Andrew Hutcheson

Andrew Hutcheson was born in Glasgow in 1868 to James Hutcheson (variously spelled McHutcheson, McCutcheon, McHutchion), a blacksmith who turned to gasfitting and bellhanging in the 1870s. 1 It was not uncommon for hammermen to add gasfitting and plumbing to their skills, as the demand for such domestic conveniences increased. Some bellhanging specialists also became electricians and window-blind makers: as they already used wire for bell-pulls and servants' bells, it was a short step to installing electrical bells and wiring. Andrew Hutcheson's family demonstrates all of these various trajectories.

Andrew was one of at least four brothers, of whom one became a bellhanger and another, James, a plumber. 2 One or both of the James Hutchesons in the family, father and son, worked on Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh buildings on their own account.

Andrew Hutcheson began his business around 1900, in George Street, in the heart of the 18th-century street grid of mercantile Glasgow. 3 Having trained as a bellhanger in the late 1880s, he became an electrician, 4 and one of his early jobs was to install 220 lamps in Sydney Place United Free Church, 'the first ecclesiastical edifice in the East End of Glasgow into which ... electric lighting has been put'. 5 He joined the charitable trade guild, the Incorporation of Wrights of Glasgow, in 1907, and his son James was apprenticed as an electrician in due course. 6 Typically for an upwardly-mobile small trader, Andrew moved from Dennistoun to the residential suburb of Cambuslang in the late 1900s. 7 His offices moved from Waterloo Street to West Campbell Street, remaining there until the company was voluntarily liquidated in 1939. 8