THE Manager of the late Glasgow Tramway and Omnibus
Company, Limited, was a native of Kinross-shire, and began business life in the
office of the procurator-fiscal, who was also a writer and banker in the county
town. In 1859 he came to Glasgow to the office of Messrs. Moncrieff, Paterson,
Forbes & Barr, solicitors. While in this employment he spent a session in
Edinburgh, and passed through the regular Law curriculum at Glasgow University.
His energies, however, were to find their real outlet in another field. The
tramway car, an American invention, had been introduced to this country by a
strange genius, George Francis Train, who had a small line running at Birkenhead
in 1861. Eight years later Glasgow Corporation determined to adopt the
invention, and the first line, from St. George's Cross to Eglinton Toll, was
opened for traffic in 1872. By law the Corporation could not work the tramways,
but it constructed the lines, and leased them for twenty-three years to the
private Glasgow Tramway Company. Of this company Mr. Duncan was appointed
secretary in 1870, and he had the entire task of organising the work. To begin
with, he bought up the old omnibuses, and this and the promotion expenses loaded
the company with a debt of £180,000. The prophets said the enterprise could
never pay, and after the first dividend it paid none for six half years. After
this, however, it steadily progressed, till its dividend was over eleven per
cent. At the end of 1894 there were in operation 32 miles of double rails, 300
cars, 3,600 horses, and 1,800 men. Forty-three million passengers a year were
carried, and the revenue was a quarter of a million sterling.
Then the Corporation stepped in. Seven years earlier the
company, with the end of the lease looming before it, had sought Parliamentary
powers to extend its business by carriage-hiring, contracting and the like, but
was induced to drop the project by the Corporation's promise to negotiate for
prolonging the lease. But in 1891 the city resolved to municipalise the
tramways, and in due course this was done. Mr. Duncan, nevertheless, found new
resources. He obtained powers to include cab and carriage hiring, undertaking,
and other work in the business, was himself appointed managing director in 1894,
and forthwith launched the enterprise upon a new career. He extended the
business to Edinburgh, Leith, Greenock, Ayr, and other places, and developed the
undertaking five-fold. In 1901 the company had 1,800 horses and nearly 1,400
men.
In 1892, when the Corporation had decided to terminate the
tramways lease, Mr. Duncan was, at the hands of the servants of the company,
presented with by Sir George Reid, P.R.S.A. He died suddenly at his residence,
Thornbank, Pollokshields, on 20th August, 1908, and was survived by a wife and a
grown-up family.
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Index of Glasgow Men (1909)