WHAT do you do if your tenement is condemned? Do you heed official warnings to leave, or do you remain? That was the dilemma faced by residents of a building in Salamanca Street, Parkhead, Glasgow, in July 1959.

The police and Glasgow Corporation had warned them to quit after the stairway, roof and walls were found to be badly cracked. Some tenants had opted to stay with relatives or had accepted temporary accommodation at the Corporation’s Foresthall Home, but others were determined to stay put.

“Five families who live with danger”, ran the Evening Times headline. A couple of them sent their children to stay with friends; one mother refused to leave until she had been given a new home. The man photographed in the top-floor flat here said he had waited 14 years to get his house and told reporters he would not be quitting to move into an institution. His five children, meanwhile, were being looked after by friends.