Burns & Harris's Directory of Dundee 1925–1926 – Digital Download or CD-ROM

A Window Into "Juteopolis" — Scottish Genealogy Resource 

Step back into Dundee at the height of the roaring twenties — a city of steaming jute mills, clattering printing presses, marmalade pots and football fever. If your family tree has roots in Dundee, Angus or Forfarshire, this contemporary directory places your ancestors at a named address, in a named street, at a precise moment in time — between the wars, between the censuses, and in the middle of one of the most turbulent industrial periods in the city's history.

Product Formats

• Instant Digital Download (PDF) — no waiting, start searching in minutes
• CD Version — posted to you, ideal as a permanent archive copy
• Supplied as scanned images of the original pages, preserving the look and feel of the period document
• Because directories are arranged alphabetically by name, the scans are easy to navigate manually even on older devices — simply scroll to the letter you need
• Modern PDF readers do the rest: up-to-date readers such as Google Chrome perform on-the-fly OCR (optical character recognition), allowing you to search, select and copy text from the scanned pages
• With Google Lens built into Chrome, you can translate the scanned text into other languages and use text-to-speech to have entries read aloud — these accessibility features are available on desktop PCs
• Please note: OCR accuracy depends on the quality of the original printing; faint or damaged pages may need a little patience!

Why This Directory Matters — Filling the Census Gap

This directory is one of the most valuable census substitutes available for mid-1920s Dundee:

• The 1921 census is available (released in 2022), but the 1931 Scottish will not be available until 2031
• No census was taken in 1941 due to the Second World War
• The next usable census — 1951 — remains closed until 2051

That means a 30-year blackout in Scottish census records, and this directory sits right at the start of it.

And there's another problem the directory quietly solves: then as now, not everyone trusted the government's appetite for collecting personal information. Fear of taxation, dislike of officialdom, and simple reluctance meant that a surprising number of households refused to fill in the forms, dodged the enumerator, or were simply missed. A directory works differently — it records the people who wanted to be found: the tradesmen advertising their businesses, the merchants courting customers, the professionals building reputations. If your ancestor is missing from the census, they may well be listed here instead.

What's Inside — The Sections of the Directory

Based on the standard make-up of Burns & Harris's Dundee directories, expect the following (exact titles and order vary slightly from year to year — please see the sample images):

• Municipal & Official Directory — the Lord Provost, bailies, Dean of Guild, town councillors, burgh officials, police, Harbour Trust, and water, gas and electricity commissioners — with names and addresses
• Parliamentary Information — Dundee's MPs and constituency details, plus voter registration information
• Post Office & Communications — postal arrangements, delivery times, telegraph and telephone details, railway goods agents and carriers
• Law, Banking & the Professions — sheriffs, solicitors, advocates, banks, insurance offices, physicians, surgeons and dentists
• Churches & Clergy — every denomination, minister and manse, from the Old Steeple to the missions
• Education — the School Board, the High School of Dundee, public and private schools, and University College
• Institutions & Charities — Dundee Royal Infirmary, the Royal Victoria Hospital, asylums, orphanages and benevolent societies
• Commercial Directory (A–Z) — merchants, manufacturers and tradesmen, alphabetically arranged with business addresses
• Private Residents (A–Z) — the alphabetical heart of the directory: householders throughout the city
• Classified Trades & Professions — every occupation grouped together, from bakers to bleachers, drapers to dockers' employers
• Street Directory — streets, avenues, closes and courts listed alphabetically with householders in house-number order — a goldmine for house historians
• Suburban Sections — Broughty Ferry, Monifieth, Barnhill, Lochee and surrounding districts
• Advertisements — wonderful period detail from chemists and coal merchants to picture houses and boot repairers

Dundee in 1925–26 — Setting the Scene

The Three Js: Jute, Jam & Journalism. Dundee was still the jute capital of the world, employing tens of thousands — the majority of them women, a rarity in British industry. Cox's Stack, the towering chimney of the vast Camperdown Works in Lochee, dominated the skyline, while Keiller's turned out the world-famous Dundee marmalade. Meanwhile D.C. Thomson's presses never stopped, with the Sunday Post, People's Journal, Rover and Wizard read in households across Britain — and The Beano and The Dandy just around the corner.

Famous — and infamous — local names. Dundee was the city where Winston Churchill lost his parliamentary seat in 1922, defeated by Edwin Scrymgeour, the only Prohibitionist MP ever elected in Britain. Mill worker, activist and folk-song writer Mary Brooksbank was among the thousands of Dundee women labouring in the mills. The city also raised the legendarily bad poet William McGonagall, and its later sons and daughters include actors Brian Cox, singer Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue and author A.L. Kennedy. Keep your eyes open — jute barons, newspaper magnates and local worthies may appear in these very pages.

Sport & entertainment. The city boasted two senior football clubs whose grounds stand a few hundred yards apart — Dundee FC at Dens Park and Dundee United at Tannadice Park (renamed from Dundee Hibernian in 1923). The magnificent Caird Hall had just opened in 1923, drawing concert-goers alongside the city's theatres, music halls and picture houses. The Dundee Law War Memorial was unveiled in 1925, looking over a city of around 170,000 people.

Wealth next door. Across the water in Broughty Ferry, the jute and shipping millionaires built their villas — reputedly making the "Brighton of Scotland" one of the wealthiest addresses in the country. Your mill-worker ancestor and their employer may both be listed here, sometimes in the same district.

Important Disclaimer

The map originally issued with this directory is MISSING from this scan, unless otherwise stated in the listing title or description above. All other content is as published. This product is a scanned reproduction of a historical document; the condition of individual pages reflects the age of the original and may include foxing, faded print or slight distortion