THE commemoration of the outbreak of the First World War this year prompted one Evening Times reader to reveal a family treasure.

Morag Mennie, of Giffnock, was sorting through papers when she was moving house and found a four-page special war edition of the newspaper.

It was discovered along with a poem, printed by Poet's Box in Stockwell Street, Glasgow, "The voice from the grave, the martyrdom of Nurse Cavell."

Morag said: "My grand-mother was born in the 1800s and my mother was about six years old when war broke out.

"My grandmother was always interested in what was going on in the world so I can understand why she felt it was important to keep this."

In the Sunday special edition of the Evening Times printed on August 2, 1914, the headline declared: "The war cloud bursts".

"Germany has declared war against Russia, and Europe is plunged into the biggest and most terrible struggle of modern times," it stated.

The momentous events that led to the start of the First World War are detailed in reports from correspondents in London that were read at the time in Glasgow by Jeanie Sherriff, then carefully folded up and put away in a box.

The report stated:"The news that Germany had struck came to London close upon midnight.

"In the West End the theatre audiences were pouring into the streets, and the carnival of flashing lights and surging crowds was at its height when the shrill voices of the paper sellers proclaimed the calamity. There was a scene of wild excitement; more shillings than coppers rained upon the newsboys."

Now, nearly 100 years later, Morag has gifted it to the Evening Times archives, along with a special four-page emergency press, combining the issues of the Glasgow Herald, Daily Record, The Bulletin, Evening Times, Glasgow Evening News and The Citizen from May 11, 1926 during the General Strike.

A glove maker, Jeanie Sherriff saw the City Chambers built in Glasgow and was married to an ironmonger who fitted locks in the city council offices in George Square.

Morag said: "She didn't die until she was 87 and I remember she lived in a house in Rottenrow, and that was one of my parents' first homes when they were married in the 1930s."

angela.mcmanus@eveningtimes.co.uk