6. The Drag
4/20/202655 min
This is The Drag – a handful of streets in Glasgow city centre which made up the red-light district in the 1990s and early 2000s. We make a visit with an experienced local crime reporter asking what life would have been like for the women who stood there on cold, dark nights all those years ago? Waiting to be picked up by one of the circling drivers, not knowing how the encounter might end. Heroin culture was still ravaging the city – pushing some women involved in prostitution into perilous liaisons to feed their habit. We hear from a charity worker who gave her time and care to many of these women, facing down threats of violence to protect them from predators. She tells us of the fear and pain this nighttime community went through as more and more women involved in prostitution were murdered. Eight women killed in less than 15 years. We want to visit The Drag in person to see what it’s like now and find out what are police doing to crack down on on-street prostitution? We join officers on patrol, who lift men for kerb-crawling – an offence now punishable by law in Scotland. We also hear from someone who lives on Glasgow’s streets who paints a vivid picture of the fear, addiction and violence that still blights the area now.
-
If you’ve been affected by any of the issues raised in this podcast and need mental-health support or want to talk about your feelings, visit the Hub of Hope to find services in your area.
If you think you might have information about any of the people we’ve mentioned you can get in touch with us at bewarebook@bauermedia.co.uk
Written, created, presented and produced by Collette McGonigle
Presented and produced by Callum McQuade
Executive Producers - Laurence Bassett & Henrietta Harrison
Sound Design - James Stodd & Michelle Homan
Designer - Ben Watkins
Production Manager - Sarah Nicholls
Legal Counsel - Jonathan McNaul for Bauer Media Group and Caroline Marshall for Reviewed & Cleared
Head of Production - Cat Moran
Chief Creative Officer, Podcasts - Lucie Cave
Director of News and Sport, Scotland and Northern Ireland - Lorraine Herbison Hollinshead
Beware Book is a Rayo Original podcast by Bauer Media
Clips
Showing 10 of 13Transcript preview
First 90 secondsColette McTaggart· Host0:00
A Rayo Original podcast.
Callum McQuaid· Co-host0:02
Beware Book contains references to sexual violence and murder, which some listeners might find upsetting.
Anne McIlveen· Guest0:09
There was a real darkness in the red-light area in particular. These lassies were living in a knife edge every night when they were going out there selling their bodies. There was girls being raped up lanes.
Colette McTaggart· Host0:22
Cold, dark, and bleak, Glasgow's red-light district, known back in the 1990s as The Drag, wasn't a place you wanted to find yourself after dark.
Norman Silvester· Soundbite0:34
So this is around, around Bordon Street, where you can see the cars coming off at M8. Drivers would circle, they would go and turn right maybe into Blythswood Street, uh, and then into Grogan Street, up Douglas Street, over into Bordon. So it's almost like a, a square, and this was the area they called The Drag. You would see the guys just driving round, maybe looking for a girl or looking at maybe a girl they knew or used before or when they had a favorite.
Colette McTaggart· Host1:11
Daily Record crime reporter Norman Sylvester there, walking us through the area. It stretches across a handful of streets in the city center, where Glasgow's grid-like structure echoes New York, but on a much smaller, more intimate scale. Far away from the