Novel plunged me into 1920s Glasgow - what I found may surprise you

The Herald Scotland

13-05-2025

As the daughter of a prominent suffragist, Mabel is not only frustrated by the professional limitations imposed on her but is especially conscious that 'justice was in very short supply if you were a woman, especially a working-class woman', so she's not above bending the rules and applying a little guile and subterfuge if it will do some good for the women of Glasgow, whose cases her male police colleagues routinely dismiss.
She's alerted by Beatrice Price, who runs an employment agency, that the girls her agency sends to the prestigious department store Arrol's tend not to stay there long, and Price's tentative enquiries suggest that they're being sexually assaulted by the store's owner, Hector Arrol. Informed that such unsupported allegations wouldn't stand up in court, Beatrice decides to get a closer look at what's really going on in Arrol's and persuades Hector to let her work there temporarily, on the pretext of combating an epidemic of shoplifting.
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Yes, it's about time we mentioned the shoplifters. Moore's Glasgow has its own equivalent of London's Forty Elephants, an all-female gang called St Thenue's Avengers who sweep through Glasgow's department stores, furriers and jewellers with such skill and speed that the police have been unable to stop them.
Mabel has a confrontation with gang members that earns her a punch in the face from the tomboyish Johnnie (Johanna), who, it transpires, is concerned about a missing friend and is trying, with little success, to alert her comrades to the dangers lurking in Arrol's. Someone with Johnnie's nerve and skill-set might be just what Mabel and Beatrice could use, if they could talk her into coming over to their side.
It all takes place in a 1920 Glasgow that has been exhaustively researched and lovingly recreated. There are fondly-remembered department stores and tea-rooms, townhouses and tenements, warehouses and public toilets, and Moore can even tell you the opening hours of the shops and what times the Glasgow streets were at their busiest.
The Devil's Draper by Donna Moore (Image: Fly On The Wall)
But she wears all her research lightly, telling us just enough for us to become immersed in her convincing recreation of the old city. She gets across equally economically that this is a time of upheaval and uncertainty, with the trauma of the war visible just beneath the surface, modern art challenging people's assumptions and the wealthy dabbling with cocaine in Glasgow's more exclusive night-spots.
There's a sub-plot about Mabel retrieving her biological grandmother from the asylum her husband dumped her into four decades earlier and bringing her back to live with her adoptive mother Floss and partner Jo, which feels a little disconnected from the main narrative at first but starts to make far more sense with the reintroduction of one The Unpicking's most unsung but important characters: the ladies toilet attendant Winnie, centrally located, with her finger on the pulse and always with a pot of stew on her stove.
While it's obvious what crimes are being committed against the girls at Arrol's, Moore draws a discreet veil over them in what is essentially a warm, engaging novel about female spaces and sisterly solidarity triumphing over a misogynistic, narrow-minded system.