Thomas Annan’s prints of ‘The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow’ had been published in his lifetime. His sons John and James Craig inherited the project and in 1900 produced a photogravure album with new images probably taken by John and, for the first time, a written text. According to the author, William Young: “The value of many of the plates embraced in this volume consists in their true presentation or suggestion of the seamy side of the city's life; in their depicting with absolute faithfulness, the gloom and squalor of the slums”.