Edit Dark days and dreadful deeds that haunt our city
IN JUNE 1969, Glasgow's then Chief Constable, Sir James Robertson, declared that crimes of violence had jumped significantly during the previous year.
But what no-one could have foreseen was that the next six months would be one of the blackest in the city's history.
They would give rise to three names that would reverberate down the years and etch themselves into Scotland's criminal Hall of Fame - James Griffiths, Howard Wilson. . . and the man who has come to be known as Bible John.
He first struck in February 1968, when Patricia Docker, a 25-year-old auxiliary nurse, was found strangled in a lane behind Carmichael Place, Langside. She had been to the Barrowland Ballroom on the night she met her death.
On Monday, August 18, 1969, city police began a hunt for the murderer of Mima McDonald, 32, an unmarried mother of three.
Her body had been discovered by her sister in derelict property near her home in Mackeith Street, Bridgeton. She, too, had been at the Barrowland, and had left the venue at about midnight.
On the Tuesday night, more than 20 detectives interviewed everyone at the ballroom, and later declared there were similarities between the two murders.
A Glasgow policewoman walked the route taken by Mima, wearing clothes similar to hers.
Police also issued a photograph of Mima's head superimposed on the body of a WPC, again clad in similar clothes.
Then, on Friday, October 31, a man was out walking his dog at 7.30am in a back-court in Earl Street, Scotstoun. The dog began sniffing at what its owner thought was a pile of rags.
It turned out to be the body of Helen Puttock, a 29-year-old mother of two.
Police were quick to say they were "thinking about the Barrowland Ballroom in relation to the circumstances of this murder" and later confirmed that Helen, too, had been at the dance hall.
Detective Chief Superintendent Elphinstone Dalglish, head of Glasgow CID, appealed for a taxi driver and a man named 'John' to contact police.
Again, a photograph was issued of the dead woman's face on the body of a WPC.
The murders gripped the city, and panic seized the dancehalls.
On Monday, November 3, Mr Dalglish, issued a description of a man he was keen to interview.
The man had fine features, was of a smart, modern appearance, was aged between 25 and 30, and 5ft 10in in height. He was thought to be called John, and may have made references to the Bible.
It was a remarkably detailed description, and among those who attended Dalglish's press conference was Evening Times journalist John Quinn.
With deadlines crowding upon him, and the description buzzing around his head, Quinn rang his office with the story for that day's paper, and told his news editor:
"Let's call him Bible John."
Within an hour, as Quinn later related, "the presses were running, the vendors were shouting and a legend had begun".
Quinn always insisted that he chose the name, not out of a flair for the dramatic, but as a way of jogging the memory of those whose paths may have crossed those of the dapper killer.
Glasgow police, of course, made formidable efforts to find Bible John, but he managed to elude justice.
Thirty-six years later, interest in him has never quite wavered.
Did he exist? Was he one man or two? Were there copycat killings involved? To this day, the dancehall killer continues to exert a macabre fascination.
By December 30 that year, Glasgow was getting back to normal after the killings of Mima and Helen.
On that particular day, all it had in mind was Hogmanay, and the need to buy in the drink and food for the celebrations.
But then something happened that made December 30 a black day in Glasgow's history.
It started when three armed men escaped with pounds-14,000 from the Clydesdale Bank in Linwood.
One of them was Howard Wilson, a former Glasgow policeman who had opened a greengrocer's shop in Mount Florida.
The others were John Sim, another ex-cop, now a van bread salesman, and Ian Donaldson, a car mechanic.
The trio, who had already raided a bank in Williamwood, had turned to crime as a way of ending their debt problems.
An hour after the Linwood raid, they were returning with their haul to Wilson's flat at 51 Allison Street, Govanhill, just as a police car happened to be passing.
Inspector Andrew Hyslop knew Wilson - in fact Wilson had been one of his trainees when Hyslop, then a sergeant, had started the force's firearms training.
The inspector, spotting Wilson, suspected he might be involved in the reset of whisky.
Knowing nothing about the Linwood raid, he summoned help, and he and a number of colleagues entered the flat.
Wilson was co-operative until the officers began looking for a black box which the men had been spotted carrying.
Panicking, and knowing now that the game was up, Wilson reached for a gun, still in its holster, which Sim had placed in a wardrobe.
He took aim and fired at Hyslop, wounding him in the face. The inspector, helpless but fully conscious, could only watch as Wilson then turned the gun on Detective Constables Angus MacKenzie and Edward Barnett.
Wilson then tried to force his way into the bathroom, where a fourth officer was taking cover;
a fifth officer, showing remarkable bravery, wrested the gun from Wilson.
But two policemen had died, and a third was badly wounded.
Glasgow was in uproar.
Hanging for murder had been abolished less than a fortnight before, but now Glasgow Corporation was urged by its police convener to press the Government to reintroduce the death penalty in Scotland.
Wilson later admitted two counts of murder and one of attempted murder, and was jailed for life, with a minimum of 25 years. Sim and Donaldson, who were not charged with the murders, each got 12 years.
Wilson was released in September 2002, having served more than 32 years in prison.
Andrew Hyslop was awarded the George Medal, but was robbed of his career and his health. Every day until his death in November 2000, he relived those terrible moments in Allison Street.
The third big crime of 1969 had taken place in the summer.
In early July, Ayr police launched a huge manhunt for the men responsible for the death of Mrs Rachael Ross, 72, following a robbery at her home.
She and her 67-year-old husband, Abraham, a director of a bingo club, had lain, bound and injured, for a day and two nights - on their bedroom floor before being discovered by their daily help.
Mrs Ross died in hospital. Her husband had been stabbed, but survived to testify in court.
On Monday, July 14, Patrick Meehan, a safebreaker who was known to police, was arrested in Glasgow and charged with Mrs Ross' murder. He was taken to Ayr, handcuffed to a detective.
When he appeared in court on the Tuesday, he was booed by a crowd of 200 onlookers, most of them holidaymakers.
Amid cries of 'Get a gun, shoot him!', one man managed to kick Meehan. But the news of the court appearance was overshadowed as dramatic events unfolded in Glasgow that same day.
Five plain-clothes officers went to an attic flat in Kelvinbridge to interview James Griffiths, 34, in connection with the murder.
They were unable to gain entry, and Griffiths, who was said to be pathologically afraid of prison, began shooting, injuring one policeman and firing at anyone who appeared in the street.
Still shooting, he raced to a car in Great Western Road, and wounded a number of people.
Retrieving a cartridge belt from the boot, he returned to the flat, where the siege continued.
By now, the police had bulletproof shields, and had been joined by a marksman with a highpowered rifle. But just as they were preparing to use tear-gas, Griffiths escaped, commandeered a car at gunpoint, and took police on a three-mile pursuit to Possil.
Griffiths ran into the Round TollBar, where he fired some more shots, asked for a drink, changed his mind, then made off in a stolen lorry, before ending up in a tenement flat in Springburn's Kay Street.
There, he fired into a children's playground and exchanged gunfire with police, his bullets ricocheting wildly and forcing local people to cower on shop floors.
It fell to Chief Superintendent Calum Finlayson and Detective Sergeant Ian Smith, both armed with revolvers, to end the siege.
Finlayson later recalled: "It was a warm day and I was perspiring and excited but I was not afraid.
"I knew that Griffiths had a rifle and sawn-off shotgun and I knew the devastating effect of the latter.
"I said, 'If he gets us on the stairhead he'll blow our heads off '."
Finlayson opened the letterbox and could hear Griffiths shooting. Then he noticed the gunman's shadow. Finlayson decided to fire and try to disarm him. He raised the revolver to the letter-box and took aim at the man's shoulder.
He fired, but then heard Griffiths shoot back at the door.
The officers feared their bullet had missed, but it hadn't - it had found its way from Griffiths' shoulder to his heart.
It was the first time that a wanted man had been shot by Scottish police. In all, Griffiths had fired more than 100 shots, injuring 13 people. One, a newsvendor, died of his injuries.
The following day's coverage of the siege contrasted with the optimistic stories about the launch of Apollo 11, which was taking Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon.
Paddy Meehan was later jailed for life for the Ross murder. But he spent his time in prison in solitary confinement, loudly protesting his innocence, and eventually, in 1976, he received a royal pardon. He died in 1994.
Finlayson was given an MBE by the Queen. Smith got the BEM.
As befits a big, overcrowded and industrialised city, with substantial degrees of poverty, Glasgow has never had any shortage of thugs, gangsters, murderous villains, hardmen, footsoldiers and petty thieves.
No wonder the job of Glasgow Chief Constable was long seen as one of the hardest jobs in British policing (the city has the oldest police force in the entire country).
Notorious among the murderers was Peter Manuel, the mass killer who was hung at Barlinnie at one minute past eight on the morning of Friday, July 11, 1958.
'Manuel Dies in Silence', read the front page headline in that day's Evening Times: Manuel hadn't uttered one word to officials for three weeks, since his unsuccessful appeal against his convictions for murder.
The 32-year-old labourer had been found guilty after an astonishing trial of the murders of Mrs Marion Watt, 45, her sister Mrs Margaret Brown, 42, and her daughter Vivienne Watt, 16, after a break-in in High Burnside.
Isabelle Cooke, 17, was killed on a footpath in Mount Vernon; and Peter Smart, 45, Doris Smart, 42, and their son Michael, 10, after a break-in in Uddingston.
The victims had all been shot, apart from Isabelle, who had been strangled.
Manuel falsely alleged that the first three murders had been the work of bakery owner William Watt, Marion's husband. During the trial, Manuel sacked his counsel and conducted his own defence with, as one paper noted, 'fluency, forensic skill and sharp intelligence'.
But his skills could not prevent the jury from returning unanimous guilty verdicts. The judge, Lord Cameron, had, however, told the jury to return a not guilty verdict on a charge of killing 17-year-old Anne Kneilands.
Nevertheless, in Lord Cameron's words, the charges facing Manuel were a "catalogue of crime which in gravity is certainly without precedent for many years".
The judge passed the death sentence, then reached for his black tricorn hat and added solemnly, "This is pronounced for doom".
In the years before gangs became associated with drugs or counterfeit goods, Glasgow had an extensive array of gangs of the sort chronicled in No Mean City, that controversial pulp saga of slumland Gorbals.
The gangs had names like Cheeky Forty, the Parlour Boys, and San Toy.
One gang leader, who was married with kids, reckoned it effeminate to dance with women, and danced with his male lieutenants instead.
Another, Billy Fullerton, drilled his Bridgeton Billy Boys and led them to blood-soaked battles on Glasgow Green and Rutherglen Bridge against the likes of the Norman Conks.
When he died in July 1962, at the age of 57, nearly 1000 people stopped the traffic as they gathered to watch the funeral.
Later on, Glasgow gave rise to 'Godfathers' like Walter Norval, who terrorised the north of the city for decades, and to Arthur Thompson senior.
The latter had a fearsome reputation, with a hand in drugs and illegal moneylending rackets.
But he always denied being anything other than a retired businessman, one whose only concerns were his children and grandchildren.
In the early 90s, the Thompson family found themselves at the centre of one of the most notorious gangland stories of recent decades.
Arthur Thompson junior was shot dead outside his father's home on August 17, 1991. On the day of his funeral, two other men were found dead: Bobby Glover and Joe Hanlon.
Paul Ferris, a former enforcer for Thompson senior, later stood trial for the murder of Thompson junior but was acquitted after what was then the longest criminal trial in Scottish legal history.
Ferris was later jailed for gun running, but publicly declared his intention to go straight after being released from prison in 2002. His life story is being turned into a film, with actor Robert Carlyle expected to take the starring role.
Jimmy Boyle was another brutal enforcer who, long before he carved a reputation as a sculptor, practised a rather different form of the art.
A high-profile graduate of Barlinnie's Special Unit, the reformed Boyle turned to writing and sculpting with a remarkable degree of success, exhibiting his work all over the world. He also worked with young people who were at risk of offending.
But few Glasgow-born criminals have attained the nationwide notoriety of Ian Brady.
Brady never knew his father, a Glasgow newspaper reporter. His mum, Peggy, was unable to cope with the baby and advertised for foster parents.
The result was that Brady spent 15 years with John and Mary Sloan, who lived first in the Gorbals and then in Pollok.
He also attended Shawlands Academy.
In 1951, at the age of 13, he was put on probation for housebreaking. His criminal career had begun, and it quickly gathered pace.
The world finally came to know Brady's name in May, 1966, when, aged just 28, he was jailed for life for the murders of Edward Evans, 17, ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, and 12year-old John Kilbride.
"These, " said the judge, Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson, "were three calculated, cruel, coldblooded murders."
Brady's co-accused, Myra Hindley, got life for the murders of Edward and Lesley Ann.
In 1987, the pair confessed to killing 12-year-old Keith Bennett (his body has never been found) and Pauline Reade, 16.
Myra Hindley died in 2002, aged 60; Brady is in a topsecurity hospital and has recently been said to be close to death after five years of hunger strikes. He has been force-fed.
Last year, Glasgow was reminded of another infamous case when two men, TC Campbell and Joe Steele, were cleared of the so-called 'icecream wars' killings.
Six members of the Doyle family died in a blaze at their Ruchazie home in April 1984, and Campbell and Steele were later convicted, though they made strenuous efforts to proclaim their innocence.
Like the Bible John killings, the tragic deaths of the Doyle family remain unsolved.
If one thing is noticeable in all of this, it's that there haven't been too many criminals like 'Gentle Johnny' Ramensky.
Ramensky, a famed safecracker and cat burglar from the Gorbals, escaped from Peterhead Prison on no fewer than five occasions.
But during the war, his finely honed skills were used by the Army - in one day, he cracked the safes of 14 embassies in Rome after the city had been liberated by the Allies.
Ramensky won military honours for his work as a commando, but after the war he returned to his old ways and died in Perth prison in 1972.
Arrayed against the legions of slashers, gangs and hoodlums has been a thin blue line of colourful, unbreakable cops and judges.
The cops included men like Joe Beattie, Sir David McNee (The Hammer), who later headed the Met in London, Elphinstone Dalglish and Tom Goodall.
Sir Percy Sillitoe, Chief Constable between 1931 and 1943, became known as the Gangbuster for his fearless confrontations with the gangs.
His hand-picked squad of tough, no-nonsense police officers met force with force, with significant success.
Even Billy Fullerton was persuaded to reform, in his own way.
In the words of Sillitoe's son, Anthony, many years later: "He solved the problem [of street warfare] years ago by enlisting tough cops, mainly Highlanders, to club first and ask questions later."
Sillitoe revolutionised the working methods of the Glasgow police, and later became head of MI5. He died in April, 1962.
Lord Carmont was a judge who became famous for his determination to stamp out lawless behaviour.
He never shirked from imposing crushing jail terms on the razorslashers and knife-wielders who terrorised law-abiding citizens in the years after the Second World War.
Early on, Carmont served notice of his intentions when he jailed eight accused for a total of 52 years for crimes of violence. The longest sentence was one of 10 years.
Carmont made his mark on the criminal classes, and a new phrase entered the language - 'Copping a Carmont'.
Mention should also be made of the lawyers who became part of Glasgow criminal legend - people like Joe Beltrami, Laurence Dowdall and Len Murray. 'Get me Dowdall' was the cry heard in many a police cell.
They are the many colourful characters who have emerged on either side of the law-and-order divide in Scotland's largest city.
Glasgow was shocked in March 1964 when a well-known Scots boxer and a young woman were found stabbed to death in a back-court in Cornwall Street, Kinning Park.
A blood-stained knife was found beside the bodies.
The man who died was Andy Barrie, 23, a docker and a professional middle-weight boxer.
The woman was Mrs Betty Duncan.
Reported the Evening Times: "Barrie, a father of two . . . is reported to have been separated from his wife and to have been friendly with Mrs Duncan."
Barrie had had 16 fights, 11 of them resulting in defeats. His last fight had been in London three months earlier.
CID officers said at the time that enquiries were proceeding but they were "not looking for any other person at the moment".
TIMESFILE - ANDY BARRIE IN APRIL, 1959, a 58-year-old widow, Mrs Helen McGhee, was found stabbed to death in her baby-linen shop at 1073 Cathcart Road, Mount Florida.
A knife was later found in her abandoned car, in Cambuslang, together with a number of items that were missing from the shop and from the dead woman.
A Cambuslang youth, John McGilvray, 17, was later charged with the murder of Mrs McGhee.
He denied the charge, and went on trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
The trial heard evidence of witness and fingerprint identification. A milkbottle top and a copy of the Evening Times, both found in the boot of the car, bore prints identical to those of the accused.
The defence presented medical evidence that McGilvray, while sane and fit to plead, had an emotional age of 12 to 13.
On July 7, McGilvray was found guilty of capital murder by a jury, and was ordered by Lord Sorn to be detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure.
But what no-one could have foreseen was that the next six months would be one of the blackest in the city's history.
They would give rise to three names that would reverberate down the years and etch themselves into Scotland's criminal Hall of Fame - James Griffiths, Howard Wilson. . . and the man who has come to be known as Bible John.
He first struck in February 1968, when Patricia Docker, a 25-year-old auxiliary nurse, was found strangled in a lane behind Carmichael Place, Langside. She had been to the Barrowland Ballroom on the night she met her death.
On Monday, August 18, 1969, city police began a hunt for the murderer of Mima McDonald, 32, an unmarried mother of three.
Her body had been discovered by her sister in derelict property near her home in Mackeith Street, Bridgeton. She, too, had been at the Barrowland, and had left the venue at about midnight.
On the Tuesday night, more than 20 detectives interviewed everyone at the ballroom, and later declared there were similarities between the two murders.
A Glasgow policewoman walked the route taken by Mima, wearing clothes similar to hers.
Police also issued a photograph of Mima's head superimposed on the body of a WPC, again clad in similar clothes.
Then, on Friday, October 31, a man was out walking his dog at 7.30am in a back-court in Earl Street, Scotstoun. The dog began sniffing at what its owner thought was a pile of rags.
It turned out to be the body of Helen Puttock, a 29-year-old mother of two.
Police were quick to say they were "thinking about the Barrowland Ballroom in relation to the circumstances of this murder" and later confirmed that Helen, too, had been at the dance hall.
Detective Chief Superintendent Elphinstone Dalglish, head of Glasgow CID, appealed for a taxi driver and a man named 'John' to contact police.
Again, a photograph was issued of the dead woman's face on the body of a WPC.
The murders gripped the city, and panic seized the dancehalls.
On Monday, November 3, Mr Dalglish, issued a description of a man he was keen to interview.
The man had fine features, was of a smart, modern appearance, was aged between 25 and 30, and 5ft 10in in height. He was thought to be called John, and may have made references to the Bible.
It was a remarkably detailed description, and among those who attended Dalglish's press conference was Evening Times journalist John Quinn.
With deadlines crowding upon him, and the description buzzing around his head, Quinn rang his office with the story for that day's paper, and told his news editor:
"Let's call him Bible John."
Within an hour, as Quinn later related, "the presses were running, the vendors were shouting and a legend had begun".
Quinn always insisted that he chose the name, not out of a flair for the dramatic, but as a way of jogging the memory of those whose paths may have crossed those of the dapper killer.
Glasgow police, of course, made formidable efforts to find Bible John, but he managed to elude justice.
Thirty-six years later, interest in him has never quite wavered.
Did he exist? Was he one man or two? Were there copycat killings involved? To this day, the dancehall killer continues to exert a macabre fascination.
By December 30 that year, Glasgow was getting back to normal after the killings of Mima and Helen.
On that particular day, all it had in mind was Hogmanay, and the need to buy in the drink and food for the celebrations.
But then something happened that made December 30 a black day in Glasgow's history.
It started when three armed men escaped with pounds-14,000 from the Clydesdale Bank in Linwood.
One of them was Howard Wilson, a former Glasgow policeman who had opened a greengrocer's shop in Mount Florida.
The others were John Sim, another ex-cop, now a van bread salesman, and Ian Donaldson, a car mechanic.
The trio, who had already raided a bank in Williamwood, had turned to crime as a way of ending their debt problems.
An hour after the Linwood raid, they were returning with their haul to Wilson's flat at 51 Allison Street, Govanhill, just as a police car happened to be passing.
Inspector Andrew Hyslop knew Wilson - in fact Wilson had been one of his trainees when Hyslop, then a sergeant, had started the force's firearms training.
The inspector, spotting Wilson, suspected he might be involved in the reset of whisky.
Knowing nothing about the Linwood raid, he summoned help, and he and a number of colleagues entered the flat.
Wilson was co-operative until the officers began looking for a black box which the men had been spotted carrying.
Panicking, and knowing now that the game was up, Wilson reached for a gun, still in its holster, which Sim had placed in a wardrobe.
He took aim and fired at Hyslop, wounding him in the face. The inspector, helpless but fully conscious, could only watch as Wilson then turned the gun on Detective Constables Angus MacKenzie and Edward Barnett.
Wilson then tried to force his way into the bathroom, where a fourth officer was taking cover;
a fifth officer, showing remarkable bravery, wrested the gun from Wilson.
But two policemen had died, and a third was badly wounded.
Glasgow was in uproar.
Hanging for murder had been abolished less than a fortnight before, but now Glasgow Corporation was urged by its police convener to press the Government to reintroduce the death penalty in Scotland.
Wilson later admitted two counts of murder and one of attempted murder, and was jailed for life, with a minimum of 25 years. Sim and Donaldson, who were not charged with the murders, each got 12 years.
Wilson was released in September 2002, having served more than 32 years in prison.
Andrew Hyslop was awarded the George Medal, but was robbed of his career and his health. Every day until his death in November 2000, he relived those terrible moments in Allison Street.
The third big crime of 1969 had taken place in the summer.
In early July, Ayr police launched a huge manhunt for the men responsible for the death of Mrs Rachael Ross, 72, following a robbery at her home.
She and her 67-year-old husband, Abraham, a director of a bingo club, had lain, bound and injured, for a day and two nights - on their bedroom floor before being discovered by their daily help.
Mrs Ross died in hospital. Her husband had been stabbed, but survived to testify in court.
On Monday, July 14, Patrick Meehan, a safebreaker who was known to police, was arrested in Glasgow and charged with Mrs Ross' murder. He was taken to Ayr, handcuffed to a detective.
When he appeared in court on the Tuesday, he was booed by a crowd of 200 onlookers, most of them holidaymakers.
Amid cries of 'Get a gun, shoot him!', one man managed to kick Meehan. But the news of the court appearance was overshadowed as dramatic events unfolded in Glasgow that same day.
Five plain-clothes officers went to an attic flat in Kelvinbridge to interview James Griffiths, 34, in connection with the murder.
They were unable to gain entry, and Griffiths, who was said to be pathologically afraid of prison, began shooting, injuring one policeman and firing at anyone who appeared in the street.
Still shooting, he raced to a car in Great Western Road, and wounded a number of people.
Retrieving a cartridge belt from the boot, he returned to the flat, where the siege continued.
By now, the police had bulletproof shields, and had been joined by a marksman with a highpowered rifle. But just as they were preparing to use tear-gas, Griffiths escaped, commandeered a car at gunpoint, and took police on a three-mile pursuit to Possil.
Griffiths ran into the Round TollBar, where he fired some more shots, asked for a drink, changed his mind, then made off in a stolen lorry, before ending up in a tenement flat in Springburn's Kay Street.
There, he fired into a children's playground and exchanged gunfire with police, his bullets ricocheting wildly and forcing local people to cower on shop floors.
It fell to Chief Superintendent Calum Finlayson and Detective Sergeant Ian Smith, both armed with revolvers, to end the siege.
Finlayson later recalled: "It was a warm day and I was perspiring and excited but I was not afraid.
"I knew that Griffiths had a rifle and sawn-off shotgun and I knew the devastating effect of the latter.
"I said, 'If he gets us on the stairhead he'll blow our heads off '."
Finlayson opened the letterbox and could hear Griffiths shooting. Then he noticed the gunman's shadow. Finlayson decided to fire and try to disarm him. He raised the revolver to the letter-box and took aim at the man's shoulder.
He fired, but then heard Griffiths shoot back at the door.
The officers feared their bullet had missed, but it hadn't - it had found its way from Griffiths' shoulder to his heart.
It was the first time that a wanted man had been shot by Scottish police. In all, Griffiths had fired more than 100 shots, injuring 13 people. One, a newsvendor, died of his injuries.
The following day's coverage of the siege contrasted with the optimistic stories about the launch of Apollo 11, which was taking Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon.
Paddy Meehan was later jailed for life for the Ross murder. But he spent his time in prison in solitary confinement, loudly protesting his innocence, and eventually, in 1976, he received a royal pardon. He died in 1994.
Finlayson was given an MBE by the Queen. Smith got the BEM.
As befits a big, overcrowded and industrialised city, with substantial degrees of poverty, Glasgow has never had any shortage of thugs, gangsters, murderous villains, hardmen, footsoldiers and petty thieves.
No wonder the job of Glasgow Chief Constable was long seen as one of the hardest jobs in British policing (the city has the oldest police force in the entire country).
Notorious among the murderers was Peter Manuel, the mass killer who was hung at Barlinnie at one minute past eight on the morning of Friday, July 11, 1958.
'Manuel Dies in Silence', read the front page headline in that day's Evening Times: Manuel hadn't uttered one word to officials for three weeks, since his unsuccessful appeal against his convictions for murder.
The 32-year-old labourer had been found guilty after an astonishing trial of the murders of Mrs Marion Watt, 45, her sister Mrs Margaret Brown, 42, and her daughter Vivienne Watt, 16, after a break-in in High Burnside.
Isabelle Cooke, 17, was killed on a footpath in Mount Vernon; and Peter Smart, 45, Doris Smart, 42, and their son Michael, 10, after a break-in in Uddingston.
The victims had all been shot, apart from Isabelle, who had been strangled.
Manuel falsely alleged that the first three murders had been the work of bakery owner William Watt, Marion's husband. During the trial, Manuel sacked his counsel and conducted his own defence with, as one paper noted, 'fluency, forensic skill and sharp intelligence'.
But his skills could not prevent the jury from returning unanimous guilty verdicts. The judge, Lord Cameron, had, however, told the jury to return a not guilty verdict on a charge of killing 17-year-old Anne Kneilands.
Nevertheless, in Lord Cameron's words, the charges facing Manuel were a "catalogue of crime which in gravity is certainly without precedent for many years".
The judge passed the death sentence, then reached for his black tricorn hat and added solemnly, "This is pronounced for doom".
In the years before gangs became associated with drugs or counterfeit goods, Glasgow had an extensive array of gangs of the sort chronicled in No Mean City, that controversial pulp saga of slumland Gorbals.
The gangs had names like Cheeky Forty, the Parlour Boys, and San Toy.
One gang leader, who was married with kids, reckoned it effeminate to dance with women, and danced with his male lieutenants instead.
Another, Billy Fullerton, drilled his Bridgeton Billy Boys and led them to blood-soaked battles on Glasgow Green and Rutherglen Bridge against the likes of the Norman Conks.
When he died in July 1962, at the age of 57, nearly 1000 people stopped the traffic as they gathered to watch the funeral.
Later on, Glasgow gave rise to 'Godfathers' like Walter Norval, who terrorised the north of the city for decades, and to Arthur Thompson senior.
The latter had a fearsome reputation, with a hand in drugs and illegal moneylending rackets.
But he always denied being anything other than a retired businessman, one whose only concerns were his children and grandchildren.
In the early 90s, the Thompson family found themselves at the centre of one of the most notorious gangland stories of recent decades.
Arthur Thompson junior was shot dead outside his father's home on August 17, 1991. On the day of his funeral, two other men were found dead: Bobby Glover and Joe Hanlon.
Paul Ferris, a former enforcer for Thompson senior, later stood trial for the murder of Thompson junior but was acquitted after what was then the longest criminal trial in Scottish legal history.
Ferris was later jailed for gun running, but publicly declared his intention to go straight after being released from prison in 2002. His life story is being turned into a film, with actor Robert Carlyle expected to take the starring role.
Jimmy Boyle was another brutal enforcer who, long before he carved a reputation as a sculptor, practised a rather different form of the art.
A high-profile graduate of Barlinnie's Special Unit, the reformed Boyle turned to writing and sculpting with a remarkable degree of success, exhibiting his work all over the world. He also worked with young people who were at risk of offending.
But few Glasgow-born criminals have attained the nationwide notoriety of Ian Brady.
Brady never knew his father, a Glasgow newspaper reporter. His mum, Peggy, was unable to cope with the baby and advertised for foster parents.
The result was that Brady spent 15 years with John and Mary Sloan, who lived first in the Gorbals and then in Pollok.
He also attended Shawlands Academy.
In 1951, at the age of 13, he was put on probation for housebreaking. His criminal career had begun, and it quickly gathered pace.
The world finally came to know Brady's name in May, 1966, when, aged just 28, he was jailed for life for the murders of Edward Evans, 17, ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, and 12year-old John Kilbride.
"These, " said the judge, Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson, "were three calculated, cruel, coldblooded murders."
Brady's co-accused, Myra Hindley, got life for the murders of Edward and Lesley Ann.
In 1987, the pair confessed to killing 12-year-old Keith Bennett (his body has never been found) and Pauline Reade, 16.
Myra Hindley died in 2002, aged 60; Brady is in a topsecurity hospital and has recently been said to be close to death after five years of hunger strikes. He has been force-fed.
Last year, Glasgow was reminded of another infamous case when two men, TC Campbell and Joe Steele, were cleared of the so-called 'icecream wars' killings.
Six members of the Doyle family died in a blaze at their Ruchazie home in April 1984, and Campbell and Steele were later convicted, though they made strenuous efforts to proclaim their innocence.
Like the Bible John killings, the tragic deaths of the Doyle family remain unsolved.
If one thing is noticeable in all of this, it's that there haven't been too many criminals like 'Gentle Johnny' Ramensky.
Ramensky, a famed safecracker and cat burglar from the Gorbals, escaped from Peterhead Prison on no fewer than five occasions.
But during the war, his finely honed skills were used by the Army - in one day, he cracked the safes of 14 embassies in Rome after the city had been liberated by the Allies.
Ramensky won military honours for his work as a commando, but after the war he returned to his old ways and died in Perth prison in 1972.
Arrayed against the legions of slashers, gangs and hoodlums has been a thin blue line of colourful, unbreakable cops and judges.
The cops included men like Joe Beattie, Sir David McNee (The Hammer), who later headed the Met in London, Elphinstone Dalglish and Tom Goodall.
Sir Percy Sillitoe, Chief Constable between 1931 and 1943, became known as the Gangbuster for his fearless confrontations with the gangs.
His hand-picked squad of tough, no-nonsense police officers met force with force, with significant success.
Even Billy Fullerton was persuaded to reform, in his own way.
In the words of Sillitoe's son, Anthony, many years later: "He solved the problem [of street warfare] years ago by enlisting tough cops, mainly Highlanders, to club first and ask questions later."
Sillitoe revolutionised the working methods of the Glasgow police, and later became head of MI5. He died in April, 1962.
Lord Carmont was a judge who became famous for his determination to stamp out lawless behaviour.
He never shirked from imposing crushing jail terms on the razorslashers and knife-wielders who terrorised law-abiding citizens in the years after the Second World War.
Early on, Carmont served notice of his intentions when he jailed eight accused for a total of 52 years for crimes of violence. The longest sentence was one of 10 years.
Carmont made his mark on the criminal classes, and a new phrase entered the language - 'Copping a Carmont'.
Mention should also be made of the lawyers who became part of Glasgow criminal legend - people like Joe Beltrami, Laurence Dowdall and Len Murray. 'Get me Dowdall' was the cry heard in many a police cell.
They are the many colourful characters who have emerged on either side of the law-and-order divide in Scotland's largest city.
Glasgow was shocked in March 1964 when a well-known Scots boxer and a young woman were found stabbed to death in a back-court in Cornwall Street, Kinning Park.
A blood-stained knife was found beside the bodies.
The man who died was Andy Barrie, 23, a docker and a professional middle-weight boxer.
The woman was Mrs Betty Duncan.
Reported the Evening Times: "Barrie, a father of two . . . is reported to have been separated from his wife and to have been friendly with Mrs Duncan."
Barrie had had 16 fights, 11 of them resulting in defeats. His last fight had been in London three months earlier.
CID officers said at the time that enquiries were proceeding but they were "not looking for any other person at the moment".
TIMESFILE - ANDY BARRIE IN APRIL, 1959, a 58-year-old widow, Mrs Helen McGhee, was found stabbed to death in her baby-linen shop at 1073 Cathcart Road, Mount Florida.
A knife was later found in her abandoned car, in Cambuslang, together with a number of items that were missing from the shop and from the dead woman.
A Cambuslang youth, John McGilvray, 17, was later charged with the murder of Mrs McGhee.
He denied the charge, and went on trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
The trial heard evidence of witness and fingerprint identification. A milkbottle top and a copy of the Evening Times, both found in the boot of the car, bore prints identical to those of the accused.
The defence presented medical evidence that McGilvray, while sane and fit to plead, had an emotional age of 12 to 13.
On July 7, McGilvray was found guilty of capital murder by a jury, and was ordered by Lord Sorn to be detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure.
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