Few buildings in this register carry a nickname as blunt as the one Glasgow's own citizens gave the Humane Society House on Glasgow Green: the Dead Hoose, a name with no folklore or euphemism softening it, earned simply and directly by what the building was actually used for across more than two centuries. The Glasgow Humane Society itself was founded in 1790 with a mission as practical as it was grim: to recover the bodies of those who drowned in the Clyde and the city's other waterways, and, where possible, to save the drowning before the river claimed them at all. A house and boathouse were built for the Society right on the riverbank at Glasgow Green in 1795, purpose-built to keep the Society's officer, known as the Keeper, close enough to the water to respond quickly whatever the hour.
The role passed down through generations of Keepers, each one living in the house with their own family while carrying out what amounted to a permanent, round-the-clock watch over one of the most dangerous stretches of river running through the city. The most remarkable individual tenure belonged to Ben Parsonage, who served as Keeper until his death in 1979; across forty-five years in the role, he is reported to have personally recovered at least 2,000 bodies from the Clyde, and to have rescued roughly 1,000 people who might otherwise have joined them, a career of sustained, unglamorous heroism carried out largely without public recognition, working out of a small riverside house whose own nickname reflected the darker half of what it did far more readily than the lifesaving half. The Society continues its work from Glasgow Green today, the house itself standing as one of the quieter, less theatrical pieces of genuinely macabre history recorded anywhere in this collection.
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