Govanhill has recently become known as something as a hub for the queer community in Glasgow. Yet the history of the LGBTQ+ people and places in the neighbourhood goes back much further. For LGBTQ+ History Month, Jack Howse digs into some of Govanhill’s queer history.

By Jack Howse

The flagpole at the top of Queen’s Park is without a doubt the best view in Govanhill. The sweeping panorama, moving clockwise reveals Glasgow’s signifiers; the moss green of Ben Lomond, Glasgow University’s gothic spire, Celtic Park and the lone turbine atop Cathkin Braes.

Yet if you continue turning, a somewhat forgotten history of Glasgow slides into view. What at first glance may appear to just be a cluster of trees, actually represents a part of queer history of Govanhill. These ash trees in the Northwest of the park that tumble down the hill to Pollokshaws Road was once known around the area as a hotspot for cruising.

The activity in this area of Queen’s Park can be traced as far back as the 1880s (almost as old as the park in its modern form) through tracing police reports of sodomy in the area. Whilst cruising continues to be a somewhat misunderstood and understudied topic, for much of its history in Queens Park, it was perhaps the only way that queer folk could openly and freely meet other queer folk; homosexuality was illegal in Scotland until 1980.

Gay Bashing in Queen’s Park

However, for this reason, Queen’s Park also became notorious for ‘gay bashing’, or people being attacked for their perceived sexuality. Perhaps the most infamous case occurred on April 6, 1960 when 48 year-old John Cremin was brutally murdered in a targeted attack. The perpetrators, 19 year-old Anthony Miller and 16 year-old James Denovan, were known for targeting gay men cruising in the park.

How the murder was reported at the time.

Denovan told how he would approach men and lead them to the woods where Miller would then be waiting to demand that they hand over their valuables. The interactions often turned violent. The two young men were known for boasting about their exploits in the Cathcart Café, an old institution on the southern tip of Victoria Road.

John Cremin fell foul to the scheme and when he fought back, the situation escalated from petty crime to full blown murder. Cremin’s body was found three days later in Queen’s Park Recreation Ground by a dog walker, his head having been bashed in with a wooden plank. Later, the two teenagers were found guilty of murder. Miller was sentenced to death, while Denovan escaped the penalty due to his minor age.

Anthony Miller, of Dixon Road, was the last person to face the death penalty in Glasgow and the penultimate soul in the whole of Scotland. Both these deaths serve as a chilling reminder of the ghosts of queer history that circumvent Govanhill.

The Citizens’ Theatre

Another part of queer history in the Southside can be found one and half miles north of Queen’s Park at the meeting of Cathcart Road and Gorbals Street, where the Citizen’s Theatre lies. According to OurStory Scotland, the theatre and its bar, which both opened in 1878, was seen as the first unofficial gay bar in the city.

Nearly a century later, the theatre became world renowned for its radical and queer stagings of both canonical and new pieces. In 1972, it staged a radical interpretation of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in which the role of the Egyptian queen was played by the male actor Jonathan Kent.

The theatre also held Scottish premieres for a number of Jean Genet plays, the controversial and avant-garde French novelist known for his depictions of the queer erotic, sex work, drugs and drag queens.

The Tartan Skirt

Twenty years later, in 1992, another radical media outlet was being set up in Scotland. The Tartan Skirt: The Scottish Magazine for the Gender Community was a zine set up in 1992 by Anne Forester and ran for sixteen editions.

The zine presented poems, book reviews, personal stories, and articles that discuss many issues faced by the ‘gender community’ – people who identified as “crossdressers, transsexuals, and transgender”. Topics covered include appearance, passing, healthcare, transitioning, terminology, support groups, legislation, travel, and familial and romantic relationships. It was very political in its voice and spoke at length about meetings held by its different faculties; from Aberdeen to Dundee to Glasgow. The collections of these zines can be found at the resource The Digital Transgender Archive. Whilst not specific to Southside, the zine would have proved invaluable to many of the trans community here in Govanhill.

In 1983, an article about bus driver Karen Miller appeared in the local Glasgow press. Titled “The Sex Torment of a Busman” the article detailed how the bus driver had recently come out as transgender to wife, Jeanette who worked as a clippie – bus conductor. The article (which frequently misgenders Karen and uses her dead name) speaks to Karen’s wife who said that she first learnt about Karen’s desire to live as a woman after spotting her walking round Southside in Jeanette’s clothing.

Albert Drive

In a more recent slice of history, Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize winning novel Shuggie Bain, about the eponymous hero’s relationship with his alcoholic mother and his own sexuality, bookends itself in the area. The first chapter, which is set in 1982 and follows Shuggie as a 16-year-old who at this age is relatively comfortable with his sexuality, firmly sets itself in the Southside in the passage: “The large bay window jutted out proudly on to Albert Drive, and Shuggie supposed at one time the room must have been the living room of a fairly grand three-bedroom flat”.

Albert Drive was the location of Guy’s, “Southside’s only gay bar” in the era which Shuggie Bain is set.

These are not, of course, the only stories from queer history in Govanhill but serve as interesting anecdotes for queerness in the area.

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