Frederick John Nettlefold was the oldest son of Frederick Nettlefold, a businessman and patron of the arts. Like his father, Frederick John Nettlefold was an art lover. Throughout his life he donated paintings to many galleries around the UK, including the Glasgow Museums. Frederick John Nettlefold donated a number of oil paintings to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, including works by Patrick Nasmyth, J. C. Ibbetson, Leon A. L’Hermitte, and Anton Mauve. He also donated a group of four paintings depicting the seasons by Marguerite Gerard. (1)
The Nettlefold family was an important part of British industrial history. At the start of the Industrial Revolution the Nettlefolds built up a company which is still in existence, known today as GKN or Guest, Keen and Nettlefold. John Sutton Nettlefold (1792 – 1866) opened a hardware shop at High Holborn, London in 1823. In 1826 he opened a workshop to make wood screws. This was followed by a second factory in Birmingham. He named the company Nettlefold and Sons. In 1854 Nettlefold bought a licence to manufacture a new type of wood screw from an American patent. He needed capital investment for this and brought in his brother in law, Joseph Chamberlain, as an equal partner. The company Nettlefold and Chamberlain was formed. They established further factories in Smethwick and Wolverhampton. The company was managed by both families. One of John Sutton Nettlefold’s sons was Frederick, the father of Frederick John Nettlefold. One of Joseph Chamberlain’s sons was Joseph Chamberlain, who eventually became a managing partner of the business with Frederick Nettlefold. (2) His sons were Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940), Prime minister from 1937-1940 and Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937) (3,4)
Frederick Nettlefold married Mary Warren. They had three children, Frederick John, Mary and Archibald. Frederick Nettlefold was involved in the family business throughout his life. After Joseph Chamberlain left the business, it reverted to using only the Nettlefold name, and was run by Frederick and his brother Joseph. By 1880, the company had grown and Frederick remained Chairman of the company from 1881 – 1893. From 1890, Frederick also took an interest in the silk manufacturing company of Samuel Courtauld. His mother-in-law was both the cousin and sister-in-law of Samuel Courtauld. Frederick Nettlefold was the Chairman of Samuel Courtaulds and Co between 1910 and 1913 and from 1913 to 1927 theChairman of Courtaulds Ltd. (5)
Figure 4. Frederick John Nettlefold by John Hillyard Swinstead 1926. Photograph, Anna McCann by kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Frederick Nettlefold was a known collector of art and after his death in 1913, his art collection was auctioned at Christie’s. News of the sale was reported by the New York Times amongst others. The sale raised a large amount of money. (6)
Frederick John Nettlefold studied at Corpus Christi, Oxford and later at Heidelberg and Berlin Universities. He was involved in the Nettlefold company and other businesses for much of his life, both in the UK and abroad but was also variously an actor manager in a number of theatres, president of a football club and a trainer of racehorses. He was a patron of the arts and an art collector. He was a director of Courtaulds for 38 years, so he obviously carried on the family involvement with the company. He was also chairman of a number of other companies, including a lighting company, a petroleum company and a gold mining syndicate in Kenya. He was president of Crystal Palace Football club from 1933 to 1938. (7)
Frederick John Nettlefold began his theatrical career as an actor in the Opera Comique in 1893. He worked with Kate Vaughan’s repertory company between 1898 and 1899. He was the actor manager of the Scala Theatre in London from 1919 -1922 and also worked as actor manager at the Apollo, London. There is little evidence of his accomplishments as an actor. However, on one occasion he sued a critic for a bad review. The play was Othello and the critic had reviewed the performance and published his review before the play was staged. The judge found in Mr Nettlefold’s favour, although the finding rested on the advance publication rather than the fairness of the review. (8)
Frederick John Nettlefold married three times. He married women involved with the theatre. His first marriage in 1907 was to Ellen Maud Redgrave m.s. Pratt. He worked with the actress, whose stage name was Judith Kyrle, at the Scala Theatre in London. They acted together in a number of productions. She was a wealthy farmer’s daughter. She had previously been married to Roy Redgrave, the founding father of the Redgrave acting dynasty. She had three children, John Kyrle Redgrave born 1895, Robin Roy Redgrave born 1897 and Nellie Maud Redgrave born 1898. The census of 1911 shows two of her children living with her and F.J. Nettlefold. The marriage lasted until her death in 1922 at the age of 50. There is no evidence of any children of this marriage. Mr Nettlefold retired from the theatre in the year of his wife’s death. (9)
His second marriage was to Lucy Eleanor Louisa Atcherley, an actress who was thirty years younger than him. They met at the Scala Theatre in 1919, where Mr Nettlefold was staging and acting in the play, The Lady of Lyons. The principal roles were played by Frederick John Nettlefold and his first wife Ellen. Lucy Atcherley also played a minor role in this play. After the run ended, Lucy Atcherley moved on to work with other stage companies in Britain and South Africa. She returned from South Africa in June 1922 and became reacquainted with Frederick John Nettlefold, whose wife had died in March of that year. They married within weeks. In December 1922, Frederick John set off for Bombay, with the agreement that Lucy would follow him in February 1923. Frederick waited at his shooting lodge in Ceylon, but Lucy never arrived, having met a diplomat on route to Baghdad and gone with him to that country. They divorced in 1924. (10)
His third marriage in 1925 was to Johanna Veronique Waterson Graaff. She was an opera singer. There were three children from the marriage, Mary April, born 1926, Frederick, born 1927, and Dorothy Anne, born 1931. This marriage, though longer lasting than his second, ended in 1944 after his wife left him for the composer Albert Coates. (11)
Frederick John Nettlefold kept careful records of his collections, publishing a series of guides to them in collaboration with a number of authors.(12) (13) He took a particular interest in Martinware.
Figure 5. From L to R: Walter F. Martin, Robert Wallace Martin and Edwin Martin. http://www.ceramicstoday.com Public domain
The four Martin brothers were early pioneers in the production of studio pottery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their ceramics were eccentric, but have stood the test of time and are still highly collectible today. The brothers made little money from their pottery and lived in poverty. They apparently could only afford to fire up their kiln once a year. In 1978 an exhibition of their work was held in Sotheby’s in London, followed by a New York exhibition in 1981. In 2019 two of their stoneware bird jars sold for £26,000 and £28,000 respectively. (14)
Figure 6. Martin Brothers, tabacheirra wally bird, londra e southall 1911. Wikimedia Commons.
In 1963 one of the Nettlefold donations was stolen from the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. The painting was one of the four seasons paintings entitled Winter by Marguerite Gerard. At 1.15 p.m on 2 December 1963 the theft was discovered on the screen wall in the main French Gallery. The attendant who came on duty at 1p.m. was making a routine check of his beat and discovered the theft. The attendant on duty between 12.00 and 1.00 p.m. had noticed nothing amiss. The glass on the pictures had been cleaned between 11.15 and 11.30 a.m. The painting has never been found. Doubts had been expressed about the attribution of the four paintings, and in 1967 it was suggested that they be reattributed as Unknown, French (early nineteenth Century), Pastiche in the style of Fragonard. (15)
Frederick John Nettlefold died in 1949. His obituaries noted his support for the London Symphony Orchestra, and his gift of art works to the National Gallery and the Tate in London and over sixty provincial galleries. He had led a very privileged and colourful life, throughout which he maintained a devotion to the arts in all their forms. Glasgow was a beneficiary of that devotion. (16)
References
Glasgow Corporation Minutes November 1947 to May 1948 p. 495
2. Grace’s Guide gracesguide.co.uk. Nettlefold and Sons accessed 14/03/22. Nettlefold and Chamberlain accessed 14/03/22
3. NICHOLAS, David, CHAMBERLAIN Joseph in: Loades, David. (2003) Readers Guide to British History. London,Routledge
4. Wikipedia : Joseph Chamberlain accessed 14/03/22
5. Grace’s Guide gracesguide.co.uk Frederick Nettlefold accessed 24/03/2022
6. New York Times 6 June 1913
7. The News 10 November 1950
8. The Era 22 December 1920
Pall Mall Gazette 16 December 1920
9. Gloucestershire Echo 26 November 1949
10. Atcherley Family Website: atcherley.org.uk accessed 24/3/2022
11. Lincolnshire Echo 21 November 1944
12. Grundy Reginald (1933-1938) A Catalogue of the Pictures and Drawings in the collection of Frederick John Nettlefold, 4 Volumes London, Bemrose and Sons
13. Forrer,R. (1934) The Collection of Bronzes and Castings in Brass and Ormolu formed by FJ Nettlefold . London, Waterlow and Sons
14. Beard, Charles R (1936) A Catalogue of the Collection of Martinware formed by Mr F J Nettlefold together with a shorthistory of the firm of R W Martin and Brothers of Southall. London, Waterlow and Sons
15. Object File GMRC
16 The Stage 1 December 1949. The Liverpool Echo 26 November 1949
Other Sources:
The Stage: May 15 1930
The News (Norwood) 10 February 1950
Frederick John Nettlefold, by George Hillyard Swinstead
In December 1945, Godfrey Pattison donated five paintings to Glasgow museums. The paintings were thought to be associated with family members from the late eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. Godfrey Pattison was a widower with no surviving children and no surviving brother. It is reasonable to suppose that, having no immediate family, he would ensure that family pictures were in safekeeping.
Godfrey Herbert Pattison was born in Chorleton upon Medlock, Lancashire on 16 April 1877 to John Pattison (1840-1917) and Mary Jane Ovington (1850-). (1 ) He was from a well-known Glasgow family descended from John Pattison of Kelvingrove House. He lived with his parents in Withington, in Lancashire and then in Cheshire. In !897 he sailed from the Liverpool docks bound for Calcutta. (2) The records of The Imperial Yeomanry show that he enlisted during the Boer War and served in South Africa from January 1900 to June 1901. (3)
Our subject is found travelling to and from England during his lifetime but passenger lists do not give his occupation or profession. Over the years he had different temporary addresses when he was on leave. In 1932 he was travelling to the UK from Dar-es-Salaam and his permanent address is given as Tanganyika (now Tanzania). He returned to Mozambique in 1932. (4) By 1939 he was home living in Andover, Hampshire. (5) His occupation at that time was given as farmer. When he gave the paintings in 1945 his address was given as the Commercial Hotel, High Street, Andover, Hants. (6)
In1939 he is described as widowed but there is no mention of his wife’s name or of a wedding. A son Donald Moncrieff Pattison (1920- 1944) was born in Tanganyika Territory. He served in the Second World War in the Royal Army Corps but died in action in June 1944 in Calvados in France and is buried in Ryles War Cemetery. (7)
Godfrey continued to travel to Africa after 1945 and was travelling to and from Mombasa in 1958. (8) He died in 1960 and is buried in Manchester. (9)
Family History
Figure 1. Pattison Family Tree
The family history, not only shows the direct line of descent of our subject from John Pattison of Kelvingrove House and the links to the present day Kelvingrove Museum, but also that this was a family who did not remain in Glasgow and were well travelled.
His father, John Pattisson (1840-1917) was the son of Godfrey Thomas Hope Pattison (1806- 1868) and Mary Cornelia Thomson (1819-1885). . He was born in New York at the British Naval Dockyard Hospital (10) (11) and his mother was an American citizen He is next found in the UK 1851and 1861 censuses (12) (13) in Glasgow. He married Mary Jane Ovington in 1873 in Glasgow. (14) Thereafter he lived in Lancashire and then in Altringham Cheshire. (15) (16) His occupation was given as Silk Merchant. He died on 7 March 1917 and is buried in Chorlton-cum-Hardy. (17)
His grandfather, Godfrey Thomas Hope Pattison (1806-1868) was the son of John Pattison (1782-1867) and Rebecca Monteith (1786-). (18) He became an American citizen on January 2 1828. (19) The reason for his being in America and his occupation have not been ascertained. However, he was a nephew of Alexander Hope Pattison and of Granville Sharp Pattison, who was Professor of Anatomy in the University of New York. (20) Godfrey married Mary Cornelia Thomson (1819 -1885) in 1836 in New York at a ceremony conducted by the mayor. (21). His son John was born in New York. Thereafter the family returned to Glasgow and are found in the 1851(22) and 1861(23) censuses at 27 Newton Place when he is described as a Commission merchant. He died in Glasgow in 1868 (24) and is buried in the Glasgow Necropolis.
Our subject’s great grandfather, John Pattison (1782-1867) was born in Glasgow son of John Pattison of Kelvingrove (1747-1807) and his wife Hope Margaret Moncrieff (1755-1803) of Culfargie in Perthshire. (25) He was active in local politics and a strong supporter of the Reform Act of 1832. (26) He married Rebecca Monteith in Glasgow in 1803. He lived in Bothwell in 1851(27) and in Mauchline (28) in 1861. He died in 1867 in Edinburgh. (29) He is buried in the Glasgow Necropolis. (30) It is his portrait by the American artist Chester Harding which was donated to Glasgow.
Our Subject’s great great grandfather John Pattison (1747-1807) of Kelvingrove was born in Paisley on 7 December 1750. (31) He was a Glasgow merchant and mill owner who owned one of the largest steam driven spinning mills in Glasgow. (32 ) He married Hope Margaret Moncrieff of Culfargie in the Low Church Paisley on 17 July 1781. (33)
Figure 2. Kelvingrove House by Thomas Annan. Wikimedia Commons
In 1792 he bought Kelvingrove House, which had been built for Lord Provost Patrick Colquhoun in 1782. With the house was an estate of 24 acres .and to which he added and sold both in 1795. It was not until 1852 that it was acquired by Glasgow Corporation .and became Kelvingrove House in the West End Park. Kelvingrove House was much extended to become a museum but it was later demolished. (34) Kelvingrove Park is the site of the present day Kelvingrove Museum Glasgow. He died in Glasgow in December 1807. (35)
John Pattison and Hope Margaret Moncrieff Pattison had a large family who incorporated the names ‘Hope’ and ‘Moncrieff’ into the family forenames.
The Donated paintings
Painting Artist
Lt Colonel A .Hope Pattison
Thomas Duncan R.S.A.
Portrait of a Young Man, nephew of the above
Unknown
Lord Moncrieff
After Raeburn
John Pattison
Chester Harding
Unknown Gentleman
Unknown
These portraits give some clues to the antecedents of Godfrey Pattison but there are some questions about the reliability of their connections.
Four of the paintings merit some attention. The other is obscure and there is no information about the identity of the subject or of the painter.
The painting of John Pattison by Chester Harding is not of John Pattison of Kelvingrove (1747-1807) but of his son John Pattison (1782-1867). Harding was an American artist who did not arrive in Britain until 1823. (36) John Pattison of Kelvingrove died in 1807. It is of interest that there is a painting of his wife Hope Margaret Pattison by Harding which is in a private collection.
The painting of Lord Moncrieff (1776-1851) is of Sir James Wellwood Moncrieff of Tullibole in Kinross. (37) No family link has been found at the time of the marriage with Hope Margaret’s family who were Moncrieff of Culfargie in Perthshire. Her father was a minister of the Church of Scotland. However it may be that the families have a common ancestor.
The painting of Lt. Colonel A Hope Pattison (1785-1835) by Thomas Duncan does have a strong family connection. He was a son of John Pattison of Kelvingrove and Hope Margaret Moncrieff but our subject is not a direct descendant. Alexander fought with distinction in the Napoleonic wars. There is a monument to him and to other members of the Pattison family (38)) in the Glasgow Necropolis and there is much information about them on their website and in the Glasgow Stories website of Glasgow University.
The painting of a young man, nephew of Alexander Hope Pattison, might be a portrait of Godfrey Thomas Hope Pattison but without knowledge of artist or date this is only a theory.
References
Ancestry .co.uk/ Church of England Births and Baptisms
Passenger lists 1878-1960
Ancestry.co.uk/Records of Imperial Yeomanry
Incoming passenger lists 1878-1960
1939 England and Wales Register
Archives of Glasgow Museums
Royal Army Corps Records
Outgoing Passenger Lists 1878-1960
Find a Grave Index 1300 to current day
Ancestry.co.uk
Wikipaedia Naval Dockyard Hospital, New York City USA
National Records of Scotland Census 1851 and 1861
National Records of Scotland Statutory Marriages 1873
Ancestry .co.uk
Ibid
ibid
England and Scotland Select Cemetery Registers 1800-1961
This portrait was donated to Glasgow Art Galleries in 1953 by the Reverend John McClure Brodie. The painting had originally been owned by the Glasgow Blind Asylum in Castle Street and was offered to Glasgow Art Galleries in 1934 when the building was sold to Glasgow Royal Infirmary. However the Galleries Committee rejected the work and it was given to our donor.1
The subject of the portrait was our donor’s great- grandfather .2
John Alston was a cotton manufacturer based at 55 Glassford Street ,Glasgow but lived at Rosemount House on the Rosemount Estate in the area of Glasgow now known as Roystonhill, previously known as Garngad.3 The Rosemount Estate was described as,’ composed of beautiful grounds and orchards.’ The area is now a housing estate but its history is remembered by one of the streets being named Rosemount Street.4
During his life in Glasgow John Alston was a town councillor, a magistrate and Deacon Convenor of the Incorporated Trades and a tireless supporter of many charities. However he is best known for his work for the Glasgow Blind Asylum of which he was a director and honorary treasurer and enthusiastic fund- raiser. He developed a system of reading for the blind using an embossed version of the Roman alphabet arguing that sighted people could then teach the blind to read. Alston Type was used at the School for the Blind in Paris for many years before the adoption of the system invented by Louis Braille. Alston produced the first embossed copy of the New Testament printed on the Asylum printing press. His ambition was that every blind child in the country should be able to read The Word of God. By 1844 almost 14,000 volumes of the whole Bible had been distributed across the country.5
The Glasgow Blind Asylum was founded in 1804 but the first building was erected in Castle Street in 1828 to be replaced in 1881 with a building designed by William Landless. The building was taken over in 1934 by the Glasgow Royal Infirmary as the Out Patients Department. Residents of the Asylum were taught music as well as various trades. Costs were covered by subscriptions, donations, bequests and the sale of articles made in the workshops such as brushes, baskets and bedding made in the various workshops.6
Figure 6. Detail from the musical catechism for the use of the blind.
John McClure Brodie(J McC) was born on 5 September 1874 in Govan.7 He was one of several children born to Robert Brodie8 and Jessie McFarlane McCaul.9According to the 1881 UK Census the family lived at 23 Belhaven Terrace, Partick, Glasgow which remained the family home until Robert Brodie’s death in 1909.10 Robert Brodie was a partner in the firm of McClure,Naismith and Brodie ,Writers to the Signet, and our donor was probably named after John McClure, one of the partners.11 In the 1891 census JMcC was recorded as a scholar and probably attended Kelvinside Academy as not only did his father Robert Brodie hold shares in the company which owned the school12 but John’s brother Malcom certainly attended the school13.By 1901 John McC was a law clerk and scholar, possibly working for his father’s firm though that is not certain.14 He graduated Batchelor of Law from Glasgow University in 1902.15 While attending the University he was a member of the Volunteer Medical Staff Corps. 16
Sometime after graduating J McC appears to have moved to Edinburgh where in 1907 he was a partner in the firm ofGraham ,Miller and Brodie, Writers to the Signet, at 44 Frederick Street17 and lived at 9 Marchmont Street.18 He appears to have moved back to Glasgow by the time of the 1911 Census or perhaps was commuting to Edinburgh. He lived in the family home at 23 Belhaven Terrace in Hillhead along with his mother, brother Thomson who was an accountant and sisters Margaret and Mary both spinsters in their thirties. By this time JMcC was thirty -six years old.19
Our donor’s life changed later in 1911 when he emigrated to New Zealand via Australia where he landed in Melbourne in October 1911 on the SS Anchises.20 We do not know for certain why he went to New Zealand, perhaps the death of his father in 1909 was the catalyst. Also his uncle Malcolm McFarlane McCaul(see Figure 2 above) had emigrated first to Australia sometime after 1862 and then moved to New Zealand sometime before 188121 Perhaps this was the reason for our donor’s choosing New Zealand. JMcC went via Australia perhaps to visit his elder brother, Malcolm who lived there.22
By September 1912 JMcC was living at 12 Lower Symonds Street , Auckland, North Island, where he was enrolled as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New Zealand on the motion of W.A. Styak23 for whose law firm at Colville Chambers in Auckland he worked for the next few years.24
After the outbreak of WW1 at the age of forty-one JMcC volunteered for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and became a private in the New Zealand Medical Corps.25 As we have seen while at Glasgow University JMcC had been a member of the Volunteer Medical Staff Corps of the Glasgow University Volunteers. While living in Auckland he had also been a volunteer with the Auckland Highland Company one of many such volunteer companies.26
According to his Military Record JMcC enlisted as a private on 15 December 1915 and was posted for training the following day to the Awapuni Camp near Palmerston, North Island.27 Established in October 1915 this was New Zealand’s only dedicated training camp for medical officers, orderlies, stretcher bearers and medical crew for hospital ships.28 He remained at Awapuni until March 1916 and was then transferred to Featherston Training Camp as a lance corporal and then back to Awapuni from where he was posted to the Hospital Ship Marama on 1 September 1916. Only three days later he was sent back to Awapuni having been demoted to private again, though it appears this may have been a temporary promotion and was ended when he was no longer needed.29 JMcC’s Military Record also states he was posted back to the Marama on 10 November 1916 in time to sail on its second commission on November 12 1916.The ship sailed via Bombay to Suez then proceeded to Southampton where 540 patients were embarked for New Zealand. A few days out from Southampton the Marama rescued survivors from a torpedoed ship.
The ship sailed again for England via Bombay on 17 March 1917 then to Mesapotamia and Suez where orders were received that the Mediterranean was unsafe and all nurses had to disembark. This may have been because in March 1917 the German Government had announced an unrestricted submarine campaign resulting in the sinking of several hospital ships in the English Channel. From Suez the Maramasailed to Durban. The lack of nurses put a great strain on the orderlies ,of which JMcC was probably one, as they had to take over the nursing of the most severely wounded, who were confined to the cots, as well as carrying out their own duties.30 JMcC must have been doing a good job as on 3rd May 1917 he was promoted to the rank of Corporal.31
From Durban they went to Cape Town and Sierra Leone and finally docked in Avonmouth to pick up a full complement of wounded New Zealand soldiers bound for home via the Suez Canal.32 JMcC’s Military Record states that he reported to Awapuni Camp on 10 October 1917 only to rejoin the Marama on 19 October 1918. The purpose of this voyage was to clear the New Zealand Hospitals in England of New Zealand patients and transport them back to various ports in New Zealand as necessary.33 He arrived back at Awapuni on 27 January 1919 and was finally discharged on 6 March 1919.
After discharge JMcC appears to have taken a post as a school teacher in Wallaceville ,Upper Hutt, a city in Wellington Region.(Military record; voting reg).34 According to The Wallaceville School Attendance and Examination Register of February to December 1921 the teacher was certainly a J.M Brodie.35
Then in 1922 JMCc enrolled as a student at Knox College, Dunedin in South Island in order to train to be a minister in the Presbyterian Church.36 There is some evidence of his earlier involvement in the Presbyterian Church in three letters kept in the National Library of Scotland addressed to John McClure Brodie at 23 Belhaven Terrace Glasgow between 1894 and 1896 which refer to his proposed sponsorship of a local person as an agent, possibly a missionary, in another country but unfortunately the content lacks detail .37 JMcC was also a member of the Kirk Session of St Andrews Church, Wellington, presumably while he was living in the area after his war service thus giving us further evidence of his connection to the Presbyterian Church.38
While at Knox College JMcC appears to have made his mark amongst his fellow students as in the student magazine The Knox Collegian No 14 1923 p23 the following ‘poem’ appeared along with others in the same vein regarding other students:-
J.M Brodie is first on left, second row from the back.
By 1925 JMcC was 50 years old and at that point, surprisingly, he married. He married 43- year- old Margaret Graham Findlay from Glasgow who appears to have sailed to New Zealand specifically to marry our donor. Margaret had sailed from Southampton on the SS Corinthic accompanied by one of her sisters, a Miss A Findlay, though we do not know if it was Agnes or Anna, on 27 November 1924.They travelled First Class and were headed for Wellington.40 According to the Intention ToMarry Register dated 10th January 1925 John McClure Brodie, theological student aged fifty had been resident in Wellington for three weeks. On the other hand Margaret Graham Findlay, spinster aged 43, had been resident in Wellington for only two days which suggests she arrived in very early January1925.41The couple were married on 15 January 1925 in the Scots Church, Seatown, Wellington.42
Margaret Graham Findlay was born in Glasgow on 2 January 1882 at 9 Montgomerie Drive, Kelvinside in Glasgow’s West End. Her father was Joseph Findlay(1852-1910),a cotton merchant and her mother was Jessie B Marshal(1852-1927).43 There is little information about Margaret except from census records. In 1891 the family was living at 11 Winton Drive, Kelvinside. There were six children including twin girls Agnes and Anna.44 The 1901 census gives us the same address and Margaret is recorded as being still a scholar even at the age of nineteen though we have no information as to the school.45
There is no mention of Margaret at the family home in Kingsborough Gardens in Hillhead in the 1911 Census, though there is a record of a Margaret Findlay aged 29 who was a patient at a Nursing Home at 4 Queens Crescent in the Park District of Glasgow but it is mere speculation that this is the same person.46 By 1921 she was back living in the family home at 16 Kingsborough Gardens, Hillhead along with her mother Jessie and twin sisters Agnes and Anna 00.47How Margaret and JMcC came to know one another is a complete mystery at this time.
The newly-weds lived in Dunedin at 15 Craigleith Street and attended the First Presbyterian Church in Dunedin48 until 1926 when John McClure Brodie was ordained as the Minister of the Seacliff and Warrington Presbyterian Church, Otago on 29th June for a period of five years.49 Seacliff was a small village on the east coast of the Otago Region of New Zealand’s South Island about twenty miles north of Dunedin. Most early Otago settlers were Presbyterians and the district had been served by Presbyterian ministers or missionaries in one way or another since 1858. The Seacliff Parish was first established around 1916 but there was no church building until 1923. However a manse was built in 1916 on land purchased in Kilgour Street ,Seacliff, intended for both the manse and the church. The first minister was the Reverend F. Tucker. 50Seacliff is best known for the presence of the Seacliff Mental Hospital, opened in 1884 and once the largest building in New Zealand.51
Figure 10.Seacliff Mental Hospital Otago. By permission of TheHocken Collection. University of Otago Library
The foundation stone for the new church was laid in June 1923 by Dr A.C. McKillop, Medical Superintendent of the Seacliff Mental Hospital. The Seacliff Presbyterian Church had an intimate connection with Mental Hospital from its inception and there is a suggestion that it was originally built for the staff of the hospital. Before the building of the church services were often held in the hospital hall as well as in the local school. The various ministers who served the parishioners in the district over the years also ministered to the patients in the hospital. Services were held in the wards and hospital patients also attended services in the Seacliff Presbyterian Church after its opening in 1923 and much of the minister’s time was spent serving the patients in the hospital.52
Figure 11. Seacliff Presbyterian Church , Kilgour Street.
Figure 11. Seacliff Presbyterian Church , Kilgour Street. Photographer J Chisholm. By permission of The Hocken Collection. University of Otago Library.
John and Margaret Brodie appear to have remained living at The Manse in Seacliff until 1929.53
Figure 12. The Manse ,Kilgour Street, Seacliff. Photographer J Chisholm. By permission of The Hocken Collection. University of Otago Library.
In March 1929 after only three years JMcC resigned as minister of Seacliff because of unspecified eye trouble.54 There had been some warning about this in the Kirk session Minutes of 22nd March 1927 when it was reported that, ‘Mr Brodie had had to postpone a communion service for Karitane( a small village about 3 miles north of Seacliff) because of eye trouble.’55 We do not know if this was the reason the Brodies decided to return to Scotland that same year. They travelled Third Class from Brisbane, Australia on the SS Berima, arriving in London on 27 August 1929.56
We do not know if JMcC had treatment for his eye problem but the Brodies did not return to New Zealand. By 1930 JMcC and his wife were living in Glasgow, probably at 18 Bank Street off Great Western Road.57 At some point in 1930 JMcC became Assistant Chaplain to the Reverend James Cardwell at the Glasgow Royal Mental Hospital in Great Western Road. Perhaps his experience ministering to the patients at the Seacliff Mental Hospital had played a part in the appointment. The Reverend Cardwell had been chaplain for 25 years. J McC took over from him sometime before 1940 when Cardwell died.58
Gartnavel Royal Hospital as it is known today originally opened in 1814 as the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum in Parliamentary Road, Cowcaddens. The hospital was awarded a Royal Charter in 1924 and became the Glasgow Royal Lunatic Asylum. It moved to new premises in the Gartnavel district of Glasgow in 1843 designed by architect Charles Wilson in the Tudor Gothic Style. There were two main wings to the hospital. The West House, later West Wing was for private patients and the East House ,later East Wing, for patients who could not afford to pay for their treatment. The hospital became Glasgow Royal Mental Hospital in 1931 then Gartnavel Royal Hospital in 1963. 59
There is little information about our donor’s time at Gartnavel .He did find time to write a History of Gartnavel Mental Hospital1810-1948 though it was never published. 60 The only information we have about JMcC during this period is from a couple of newspaper reports. In 1931 the Scotsman reported that along with others the Reverend J M Brodie had donated £1/1/0 to the New Zealand Earthquake Relief Fund.61 Then in 1940 the JMcC attended the celebration of the founding of Presbyterianism in New Zealand held at the Martyrs Church in Paisley.
‘ In the afternoon the Reverend J M Brodie, formerly a member of the Kirk session of St Andrews Church, Wellington, was the preacher.’62
The Brodies lived at 18 Bank Street during the 1930s 1940s and early 1950s.63 JMcC retired from Gartnavel around 1950.64Then around 1952 or1953 at the age of seventy-nine J McC and Margaret moved to 3 Buckingham Terrace, Great Western Road. Numbers 3 and 4 Buckingham Terrace at that time were the Kirklee Hotel. So perhaps the couple felt life would be easier for them at their age if they lived in a hotel.65
On 9 January 1962 Margaret Brodie was admitted to the West Wing of Gartnavel Royal Hospital.66 This wing was for private patients. J McC joined her on 30th January 1963 aged eighty-eight.67 Margaret died on the 19 November 1963 of ,’myocardial degeneration with arterio sclerosis’68 and the Reverend John McClure Brodie died on 11 April the following year of ‘generalised arterio sclerosis’.69 We do not know if Gartnavel Hospital acted as a care home and took in elderly patients as a matter of course or if the Brodies were taken as patients because JMcC had once worked there. There is no information as to where the couple are buried.
References
1.Glasgow Museums Resource Centre Object File. Accession No 2993
I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable help with the research for this donor: Danielle Ashby Coventry and Alison Metcalfe-National Library of Scotland; Laura Stevens-NHS Archives,Mitchell Library Glasgow; Susan Taylor-Special Collections,Mitchell Library,Glasgow;Matthew-Auckland Military Museum;Nick Austen-Hocken Collection,University of Otago;Hilary Ackroyd-Archives New Zealand;Linda McGregor-National Library of New Zealand;Rachel Hurd and Jane Boore -Presbyterian Research Centre(Archives) Knox College Dunedin.
John Blackie jnr. donated three paintings by Hugh William Williams to Glasgow museums in 1868, the subjects of the paintings being a portrait of David Dale, industrialist and philanthropist who founded the cotton mills in New Lanark, and two different views of his factories.[1]
Although being described as John jnr. he was in fact John Blackie the fourth, his great grandfather, grandfather and father all being named John.
The Blackie family originated from the east of Scotland, great grandfather John living in Haddington. Grandfather John was born and christened in 1762 [2] in Yester, Haddingtonshire, and for the first part of his life he lived in the parish of Dirleton and Gullane. He was a tobacco spinner and in 1781 he moved to Glasgow, presumably to pursue his trade more effectively. Later that year he married Agnes Burrell,[3] the daughter of James Burrell and Margaret Anderson, who was born in Scoonie in Fife in 1760.[4]
John and Agnes lived in the Old Wynd in Glasgow and had five children, three boys and two girls, the first of whom was John born in 1782.[5] He, in due course, became known as John senior.
Around 1793/94 John, Agnes and family decided to move to Newcastle, however son John snr. remained behind to serve an apprenticeship as a weaver with his father’s friend Robert Dobbie who had a four loom weaving business. The terms of the indenture were that John snr. would serve five years as an apprentice, followed by two years as a journeyman thereafter. Another common condition of the time was that John snr. would be given board and lodging with the family of Robert Dobbie. In the event John snr. was released from his journeyman commitment after one year.
His maternal grandfather James Burrell and his wife came to Glasgow around 1799/1800, James being involved in supplying water to the military barracks in the Gallowgate. The water conduit passed through Ark Lane near Duke Street on its way to the Gallowgate. In that area resided John Duncan, a well-to-do weaver. Burrell got to know Duncan and he recommended his grandson to him. Duncan agreed to employ John snr. and on the 30th January 1800 he formally joined Duncan’s business and lived with the family for nearly five years until December 1804, when on the 31st December he married Duncan’s daughter Catherine, who was five years older than him. Their first home was in Barrack Street where on the 27th September 1805, son John was born, later known as John jnr.[6] They also had two other sons, Walter Graham, born in 1816 [7] and Robert born in 1820.[8]
John snr. did not remain a weaver for long. He clearly had ambitions to improve his lot and was offered the opportunity to change his occupation by A Brownlie of the firm W.D. & A. Brownlie who were publishers and booksellers located at 414 Gallowgate.[9] It’s not clear how long he stayed with them however the last entry in the Glasgow P.O. directory for Brownlie was in 1807, located at 20 New Vennel.[10] There is some evidence to suggest that the business ran into financial difficulties and that John snr. was asked to take on some of it by its main creditor and Brownlie.[11]
He seems to have been successful in what he did as in 1812 he first appears in the Glasgow directory as J. Blackie and Co., printers and booksellers, located at 5 Saltmarket.[12] He remained there until 1816 when he moved premises to 8 East Clyde Street.[13] Also located at 5 Saltmarket was Andrew Khull, printer, and it seems likely that Blackie used him for his own publications as when he moved to East Clyde Street so did Khull.[14] By 1819 the entry in the directory was for Khull, Blackie and Co.[15] The formal partnership was established in 1820,[16] but dissolved in 1826.[17]
In 1824 he formed a partnership with Archibald Fullarton and William Somerville, the company being known as Blackie, Fullarton and Co.[18], located in 8 East Clyde Street, and first appearing in the directory of 1828.[19]John jnr. joined the partnership in 1826.[20] which lasted until 1831 when the partnership was dissolved.[21] In the 1832-33 directory, Blackie’s entry is as Blackie and Son, consisting of John snr. and Johnjnr., printer and publisher, still in East Clyde Street; Fullarton is listed as Fullarton and Co., printer and stereotype founders, located at 34 Hutcheson Street.[22]
John jnr. was initially educated at the school of William Angus thereafter attending the High School being tutored in English by a Mr. Gibson and in commercial arithmetic (accountancy) by Thomas Rennie at which he excelled. This was to be of great benefit to him in his early days working with his father. As the business had developed, various agencies had been set up in different parts of Great Britain. Johnjnr. had the task of visiting these agencies to supervise, look at accounts, and to generally be satisfied that the conduct of each agency was acceptable. Dealing with the English agencies only could take as long as three months to visit them all.[23]
Figure 2. John Blackie Jnr. From Memoirs and Portraits of 100 Glasgow Men. 1886.
He was also involved with company publications, the Casquet of Literary Gems being the first major book entrusted to him. It sold very well and probably confirmed to his father that he had [24] the capability to deal with all aspects of the business. Another major success for John jnr. was obtaining the publication rights in 1833 to the Winter Evening Tales by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. The first volume was published in 1836, the year after Hogg died.[25]
John jnr. continued to develop his activity in the business getting more involved with its publications and finances and sharing the management load with his father. His younger brothers Walter and Robert had also become active in the business and became partners in 1842.[26] He was a member of the Free Church of Scotland and became heavily involved with the publication of the company’s religious books. In particular he was instrumental in the publication of Scotland’s first religious newspaper, Scottish Guardian in 1832. It was a liberal minded publication and evangelical, it’s motto being ‘The people of Great Britain are a free and religious people and by the blessing of God I will lend my aid to help keep them so’.It remained in publication until 1862.[27]
His beliefs also manifested themselves in a number of practical ways. He helped set up three model lodging houses in Glasgow in 1845 (Green Dyke Street), 1847 (Mitchell Street) and 1856 (Carrick Street) in attempt to alleviate the squalor of existing lodging houses and generally to try and improve the conditions of the housing in which the poor were forced to live which were consequentially overcrowded, and unhealthy. In the mid-1860s he was to do much more as I’ll explain later.[28]
John jnr. married Agnes Gourlie, the daughter of Glasgow merchant William Gourlie in 1849.[29] They had three children, all boys: John James, born 1851 [30], William Gourlie, born 1853 [31], and Alfred, born 1855.[32]
Incidentally John snr. at the age of 68 married again in 1850, his second wife being Margaret Frame, the widow of wine merchant David Ferguson,[33] his first wife Catherine Duncan, having died in 1847 according to the Ancestry website although there is no primary proof of this.
In 1857 John jnr. was asked by the electors of the seventh ward in Glasgow to put himself forward for election to the town council. He was duly elected in November of that year and served on the police committee. In 1860 he was elected in ward six after becoming a bailie in 1859. He became a senior bailie in 1862 and in November 1863 he was unanimously elected as Glasgow’s Lord Provost remaining so until 1866.[34]
As a councillor, bailie and Lord Provost John jnr. continued to seek, in accordance with his political and religious beliefs, practical solutions to the housing of Glasgow’s poor whose living conditions were filthy, disease ridden and over-crowded, the buildings being too close together lacking full daylight and air. In a talk given to the Glasgow Philosophical Society in 1895 by Bailie Samuel Chisolm, a future Lord Provost of Glasgow who promoted further city improvement action, the condition of central or old Glasgow in the 1860s was clearly stated:
‘There were narrow streets, with high and crowded tenements on either side ; and closes, dark and filthy, running at right angles to the streets, were literally swarming with inhabitants. Within a comparatively narrow area 75,000 persons were huddled together, a large proportion of them under conditions which made physical well-being difficult, and moral well-being all but impossible.’
‘From each side of the Gallowgate, High Street, Saltmarket, Trongate, etc. there are narrow lanes or closes running like so many rents or fissures backwards to the extent of two, or sometimes three hundred feet, in which tenements of three or four storeys stand behind each other, generally built so close on each side that the women can either shake hands or scold each other, as they often do, from the opposite windows. When clothes are put out from such windows to dry, as is usually done by means of sticks, they generally touch each other. The breadth of these lanes is, in most instances, from three to four feet, the expense of the ground having at first induced the proprietor to build upon every available inch of it. Throughout the whole of these districts the population is densely crowded. In many of the lanes and closes there are residing in each not fewer than five, six, and even seven hundred souls, and in one close we observed thirty-eight families occupying one common stair. In the Tontine Close there are nearly eight hundred of the most vicious of our population crowded together, forming one immense hot bed of debauchery and crime’.
Dealing with this situation was therefore the key action of his time as Glasgow’s chief magistrate. Initially he and some like-minded friends joined together for the purpose of purchasing property in some of the worst districts of the city, with a view to laying out wider streets and thereafter reselling the remaining building ground, or themselves building upon it. That was not successful mainly due the exorbitant prices asked for by the landowners. What they did however was to bring the issue to the general public’s attention and demonstrate, by their failure, that the problem would only be resolved by means of an Act of Parliament which would compel change.[35]
He first brought before the council his City Improvement Scheme on the 17th September 1865. It was well received by council members and the public at large. It provided for 88 acres of over built land being dealt with, the creation or improvement of 45 streets and the power to spend £1,250,000 on the purchase of property. It also included a general rental taxation of 6d per £ for five years. This latter feature was to result in John jnr. leaving the council. In June 1866, the Act of Parliament was approved and trustees were appointed to deal with its implementation. In 1867 the first imposition of the 6d rental tax was due to be applied which led to a negative reaction to the act and John jnr. personally. So much so that when stood for re-election in November 1866, his three years tenure being up, he lost by two votes. [36]
He never sought election to the council again, continuing to play an informal part in city affairs and running the family business. He died of pleurisy on the 12th February 1873.[37]
His obituary in the Scotsman of the 13th February recorded his many attributes and included the following comment:
‘Ex Provost Blackie, as originator of the (City) Improvement Plan, has perhaps done more for the good of the city of Glasgow than any other of its chief Magistrates, with the exception of Lord Provost Stewart who promoted the Loch Katrine water scheme.’[38]
John snr. died in 1874,[39] the company he formed essentially in 1809 ceased trading in 1991.[40]
Shown below are examples of the children’s books Blackie published which are in the writer’s possession.
Figure 3. Published 1928
Figure 4. Published 1890.
Figure 5. Published 1935.
One other point worthy of mention, it was William Wilfrid Blackie, the son of Walter Graham Blackie, brother of John jnr., who commissioned Charles Rennie Mackintosh to design and build the Hill House in Helensburgh.
Archibald Gray Macdonald was an engraver/lithographer who bequeathed twenty three paintings to Glasgow, eleven of which were by the landscaper Samuel Bough. The paintings were to go to Glasgow on his death or on his wife’s if he predeceased her,[1] which is what happened as she died in 1903, three years after he did.[2] Two examples from his gift by Samuel Bough are shown below.
Archibald was born in 1813 in the Barony parish to John Macdonald, writer (lawyer) and Thomina Gray[3] who had married in 1810.[4] He was named after his maternal grandfather Archibald Gray and was the youngest of their three children, Mary being born in 1811[5] and Eneas in 1812.[6]
Very little has been established about father John, not helped by the fact there were two writers of the same name in Glasgow at the same time. When he was born is not clear but it may have been around 1790. He died intestate at Bridge of Allan in 1856, son Archibald was confirmed as executor, his estate being valued at £295 6s 9d. Interestingly in his inventory document he was described as being the owner of the Gartverrie Fire Clay Works in New Monklands and lived in Kingshill Cottage in the parish of Cadder.[7] In the Glasgow Herald of the 12th January he is recorded as donating £1 to the Patriotic Fund, set up to support the troops fighting the Crimean War (1853-56).[8] His death is recorded in the Inverness Courier on the 19 June 1856.[9] On his father’s death Archibald became owner of the Clay Works [10] eventually selling it c.1860 to J. Arthur and Co. and the Garnkirk Company.[11] Archibald’s mother Thomina was born in Kilmallie in 1780, the daughter of merchant Archibald Gray and Mary Cameron.[12]
Where Archibald was schooled has not been established nor is there any evidence to support his attendance at university. By 1835 however he partnered Andrew Maclure in the lithographing and engraving company Maclure, Macdonald & Co, situated at 190 Trongate,[13] the company first appearing in the Post Office Directory of 1836/37.[14] It’s not clear how he got involved with that activity, perhaps he and/or Andrew worked with another company initially. As it happens Hugh Wilson was an engraver and lithographer situated at 197 Trongate. Wilson had been in the profession since 1822 in Argyle street[15] and had moved to the Trongate in 1828[16] at which time Andrew would be age 16 and Archibald 15. Is this where one or both served their ‘apprenticeship’? Pure conjecture of course.
In 1838 their description in the directory was given as ‘lithographers, printers, draughtsmen and printers to Her Majesty’[17]the latter part subsequently becoming ‘ornamental printers to Her Majesty’ in 1846.[18]
In 1839 they moved their business premises to 57 Buchanan Street[19] remaining there until 1853 when they moved to 20 St. Vincent Place.[20] They were to stay there for the next thirty one years, moving to Bothwell Street in 1884. Their directory entry for that year gives a clear indication of the range and growth of the company which now included engineering activity, chromo lithographs, photographs, photo engraving, making medals, die sinks and embossing.[21] They were also at the forefront of innovation in their profession having bought a Sigi machine from Germany in 1851 which could print 600 sheets per hour and were the first company in the UK to use steam power for lithographic printing.[22]
Their business activity was not confined to Glasgow. In 1840 they opened premises in Liverpool, then London in 1845. In 1886 they opened in Manchester[23] by which time the founders of the company were no longer there. Andrew Maclure had died in 1885 at Monzie Castle in Perth, usual residence given as Ladbroke Square, London [24] having lived there from at least 1861.[25] Archibald retired from the business in 1886.[26]
Their products included portraiture, events and postage stamps. The National Portrait Gallery in London have forty four lithographs and chromolithographs of significant Victorian individuals including royalty, politicians, artists and soldiers, the original artwork on a number of them being done by Andrew Maclure.[27] The Wellcome Collection based at London University has thirty three lithographs of varying subject matter, with a small number of portraits. They also have thirty published reports produced by the company on a variety of subjects . [28]
The stamps they produced were mainly for the National Telephone Company, which was based in Glasgow, although they also created postage stamps for Uruguay and Sarawak.[29]
Some examples of their output are shown below.
Figure 6. Gordon of Khartoum.
Figure 3. Queen Victoria.
Figure 4. Lord Randolph Churchhill
Figure 5. Sir John Millais
These lithographs are from the National Portrait Gallery. The two below are from the Wellcome Collection .
Figure 7. Duke of Wellington lying in state
Figure 8. Opium Factory at Patna India.
Figure 11. Uruguay Postage Stamp
Figure 9. National Telephone Company
Figure 10. Sarawak Postage Stamp
Stamp images from Wikipedia Commons.
Archibald married Janet Gemmill Aitken in 1845.[30] She was the daughter of Dr. John Aitken and Margaret Montgomerie Thomson who married in 1817.[31] The Aitkens had four children, Janet being the third, born in 1823.[32] Her father was a graduate of Glasgow University gaining an MA in 1815 and an MD in 1839 and was also at one time the Register of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons.[33]
Archibald and Janet’s marriage was childless. Two years after their marriage they were living at 1 Fitzroy Place in Glasgow.[34] They moved to 8 Park Circus in 1866 where they lived for the rest of their lives.[35]
Archibald died at home on the 25th April 1900, cause of death given as Pulmonary Congestion.[36] Janet died, also at home on the 10th January 1903, cause of death recorded as acute bronchitis.[37] They were both buried in the Glasgow Necropolis in the tomb of Janet’s father and mother.[38]
Their favourite artist seems to have been Samuel Bough. He was born in England in 1822 but became well known and influential in landscape paintings of Scotland in the 19th century. He initially started out by painting theatrical scenes but by 1855 had moved to Edinburgh and was elected to the RSA the following year.[39] His portrait was painted by Daniel Macnee which is shown below.
‘The Director reported that Mrs. Howard, Green Gates, Albion Hill, Loughton, Essex, had gifted a portrait of herself as a young child by Robert Brough, and the committee agreed that the gift be accepted and that a letter be sent to Mrs. Howard conveying their appreciation therefor’.1
(‘Green gates’ was a house that Edith and her husband occupied temporarily while they were looking for permanent accommodation in London). 2
In the catalogue of donations to Glasgow, the painting is entitled Edie, Daughter of O. H. Edinger, Esq., London (2285) and was presented by Mrs Geoffrey E. Howard, of Ashmore, near Salisbury on 6 June 1942.3
There is no photograph available of the painting as it is currently on extended loan to Edith’s family.
The portrait was painted about 1900 when ‘Edie’ was nine. It was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) Exhibition of 1900 having been sent from the Rossetti Studios, Flood Street, Chelsea, London. 4 The artist, who was Scottish, was a protégé of John Singer Sargent who in turn was a friend of Edith`s father which is probably why Brough was chosen to paint the portrait.5
Figure 1. Photograph supplied by Professor Sir Michael Howard and used with permission
Edith Julia Emma Edinger (“Edie”) was born in London on 15 May 1891 6. Her parents were German Jews who emigrated to Britain and took British citizenship. Her father, Otto Henry Edinger was born in Worms in 1856; her mother was Augusta Fuld, whose date of birth was 24 June 1869 7. They married in Germany on 2 July 1890 8. Edith had two younger brothers, Valentine (born 1894) and George (born 1900) 9.
Otto had first visited London in 1875 and set up in business there. He appears on the 1881 Census as a ‘lodger’ at 72 Prince`s Square, Paddington. 10 He was employed as a clerk. However, by 1901 he was living with his family at 83 Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea. He was now a stockbroker and employed six servants.11 He made several trips to New York between 1904 and 1907 but seems to have been unaccompanied. 12
Otto`s family was now ‘rich and fashionable ……..kept a carriage and a butler, rode in Rotten Row, and in the winter months took the train out to Leighton Buzzard to hunt’. 13 As a result, Edith received a privileged upbringing. She ‘went to a fashionable, girls` day-school near Sloane Square and to finishing schools in France and Germany’. She was a debutante at the court of Edward VII and was also presented to the Kaiser aboard his yacht. (She reported to the family that the Kaiser spoke better English than Edward VII). ‘She dined with his officers, flirted with the King of Norway (and) attended the Berlin premiere of Rosenkavalier. She was lively, witty, wealthy ……….. and very beautiful’. She met her husband, Geoffrey Eliot Howard, at a dance at the Alpine Club in London in 1913 and they married on 19 November the following year. 14
Figure 2. Photograph supplied by Professor Sir Michael Howard and used with permission
Geoffrey, who was born on 24 December 1877 in Walthamstow, was thirty-even and Edith twenty-three. He was a director of the family firm of Howards and Sons based in Ilford and was later appointed chairman 15. The firm manufactured pharmaceutical and industrial chemicals. (Their main medicinal products were ether, quinine and aspirin, the latter being marketed with the slogan ‘Howard’s Aspirin is not the cheapest – it is the Best’)16
After their marriage, Geoffrey and Edith moved into a house in Brompton Square ‘in a highly fashionable area on the borders of South Kensington and Chelsea’. Their first son, John Anthony Eliot Howard was born there on 19 January 1916. The next three years saw the birth of another son, Denis Valentine Eliot Howard but also the death of both of Edith`s parents. Her brother Val was killed on the Western Front in 1918. After the war they moved to a larger house looking on to Ennismore Gardens where a third son, Michael Eliot Howard was born in 1922.
According to Michael, the 1920s were happy times for his mother. Her family was growing up and living in some style with a retinue of servants to look after them. She had a wide circle of friends in London and in the country. In addition, ‘She collected pictures and (Chinese) jade with enthusiasm and discrimination with a taste for modern artists’. She possessed works by Walter Sickert, Laura Knight, Duncan Grant, Jacob Epstein, Paul Maitland, Mary Potter, Marie Laurencin and Matthew Smith. She and her brother George were founder members of Chatham House set up in 1920 to analyse and promote understanding of major international affairs.
Geoffrey`s father, Eliot Howard, died in 1927 and his house The Cottage on the Ashmore Estate, near Salisbury in Dorset passed to Edith and Geoffrey . Later as the house became too small for their needs it was ‘swapped’ for the village Rectory. Michael recalled ‘My mother spent what were probably the happiest years of her life redecorating what had now become The Old Rectory……in the elegant and comfortable style of the 1930s’.
‘But in the 1930s ……she slipped into a decline from which she never entirely recovered. Still implacably elegant, increasingly neurotic ………she spent the rest of her life in a search for the kind of stability that the world of the twentieth century proved unable to provide’. Her depression was exacerbated by the likely outbreak of war and the prospect of all three of her sons being called up for military duty. When war did break out, she moved with the family out of London to Ashmore. They returned to London in early 1940 when the more valuable pictures (in her collection) were placed in store’.
However, in the bombing which followed, their house in Brompton Square although not directly hit was declared unsafe and they were again evacuated to Ashmore. In the spring of 1942, they moved back to central London to a flat in Ennismore Gardens. Edith ‘regained her old elegance and sparkle ……. visiting picture galleries and adding to her small, excellent collection of contemporary, British painters’. She also worked in the Red Cross attending to the needs of prisoners-of-war. ‘Air raids she took in her stride, refusing to go to the shelter at night and next morning, immaculate in twinset and pearls……..she crunched in her high heeled shoes through the broken glass of Knightsbridge and Piccadilly to the Redfern Gallery or Harrods; this was her finest hour’.
After the war she and Geoffrey moved to a house in Egerton Crescent, London. Geoffrey Howard died on 16 January 1956 and was buried at Ashmore. Edith survived him by 20 years and died in the spring of 1977 aged 86. Her ashes were buried at Ashmore beside her husband.
It is still not clear why Edith took the decision to donate her portrait to Glasgow since it seems unlikely that she ever visited the city. Was the nationality of the artist a factor? The painting itself had crossed the border once before to be exhibited at the RSA exhibition of 1900. It may have been sent north to escape the bombing in London although many of her other paintings were placed in storage at that time. It may also be that as she continued to collect the works of modern artists, she needed space to display them.
References
Minutes of the Corporation of Glasgow, November 1941 to May 1942, C1/3/105, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Minute of the Committee on Art Galleries and Museums, 21April 1942.
Information from Professor Sir Michael Howard, Edith’s youngest son
Catalogue of Paintings Donated to Glasgow Corporation, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre
Baile de Laperriere , Charles, editor, The Royal Scottish Academy Exhibitors, 1826-1900, Hillmartin Manor Press, 1991
This and subsequent quotes are used with permission from Captain Professor, a life in war and peace – The Memoirs of Sir Michael Howard, Continuum UK, 2006.
This oil painting was bequeathed by the sitter, David Fortune, of the Scottish Legal Life Assurance Society, 84 Wilson Street. It was received in June 1911.
David Fortune was born about 1842 in Glasgow. His parents were Helen Brown and David Fortune, a master plumber. It is possible that both his parents died when David was young because in the 1851 census he was with his grandfather, David Fortune, a journeyman plumber, and his grandmother Smollet Renton.1 (His grandparents had married on 19 June 1818 in Glasgow). 2 They were living at 74 Cannon Street, Glasgow along with David`s uncle John Fortune who was 17 and his aunt Smollet Fortune aged 14. David`s parents do not appear in any census. In the 1861 census 3, David`s occupation was ‘printer compositor’. He was now aged 18 and living with his uncle John and his wife Mary at 140 Cumberland Street, Hutchesontown. His grandfather was living with them.
By 1865, aged 23, David Fortune had become secretary of the Central Working Men’s Club based at 153 Trongate. He had a house at 10 Wellington Street 4. While occupying this position, he was instrumental in setting up the first of several industrial exhibitions he was to be involved with. From a retrospective article in The Bailie we are told that:
Mr. David Fortune was the Secretary of the first Industrial Exhibition in Scotland. It was held under the auspices of the Central Working Men`s Club, in the present Royal Polytechnic buildings, in the year 1865, and was opened by the late Duke of Argyll as a Winter Exhibition. Mr. Fortune was also connected with the Partick and Whiteinch Exhibition held in the same year. 5
(An earlier edition of The Bailie had demoted him somewhat stating that he was ‘janitor of an industrial exhibition in what is now (1889) the Polytechnic Warehouse’). 6 According to the Glasgow Encyclopaedia, The Royal Polytechnic buildings were at 99 Argyll Street and the exhibition (of 1865) had ‘500 exhibits, 400 of which, its placards announced, were by working men’. 7
Figure 2. A medal Awarded at the Industrial Exhibition of 1865. On file at Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC)
The Post Office Directory for 1866-67 lists David Fortune as the ‘manager of an Industrial Museum at 99 Argyll Street with a house at 26 George Street’.
On 15 March 1866, David Fortune married Ann Webster, a seamstress, at 24 Stockwell Street, Glasgow. In the same year, on 29 November, their first child, George Roy Fortune was born. 8 This occasion gives the first glimpse of David`s passion for the Temperance Movement as the child seems to have been named after George Roy Esq. who, according to a report on the movement 9, was a prominent member of the Scottish Temperance League and became its Honorary Director in 1868. The whole family was named as members of the Scottish Temperance League in 1868-69 with George Roy (aged 2) a ‘Juvenile Adherent’. In the report David Fortune is listed among those ‘Gentlemen who have frankly given their occasional services in the advocacy of the cause….their labours have been most abundant and self-denying’. He contributed five shillings in Donations and Subscriptions. (William Collins, the publisher, and future employer of David Fortune, who was also a member, contributed £5).
The following year, aged 25, David Fortune was appointed to the post of Janitor of Anderson`s University and Keeper of the University Museum. There were 267 applicants for the post with 14 leeted. (Whether significant or not, David Fortune was the first name on the leet). He was appointed on 18 September 1867, with a salary of £60 per annum. In addition, he was to receive a 5% commission on Annual Subscriptions to the University which he was to collect. He was also to occupy the Janitor`s House rent free with water, gas and coal included and free of taxes. He sent his letter of acceptance on 20September 10 (Appendix 1).
In the census of 1871 11, the family was at 204 George Street (the Janitor`s House). David is described as the ‘Curator of University’. Apart from George Roy, aged 4, there were two other children, Jamie E. (a daughter who probably died young) and Maggie Webster aged 7 months. Another child, Anne Smollett Fortune, had been born on 24 July 1869 12 but is not recorded on the census. In the Glasgow Post Office Directories from 1868 to 1872, David Fortune is listed at the Andersonian University, 204 George Street. He was still pursuing his temperance activities as the following advertisement, which appeared in The Temperance Record of 1871, illustrates:
Amy Royson`s Resolve, by David Fortune. A New Prize Temperance Tale. Price, in paper covers, 1s; post free, 14 stamps. In extra cloth boards, 2s; post free 28 stamps. Published by John S. Marr and Sons, Glasgow. 13
According to the Anderson`s University Calendar, David Fortune was Janitor of the University until 1871-2. However, on 21 February 1872 he tendered his resignation in order to take up a ‘new post’. Although his terms of employment stated that he was required to give three months’ notice, he asked to be allowed to relinquish his post within fourteen days and was given permission to leave on 1 March.14 His ‘new post’ was that of Secretary of the Irish Temperance League (ITL) in Belfast.15 On 2 June 1873 he communicated an article on The Origin of the Temperance Agitation in Ireland which was published in a volume entitled The Early Heroes of the Temperance Reformation. 16 ‘He was a very dynamic and effective secretary’ of the League and had the idea of setting up coffee stalls in Belfast ‘for which the ITL is popularly remembered’. 17
In 1876 an International Temperance Conference was held in Philadelphia. David Fortune contributed an article The Irish Temperance League which was published in a Memorial Volume. 18 He left the ITL in 1877 (a departure that was ‘greatly regretted’) and returned to Glasgow to take up a ‘share in the management of the important business of Sir William Collins &Co.’.19 From 1879 to 1881 he was living at 89 North Frederick Street 20 and according to the census of 1881 he was the ‘foreman of a stationery manufacturer’. There had been an addition to the family – David jnr. who was aged two and born in Glasgow.21
Between 1881 and 1886 he became President of the Scottish Legal Life Assurance Society (SLLA).22 It is likely that this was a part-time post as his main occupation was still with William Collins. In the same year he gave evidence to the Select Committee on ‘National Provident Insurance’. 23, 24 (Appendix 2) At that time the SLLA had over 30,000 children under the age of five listed as members, but he denied, in his evidence, that child insurance encouraged infanticide or neglect.
He was now resident at 104 Peel Terrace, Hill Street, Garnethill. As The Bailie commented ‘whenever a decent, hard-working, shoemaker or warehouseman blossoms into a ‘swell’ he chucks his ancient dwelling-place in Monteith Row or North Frederick Street, and travels ‘out West’. 25 The article was bemoaning the exodus from the East-end of Glasgow and the increased prominence in city affairs of the West-end.
On 25 November 1886 an Industrial Exhibition was opened at the Burnbank Drill Hall and Grounds in Great Western Road. David Fortune was a member of the Executive Committee and Honorary Secretary. Of the members of the Executive Committee, The Bailie commented ‘One and all of these gentlemen, each of whom is a citizen of repute, has wrought with might and main to further the scheme’. 26
Figure 3. The Executive Committee, Burnbank Industrial Exhibition. The Bailie, 24 November 1886.
An advertisement was placed in TheGlasgow Herald advising that there would be ‘Illuminations with Electric Light’, ‘Machinery in Motion’ and ‘Sir Noel Paton`s Choice Works’ etc. etc. The proceeds of the first week and any overall profits were to be given to local charities. An article in the same issue gave a full account of the attractions on offer. 27
In the Glasgow Post Office Directory of 1888-89 David Fortune is described as ‘manager, Sir William Collins, Sons and Co., Stirling Road’ and ‘President of Scottish Legal Life Assurance’. According to The Bailie the SLLA ‘may be congratulated on the possession of a Chairman (President) whose strong common sense and admirable business faculty has already been of the utmost advantage in their interests’. 28 He was also Chairman of the Congress of Friendly Societies and Director of the Scottish Temperance League. His interest in education was shown when he gave evidence before a Royal Commission on Technical Education.
David Fortune`s next major project was the East-End Industrial Exhibition of 1890 held in Dennistoun.
‘It is but a few months since an East-end Industrial Exhibition was suggested by Mr. David Fortune, and today………the Marquis of Lothian unlocks a palace of instruction and entertainment’. 29
Perhaps because of the influence of David Fortune the exhibition seems to have been a teetotal affair and perhaps because of that ‘misguided decision’ was lacking in visitors. 30 However, a later edition of The Bailie states that the exhibition ‘resulted in a surplus of £3000 being handed to the Corporation to aid in building the People`s Palace.’ 31 This is confirmed by an article in the Glasgow Encyclopaedia:
The East End Industrial Exhibition of Manufactures, Science and Art, took place in 1890-91. Its profits were to go towards establishing ‘an institute for the intellectual and social improvement and recreation of the inhabitants of the East End of Glasgow’. – this objective was realised by the erection of the People`s Palace.32
‘Concerning Mr. David Fortune, the Chairman of the Executive Committee, there is little need to say anything. Mr. Fortune is an eager and enthusiastic worker at whatever he puts his hand to, and he usually contrives to make the different enterprises with which he is connected turn out successes.’ 33
One of his duties was to reply to the toast to the executive at the opening ceremony.
According to the 1891-92 Glasgow Post Office Directory he was ‘President, Scottish Legal Life Assurance Society’ but was now described as a ‘mercantile stationer’ at 28 Gordon Street. In the 1893-94 edition he was a manager at Sir William Collins, Sons and Co., Stirling Road and had become Secretary of Scottish Legal Life. In 1895-96 he is listed as ‘J.P., F.S.S.’. In 1897 he moved to 197 Pitt Street and two years later he moved again to 19 Rowallan Gardens, Broomhill.
David Fortune was Chairman of the Glasgow East End Industrial Exhibition which ran from 9 December 1903 till 9 April 1904. It was staged in Duke Street in premises designed for the East End Exhibition of 1890 – 91 and attracted 908,897 visitors. Its aim was to raise funds for the Royal Infirmary but in the event made a disappointing profit of £221. An advertisement for the exhibition appeared in the Glasgow Herald of 9 December 1903. At the closing ceremony ‘the members of the Executive, accompanied by Sir John Ure Primrose, the Hon. the Lord Provost came upon the platform and were enthusiastically received. Mr. David Fortune, who presided, briefly introduced the Lord Provost’. 34 In his speech, the Lord Provost congratulated the Executive on the success of the Exhibition. Mr. Fortune then proposed a vote of thanks to the Lord Provost and the formal proceedings were terminated.
The Bailie again commented:
‘Mr. Fortune`s zeal and energy have permeated the various committees. Exhibitions are Mr. Fortune`s hobby, but in the serious business of life he devotes his time and attention to the work of the Scottish Legal Life Assurance Society, where, as the able and efficient Secretary, he renders yeoman service. Mr. Fortune is also actively identified with the leading social, educational, and municipal movements in the city.’ 35
On 10 October 1911, David Fortune was presented with his portrait in oils ‘in recognition of 50 years public service in Glasgow’. (This was the painting which was subsequently bequeathed to Glasgow). Rather appropriately, the portrait was presented to him at the Scottish National Exhibition of 1911 held in Kelvingrove. The purpose of this exhibition was to raise funds to endow a Chair of Scottish History and Literature at the University of Glasgow. For once, David Fortune appears not to have been involved. The presentation was made by Lord Rowallan in front of a large gathering in the Athole Restaurant. At the same time, Mrs. Fortune was presented with a gold pendant set with pearls. Among those present were David Fortune`s daughter and his son Dr. George Fortune. Also present was Francis Wilson who painted the portrait. 36
On 16 June 1912 Annie Fortune died aged 65 at home in Broomhill. Her death was reported by her son G. Roy Fortune but some details on her death certificate differ from those shown on her marriage certificate i.e., her father is listed as David Webster, a blacksmith and farmer, and her mother as Annie Webster m.s. Hall. 37
After his wife’s death, David Fortune appears to have remarried although this marriage is not recorded on Scotland’s People. His new bride was a widow Mary Ann Gray (nee Kemp) who predeceased him. She died on 24 March 1917. 38
David Fortune died, aged 75, on 12 November 1917 at 19 Rowallan Gardens, Broomhill. He was buried in the Glasgow Necropolis on 14 November but there is no evidence of a gravestone having been erected. His death certificate records that he was an insurance secretary, widower of 1. Annie Webster, 2. Marion (sic) Gray. The death was reported by his son G. Roy Fortune and again the details differ from those on his marriage certificate. His father is given correctly as David Fortune, plumber but his mother is listed as Maggie Fortune m.s. Galloway. 39 His obituary was published in TheGlasgow Herald under the heading ‘A Social Reformer – Death of Mr David Fortune’. The author noted that as well as his many other interests, David Fortune was a ‘keen Burnsian’ and was frequently called upon to deliver ‘The Immortal Memory’. He was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries and a member of the Greenock Harbour Trust. 40 A memorial service was held on 18 November 1917 in the Newton Place United Free Church in Partick.
Figure 5. Order of Service (On File at GMRC)
His estate was valued at £6913.18s. 6d and in his will,41 he left £100 each to the Scottish Temperance League and the Royal Glasgow Institute for the Deaf and Dumb and £50 each to the Royal National Lifeboat Institute and the East Park Home for Infirm Children. He also left bequests to the Sabbath Schools of the Newton Place United Free Church, Partick ‘for the purchase of prizes’ and to the Rose Street Day Industrial School to help with funding the Annual Excursion and Christmas Entertainment for the poorer children. The ‘goods and chattels’ belonging to his second wife were left to her grand-niece Marjorie Hartstone who was then living at 19 Rowallan Gardens.
Two paintings are mentioned in his will; Scotland Yet by Cameron (first name not given) ‘bequeathed to me by the grandson of Robert Burns’ which was left to his elder son and his portrait by Francis Wilson which was to be given to the People`s Palace in Glasgow.
His portrait was offered by his trustees to Glasgow Corporation on 1 February 1918 and was initially declined due to a lack of space at the People`s Palace. However, after further consideration and correspondence from the trustees, the painting was accepted on 31 May 1918. 42
The Artist
Francis Wilson was primarily a painter of landscapes and portraits. He was born in Glasgow in 1876. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art and continued his training in Florence, Paris and Rome. On his return from the Continent, he set up a studio in Glasgow, exhibiting at many of the Scottish societies, including the Royal Scottish Academy and the Glasgow Institute. He also exhibited at the Paris Salon. He was a Member of the Glasgow Art Club and his work is represented in the Glasgow Art Gallery.
References
ancestry.co.uk, Scotland Census 1851
familysearch.org
ancestry.co.uk, Scotland Census 1861
Glasgow Post Office Directory, 1865-66.
The Bailie, No. 1626, 16 December 1903, Mitchell Library, Glasgow
The Bailie, No. 886, 9 October 1889
Fisher, Joe, The Glasgow Encyclopaedia, Mainstream Publishing, 1994. pp 130-134.
Information from Archie Wood, Honorary Archivist, Irish Temperance League. (Sent by email, 2012)
Centennial Temperance Volume. A Memorial of the International Temperance Conference, held in Philadelphia, June 1876. (Published 1877, article number 851 – 852). (Google Books).
The Bailie, No. 886, 9 October 1889
Glasgow Post Office Directories
Scotland’s People, Census 1881
Glasgow Post Office Directories
Scotland in the 19th Century, (ebook), Chapter 6, Section 6.8, Insurance
The Bailie, No. 736, 24 November 1886.
The Bailie, No. 886, 9 October 1889.
The Bailie, No. 736, 24 November 1886
The Glasgow Herald, 25 November 1886 pages 1 and 5.
The Bailie, No. 886, 9 October 1889.
The Bailie, No. 949, 24 December 1890.
ibid
The Bailie, No. 1626, 16 December 1903.
Fisher, Joe, The Glasgow Encyclopaedia, Mainstream Publishing, 1994 pp 130-134.
The Bailie, No. 949, 24 December 1890.
The Glasgow Herald, 11 April 1904, page 9.
The Bailie, No. 1626, 16 December 1903.
The Glasgow Herald, 11 October 1911, page 9.
Scotland`s People, Death Certificate.
ibid
ibid
The Glasgow Herald 12 November 1917.
Scotland’s People, Wills and Testaments, SC36/51/179, pp 228-239, 1918
Glasgow Corporation Minutes, 1 February 1918, C1 3.58, p584; 1 May 1918, p1089; 31 May 1918, C1 3.59, p 1277, Mitchell Library
Appendix 1
David Fortune`s letter of acceptance of the post of Janitor of Anderson`s University and Keeper of the Museum.
26, George Street, 20th September 1867
Sir,
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication of yesterday, acquainting me of my appointment by the Managers, as Janitor to Anderson`s University, and Keeper of the Museum connected with that institution. I cordially agree to the terms specified in your letter, and I need scarcely say that my best energies shall be devoted to the fulfilment of the various duties required of me, in a manner which, I hope, shall prove satisfactory to the Managers and the other gentlemen connected with, and interested in the welfare of the University. With thanks for the great favor (sic) bestowed on one, I remain, Sir etc.
(signed) David Fortune
William Ambrose Esq. Secretary, Anderson`s University.
Taken from the Minute Book of Anderson`s University, 1865-1881.
Appendix 2
David Fortune, the President of the Scottish Legal Life Assurance Society, which was a mutual as well as a collecting society, said its business was almost entirely confined to the working classes. Out of a total of 400,000 members, 38,771 were under the age of 5 and 37,731 between the ages of 5 and 10. He disclaimed the suggestion that child insurance encouraged infanticide or neglect. He recommended that only one insurance should be allowed on a child, as with only one certificate, there would be no possibility of insurance beyond the legal amount. He thought all societies insuring children ought to be registered under the Friendly Societies Act, 1875, but did not recommend the registration of every child life insurance as this would be extremely unpopular among the working classes
Janette Mary Fernie Ranken was born on 16 December 1877 to Robert Burt Ranken, Writer to the Signet, and his wife Mary at 8 Learmonth Terrace, Edinburgh. (1) On her birth certificate she is ‘Jeanette’ but on all other documents this is spelt ‘Janette’. She first appears in the 1881 census (2) with father, mother and her brother Thomas and household staff which included a cook, 2 housemaids, a laundress, 3 nurses and a kitchen maid. In the 1891 census (3) she is at Cringletie Manor House, near Eddleston, with her younger brother William, and a governess, housekeeper, nurse, cook, laundry maid and coachman. Her parents are not present and are presumably furth of Scotland. Cringleltie is now a hotel and is a substantial house which was then rented, since it was owned by another family. (4)
Figure 1. Janette Ranken at Lady Margaret Hall .By kind permission of the Principal and Fellows
She attended Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford from 1895 to 1897 and in their records is described as having been educated at home. (5)
From time to time her father, while retaining his main residence in Learmonth Terrace in Edinburgh, rented other substantial houses in the Borders In 1901 Janette’s residence is listed as with her father at Dalswinton house, Dumfries (6) and at 8 Learmonth Terrace, Edinburgh. (7)
Her father died in August 1902 (8) at Dalswinton House and she was named a Trustee in his Will with her older brother Thomas and others. (9) Glimpses of her may be seen in Hilary Spurling’s biography of Ivy Compton Burnett (10) ‘her (Margaret Jourdain’s) closest friend at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford was Janette Ranken, a statuesque beauty from a well-to –do Edinburgh family’. Margaret Jourdain became a writer and a much-admired historian of furniture. She and Janette lived together until 1917. (11) Margaret was friendly with Janette’s brother William and with his friend Ernest Thesiger. They all moved in a literary and aesthetic circle in London. (12)
Janette eventually became an actor. During the 1914-1918 war she worked in censorship and in relief organizations. From 1918 she worked for the Theosophist Society. (13)
Figure 2. From ‘The Sketch‘ 30 May 1917
Janette married the actor Edward Thesiger, a friend of her brother William, on 29 May 1917 at Holy Trinity, Chelsea London. (14) Margaret Jourdain then became Ivy Compton Burnett’s lifelong companion. Janette’s forthcoming marriage was reported in various papers, in The Scotsman (15) and in The Sketch ‘An interesting marriage between the actor Edward Thesinger and the well-known actor Miss Ranken’. (16) This was because he was known to be gay. She was given away by her brother Major Thomas Ranken.
On the subject of her marriage Hilary Spurling comments that ‘Janette whose devotion to Margaret remained unimpaired by a marriage so unexacting on both sides that a great many of Ernest’s friends never suspected him of having a wife at all’. (17) An article in TheStage published after his death quoted him as saying ‘that the marriage was never consummated’. (18)
After her marriage her life is not well documented and she would appear to have lived on private means and to have continued her interest in Theophisists but she did travel to Colombo in 1928 and to Durban in 1936 (19) (20) and she appears to have been unaccompanied. Ernest Thesinger died in 1961. (21)
Janette was always very close to her brother William and when he died in 1941, (22) she distributed his paintings to Art Galleries in the UK and abroad.
She gave two paintings to Glasgow Museums in 1926 both by William Ranken’, an Oil Painting The Garden Door and a watercolour Dreaming Room at 139 Picadilly She died in June 1970, aged 92 years, in Kensington, London. The last years of her life had been marred by illness. She was blind and latterly bedridden. (23)
It was generally agreed that Janette found women more attractive than men (24) but there were three men in her life. Her brother Thomas Ranken was a donor to Glasgow museums in his own right and is reported separately.
The second and most important was her brother the artist William Bruce Ellis Ranken (1881-1942). (25) He was educated at Eton and the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks. (26) It was there that his lifelong friendship with Ernest Thesiger began. His first exhibition in London in 1904 was well received. He became friendly with John Singer Sargent and travelled to America possibly with him. In America his clientele expanded to include the wealthy and famous and he exhibited successfully. He returned to Britain and his studio was at 14 Cheltenham Terrace, London. His subjects included Queen Mary and the Princess Christian. (27) He also painted miniatures for the Queen’s Dolls’ house.
His many portraits include that of Sir John Stirling Maxwell at Pollok House, which is in the Glasgow Museums Collection and hangs in Pollok House. (28) He became quite wealthy and bought an estate Warbrook, in Hampshire.
He died suddenly in 1942 and left about 200 paintings. (29)
Janette was responsible for donating these to Art Galleries around Britain. Eighty-two of his paintings feature in the ArtUK website. (30) Her husband Ernest Thesiger (1879-1961) (31) came from a prominent English family of public and civil servants. (32) His grandfather was the first Lord Chelmsford; his father was Sir Edward Pierson Thesiger a civil servant; an uncle was General Charles Thesiger of the African campaign and a cousin was the explorer, Wilfred Thesiger.
Figure 6. W.E.B. Ranken. Ernest Thesiger. Photo credit: Manchester Art Gallery (www.artuk.org).
After an education at Marlborough College, he proceeded to the Slade School of Art where he met William Ranken. (33) He tried to follow a career as a painter but became an actor though he continued to be an accomplished embroiderer. From 1909 he had success on the London stage and moved in artistic circles which included George Bernard Shaw and John Singer Sargent. He served in France in the First World War but was wounded and honourably discharged. He first appeared in a film in 1916 but it was not until 1930 that his Hollywood career was launched properly. He continued to appear in films until the year before he died. He appeared in over 50 films and among them are some which are well known such as The Bride of Frankenstein and The Man in the White Suit. (34) He was awarded a CBE in 1960 (35) and died in 1961. (36).
References
National Records of Scotland Statutory Births 1877
National Records of Scotland Census 1881
National Records of Scotland Census 1891
Cringletie House Hotel website
Archives of Lady Margaret Hall. By kind permission of the Principal and Fellows
Dalswinton House Dumfries
National Records of Scotland Wills and Confirmations 1902
National Records of Scotland Statutory Deaths 1902
National Records of Scotland Wills and Confirmations 1902
Hilary Spurling. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart: the later life of Ivy Compton-Burnett. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1984
Ibid
Milne, James Lees. Ranken, William Bruce (1881-1961). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Archives of Lady Margaret Hall. By kind permission of the Principal and Fellows
Ancestry.co.uk
The Scotsman 10 April 1917
The Sketch 30 May 1917
Hilary Spurling. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart: the later life of Ivy Compton-Burnett. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1984
The Stage 20 October 2000
Ancestry.co,uk
ibid
England and Wales National Probate Calendar
Milne, James Lees. Ranken, William Bruce Ellis (1881-1961). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Hilary Spurling. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart: the later life of Ivy Compton-Burnett. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1984
ibid
National Records of Scotland Statutory Births 1881
A Forgotten Gay Great: mrmhadams.typed.com
ibid
Art.uk
Ancestry.co.uk
Art.uk
Ancestry.co.uk
National Portrait Gallery website
Anderson, Michael. Thesiger, Ernest Frederic Graham (1879-1961) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Wikipedia
Anderson, Michael. Thesiger, Ernest Frederic Graham (1879-1961) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2014.
In October 1917, Alexander Brownlie Docharty gifted a series of his own paintings to Glasgow Corporation. (Appendix 1)
Fig. 1 In the Woods Early Spring (1914). (1436). (c) Glasgow Museums; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Figure 2. An Autumn Day (1917). (1437). (c) Glasgow Museums; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Figure 3. Winter Sunshine. (1917). (1438). (c) Glasgow Museums; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Figure 4. THe Old Clock Tower, Evening. (1439). (c) Glasgow Museums; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Figure 5. Springtime, Hawthorn Blossom (1917). (1440). (c) Glasgow Museums; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Alexander Brownlie Docharty was born on 8 October 1862 at 5 McAslin Street, Glasgow. 1 This was in the Townhead area of the city near the present University of Strathclyde. He was the second son of Joseph Docharty a pattern designer and his wife Elizabeth Brownlie. Joseph and Elizabeth had married in Calton, Glasgow on 13 June 1859.2 They went on to have three sons and three daughters. At the 1871 census 3, the family was living in Crossmyloof, Cathcart. Joseph Docharty was described as a ‘designer and coal agent’ born in Bonhill, Dunbartonshire.
Alexander left school aged thirteen to work with his father designing calico prints. At the same time, he studied in the evenings at the Glasgow School of Art under Robert Greenlees and in 1878 at the age of fifteen he had a watercolour, On the Cart Pollockshaws hung in the Glasgow Fine Art Institute. It was priced at three guineas.The painting was submitted from 5 Viewfield Terrace. 4
At the 1881 Census, Alexander was living with his widowed mother, grandfather (a retired grocer) and siblings at Langbank, Renfrewshire. He was described as a ‘landscape painter’. The following year he had a painting Arran Cottages hung in the Royal Academy in London. The painting was sent from 113 West Regent Street, Glasgow. 5 However, his attempts to make a living from painting seem to have been premature and he found employment as a designer with the firm of Inglis & Wakefield who had a print works at Busby.
By 1885 however, he had returned to painting and while living at 11 Prince`s Street, Pollockshields he shared a studio with his uncle James Docharty and his cousin also James Docharty at 134 Bath Street, Glasgow. 6 James Docharty, A.R.S.A., was a well-known painter of landscapes who exhibited extensively at the Royal Scottish Academy from 1864 till his death in 1878. He undoubtedly had a significant influence on his nephew Alexander`s decision to try to make his living as an artist.
On 6 June 1890 at Nether Barr, Ayrshire, Alexander married Catherine McKnight a schoolteacher and daughter of a farmer from Kirkconnell, Dumfries. His occupation was ‘landscape and portrait painter’ and his address ‘Maitland, Dailly’. 7
At the 1891 census he was at Nether Barr with his in-laws. In the same census his wife and their new-born son, Joseph, were at 4 Melville Street, Govan with Alexander`s mother and family.
Alexander was among those Glasgow painters who in 1891 appended their names to a petition requesting that the Corporation of Glasgow buy Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle by J. A. M. Whistler. 8 This painting was duly purchased (for 1000 guineas!) from the artist and is now in Kelvingrove Art Galleries in Glasgow.
In 1894 Alexander went to Paris where he entered the Academie Julien and studied for a time under Benjamin Constant and Jean Paul Laurens. On his return to Scotland, he went to live and work at Kilkerran in Ayrshire. He painted mainly in oils and spent about fourteen years in Kilkerran in a cottage owned by Sir James Fergusson. 9 One of the works he produced there was shown at the Venice Biennale in 1903 and purchased by the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs. It hung in the Consulta Palace in Rome. 10
According to the Glasgow Post Office Directory for 1895-96, he still had a business address at 134 Bath Street with a house at Ruglen, Kilkerran, Ayrshire.
In 1901, the family was living at 3 Jane Street, Blythswood Square, Glasgow. Alexander was now an ‘artist (painting) working on his own account’. As well as Joseph there were now two other children, William McK. Docharty, aged 5 and Mary R. Docharty, aged 3. Both children were born in Kirkoswald, Ayrshire. There was also a servant employed who had been born in Dailly. 11
In the early 1900s, Alexander spent his summers in Symington painting at Dankeith, Dundonald and Auchans. 12 He also travelled to the Highlands and the nature of the subjects he depicted is indicated in the titles of a few of his more outstanding works including, Winter in Glenfinlas (1902), Ben Venue (1905) and Lochiel`s Country which was shown at the Royal Academy, London and was purchased by Glasgow Corporation. In 1907, his September, Glen Falloch was exhibited at the Glasgow Institute. It was purchased by Archibald Watson Finlayson of Merchiston (qv) and presented to Glasgow Corporation.13 In 1916 his painting Glen Morriston was sold for 320 guineas by J. and R. Edmiston.
Alexander travelled and painted in Europe especially in Holland and made trips to Donegal in Ireland. In 1903 he went to Paris and then to Italy via the Riviera and on to Naples, Rome, Florence visiting Venice several times. One of his landscapes, Glenfinlas, was hung in the St. Louis International Exhibition of 1904. This may have come about because an uncle, Alexander Brownlie, had emigrated to the USA and in 1904-5 was living at 338 Bloomfield Avenue, Montclair, NJ. He was a member of a flourishing artistic community in the town. (An article in the Montclair Times describes a walking tour of the town which pointed out the homes of turn-of-the-century artists. This included the home of Alexander Brownlie). 14
Alexander Brownlie Docharty was a member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and served on the Council of the Institute. In addition, he was president of the Glasgow Art Club from 1911 to 1913 and was a Member of Council thereafter.
In 1915, the Balloch Estate on Loch Lomondside, was sold to Glasgow Corporation and on 2 October 1916, Alexander wrote to the Lord Provost with his offer to ‘paint and present several of the more outstanding views (autumnal and spring) of the park and its surroundings’. (Appendix 1) The five paintings produced were those gifted to the Corporation in 1917. It seems that the first of these had been painted before the acquisition of the estate at Balloch and this may have given him the idea for the remainder.
On 26 July 1926, age 63, Alexander sailed on the Caledonia from Glasgow to New York. He was accompanied by his daughter May Rankine Docharty . They arrived back in Glasgow from New York via Moville in Northern Ireland on 10 October having travelled first class on the California. 15
By 1940 he was living with his daughter at 20 Hyndland Road, Hillhead. 16 He died there on the 12 November 1940 aged 78. 17 However, the death notice in the Glasgow Herald states that he died at 6 Montague Terrace. 18 He was buried in Cathcart Cemetery on 14 November 1940. (His uncle, James Docharty, was also buried there). His wife pre-deceased him and he was survived by a son and daughter. An obituary was published in the Glasgow Herald19 and his death was also reported in an article in The Scotsman which noted that ‘he took a deep interest in religious work and served as an elder of Glasgow Cathedral’. 20
Figure 6. From the Glasgow Herald 13 November 1940.
Alexander Brownlie Docharty exhibited widely for almost 60 years including at the Royal Academy (12 works), the Royal Scottish Academy (19) 21, the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour (5) and the Glasgow Institute (155) 22 as well as at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the Manchester City Art Gallery and the New English Art Club. His work attracted praise and criticism from various sources. Of his landscapes Caw commented,
‘Painted with gusto, but not without refinement, in frank, fresh and harmonious colour, and good in drawing and design, Brownlie Docharty`s landscapes preserve the aroma of a sincere, if unimpassioned, love of the simple and everyday aspects of Nature and awakened pleasant memories of the country’.23
Harris and Halsby note that, ‘(He) worked mainly in oil but his watercolours can be fine with good composition and sensitive colour’. 24The Scotsman reported on four of his paintings exhibited at the Glasgow Art Club Show of 1899; ‘Mr. Brownlie Docharty`s works have always shown him to be an artist in evident sympathy with the tenderer aspects of nature which disclose themselves in woodland and stream, but his sojourn to Holland has added both sweetness and strength to his brush,…. 25
Again in 1912, the same paper reported; ‘One of the most striking landscapes in the gallery is the Falls of Garry by Mr. A. Brownlie Docharty. ……….the rocks are painted with a solidity which would have pleased Ruskin; the foaming water has been carefully studied, and with a dainty brush, the artist has rendered the summer greens of the trees and the glow of the sky’. 26
Alexander Brownlie Docharty`s two surviving children each had their own claim to fame. His son, William McKnight Docharty served with the King`s Liverpool Regiment during World War I and achieved the rank of Captain. He was twice wounded in action and was awarded the Military Cross. 27 He became a keen hillwalker and compiled and published in 1954, a list of the 900 highest mountains in Britain. He was also the second person to complete in 1960 the ascents of all 220 ‘Corbetts’ i.e. Scottish mountains between 2500 and 2999 feet in height. William McKnight Docharty died on 14 July 1968 aged 72. 28
May Brownlie Docharty, who died in 1972, was a gifted player and teacher of contract bridge. She owned and managed the Western Bridge Club in Glasgow which she formed after her father`s death. 29
References
Scotland`s People , Birth Certificate
Scotland’s People, Marriage Certificate
Scotland’s People, Census 1871
Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts Exhibitions Catalogues 1877-83. (Mitchell Library).
Catalogues of the Royal Academy Exhibitions, 1880-89, W. Clowes and Sons., Ltd.
Glasgow Corporation Minutes, 4 October 1916. C1 3.57, p2002.
There was submitted a letter, of date 2nd instant, from Mr. A. Brownlie Docharty, 3, Jane Street, Blythswood Square, to the Lord Provost, in which he states that the value and beauty of Loch Lomond Park, recently acquired by the Corporation, and its immediate surroundings, might be brought home to many of our working-classes and industrial citizens, if these were depicted on canvas, and, for this purpose, he is willing to paint and present several of the more outstanding views (autumnal and spring) of the park and its surroundings on condition that the pictures be housed together in the People`s Palace, in Glasgow Green, where they would be most likely to come under the notice of the citizens.
The members of the committee unanimously resolved to record their high appreciation of Mr. Docharty`s generous offer, and to accept the same and to award to him, on behalf of the citizens, their most cordial thanks for this handsome gift. It was also agreed that it be remitted to the Convener, Sub-convener, and Councillor Barrie to confer with Mr. Docharty as to the necessary arrangements for the work being executed and to adjust any details with reference thereto.
The gift was accepted by the full committee of the Corporation at their meeting of 18.10.17. “The paintings would, in accordance with the desire of the artist, be housed in the Peoples` Palace in Glasgow Green”.
The Scotsman of October 17 1917, page 5, has the following article, presumably written when the paintings were gifted to the corporation;
“ARTIST`S GENEROUS OFFER TO GLASGOW:- Mr. A. Brownlie Docharty, a well-known landscape artist, has offered to paint for the Glasgow Corporation, several of the more outstanding views of the Loch Lomond Park and its surroundings, on condition that the pictures are placed together in the People`s Palace. In his letter to the Lord Provost, Mr. Docharty suggested that the value and the beauty of Loch Lomond Park might be brought home to the working classes if depicted on canvas. The Parks Committee of the Corporation have recorded their high appreciation of Mr. Docharty`s generous offer and have agreed to accept the gift”.
In 1916 Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (RBCG), adventurer, politician and writer, donated a portrait of his wife Gabriella by John Lavery to Glasgow Museums.
Starting this research, I rather assumed that following the surname of the donor back in time would present no more than the usual difficulties and similarly with his wife. However that that was not the case as Cunninghame Graham’s surname was not a consistent feature of his ancestry. Additionally his wife’s name was an assumed one, entirely different from her birth name.
RBCG’s great-great-great-grandfather was Nicol Graham, the son of Robert Graham of Gartmore and his wife Isobel Buntine, who was the daughter of Nicol Buntine, Laird of Ardoch. Unfortunately there are no primary sources that confirm this however I’m reasonably confident that this marriage is the source of the Bontine part of RBCG’s surname. Hopefully what follows will support that.
Figure 2. Gartmore House in 2oo8. Public Domain (Jonathan Ng).
Nicol Graham married Margaret Cunninghame, eldest daughter of the Earl of Glencairn in 1732.[1] This marriage is the source of the Cunninghame element of RBCG’s surname. They had four sons; the eldest William, baptized in 1733, [2] the second, Robert, born circa 1735,[3] being RBCG’s great-great-grandfather. William, the heir presumptive to Gartmore, and Robert both matriculated at Glasgow University in 1749.[4]
In his entry in the matriculation records William is described as being an advocate in 1756, although I have been unable to find any evidence to support a law degree from Glasgow. In James Boswell’s London Journal 1762-1763, reprinted in the Penguin Classics series in 2010, it is recorded in the notes that he met William on the 18th June 1763 and again in Lausanne, Switzerland on the 21st December 1764, this latter encounter causing Boswell to comment that it pleased him to see that ‘an Advocate may be made a fine fellow’.[5] In 1767 William married Margaret Porterfield, the daughter of Dr. Porterfield of Edinburgh.[6]
In the meantime Robert had decided his fortunes lay in Jamaica, going there it seems in 1752 at the age of 17. His father had a cousin there who was Clerk of the Court in Kingston therefore it’s probable he was the catalyst for Robert leaving Scotland. As it happens the cousin’s name was Bontein, the relationship no doubt as a consequence of the marriage of Nicol Graham and Isobel Buntin.
By 1753 he was appointed Receiver-General of Taxes, deputed by Thomas Graham (a relative?), a previous holder of the office. In August of that year he wrote to his mother essentially seeking news from home, in particular asking after his sister Henrietta.[7] He suffered all the usual sicknesses that newcomers to the Caribbean colonies did, overcoming them due to the care of ‘very friendly ladys, the power ofmedicine and the strength of his constitution.’ He wrote two letters to his mother in 1757, the first telling her of his health problems, the second stating that he was again fit and well.[8]
As he gained experience in his tax role he became confidant enough to write to Sir Alexander Grant, a London Parliamentarian who previously had business interests in Jamaica and had advised the Board of Trade on West Indian commerce,[9] criticising the methods employed in the collection of taxes and stating that it was a hindrance to trade. His first personal commercial venture was to invest ‘a small sum’ in a privateer whose sole purpose seems to have been capturing French ships for prize money.[10]
His relatively peaceful existence however was severely disrupted by a slave revolt in 1760. The ringleader was Tacky an Obeah man who claimed occult powers that would protect the rebelling slaves. (Obeah can be broadly defined as anything used, or intended to be used by anyone pretending to be possessed of any occult or supernatural power.)[11]
As can no doubt be imagined the revolt was put down brutally and without mercy, any captured rebelling slave being dealt with by ‘Burning, Hanging and Gibetting.’ The slaves set up a negress called Cabeah as queen of Kingston with robes and a crown. In due course she was caught and executed. Tacky was shot and killed during a chase by an army lieutenant, with two other ringleaders Kingston and Fortune being up hung up in chains alive, Fortune taking seven days to die, Kingston nine days. He reported these events to his father in a very matter of fact way, as if he was describing how to cure belly aches and fevers.[12]
At the end of 1760 a law was passed outlawing Obeah to prevent further slave revolts. Another view of this might be that Act in reality was to protect the concept of the slavery of Africans and to deny the slave population’s African origins.[13]
Robert remained in Jamaica until 1770 continuing with his public duty as Receiver- General until 1764. In the following year he was elected to the National Assembly for the district of St. David’s remaining in that position until 1768.[14] He was also the owner of two sugar plantations on the island: Roaring River and Lucky Hill, his biographical notes in the Glasgow University Story website stating he owned fifty-one slaves of the latter plantation valued at £3,604.[15] In 2018 Stephen Mullen and Simon Newman wrote a report for Glasgow University, its theme being how the University benefited financially from slavery. In it Robert Graham features significantly, including reference to his fathering illegitimate children writing to a friend that he had ‘rather too great a latitude to a dissipated train of whoring, the consequence of which [is] I now dayly see before me a motley variegated race of different complexions’.[16]
In 1757 the Bontine estate of Ardoch was entailed to him by kinsman Nicol Bontine, the entail requiring him to assume the name of Bontine.[17] In 1764 on the death of Bontine he duly became the Laird of Ardoch.[18] Some sources say that Bontine’s death occurred around 1767-68 although I can find no primary source to confirm that.
In 1764 in Jamaica Robert Graham married Anne Taylor, daughter of Patrick Taylor and sister of Simon Taylor,[19] a wealthy merchant who owned several plantations and at the time of his death in 1813 owned 2228 slaves.[20]
Robert and Anne had six children two of whom were born in Jamaica, the others in Scotland. Their first was Margaret Jane who was born in Kingston in 1765 [21] and died the same year. 1766 saw the birth of their second, also Margaret,[22] who in due course travelled back to Scotland with them in 1770.[23] She was a beneficiary of her uncle Simon Taylor’s will in 1813 inheriting £10,000.[24]
Their Scottish born children were John, born and died in 1773, William Cunninghame, born in 1775 and RBCG’s great grandfather, Ann Susannah, born 1776, died 1778 and Nicol, born in 1778,[25] who became a soldier in the Austrian army rising to the rank of Maréchal de Camp.[26]
Robert and Anne on returning to Britain had initially lived in London for a short period but by late 1772 the family were living in Ardoch House,[27] his father Nicol and his elder brother William and family living at Gartmore.
William had been in poor health for some time and in 1774 had gone to Lisbon with his wife hoping that would help him. Unfortunately no improvement occurred and he died there later that year. As his three children were all girls that meant Robert was the next male heir of his father. When his father died in 1775 Robert became Laird of Gartmore in addition to Ardoch. [28] He and his family moved to Gartmore House sometime during 1776.[29]
From that time on he worked to improve his estates. He also appears to have supported his brother’s widow financially, paying for their three girls, education. In 1779 he took a house in Edinburgh to facilitate the education of his own children. Funds were also provided for the education of his illegitimate ‘offspring’ in Jamaica. In 1784 he became a burgess and guild brother of Edinburgh.[30]
Since his return to Scotland he had not engaged in any commercial activity however in 1778 he gave a Captain Stephenson £250 to help fit out a ship to be used in the Jamaica trade.[31]
Despite periods of ill health (gout) life at this point seemed to be very satisfactory, his interest in politics and literary matters growing, however that was to change with the death of his wife Anne circa 1781. Her cause of death has not been established however RBCG refers to periods of illness from when she settled in Scotland. He also from time to time refers to her as Robert’s creole wife however no significant evidence is produced in his book to support that.[32] Robert subsequently married Elizabeth Buchanan Hamilton circa 1786 which was short lived, ending by separation in 1789.[33]
His interests in politics and literary matters had been developing for some time. He became MP for Stirlingshire from 1794 to 1796 with a keen interest in political reform. He promoted a bill of rights during his tenure which although unsuccessful could be said to foreshadow the Reform Bill of 1832. Prior to that he had been rector of Glasgow University from 1785 to 1787.[34]
He also wrote poetry, his main claim to fame lying with his lyrical poem ‘If doughtydeeds my lady please’. When it was written is not clear, probably sometime between 1780 and 1790, but it was included in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of 1875 and in 1866 Arthur Sullivan put it to music and dedicated it to a Mrs. Scott Russell, the mother of Rachel Scott Russell with whom he had or hoped for, a romantic attachment, much to her mother’s displeasure.[35]
Thereafter Graham was known as ‘Doughty Deeds’, RBCG’s biography of him bearing that title.
In 1796 he inherited the estate of Finlaystone on the death of the last Earl of Glencairn, John Cunninghame, and assumed the name Cunninghame, thereafter known as Robert Cunninghame Graham. He died in 1797 at Gartmore, son William inheriting.[36]
At the age of twelve William matriculated at Glasgow University in 1787,[37] under the tutelage of family friend Professor William Richardson, who holidayed often at a cottage on the Gartmore estate.[38] Apparently destined to run the family estates rather than be involved in business or commerce he then went on to study French and German in Neuchatel in Switzerland from around 1790 until late 1793.[39]
He married twice, first to Anne Dickson in 1798 [40] and they had five children between 1799 and 1809, the first born being Robert Cunninghame his eventual heir and grandfather of RBCG. The others were: Anna (1802), William John (1803), Douglas (1805) and Charlotte Maria Elizabeth (1809).[41]
His second marriage, in 1816, was to Janet Bogle nee Hunter.[42] They had four children as follows: Thomas Dunlop Douglas (1817), Alexander Spiers (1818), Susan Jane (1820) and Margaret Matilda (1821).
Like his father he became involved in politics being MP for Dunbartonshire from June 1796 to May 1797, winning his seat by eleven votes to three, his father Robert being the other candidate. He apparently had committed to support the then government but subsequently ‘now found he was unable in conscience to do so,’ hence the short duration of his political career.[43]
If he really was destined to run the family estates then what he achieved was the exact opposite. He was a gambler, not a very good one as he lost a fortune, and ultimately a swindler. He was forced to leave the country in 1828 to avoid his creditors, having squandered the family art collection through his gambling plus compromising the financial stability of his estates. By 1832 he was living in Florence with his wife Janet and their two daughters.
He was something of a mechanical genius developing a machine with which he could very accurately make copies of rare and famous engravings, thereby earning a living by selling these copies. The machine however was in due course used to produce false letters of credit of the bank Glyn, Halifax, Mills and Co.
There were fourteen individuals involved the main instigator of the fraud being the Marquis de Bourbel. They initially obtained a genuine letter of credit from the bank, from a strong box which Cunninghame Graham’s stepson Allan George Bogle had control of, thus seeing the approval signatories required.[44] They were then able to procure the same paper used by the bank, create a number of letters of credit and then forge the bank signatures using Cunninghame Graham’s machine to ‘trace’ them on to the false documents. By this means the conspirators were able to defraud banks in Italy, France, Belgium and elsewhere of £10,700 in six days. That sum today would, on RPI changes alone, be worth around £1million.[45]
However, as always seems to happen, greed overcame caution with one of the fraudsters being arrested on the Ostend ferry whilst trying to flee, the rest when learning of his fate scattered. An article in the Times newspaper goes into great detail with regards to the scheme with all fourteen conspirators being named, including William, his son Alexander and his stepson Allan Bogle. None of the main players in the fraud appear to have suffered any adverse consequences with the exception being the Graham family. Allan Bogle sued the writer of the article which he claimed defamed him. He was eventually awarded one farthing damages and ordered to pay his own legal expenses. Alexander lived under an assumed name in France and died there within the year at the age of twenty three. William was banished from Tuscany, ending up in London where he died in 1845.[46]
He was succeeded by his son Robert Cunninghame Cunninghame Graham. He had married Frances Laura Speirs in 1824 in the parish of Port of Monteith,[47] she being the daughter of Archibald Speirs, son of tobacco lord Alexander Speirs and his wife Mary Buchanan. They had nine children between 1826 and 1844, born in a variety of places. His eldest son and heir William Cunninghame Bontine was born in Leamington, Warwickshire in 1825 as was brother Douglas Alexander in 1844. Four were born at the family estate of Finlaystone between 1826 and 1834, a son and a daughter were born in Edinburgh in 1838 and 1839 respectively, and one daughter was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1842.[48] In the 1851 census he is recorded as a visitor to the Speirs family in the parish of St. Ninians in the county of Stirling.[49]
Presumably the Finlaystone births over eight years are an indication of his involvement with the management of his estates, what he was doing in the other localities, in particular Germany, has not been established. He was Vice-Lieutenant of the county of Dunbartonshire and Deputy Lieutenant of the counties of Renfrew and Stirling.
Robert died in 1863 at Castlenaw House, Mortlake, in Surrey, his son William being his sole executer. Also in 1863 his son William was forced to sell of the Finlaystone estate to pay off outstanding debt, presumably emanating from his grandfather’s gambling activities.[50] In the year of Robert’s death his personal estate was valued at £20,358,[51] however in 1879 a second confirmation took place which identified further inventory valued at £134,276. On this occasion there was a reference to William’s curator bonis, a legal representative who looks after an individual’s affairs because of some physical or mental incapacity. The reason for that will become clear in due course.[52]
William Cunninghame Bontine Graham was to spend most of his life in the military. Prior to that however he attended Trinity College, Cambridge in 1842. What he studied has not been established.[53] In 1845 he became an ensign in the 15th Regiment of Foot (Scots Greys) by purchase,[54] a year later becoming a Cornet in the same regiment, again by purchase.[55] At that time he was serving in Ireland remaining there for circa five years.[56]
He married Anne Elizabeth Elphinstone Fleeming, daughter of the late Admiral Sir Charles Elphinstone Fleeming, in June 1851.[57] They had three sons, the eldest being Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (RBCG), born at Cadogan Place, London in 1852.[58] The second son was Charles Elphinstone Fleeming Cunningham Graham, who enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1873 at the age of nineteen. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1877 and served until 1888.[59] He was awarded the M.V.O. and in 1908 became Groom in Waiting to the King.[60] In 1910 he became Groom of the Bedchamber.[61] The youngest son Malise Archibald Cunninghame Grahame became a minister of religion dying aged twenty five in 1885.[62]
William’s final promotion came in 1855 when he was made a major in the Prince of Wales Renfrew Regiment of Militia.[63] He remained at that rank until 1862 when he resigned his commission.[64] In the following year he became Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Stirling on the death of his father.[65]
From the late 1850s he began to suffer mental health issues. Whilst in Ireland with his regiment he had been attacked in Waterford and had suffered a severe head injury, letters written by his wife between 1857 and 1866 making reference to his problems and suggesting that they arose from this attack.[66] By 1876 it was of such concern that there was a legal notice in the Edinburgh Gazette requiring ‘in theQueen’s name’ the Lord President of the Court of Session to summon William to attend the Parliament House in Edinburgh to determine his sanity.[67] Clearly at some time after a curator bonis was appointed to look after his affairs hence the comment in the 1879 probate statement.
For the rest of his life William continued to have significant mental health problems. He died in 1883 at Eccles House in Penpont, Dumfriesshire, cause of death given as ‘Insanity – about 19 years.’ [68]
RBCG’s life by any measure became an incredible journey starting essentially as a cowboy, then general adventurer, a politician holding, for the time and considering his lineage, very socialist ideas, and a prolific writer.
His schooling began at Hillhouse in Leamington Spa from 1863 to 1865 followed by two years at Harrow. His education continued in London and Brussels before he went to the Argentine in 1869/70.[69]
Why the Argentine? The answer probably lies with his mother Anne Elizabeth who was half Spanish, her mother being Dona Catalina Paulina Alessandro de Jiminez who married her father in Cadiz in 1816. She was apparently aged 16, he was 42 years old. Another connection to South America may have been that RBCG’s mother had been born on board her father’s flagship HMS Barnham in 1828, whilst it was off-shore from Venezuela. At any rate he was brought up heavily influenced by his Spanish grandmother, speaking Spanish fluently from a very early age, and in general having, for the time, an unconventional upbringing.
One other, perhaps more pressing reason, was that his father’s illness had resulted in significant debts for the family, hence, as the eldest son, he would feel an obligation to deal with those debts. It was during this time in the Argentine where he rode with gauchos, dealt in cattle and horses, for which he had an abiding passion, that he became known as Don Roberto. Unfortunately whatever he did in South America had no effect on the debt situation at home and only served to create debt of his own.[70] One clear benefit however was his experiences there were the basis of a number stories he wrote in later life detailing the turbulent every-day life with the gauchos and the physical expansiveness of their country. He returned to Britain around 1877 however he was to go back to South America in later life on a number of occasions, one specific stay was in Uruguay where he purchased horses for the British army during World War I.
He lived in Paris for a while which is where he met his future wife Gabriela de la Balmondiere, apparently half French, half Chilean, marrying her there around 1878. However that was an entirely assumed name, more of which later.
His political career began in the General Election of 1885 when he stood as a Liberal candidate in North-West Lanarkshire. He lost to his Conservative opponent John Baird by over a thousand votes. In July of the following year, again as a Liberal, he stood against the same opponent and won by 332 votes. However he clearly identified as a radical socialist throughout his political career being described as the first socialist elected to parliament. He condemned a whole series of injustices of the society of the day. He was anti-imperialism, anti-racism, against child labour and was for abolishing the House of Lords.. He was also vigorously against the profiteering he saw in property and industry which was to the detriment of the people making the profit, that is, the workforce. Considering his ancestry and family background these were astonishing views to have held but by all accounts not out of character.[71]
His maiden speech in the House of Commons included the following words:
‘ the society in which one man works and enjoys the fruit – the society in which capital and luxury make Heaven for thirty thousand and a Hell for thirty million, that society…. with its want and destitution, its degradation, its prostitution and its glaring social inequalities – the society we call London….’
In 1887 the threat of disorder was such that demonstrations were forbidden. That did not stop a rally in Trafalgar Square against unemployment which ended in a riot. Among the leaders of the rally were RBCG and fellow socialist John Burns. Police and the army were in attendance which resulted in violence with over seventy people seriously injured and over four hundred arrests. RBCG and Burns were both severely beaten, arrested and eventually each sentenced to six weeks in Pentonville jail.[72]
Throughout his time in Parliament (until 1892) he continued to espouse his socialist views clearly and emphatically. On one occasion at the end of his speech he said:
‘To sum up the position briefly. Failure of civilisation to humanise; failure of commercialism to procure a subsistence; failure of religion to console; failure of our parliament to intervene; failure of individual effort to help; failure of our whole social system.’
This led to his expulsion from the House of Commons.[73]
Around 1888 he left the Liberal party and along with Keir Hardy formed the Scottish Labour party, RBCG becoming its first president, Hardy its first secretary general. In 1892 they both stood for election as party candidates, Hardy was successful in West Ham, London however RBCG lost in the Camlachie constituency in Glasgow, thus ending his parliamentary career.
That setback did not change his political views, which even led him to criticise Labour MPs for not presenting a radical challenge to the government. He had always advocated home rule for Scotland becoming president of the Scottish Home Rule Association and in 1928 president of the newly formed National Party of Scotland. Six years later the Scottish National Party was created when the National Party joined with the Scottish Party, RBCG being appointed president of the new organisation.[74]
Being freed of his formal involvement with politics allowed him and his wife to travel more often. He also wrote prolifically about his travels, his politics and his concerns about the disappearance of local cultures and ways of life he had experienced in his travels. He had a large number of friends and acquaintances from all walks of life, including George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, artist John Lavery who painted portraits of him and his wife, Whistler, Epstein and Augustus John. From his early visits to South America his writings refer to gauchos he befriended in particular Exaltacion Medina and Raimundo Barragan. He had also become friendly with the author Joseph Conrad from about 1897 with the writer in a letter to RBCG commenting on his wide experiences and the people he had met by saying:
‘What don’t you know? From the outside of a sail to the inside of a prison!’
In 1900 due to the level of debt, including death duties, he was forced to sell his Gartmore estate to Sir Charles Cayzer, a cause of great disappointment and sorrow to him.[75]
Figure 5. Gabriela photographed in 1890 by Frederick Hollyer. Victoria and Albert Museum.
More was to follow with the death of his wife in 1906 in France. Her true name was Carrie or Caroline Horsefall born in 1858 to a Yorkshire surgeon. Why she chose her assumed name is not clear however it seems she was rebelling against her strict upbringing and took herself to Paris which may have been the reason. Another, perhaps the more plausible, is that she assumed her chosen name on her marriage to RBCG to be more acceptable to his social circle. Presumably close family members knew of the deception but that is not clear.
She was an accomplished writer contributing to The Yellow Book and writing, amongst others a life of St Teresa of Avila, had artistic and musical skills, and wrote poetry.[76]
She died on the 8th September at Hendaye in France, her name registered as Gabriela Chideock (where did that come from?) Cunninghame Grahame.[77] As she had wished she was interred in the Inchmahome Priory on the Lake of Menteith.[78]
RBCG’s writings covered over thirty books which included 200 short stories and sketches. He also wrote Doughty Deeds a history of his great great grandfather Robert Cunninghame Graham. As may be expected during his life-time he had a very good reputation as a writer, his writings often being full of exotic individuals and adventure in faraway places. That has not fared very well since his death. A number of his stories also indicated the sadness he felt about the changes that occurred in some of the places he had visited such as the Pampas. His political reputation was also well established, particularly in the labour and Scottish Independence movements although with his privileged background it may have seemed strange but welcome to some and perhaps traitorous, to his class, to others. Again as for his writings his political activity is not well remembered today.
Figure 5. John Lavery (1856-1941). Don Pedro on Pampa.
He had one other passion and that was horses. He owned several throughout his life but his favourite was Pampa, an Argentinian stallion he saw pulling a tram-car in Glasgow. He bought it from the tram company and rode it at every opportunity until it died in 1911.
When he went to buy horses for the British Army in Uruguay during the Great War he had two opposing emotions. He was happy to be riding again in the Pampas, but was saddened to think of their likely fate in Flanders. He wrote a book about his experience in Uruguay entitled ‘Bopicua’. The book ends with the words, to the horses, ‘eat well there is no grass like that of La Pileta , to where you go across the sea. The grass in Europe all must smell of blood’.[79]
His made one last trip to Argentina in 1936, dying there in the Plaza Hotel in Buenos Aries on the 20 March. He lay in state in the Casa del Teatro his strong affinity with the country being recognised by the attendance of the Argentinian President at his funeral. His body was subsequently returned home and buried beside his wife in the Inchmahome Priory.[80] The last of the family estates, Ardoch, was inherited by his brother Charles’ son Angus.[81]
[1] Marriages. (OPR) Scotland. Edinburgh. 23 April 1732. GRAHAME, Nicol and CUNNINGHAME, Margaret. 685/1 470 74. www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
[16] University of Glasgow. Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow, report, and recommendations of the University of Glasgow History of Slavery Steering Committee.https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_607547_smxx.pdf
[17] Shaw, Samuel (1784). An Accurate Alphabetical Index of the Registered Entails in Scotland. Edinburgh. p. 14. https://books.google.co.uk/books AND Graham, op.cit. p. 76.
[41] Births (OPR) Scotland. Port of Menteith. 14 September 1799. GRAHAM, Robert + Anna + William John + Douglas + Charlotte Maria Elizabeth. 388/ 10 385. www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
[47] Marriages (OPR) Scotland. Port of Monteith 20 June 1824. BUNTIN, Robert Cunninghame and SPEIRS, Frances Laura. 388/ 20 120. www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
[57] Marriage Announcements. (1851) Morning Post London. 14 June. BONTINE, William Cunninghame and Fleeming, Anne Elizabeth Elphinstone. p. 8. https://www.nls.uk/
[62] Testamentary Records. England. 19 January 1886. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM, Malise Archibald. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995. https://www.ancestry.co.uk
[81] Testamentary Records. Scotland. 17 July 1936. Cunninghame Grahame, Robert Bontine. Scottish National Probate Index (Calendar of Confirmations and Inventories), 1876-1936. p. G63. https://www.ancestry.co.uk
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