📍David Livingstone Birthplace, 165 Station Road, Blantyre G72 9BY, UK
1813 – 1836“I was born in March 1813 in Shuttle Row, a tenement block built for workers at the Blantyre cotton mills on the River Clyde, south-east of Glasgow. Twenty-four families lived in the building, and ours, my parents and five children, lived in a single room. My father, Neil, sold tea from door to door and was a devout Sunday school teacher who loved books; my mother, Agnes, kept our one room spotless and was the gentlest of women. At ten I went to work in the mill as a piecer, joining broken threads on the spinning machines from six in the morning until eight at night. With part of my first week's wages I bought a Latin grammar, and I propped books on the spinning frame so I could read a sentence at a time as I worked. After the long day, I went to the mill's night school from eight until ten, and then read at home until my mother took the candle away. On Saturdays I roamed the countryside around Blantyre, collecting plants, shells and rocks, and reading every book of science and travel I could find. From my father I learned faith; from the mill, endurance. In 1836, with money saved from my wages, I went to study medicine and Greek in Glasgow, and I became a medical missionary in Africa, travelling across the continent and campaigning to end the slave trade. Shuttle Row is now the David Livingstone Birthplace Museum, and the single room where my family lived has been restored for visitors.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today