Bare foot girls in sugar sheds...

Link to this picture + info in archive of Scottish National Gallery

This picture in the Scottish National Gallery archive is quite something.

Absent Voices artist, Alec Galloway, showed the rest of the group this picture which he'd been given copy of by the late Bill Hunter.

Bill was a fount of information on the sugar industry in Greenock.

The historian in the group, Rod Miller, wondered why the bare feet, the material and puddles on the floor, the hoses hanging up...

He thought they could have been involved in tanning.

But, no, further research reveals these girls are preparing cloths for the filter presses – a key element in sugar production – around 1914.

The link to the Scottish National Gallery archive reveals all. Don't you just love the web? It's opened up the world to the possibilities of the past.