Inferno that brought death and despair

On that night nearly 400 men were inside asleep in their cramped cubicles when they were roused by a shout of "Fire! Fire!" Many escaped but saw their possessions burn. Nearly forty men lost their lives.Victorian Glasgow was a magnet for itinerant workers. Highlanders, Irish workers and other Scots streamed into the city in search of any low-paid manual labour. By 1860 the city council, appalled by the overcrowded hostels that accommodated these people, built six Model Lodging Houses for men and one for women. These were meant to provide better and cheaper accommodation for the city's poor and destitute. They were meant to keep them safe.

By the 1900s, Gordon Street, close to the centre of Glasgow, was lined with these hostels. Number 39 was one of two owned by William Nicol, a local town councillor.

This converted warehouse comprised four floors plus an attic and basement. Each floor was divided into dormitories – which in turn were broken up into small wooden cubicles. These tiny cramped spaces could fit only a bed. For the privilege of sleeping here the men paid between 4d (pence) and 6d per night.

The interior was lined with wood. The cubicles were made of wood. Although smoking in bed or using candles was prohibited, the rules were often ignored. And, fatally, there was inadequate fire protection.

On the night of Sunday 19 November 1905 the house was full of men. At ten to six in the morning a watchman outside noticed smoke and alerted the fire brigade. By the time they arrived minutes later huge licking flames were shooting out from the fourth floor dormitories.

Soon half-clothed men started staggering out of the building, shivering in the cold. Firemen struggling to reach those trapped inside had to battle up the single stairway, pushing their way through the throng of panic-stricken men flooding towards the one exit.

The fire had started on the fourth floor, just below the attic where yet more men slept. The firemen had only ten minutes in which to mount their rescue before they were forced back by the heat of the blaze. In this time they rescued nearly 40 men – men who would have surely perished but for their perseverance.

In the attic floors a different drama was unfolding. Realising that escape downwards was impossible, they took to the roof. Donald McNab, who was physically disabled and used a crutch, later described seeing men hammering away in desperation at glass windows with their bare hands. He waited with a blind man and a paralysed man whilst the able-bodied around him tried to flee. One man, Jack Findlay – later hailed as a hero – used McNab's crutch to break the windows. He returned to help the three disabled men onto the roof and found a ladder leading to a neighbouring building. Over thirty men's lives were saved that way – over the roof, most naked in the bitter cold.

Survivors were taken to the Central Police Station where they were served tea, bread and butter and provided with clothing. The more seriously injured, 29 in total, were taken to the Royal Infirmary.

When the fire was brought under control the fire brigade began the grim task of searching for the dead. Eventually 39 bodies were pulled from the ruin of the building; most had died from suffocation. The bodies were laid out in the mortuary of the police station and crowds formed immediately of those seeking to identify missing relatives.

By Wednesday all but eight were identified and the funerals began. Some bodies were taken by family for private service, but the greater proportion were honoured with a public burial.

On Wednesday 22 November thousands lined the city centre streets to watch the funeral cortege process to the cemeteries. On this wet drizzly day two mounted policemen lead first the hearses containing the protestant dead, then the hearses with the Roman Catholic dead. Round the graves were women carrying children, a desperate reminder of the human tragedy.

The police, the fire brigade and the city council were widely praised for the actions they took on the night of the fire. But later there were concerns raised over the level of safety in the Model Lodging House. Later, in an effort to ensure that such a disaster never happened again, the law was changed and many new safety measures insisted upon for Lodging Houses.

Yet, although covered well in the press of the time, there appeared to be a collective shame at the fate of these vulnerable men. William Cross, author of a book on the fire, Death in a Lodging House, is saddened that their death was so quickly forgotten and that unlike other areas where there was tragic death, no memorial to the men has ever been erected.

""These men were among the poorest in the City," says Cross. " They were men with few friends some separated from their families and their past. These men deserve to be remembered. "

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