A man who spent 14 years recording thousands of war dead has had his work memorialised in a Roll of Honour in Glasgow.
John Houston recorded over 4,000 names in his efforts to uncover the stories of Glasgow’s forgotten First World War fallen before he died in 2024.
The retired BT engineer scrutinised more than 17,500 names already contained in the Roll of Honour, while investigating and verifying thousands more he believed were missing.
His work now forms part of a revised edition of the Roll, correcting and significantly expanding the city’s historic record more than a century after its first publication in 1922.
More than 5,000 names have been added or verified, bringing the updated Roll to 24,824 entries.
‘He wouldn’t stop looking for that person’
For years, John Houston could be found in his living room, at his computer, surrounded by books, papers, names and dates.
Following a morning at the Mitchell Library, an afternoon’s research might stretch long into the evening.
His wife, Margaret, would call him for his tea, but if John had found a promising lead, there was little chance he would leave it there.
Margaret, 82, and son Stephen, 63, say they are proud of his legacy.
“He could be finished at 1am in the morning. If he found something, he had to run with it until he completed it,” Margaret told STV News.
“He wouldn’t stop looking for that person until he’d got all the proof that he needed.”
Stephen added: “He didn’t do anything by halves – the research was all time-consuming.
“I thought it was his hobby, but I didn’t realise the scale of it. When you’re talking 4,000-plus names in a period of time.
“His grandson says it was an obsession, but a good obsession.”
One of the discoveries that stayed with Margaret involved Glasgow’s Police Roll of Honour.
While checking entries, John noticed several names that appeared to have been omitted.
“The more he looked, the more there was,” Margaret recalled.
STV NewsFurther investigation eventually led John to three servicemen he had been searching for. In two cases, what had long been assumed turned out to be wrong.
The men had been recorded as missing and presumed dead, but John discovered that both had in fact survived the war and gone on to live into their 90s.
“That was lovely,” Margaret added. “A nice surprise.”
‘My great-grandfather has been properly honoured’
One of the corrected entries has a deeply personal significance for Glasgow’s Lord Provost, Jacqueline McLaren.
Her great-grandfather, Private Allan Hannah McIlvennie of the Cameron Highlanders, was incorrectly recorded in the original Roll, where his surname had been omitted and ‘Allan Hannah’ mistakenly appeared as his full name.
McIlvennie had previously served in the Second Boer War before returning to civilian life. He later re-enlisted during the First World War, leaving behind a wife and three children. His youngest daughter, Mary, the Lord Provost’s grandmother, was just ten months old when he died and never knew her father.
“A lot of children were born or grew up without ever knowing the fathers who never came home,” Provost McLaren said.
“To finally see my great-grandfather take his proper place in Glasgow’s Roll of Honour means a great deal to my family and me.”
The Lord Provost said John’s work was “a labour of love.”
STV NewsShe said: “Glasgow owes a real debt of thanks to the Houston family, and particularly to John, whose painstaking research has ensured that thousands more people are now given their rightful place in our city’s history.
“He just wanted to do the right thing. It’s important to remember those who put themselves in the front line, the sacrifice they gave.”
She says the Roll of Honour is a way of “looking after” the families of servicemen and women for generations to come.
“I would see families come here and leave upset because they don’t see the name in the book. They’re all invited to come back to discover and remember someone connected to them.
“I hope it encourages people to explore their own family history, to visit Glasgow City Archives and to discover the individual stories behind these names.”
Margaret says John would be “embarrassed” to accept any accolade for his work if he were alive today.
“He didn’t do it because he wanted recognition or anything like that,” says Margaret. “He just did it because he felt that it was something that needed to be done.”
STV NewsJohn’s interest in the Roll grew through volunteering with the Scottish Military Research Group, whose work included photographing and documenting lesser-known war memorials in schools, churches and community buildings across Scotland.
As he investigated the people behind those memorials, his attention increasingly turned to Glasgow.
At the Mitchell Library, he worked through historic copies of the Evening Times on microfiche, searching for reports about local servicemen who had died and gathering information about their lives.
He discovered discrepancies and omissions in Glasgow’s Roll, with others appearing more than once or recorded incorrectly.
Not only was he now finding those overlooked, but he also became convinced that the existing Roll needed to be checked.
His research soon stretched far beyond the Mitchell Library and the accumulating piles of papers and records in the Houston family home.
He and Margaret travelled several times to the National Archives at Kew, with research trips sometimes lasting several days.
Visits to France and Belgium also became opportunities to pursue leads. They travelled through military cemeteries searching for the final resting places of the men John had been researching.
He would arrive with lists of names he hoped to find.
Margaret became part of the detective work too, photographing headstones carrying the emblems of Scottish regiments and gathering information that might help later.
There was satisfaction when their research helped other families searching for graves in these cemeteries, discovering where a relative had finally been buried.
John also contributed to the In From The Cold Project, a volunteer research initiative investigating servicemen and women who died during the First and Second World Wars but were missing from official Commonwealth War Graves Commission records.
As new historical records became available, he repeatedly revisited his research.
When pension records became accessible, Margaret says it gave him another source against which to check the names.
“It just kept on,” Margaret says. “That would be him off again; I need to go through all those names.”
John also passed his research to Dr Irene O’Brien, City Archivist at the Mitchell Library, including supporting information beyond what could be contained within the finished Roll.
Dr Irene O’Brien said: “As regular visitors to the Mitchell, I got to know John and Margaret very well, but I don’t think each of us understood just how this work would grow and evolve over the years.
“John’s meticulous research has left Glasgow an invaluable historical legacy. It will provide future generations of historians with a richer record of the city’s wartime experience, while giving families the opportunity to discover and understand the stories of relatives whose sacrifice might otherwise have gone unrecorded.”
When people thanked John for helping them uncover information about a relative, Margaret remembers his response: “This is my hobby. This is what I do.”
Yet she says he never felt the work was complete.
“John always thought this job would never be finished because there will always be people who deserve to be remembered.”
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