1 Maggie McIver, Queen of the Barras, had her first taste of business when she looked after a family friend’s fruit barrow in Parkhead. She was just 12 years old at the time. Maggie was born Margaret Russell in 1879, to Margaret Hutcheson, a french polisher and Alexander Russell, a policeman, and she lived in Bridgeton. The barrows, or barras, were the handcarts the traders used to sell their wares.

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2 Maggie met her husband and future business partner James McIver at the local fruit market. The couple ran a small business in the Calton, hiring out horses and carts to local hawkers, mainly women, on a daily basis.

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After the first world war, the McIvers started organising Saturday markets on land that would become the present-day Barras market. In 1926, Maggie decided the market should be covered, as she was concerned about the health of the hawkers in bad weather.

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3 When James contracted malaria during the war and died, Maggie was left to raise nine children and think of new ways to raise income.

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She came up with the idea of opening a ballroom above the market, partly to give the hawkers somewhere to hold their Christmas dance. The Barrowland is now a world-renowned, much-loved and respected music venue, famous for its sprung floor and impressive list of performers, from David Bowie and Bob Dylan to Simple Minds and Oasis.

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4 Maggie asked former Bluebirds bandleader Billy McGregor to form a resident band for the Barrowland and it became Billy McGregor and the Gaybirds, a hit with Glasgow’s dancers throughout the thirties. Foxtrots and waltzes were the order of the day until American servicemen introduced jiving and jitterbugging during the Second World War.

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5 When she died in 1958, astute, caring and creative businesswoman Maggie McIver was a multi-millionaire.