Joe Gurney

Greenock in the 1930's Joe Gurney

This book gives an insight into life in Greenock, Scotland, during the great depression years of the 1930's. During that period, Greenock suffered badly from dreadful housing conditions, high unemployment, terrible poverty, and poor health. There were many areas in the town where housing conditions were practically uninhabitable, with homes being overcrowded, damp, and rodent infested. Numerous families in a tenement block had to share an outside toilet. Although the shipyards, engineering works, sugar refineries, and mills were all in production, jobs were hard to come by and unemployment in the district was very high. Those who did have a job had to work in harsh and dangerous conditions with little or no health and safety laws. As the decade came to an end, Britain declared war on Germany, and Greenock like many other towns and cities in the country faced an uncertain future.