Carluke Parish Historical Society  

Sports Day 1935

Our family has a brown and faded clipping from the Carluke Gazette dated around June 1935. Most copies of that Gazette survived perhaps at the most just a few days, before maybe being used to wrap fish and chips, except my copy which has been kept for 76 years now. This clipping from the inside back page where golf and football results are found, shows a pair of young lads and the headline Champion of School for third time.

The boys are William and Adam Cairns aged 14 who lived in Wildman Rd in Law and attended Carluke High School together. That they won the sports day with the most points, was commendable but in fact they had done so for three successive years, winning races at Wishaw High and Motherwell as well, in invitational competitions.

In the next picture you can see the bonnie lads, born twins and probably

fighting and squabbling even then, set in a hard-back chair, Willie on the left and Adam on the right, aged 3 months at the time. normal weans, normal weight and size considering they are the only twins born in their genealogy either before or after.

And so the lads went to the Wee School, and I am told they walked from Law each day, if that can be believed, and might have gotten their athletic legs that way. I cannot say, except that by the time they were eleven years old they were head and shoulders above their classmates as can be seen here
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