The Telford sisters, Cecilia and Margaret, being unmarried and of independent means, having been bequeathed various annuities from the Heugh, Wright, Littlejohn ancestors, had time on their hands. This enabled them to become involved in charitable activities in Glasgow. 

 

In particular Margaret Telford received special recognition from the City of Glasgow for her work as recorded in the following obituary from the Glasgow Herald of July 13, 1918:

 

The Late Miss M. Telford

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The death is announced at the age of 83 of Miss M. Telford whose name will be for many years a fragrant memory in many a Glasgow home. For 40 years she devoted herself to the work of providing and distributing clothing to patients on leaving the fever hospitals of the city, a self-imposed duty in which she spent herself tireless energy and genuine unpatronising kindliness. 

 

Six years ago Miss Telford was honoured for her services by the Corporation in a unique fashion. She was presented with an address enclosed in a casket, and with her name there was opened a "Civic Roll" of honour for which the Lord Provost of the day, D.A.Stevenson, prognosticated a rival with the Burgess Roll of the city - should it contain no names of less distinction then Miss Telford's. 

 

Her beneficent work was undertaken - almost half a century ago - at the urgent desire of Dr. R. H. Russell and Lord Provost Ure, and in accepting the address Miss Telford paid a high tribute to them as well as to her fellow members of the Dorcas Society with which she was associated from the first ( from 1872 and secretary for many years).

  

The photo above of the Belvedere Infectious Diseases Hospital is from around 1922; it has now largely been demolished.

 

The conditions in which she worked are vividly evoked by this extract from "Laws of Livingstonia" (available at Google Books online ):

 

The Glasgow City Mission was a notable institution which carried the message and spirit of Christ into social deeps where vice reigned naked and unabashed. There were few better training grounds for foreign missionaries than the sphere in which its service was carried on. John G. Paton of the New Hebrides was one of its agents ; Chalmers of New Guinea was another : both came into contact with scenes almost un- believable in their degradation and wickedness, but both owed much in after-life to the knowledge and experience they gained in 

the work. 

On the mid-session holiday the two students took train to Glasgow and called at the office and saw the superintendent, the Rev. John Renfrew. 

" I see you have had smallpox," he said, eyeing Robert Laws narrowly. " Yes." 

" Well, none of the ordinary posts are vacant, but we are beginning a mission in the Smallpox and Fever Hospitals and want a missionary for that. The post has been offered to all our other men — over forty in number — but we cannot get any to accept it." 

" I will accept it," said Laws, without hesitation. " I have no fear of infection, and I am also a medical student." "That is all to the good. Here is a form to fill up, and I will 

speak to the Directors." 

Laws was interested to learn of the origin of this development of the City Mission. Miss Margaret Telford, a little, energetic lady, plump of body and rosy of cheek, was asked by a friend to make inquiries regarding a servant who had been taken to the Fever Hospital. While being conducted over the building a Roman Catholic priest appeared. 

" What is that man doing here ? " she asked. 

" He is the only Christian visitor who ever comes," was the reply. 

Miss Telford visited the servant regularly, and also spoke to the other patients, and gradually there was a general request for her kindly ministrations. She had herself contracted more than one serious fever, and had but recently recovered from an attack of typhus. Talking to her brother-in-law, who was a doctor, she remarked : 

" Why, Doctor, do you suppose these disciplines have been sent to me ? "  "Well, Maggie," he replied, " I don't know much about the ways of Providence, but as a medical man I think you are now immune from the major fevers. Is there no guidance in that fact ? " 

She thought there was, and continued her voluntary work at the hospital, where she became known as the " missionary lady," and was welcomed with eagerness by the inmates. 

She became more and more impressed with their dire need of spiritual help and comfort. One day she went into a ward to see a girl of fourteen who was dying of typhus, and found the priest standing by her. He taunted Miss Telford with the fact that no Protestant minister had the courage to enter the hospital. She pointed to the dying girl. " Perhaps, sir," she said, " you will pray for her." Taken aback, he mumbled something about not interfering with those who did not belong to him, and left the ward. She went to the Directors of the City Mission and urged them to appoint a special missionary to the hospitals. 

" We are quite willing to do something," they said, " but we have no money.". 

" I will raise the money," she replied, and did so. 

Laws was the only applicant for the post. Before being engaged he was subjected to a severe test. The Superintendent accompanied him on a round of visitation to houses in the slums, 

frightful dens of viciousness and dirt, and watched how he approached and addressed the people. Laws felt miserably out of his element : it seemed like impertinence to knock at doors 

and speak to men and women about their spiritual welfare. When the Superintendent took his place his feelings changed : he could not admire sufficiently the naturalness, the skill, the kindliness of his address. But when a Roman Catholic virago attacked them as heretics, flourished a long knife in their faces, and threatened to murder them, the Superintendent suggested that perhaps they had done enough, and Laws fervently acquiesced. He was ex- hausted with the ordeal, and felt an unhappy sense of ill-fittedness for the work. 

Nevertheless he was appointed, his salary being £80 per annum ; on arrangement being made by which he should spend four hours daily and the week-ends in the work, and have the rest of his time for his studies. As his chief residence was now to be Glasgow he took permanent lodgings there in a third-storey room. It was the first time he had definitely left home, and the parting with his father and stepmother was trying. As he stood girt for his journey south his father with broken voice prayed that the blessing of God might rest upon him, and that he might be guided and helped and made an instrument of blessing to others. 

 

When, in October, he took up duty in the hospital, Miss Telford met him in one of the passages. The tall, ungainly figure towered above her, and as she looked up into his grave, smallpox-marked face her heart sank ; he seemed so unlikely a person for the work. 

But, following him into the wards, she watched his first overtures to the patients and was satisfied. She did not know that what made the ordeal less difficult for him was the presence of the children. He was sorry to see them suffering, but he was always at his best with young life, and the little patients put him at his ease. 

 

There were over a hundred cases of scarlet fever, typhus, and typhoid in the Fever Hospital at Belvedere, and fifty patients in the Smallpox Hospital in the Parliamentary Road. His duty was to talk to the patients, to hold services either by their cots or in the convalescent wards, to write letters to inform relatives of their admission and progress, and — what he shrank from most — to visit their homes, or the homes of their friends, with the intimation that they had succumbed. So much walking had he to do that his muscles grew to be like cords of steel. 

Smallpox became epidemic in the city, the number of patients rapidly mounted up, and his time and energies were so tasked that his own studies were put aside or pursued when the world was asleep. His father anxiously urged him to give up part of his duties, but he would not hear of it. " With God's help and good health and plenty of Aberdeen pluck I shall yet get through it all." 

 

The cases in the Smallpox Hospital rose to 240, and those in the Fever Hospital to 320. The deaths averaged three per day : twelve corpses lay at one time in the smallpox morgue awaiting burial. " I am afraid," he said, " I am getting too familiar with death." Often in a whole ward there would not be a pair of intelligent eyes : all were ablaze with delirium. Many of the patients were belted down to their beds. Numbers died moaning in agony as he passed along. The odour of the diseased bodies was horrible : he would stumble out, sick, into the open air and go to his lodgings and refuse all food. " Sometimes," he wrote, 

" my heart is like to burst amongst such awful scenes, and yet I would need ever to have a smile on my face to cheer the nurses and the patients." It was his faith in God and his belief that he would be guided and helped that kept him calm and strong. 

Nurses were struck down and died, but he had no fear for himself : he was, indeed, ready for further service and sacrifice. " My smallpox experience has given me a wonderful influence with the patients, and to gain the same advantage with the others I am quite ready to go through the ordeal of typhus if it should please God thus to order it." Yet he was not conscious of heroism but only of a humble willingness to do his duty. 

 

Miss Telford grew to appreciate the sterling character of the young missionary. She became his kind and loyal friend, introduced him to her home and to the society of her two sisters, and in many practical ways helped him then and afterwards. 

One day she said to him, " Why do you always stop at the ropewalk and the brickwork on your way to Belvedere ?  "He looked surprised. "How do you know that ? " he asked. 

" Never mind — why do you waste your time standing so long there? " she demanded, with mock severity. " I am not wasting my time. I am trying to pick up a know- ledge of the two crafts — I want to know how to make ropes and how to make bricks." " Why ? " 

" Because it will come in useful in the future when I am in Africa."

 

She is buried at the Glasgow Necropolis, the city cemetery adjacent to Glasgow Cathedral.

 

Margaret Telford was the last surviving member of the Telford family of Blairlogie, Stirling and Glasgow to remain in Scotland. The family line however flourished in Australia and New Zealand - described elsewhere in this document.

 

There are still descendants in Scotland of other branches of the Tellfoords of Blairlogie.