided the right conditions for papermaking in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries and it seems that supplies were adequate
to meet local needs and those of printers as far away as London.
It is not possible here to go into the development of papermaking
or ink making but merely to note their importance to printing. It
is known that printers in the middle of the nineteenth century had
the dirty job of grinding their own colour into black inks.
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Volume 2 published 1994
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