Window to the Past: 61 Harriet Street, 1920

There are various pottery items and a range of black enamelled iron cooking pots on the top shelf at the rear and an indistinct and enigmatic sign advertising ‘miner’s oil’ which may have been lamp oil for miners lamps.

There’s a wicker clothes basket and brushes and mop heads in the doorway.

Shops like this were always redolent of smells of cleaning materials and paraffin, pipe clay and bunches of sticks for lighting house fires etc.

There were domestic coal shovels, cloth dusters, mansion polish, bars of washing soap, packets of washing soda and washing powder, and chloride of lime that was used to remove the more persistent greasy stains.

Image courtesy of Pollokshaws Heritage Group, holding weekly meetings on Mondays at 1pm in the parish hall — all welcome along.