Halloween Traditions in Lochee in 1914
On Saturday, 31 October 1914, Lochee would have met Halloween with candlelight, soot-blackened faces, turnip lanterns, and a shadow it had not known the year before. Britain had been at war since 4 August. Men had left for training or service. Families watched the newspapers with dread. Yet the old customs did not simply stop.
Halloween in Lochee was not the plastic-mask, supermarket-sweets festival familiar today. It belonged to kitchens, closes, stairwells, wynds, mill families, and children brave enough to knock on doors after dark. It mixed play with fear, courtship with superstition, and mischief with neighbourly rules.
To picture Halloween Traditions in Lochee in 1914, it helps to imagine a working district of Dundee at the end of an autumn week: mill chimneys, damp pavements, crowded homes, tired adults, excited children, and the smell of singed candle inside a hollowed-out turnip.
Lochee in 1914 gave Halloween its own character
Lochee was shaped by work. The jute industry dominated Dundee, and Lochee was closely tied to it through large mills such as Camperdown Works. Many streets were home to mill workers and their families. Women’s wages mattered. Children grew up around shift bells, factory gates, tenement stairs, shared yards, and a strong sense that neighbours knew one another’s business.
That closeness mattered at Halloween. Guising worked best in a place where doors opened onto familiar families. A child might disguise themselves, but the voice, height, shoes, or laugh could give them away. The joke was part of the ritual.
Lochee also carried a mix of Scottish and Irish custom. Dundee’s mills had drawn Irish workers during the nineteenth century, and Halloween traditions from both sides of the water sat easily together. The season already had deep roots in older Celtic festivals, especially the idea that the end of October marked a dangerous border in the year. Summer had gone. Winter was coming. The living world felt a little closer to hidden forces.
By 1914, many people no longer took every old belief literally, at least not in daylight. Yet Halloween gave permission to act as if they might. A sensible mill worker could laugh at fortune-telling with nuts and still glance twice at the fire.
The war altered the mood. It did not erase the festival, but it changed the feeling under it. Courtship games that once asked, “Who will I marry?” could feel sharper when young men were away. Children’s fun carried on around adult worry. That is part of what makes Halloween in Lochee in 1914 so human: ordinary customs continued in an unsettled year.
Guising meant performance, not just asking for treats
The main children’s custom was guising. The word comes from disguising, and the disguise mattered. Children might blacken their faces with soot, wear old coats, shawls, caps, or bits of cloth, and try to look strange enough to earn a laugh. Paper masks existed, but many families made do with what they had.
A guiser did not simply turn up and demand sweets. The expected exchange was more active. A child might sing, recite a verse, tell a joke, or do a little turn before receiving something. That could be:
an apple
nuts
a small cake or piece of baking
a coin if the household could spare it
a bit of tablet or sweet if there was any
This was not yet American-style trick-or-treating. The “treat” depended on performance and on the generosity of households. The “trick” sat more in the background, as mischief rather than a fixed formula.
In Lochee, guising would have been practical and local. Children could move between nearby streets, up stairs, along closes, and across familiar ground. A carved lantern gave light and drama, but it also helped signal the season. A small group of guisers with a flickering turnip lantern would have been both comic and eerie.
The best guisers were bold but not rude. They had to cross a threshold, perform in front of adults, and risk being recognised. That mix of courage and embarrassment was part of the fun.
Turnip lanterns were hard work and worth the effort
Today, pumpkins dominate Halloween. In 1914 Lochee, the lantern was far more likely to be a turnip, often called a neep in Scots. In much of Scotland, children carved large turnips or swedes into faces, hollowed them out, and placed a candle inside.
Anyone who has tried it knows the truth: turnips are stubborn. They are dense, tough, and awkward. Hollowing one with a knife or spoon took patience and sometimes adult help. The result could be crude, but that suited Halloween. A rough face, jagged mouth, and uneven candle glow often looked more frightening than a neat design.
The turnip lantern had several jobs.
It lit the way through dark closes and streets. It made the guiser look more mysterious. It also linked the child to older ideas about warding, spirits, and the uneasy night when strange things might wander.
There was a smell to it too: raw turnip, warm wax, burnt wick, damp cloth, and cold stone. Halloween was not just seen. It was smelt and felt in the hands.
For working families, a turnip lantern was also affordable. It used a common vegetable and a little candle. It did not require a shop window full of seasonal goods. The making was the event. Children had to plan it, beg for help, scrape and carve, then guard the lantern from being dropped or kicked.
A good lantern could bring pride. A bad one could still raise a laugh.
Kitchen games turned ordinary things into magic
Not all Halloween customs belonged outdoors. Much of the night happened around the hearth or kitchen table. In a crowded home, Halloween games used the things already to hand: apples, nuts, treacle, string, bowls of water, mirrors, and sometimes silence.
One of the best-known games was dookin’ for apples. Apples floated in a basin of water, and players tried to catch one with their teeth while keeping their hands behind their backs. It was messy, noisy, and funny, especially in a room where space was tight.
Another favourite was the treacle scone game. A scone, or sometimes another sticky item, could be hung from a string and coated with treacle. The player tried to bite it without using their hands. The result was a sticky face and plenty of laughter. In a household where treats were limited, the comedy stretched the pleasure.
Then came the fortune-telling customs. These were especially linked to courtship and marriage. Some were playful. Some had a nervous seriousness.
Apple peel could be thrown over the shoulder in the hope that it formed the initial of a future sweetheart. Nuts placed near the fire might show whether two people would stay together or part. A mirror ritual might involve looking for the face of a future partner, though such customs were often surrounded by warnings and dares.
Kale-pulling, where a person pulled a stalk from the ground to learn about a future spouse, was more suited to rural settings, but memories of rural practice often travelled into towns. Lochee families with Highland, Angus, Perthshire, or Irish connections may have known such customs even if they adapted them to urban life.
Halloween made a kitchen feel larger than it was. A basin became a test of skill, an apple peel became an omen, and the fire became a place where the future might speak.
Love, luck, and fear sat close together
Halloween was funny, but it was not only funny. The older mood of the night carried a sense of danger. This was the time when witches, fairies, spirits, and uncanny forces felt near in popular imagination. Even people who laughed at such ideas still enjoyed being half-frightened by them.
Many customs asked questions about the future. Who would marry? Who would prosper? Who might leave? Who might die? In an ordinary year, these questions had weight. In 1914, with war newly present, they carried extra force.
Young women and men often took part in love divinations, though the customs were not always polite or solemn. Halloween allowed people to talk about marriage and desire indirectly. A game could say what a person might not dare to say plainly.
Children’s fear was different. They wanted to be frightened, but not too much. A dark close, a flickering lantern, a story about a ghost, and a sudden shout could be enough. The fear was controlled by community. There were doors to run back to, older siblings nearby, and adults listening.
Mischief had its place as well. Gates might be shifted, doors knocked and fled from, small objects moved, and neighbours teased. This kind of behaviour belonged to seasonal licence, up to a point. Working-class communities often tolerated a little Halloween nonsense, but they also knew where the line lay. Damage, cruelty, or danger could bring swift correction from adults.
That balance gave the night its shape. Halloween allowed disorder, but only briefly. The next morning, the same neighbours still had to share stairs, yards, work, shops, and churches.
The war changed the shadows around the customs
By late October 1914, the First World War was no longer an abstract event. Across Scotland, recruiting, training, separation, and casualty news had begun to enter daily life. Dundee and its districts felt the pressure like everywhere else.
Lochee’s Halloween that year likely carried contradictions. Children still wanted lanterns. Young people still wanted jokes and omens. Families still needed an evening that broke the routine. Yet many homes had someone in uniform, someone thinking of enlisting, or someone worried about a son, brother, husband, neighbour, or workmate.
The old fortune games may have felt different. A nut that jumped from the fire, a face imagined in a mirror, a silence after a joke, all could land more heavily. Halloween already dealt in uncertainty, and 1914 supplied more than enough of it.
Material conditions mattered too. Full wartime rationing came later, but households had to watch money, food prices, and supplies. Many Lochee families were used to making small pleasures go far. Halloween fitted that pattern. A few apples, a turnip, a candle, and borrowed clothes could create a night to remember.
There may also have been more caution around light and outdoor movement, even before later wartime restrictions became familiar. East coast towns were conscious of war at sea and the possibility of attack. Still, it would be wrong to picture the whole district in silence. Local life carried on, and seasonal custom had a strong hold.
That is the striking point. Halloween did not need peace and plenty to survive. It was built from everyday materials, memory, courage, and performance.
What has changed and what still feels familiar
Modern Halloween looks very different. Pumpkins have largely replaced turnips because they are easier to carve. Costumes are bought as often as made. Sweets come in bright wrappers. American films and television helped spread “trick or treat” as a phrase, and the festival has become more commercial.
Yet older Scottish habits have not vanished. Guising is still remembered and practised in many places, especially the idea that children should offer a song, joke, or performance at the door. Apple games still appear at parties. The thrill of making a lantern remains, even when the vegetable has changed.
What feels most familiar is the social heart of it. Halloween still lets children test bravery. It still turns ordinary streets strange for one night. It still gives adults a reason to remember their own childhood. It still makes room for laughter in dark weather.
Lochee in 1914 reminds us that tradition is not a museum object. It lives because people adjust it to their own circumstances. A mill district under the first shadow of war could still keep Halloween with old clothes, kitchen games, turnips, songs, dares, and the small generosity of neighbours.
The takeaway is simple: the Halloween of 1914 was poorer in goods but rich in participation. People made the night themselves. That may be the most enduring tradition of all.
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