“Jail” Square

Running perilously short of time, but still desperate to find a site near the town centre, the Statue Committee naively approached the council with a request to erect the statue in County Square. This was unanimously and quickly agreed by the Council, but if the denial of the centre position in Dunn Square created a storm, the proposal for the County Square site generated absolute outrage.
The Square, which was known locally as “Jail Square”, was a far from prestigious area in those days and letter after letter to the Paisley Express and in the wider Scottish press made it plain that the public, both in Paisley and elsewhere regarded this proposal as a serious insult to the memory of the bard.
Comments were made about the “…dregs of life…” being led to the prison past the statue; others complained about the proposed site being close to the new cabmen’s shelter, as cabmen were not noted for their decorum or language (they later burnt an effigy of the poet in the square!) and the presence of many horses meant that their filth was everywhere.
Lastly people complained about the proximity of Gilmour Street railway station. Their complaints did not only relate to the regular occurrences of drunkenness around the station. This, remember, was a very busy freight and passenger terminal at the height of the steam age – the whole area was filthy with soot, the noise was at times deafening and the attendant smoke and sparks neatly completed the hellish impression. Making a less than beautiful backdrop, the freight yard itself, looking

County Square 1888, showing goods yard (Courtesy David Rowand Collection)

like a run-down industrial estate, covered almost a third of the square. No surprise then that no memorials to members of the Coats or Clark thread making dynasties appear here today; predictably they all stand in prominent positions close to the originally planned position for the Burns statue, in or around Dunn Square!
The outcry over the County Square site rumbled on and on and simply refused to go away. People in the town simply would not accept that their hard-won gift could be treated in such an off-hand and demeaning way by the very people elected to look after their best interests – the local MP and the town council. Eventually, when the council continued to ignore the opinions of the people, which were by then being expressed on every street corner and almost daily in letters and editorial in the Paisley Express, a petition opposing the County Square site was raised and handed in.
At the same time, Sir William and the council appeared to blame each other for the problem. A letter from Sir William was quoted in full in the Paisley Express on 12th March. Inexplicably, in the light of his earlier actions, it states that “….it is not in my power to interfere with the action of the town council.”
Eventually the continuing furore and confusion over the statue led to Paisley becoming an object of derision throughout the country.