Politics and Pills – an 1820 Medical Bill: Part 2

This is my second post about the 1820 medical bill I recently bought on eBay. You can read Part 1 of the post here.

 

 

The first thing that struck me when I saw the bill was that it covered a long period of time. The first entry was for treatment on 17 July 1817 and the last for treatment on 7 March 1820. I already knew that, during the Regency period, it was common for wealthy people to run up extensive debts with tradesmen, who often weren’t paid for years. I did not realise that this practice also extended to professional accounts.

In his covering letter, Dr Lowe said that he was “taking the liberty” of sending the account – suggesting that it was almost considered improper to ask for payment. My cousin in Canada has kindly sent me a copy of a letter, written to Dr Lowe in January 1819, in which a friend said, “I made particular enquiries about you & it gave me sincere pleasure to learn that you were so well employed & in such high estimation with the first class of society”. No doubt Dr Lowe was gratified to hear this but, if “the first class of society” were all so dilatory in settling their bills, it must have been difficult for him to support his growing family.

 

 

Dr John Lowe was born in 1781, the eldest son of Robert Lowe, laird of Chapelton, Tullymet, Perthshire, an estate in the parish of Logierait, comprising a number of farms which had once belonged to the Duke of Atholl. For three years, from 1794 to 1797, John was apprenticed to Dr Alexander Stewart, a surgeon in Dunkeld, and in 1799 he was a medical student at the University of Edinburgh, although he never took a degree.

John joined the East India Company as an Assistant Surgeon and had just arrived back from a voyage to the East Indies when, in 1801, his father unexpectedly died. John inherited a considerable amount of landed property from his father but it was encumbered with debt and he was eventually forced to sell it. John left the Company’s service after his second voyage and in 1803 was working as a surgeon and druggist in Perth. By 1807 he had moved to Coupar Angus.

John Lowe married Janet Gillespie in Perth in 1806 and they had one child, Elizabeth, born in Coupar Angus in 1807. Following Janet’s death, John married Marjory Clark in Coupar Angus in 1810 and they had 13 children between 1811 and 1832. I am descended from their second son, John.

 

 

Returning to the bill, the next thing I noticed was that the bill contained three entries for “Calomel pills”, supplied in March 1818 and in March and December 1819. I had never heard of this medicine before and vaguely supposed it was something to do with calamine. Imagine my horror on learning from Wikipedia that it was actually mercurous chloride, a poisonous compound of mercury. Before the age of modern medicine, calomel was widely used as a laxative and purgative and was even given to teething babies!

Charles Tennant noted in his book, “The Radical Laird”:

George Kinloch had his own ideas about health and hygiene and, for most people, his advice was a good dose of "Dr Calomel”, as he attributed the usual complaints to constipation. “I wish you would get a box of calomel pills, three grains in each, of which you might take one when you have occasion for it. It is the best of all physic, and if taken in time often prevents serious diseases.”

In the summer of 1815 George wrote to his wife from London:

“I have been in perfect health since I left you, till Sunday last, when I had an attack of bile, which has not yet left me. I mean tonight to apply to Dr Calomel, who will rid me of it.”

The day on which Dr Lowe supplied him with his last prescription for calomel – 8 December 1819 – was the day before George left Kinloch for Edinburgh to prepare for his trial. He obviously wanted to take some of his favourite medicine with him – probably fearing a prison term - and Dr Lowe must have been one of the last people in the district to see George Kinloch before he left his home, not to return for over three years.

 

 

The bill also includes charges for bleeding – another horrific medical practice of the time – and for extracting teeth. Extraction was the normal way of dealing with persistent toothache and with problems such as abscesses which would nowadays be treated with antibiotics. The tooth was removed using an instrument called a dental key and, of course, it was done without any form of anaesthetic. I imagine the toothache must have been pretty bad before anyone would invite Dr Lowe to visit them with his dental key!

The bill covers treatment not just for George Kinloch but also for Mr Gray (a relative of the Smyths) and for two of George’s daughters. Ann was 17 when she had her tooth extracted and Eliza 16 when she was vaccinated. The vaccination took place a month before George’s family left to join him in Paris. 24 years after Jenner’s first vaccination, smallpox epidemics were still occurring in crowded cities. Sadly, Eliza contracted another scourge of crowded cities – tuberculosis – and died shortly after her return from Paris in 1822.

Politics and Pills – an 1820 Medical Bill: Part 1

Two weeks ago I received an email from eBay which caused me considerable excitement. Many of my Scottish ancestors came from the town of Coupar Angus in Perthshire and I have a “saved search” in “My eBay” which sends me alerts whenever the town’s name appears in an eBay listing.

Over the years I have bought a number of interesting items in this way, including the postcard which I blogged about in Postcard from the Past, which I now use as the header for my business website and my Facebook page.

 

 

But the latest email from eBay led me to a treasure I had never expected to find – a bill, dated 22 November 1820, submitted by my 3x great grandfather, Dr John Lowe of Coupar Angus, for medical services to the family of George Kinloch of Kinloch, near Meigle, Perthshire. I’m happy to say that I won the eBay auction and my “new” family heirloom arrived this week.

 

 

The bill was addressed not to George Kinloch himself but to his brother in law, a writer (solicitor) called John Smyth of Balharry (who was probably also a cousin of Dr Lowe’s wife). And this is where the politics come in.

George Kinloch was born in 1775, the son of a poor half-pay Captain who unexpectedly inherited money from a brother in the Jamaican sugar trade. Both George’s parents died before he was eight years old and his sickly elder brother when George was 13. At the age of 21, George therefore took possession of the ancestral estate of Kinloch, situated on the banks of the River Isla in the beautiful Vale of Strathmore. That same year he married his first cousin once removed, Helen Smyth, the daughter of John Smyth, whose estate of Balharry lay directly across the river from Kinloch.

George and Helen lived quietly on their estate, raising their two sons and six daughters, born between 1797 and 1805. George sat as a Justice of the Peace, together with his close neighbour Charles Hay of Balendoch, my own 4x great uncle. In 1797, at the height of the fear of Napoleonic invasion, George was appointed to command the Coupar Angus volunteer militia, with Charles Hay and my 4x great grandfather, David Clark, as his subalterns.

 

 

Despite these conventional roles as a member of the landed gentry, George Kinloch held liberal political views, was friends with the free thinking editor of the Dundee Advertiser and a correspondent of William Cobbett. In 1808 George resigned his commission with the Coupar Angus volunteers because he was opposed to the maintenance of a standing army. In 1812 he wrote an anonymous letter to the Aberdeen Chronicle attacking the Peninsular War because, “instead of fighting in the cause of the Spanish people, we have been fighting for a worthless King, an insolent nobility and a useless clergy”. He also supported the American cause in the War of 1812.

Following the defeat of Napoleon, George turned his energies to the reform of the franchise and the abolition of the income tax imposed during the Wars, which was depressing trade and employment. He attended radical dinners in Dundee and became known as a political orator. He drew attention to the enormous size of the National Debt, inveighed against excessive taxation and said, “I recommend retrenchment, cut off sinecures and diminish the salaries of Government Officers” – a strikingly up-to-date political platform to modern ears!

Radical agitation came to a head with the Peterloo Massacre in August 1819, when 15 people were killed and hundreds injured after soldiers charged a large but peaceful crowd which had gathered in Manchester to demand reform of the franchise. Protest meetings were organised all over the country and George Kinloch was invited to address the meeting in Dundee in November of that year. In his speech he described the government as “a contemptible Ministry” and asserted that “the House of Commons does not represent the people of these Kingdoms”. He called for annual parliaments and universal (male) suffrage. He said that, “We want no Revolution; on the contrary we want Reform to prevent a revolution” but, referring to the Peterloo Massacre, he also said that, “the time is near when we must either bow our necks to a military despotism, or be prepared to rise like men in defence of our liberties”. He also accused the Home Secretary of treason.

The speech was reported in full in the Dundee Advertiser and drawn to the attention of the authorities in London who, terrified of revolution, were engaged in a full scale crackdown on those who supported reform. Two weeks after the speech, George Kinloch was arrested on a charge of sedition. Bailed to stand trial in Edinburgh, he learned that the authorities intended to make an example of him by passing a sentence of transportation for life to Australia. He bought a large wig and, assuming the name of Smith, fled via Newcastle, London and Dover to Paris, where he arrived on Christmas Eve.

Before leaving Edinburgh, George had signed a legal document putting all his property into a trust, with his brother in law, John Smyth of Balharry, as one of the trustees. This was necessary because, when George failed to appear at his trial, he was declared an outlaw and all his assets became forfeit to the state. Using the trust, John Smyth was able to keep the Kinloch estate in the hands of the family and provide an income for George and his dependents.

George Kinloch remained in exile in France from 1820 to 1822. His wife and daughters joined him at the end of April 1820, after which John Smyth was asked to sell all their furniture and advertise for a tenant for the house. It must have been abundantly clear to Dr Lowe that his services to the Kinloch family were at an end and unlikely to resume in the near future. On 22 November 1820 he submitted his bill, which John Smyth settled the next day:

 

 

Coupar Angus Novr 22 1820

Sir,

I take the liberty of inclosing you a small acct. of Mr Kinloch’s which you may settle at any time most convenient. I am

Sir

Your most obed. Servt

John Lowe

 

George’s wife and daughters returned to Scotland in May 1822. Helen hoped to bring pressure on the government to pardon George and one of their daughters – Eliza – was seriously ill with tuberculosis. Having received hints that a pardon might be imminent, George jumped the gun and himself returned secretly to England at the end of October 1822. The first news he received was of Eliza’s death in Scotland a few days earlier. After lying low in London until the New Year, with still no pardon in sight, George took an even bigger risk and returned to Scotland in February 1823. He remained hidden at Kinloch until his pardon finally arrived on 25 May.

George set about restoring his estate and took no active part in politics for some years. With the coming of Reform in 1832, views which had once been dangerously radical became mainstream and George Kinloch was feted as a hero of the movement. He stood for the new Dundee constituency in the first election after the passage of the Act and was duly returned as the city’s first MP.

In his own words:

“On the 24th December 1819 I was proclaimed at the Cross of Edinburgh a rebel and an outlaw … On the same day of December 1832 I was, by the same Sheriff L’Amy, proclaimed the chosen representative of the people of Dundee.” 

Sadly, George Kinloch did not represent Dundee for long. Having caught a chill in the old, draughty House of Commons, he developed complications and died in his lodgings in Parliament Street, London, on 28 March 1833. In 1872 a statue of George Kinloch was erected by public subscription in Dundee, “to commemorate a signal triumph of political justice”.

 

 

If you would like to learn more about George Kinloch, I thoroughly recommend Charles Tennant’s book, “The Radical Laird”, published by The Roundwood Press, Kineton, 1970.

You can read the second part of this blog post here.

UK Genealogy News & Views: 12 September 2011

Essex Ancestors Update

The planned launch of Essex Ancestors on 30 August has been put back to 3 October. This means that you have an extra month to view the digital images currently online for free, as explained in my previous post. Don't miss this opportunity whilst it is available.

Genhound - a little known resource

I read a lot of genealogy blogs and follow many genealogists on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. Some sites get mentioned repeatedly but I rarely see any reference to Genhound. That is a pity as it is full of useful content which is growing fast. Records include parish registers, monumental inscriptions, newspapers, obituaries, wills, military records, court records, land records, biographies and much more besides. You can see a complete list of databases here. At the moment there is a little bit of everything, so it's a real lucky dip. As someone who's stuck in late 17th century Scotland, I am particularly keen on the Scottish Deeds Index, which now covers the period 1675-1696. But I've also found relatives in poll books, directories and school records. Genhound is extremely reasonably priced. You can buy 60 Credits for £3 and they have no expiry date. The average record costs just 10 credits (50p) to view. Do give their search engine a try today and let me know how you get on.

New Crew List Records on Find My Past

Find My Past have recently added records from 1881 and 1891 to their database of Crew Lists, 1861-1913. This database is potentially very valuable. It contains indexes to around 33,500 lists of crew members on board British merchant vessels and around 413,500 records of individual crewmen. Information available in the index includes name, age, place of birth, rank, previous ship, current ship, dates of voyage, details of the vessel, details of the owner, master and other crew members and the reference number for the original crew list at the National Archives.

Unfortunately, the usefulness of the index is seriously undermined by the limitations of the search function and the poor quality of the indexing. It is not possible to search by the birth town, only by the birth county (usually not in the original but added by the indexers). You must select from a list of counties which covers England, Wales, two counties in Ireland - Cork and Dublin, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Overseas. The database contains a large number of crew members who were born in one of the other Irish counties, or in Scotland, but it is impossible to search for them by birth county.

Birth towns have also been incorrectly allocated to counties. Whilst ploughing through 28 pages of Andersons to find my Scottish relatives, I came across Falmouth indexed in Cork instead of Cornwall, Ferryden in Overseas instead of Angus and Arundel in Norway! There are five whole pages out of the 28 where the places have not been allocated a county at all. Many of these birth places are blank, abbreviated or obscure, but others are instantly recognisable, such as Morpeth, Tipton, Halifax, Glamis, Kirkcaldy and Pontypridd.

Unlike most of the other Find My Past databases, there is no facility to submit corrections to these indexes.

UK Genealogy News & Views: 23 August 2011

Only a week left to get Essex records for free

Essex Record Office currently have digital images of a number of parish registers available free via the Essex Ancestors section of their SEAX search engine. Coverage varies by date and parish - excellent for Dedham and very poor for Prittlewell, for example. From 30 August they will be offering unlimited access to Essex parish registers and wills on a newly launched Essex Ancestors website but it will be a subscription service. The charges will range from £5 for one day's access to £75 for a year. So if you have Essex ancestors, take a look to see if digital images for their parish are currently free online, before this week's window of opportunity closes.

London Confirmation Records, 1850-1921, on Ancestry

Ancestry usually add new databases quietly, a few days before they announce them publicly. I regularly check the New Collections page to see what they've sneaked in and last week I spotted the addition of London Confirmation Records, 1850-1921. I had high hopes for this collection but they were soon dashed. The new database contains  records from just 25 parishes, some covering very short time periods, such as St John, Kensal Green, 1892-99 and St Jude, South Kensington, 1904-1912. There are less than 23,000 records in total. So don't get your hopes up, fellow London researchers! Oh, and St Martin, Kensal Rise, has been indexed as St John, Kensal Green!

Poor indexing of the 1851 census on Find My Past

British genealogists often complain that Ancestry make a hash of transcribing our records, as in the example above. Yesterday I found equally poor indexing of the 1851 census records on Find My Past. I was looking at the delightfully named Dorset village of Whitchurch Canonicorum and found that over 160 people born in the village had their birthplace mistranscribed as "Whitchurch and Coventry". Other gems of mistranscription included "Whitchurch Lanonicorner" and "Whitchurch Cononicorem". Given that the parish name was clearly written, in full, at the top of the first page, you'd think it would have been fairly easy to get it right! I've suggested to Find My Past that they should review their indexing of this whole section of the census.

Scottish records in English archives

People researching Scottish ancestry naturally gravitate to Scottish repositories and to websites such as Scotland's People. But don't forget that English archives also contain important Scottish records. I have struck lucky in a number of places. In the National Archives at Kew, the TS 11/1082 series of papers relating to the 1745 Jacobite rebellion contains three letters sent to one of my Scottish ancestors. I found deeds for properties in Angus, owned by my 17th century ancestors, in the Sheffield Archives, in the papers of a local aristocratic family of Scots descent. And I have been able to trace the careers of a number of Scottish relatives in the India Office Records at the British Library. The Access to Archives search engine is a good place to start looking for Scottish names and places in English archives and you should also search the National Archives online catalogue.

Identifying & Dating Old Photos: Mystery Photo 1

This evening I participated in an excellent webinar by Maureen Taylor, Photo Detective, on the subject of Identifying and Dating Family Photographs. It has really motivated me to get back to work on an album containing photographs of my Lowe ancestors in Coupar Angus, Scotland, which a cousin shared with me last year. See Every Picture Tells a Story for the background. Of the 96 photographs in the album, only 26 have so far been identified.

 

 

I have decided to start with this full length portrait of an unknown man because it has details of the photographer on the reverse:

.

 

Here is what I know so far, set out under headings suggested by Maureen's webinar:

Provenance of Photograph

From an album belonging to Dr John Lowe (1849-1925), and his wife, Annie Willie Cowpar. The album was subsequently taken to Canada by their son, Major Robert Lowe (1882-1955). It is now in the possession of one of his daughters, my third cousin, once removed, from whom I obtained a digital copy.

Type of Photograph

Paper print, common in England from 1858 to 1914.

Photographer

Thanks to Photo London, I know that Alexander Lamont Henderson, born in Edinburgh in 1838, had a studio at 49 King William Street, London Bridge, from 1860 until November 1887. His son gave his photographic library to the Guildhall Library in November 1907. Alas, it was destroyed during the Blitz in 1942. Otherwise I could simply have looked up the print number in the library.

Internal Evidence

The painted window, looking out on a country scene, was popular in the late 1860s.

Costume

A number of features suggest the first half of the 1860s:

• Loose fitting suit
• Peg top trousers, wide at the top and tapering to a close fit at the ankle
• Dark jacket worn with light trousers
• Shoes neither square-toed nor pointed

Genealogical Research

Most of the photographs in the album were taken in Scotland. This one suggests someone who was living in London. Between 1863 and 1872, George Lowe (1819-1915), worked in London as an engineer, first at Woolwich Arsenal and later at St Pancras. He was aged 44 to 53 during this period, which fits with the age of the man in the photograph. I have a photograph of George Lowe taken in 1902, when he was 83. Comparing the two photographs, there would seem to be a similarity in the eyes, nose, mouth and ears:

 

 

Add up all the Clues

The evidence so far suggests that this may be a photograph of George Lowe, taken when he was working in London during the 1860s.

Next Steps

George Lowe and his family emigrated first to Canada, in 1872, and then to the USA in 1873. I am in touch with one of his descendants in the USA, my fourth cousin. I shall email him to see if he, or his relatives, have any photographs of George Lowe.

An ancestor who fought at Waterloo

Since my daughter married, two years ago, I have been tracing my son in law's ancestry. I recently discovered that his 4x great grandfather, George Stables, fought at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.

George Stables was born at Cairnie in Aberdeenshire in December 1782, the son of George Stables, a crofter, and Jean (or Jane) Minty. George junior originally worked as a weaver but on 9 February 1807, at the age of 24, he enlisted as a Gunner in the Royal Artillery.

Unfortunately, the only part of his military service record which survives is his discharge record, so it is impossible to piece together the details of his military service prior to Waterloo. It seems highly likely, however, that he saw service during the Peninsular War (1808 to 1814).

 

 

By 1815, George Stables was a Gunner in Captain Courtenay Ilbert's Company, 5th Battalion, Royal Artillery, which formed part of Wellington's Reserve and did not see action at Waterloo. Shortly before the battle, however, a detachment of 3 Officers, 3 Bombardiers and 33 Gunners were sent from Captain Ilbert's Company to join the 2nd Company, 3rd Battalion, Royal Artillery, under the command of Brevet Major Thomas Rogers. George Stables was one of the Gunners and Lieutenant George Sylvester Maule was one of the Officers.

George Maule kept a journal which is now in the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives. I was able to purchase a transcript and commentary by Mike Robinson at 1815 Limited. I also found online a detailed presentation on the history of Rogers' Company of the Royal Artillery. From these two sources, it is possible to know what George Maule and the men under his command experienced in the three days from 15 to 18 June 1815.

On the evening of Thursday, 15 June, they were quartered at the Chateau at Foret, two and a half miles south of Brussels. They were roused from their beds at 11 pm by a courier bringing orders to march. Between 1 and 2 am on the morning of Friday 16 June they left Foret and marched to Brussels, where they waited some time for the 5th Division, of which they were part, to form up. They then departed by the Namur Gate, marching to the tune of "The British Grenadiers".

About 8 o'clock on the morning of 16 June they arrived at Waterloo and rested on either side of the road outside the village, in the Forest of Soignes. During the course of the morning they passed several places from which the inhabitants had fled, apart from some terrified old women.

 

 

At 1pm they arrived at the strategic crossroads of Quatre Bras, where Dutch and Belgian troops were already engaged in fighting the French. Rogers' Company, who were equipped with six 9-pounder guns, formed a line and were soon in action. They took part in a furious artillery duel with the French, whose guns were well hidden in a wood 600 yards in front of them, and fought off a charge of Cuirassiers and a column of enemy infantry. The Company suffered heavy losses in men and horses but kept up their steady firing. The fighting carried on until dark (which at that time of year would have been late evening) when the two armies bivouacked where they had fought.

At daybreak on Saturday 17 June they buried the dead officers and the ordinary soldiers, such as George Stables, took the opportunity to fit themselves out with new kit at the expense of their dead comrades. At 11 am they marched back they way they had come towards Waterloo, with French troops harrying them from behind. They were also caught in a dreadful storm. By 6.30 pm the whole British army had taken up its positions at the hamlet of Mont St. Jean, with the French about three quarters of a mile away, with whom they exchanged artillery fire until nightfall. Heavy rain extinguished their fires as they bivouacked for the night.

 

 

They were up and under arms before daybreak on Sunday 18 June, although the battle did not start until later in the morning. Rogers' Company were positioned in front of the infantry and were under direct orders from Wellington only to open fire on an enemy advance. The Commander of the 5th Division, Sir Thomas Picton, stationed himself next to Rogers' artillery to direct their fire on the mass of French infantry.

A present day member of Rogers' Company has described the scene:

Calmly the gunners waited with lighted portfires until the head of the French column appeared over the crest in front of the guns. At the word “fire” a tremendous salvo of grape shattered the enemy and before they could recover the British infantry charged them. A melee ensued which the gunners joined in, armed only with rammers, until the French resolve weakened and they gave way in confusion. So critical was the situation at this time that one of Rogers's guns was spiked by its Number 1 to prevent it being used by the enemy who seemed bound to capture it.

Sir Thomas Picton was killed close by the Company at this time. They then changed position twice before, down to only three guns, they took part in the final decisive action of the battle, the repulse of Napoleon's famed Imperial Guard, cutting down whole ranks with their murderous artillery fire.

 

 

Rogers' Company won a battle honour for their actions at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. Like all those who had fought in either action, George Stables received the Waterloo Medal and had 2 years added to his reckonable service for pension purposes. By 1816 he was back in Britain and stationed at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich. On 26 October 1816 George married a Suffolk girl, Rebecca Dawson, at St Nicholas, Plumstead.

George was discharged from the 5th Battalion of the Royal Artillery on 31 January 1819. The discharge papers contain a physical description. He was 5 foot 7.5 inches, with dark brown hair, blue eyes and a dark complexion. The official reason for his discharge was "ague and debility". Ague was the old term for malaria, a disease which devastated the British forces during the Peninsular War. This reinforces the likelihood that George Stables had seen service there.

George wasted no time in returning to Scotland after his discharge, settling at Cults, near Kennethmont in Aberdeenshire, about 12 miles from his birthplace. His first known child, also George, was baptised at Kennethmont on 11 March 1819, so poor Rebecca must have travelled nearly 600 miles whilst heavily pregnant. Despite his "debility", George went on to live for another 40 years, drawing a pension of 9d a day from the army (about £30 in today's money). He also fathered eight more children with Rebecca. He died at Cults, of dropsy, on 20 December 1859, aged 77, and was buried in the kirkyard at Kennethmont.

Surname Saturday: Haliburton

Haliburton is a Scottish surname which comes from two farms near Greenlaw in Berwickshire - Meikle and Little Haliburton. It is thought that the original name for the area was Burton, from the Norse bur, a storehouse, and dun (pronounced toon), a fort. Then a chapel was built and the area became Holy or Haly Burton.

The earliest recorded bearer of the surname was David de Halyburton who, in 1176, gave the chapel at Halyburton to the Abbey of Kelso. The Haliburtons originally held estates at Merton and Muirhouselaw near Dryburgh. In the 14th century they acquired by marriage the lordship of Dirleton, in East Lothian and, in the 15th century, the lordship of Pitcur in  Angus.

From Pitcur there developed a strong Angus branch of the family in and around the parish of Kettins, where Hallyburton House and Forest remain to this day. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Angus branch of the Haliburtons were also active as merchants and writers (solicitors) in Dundee and in Edinburgh.

Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott was descended from the Haliburtons of Dryburgh through his mother. In 1820 he published a book called Memorials of the Haliburtons which is now available to read online at the Internet Archive.

Battle of Killiecrankie, 1689

One of the Haliburton lairds of Pitcur was killed at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, fighting on the Jacobite side under John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. He is mentioned in the folk song The Braes of Killiecrankie: "The bauld [bold] Pitcur fell in a furr [ditch]:

 

 

My Haliburton ancestry

My own Haliburton ancestors come from the same period of Scottish history. I've traced them back to the early 17th century in the parishes of Kettins and Newtyle. My family were tenants of land belonging to the Haliburtons of Pitcur, so are likely to be related in some way, but at present I do not know how.

 

 

Name	Father	Mother	Spouse	Marriage	Place	Death
John Haliburton						aft 26 Aug 1622
George Haliburton	John Haliburton		Susanna Halden	bef 30 Sep 1664
James Haliburton	George Haliburton	Susanna Halden	Agnes Smith	9 Jul 1677		bet 1698 & 1700
Jean Haliburton	James Haliburton	Agnes Smith	Charles Hay	8 Jul 1720	Coupar Angus, Perthshire	aft 22 May 1753

Ancestors who died of tuberculosis

Today is World Tuberculosis Day. It commemorates 24 March 1882, the day on which Dr Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis - the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

 

 

Tuberculosis has been with us since antiquity. Tubercular decay has been found in the spines of Egyptian mummies and the famous Greek physician, Hippocrates, described it as the most prevalent disease of his day. In the 19th century, as people crowded into cities following the Industrial Revolution, living in overcrowded and insanitary conditions, it became the particular scourge of the urban poor.

 

 

Effective treatment only became possible after 1946, with the development of the antibiotic streptomycin. However, hopes that tuberculosis could be eradicated have been dashed, following the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of the disease. In fact, tuberculosis is once again on the rise in all parts of the world, including the developed nations. According to Wikipedia, one third of the world's population is thought to be infected with the disease and new infections occur at a rate of about one per second.

 

 

Genealogists do not have to read many death certificates before they come across an ancestor who died of tuberculosis. The disease may be described in a number of ways, the most common being consumption, phthisis and TB. To mark the day, I thought I would list the known victims from my own family tree, whose deaths spanned a period of nearly 100 years:

21 January 1856: Elizabeth McWilliams, nee McCarry, aged 39, Dundee.

5 October 1858: Charlotte Davis nee Aves, aged 40, Cornwall.

2 August 1867: Frederick Thomas Rayman, aged 28, London.

1 April 1880: William Bluett, aged 26, London.

20 March 1883: Ann Hay Clark, aged 17, France.

20 April 1888: Cecilia Rayman, nee Baldwin, aged 54, London.

22 January 1895: Ada Charlotte Gurney, aged 23, London.

16 March 1898: Christian Robb, aged 66, Aberdeenshire.

15 July 1899: Robert Lowe, aged 35, USA.

12 May 1902: Mary Bunch, aged 71, Dundee.

8 September 1912: Matilda Anderson, nee Gall, aged 63, Dundee.

29 October 1940: Ida Blanche Bentley, nee Wreford, aged 29, London.

15 July 1948: Reginald Vivian Bentley, aged 39, London.

 

 

The last name in the list is the most tragic of all, my father's beloved brother, Reg. The preceding name is that of his wife Ida, whom he married in 1936. He knew that she was suffering from TB, and that he risked catching it from her, but his love for her was such that he married her anyway.

Reg died in 1948, two years after the first successful trials with streptomycin, but before treatment with the drug had become widespread. The wonderful new medical breakthrough with antibiotics came just too late to save him from this cruel disease.

He was long mourned and sadly missed by his whole family. I was born after his death but my father often spoke of his sunny personality, generosity and wonderful sense of humour.

RIP Uncle Reg.

A Genealogist's View of the 2011 Census

This afternoon I filled in the 2011 Census forms online for our household and that of my 91 year old mother. The actual census date is 27 March 2011 but you can fill in the information online now and save it, then go back and make any necessary changes on the night of 27 March, before finally pressing Submit.

These are my thoughts on the process, as a citizen and a genealogist:

• It is much easier to fill in the online form than the paper one, with its daunting 32 pages.
• The form only asks for one first name but I filled in all our first names, for the sake of future genealogists. The online form only allows a limited number of characters, so I only had room to enter the last initial for my husband, who has three Christian names.
• The form asks for place of birth at country level only. If you use the paper form there is nothing to stop you writing the actual place of birth next to this box. The information will then be recorded for future researchers. (According to Annie Barnes at Hibbitt Family History, digital copies of the forms will be preserved.) This is quite important if your name is a common one.
 

 
 
• The question which made me really stop and think was the one about national identity, where you are allowed to tick multiple boxes if you wish:
• I am a citizen of the United Kingdom and, as a diplomat and civil servant, have served the whole country in my work in Whitehall, at international conferences, and in British Embassies overseas. I see myself as British and would hate to see the break up of the United Kingdom into its component nations.
• I feel this even more strongly because my ancestry is a mixture of all the different nationalities of these Isles - English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh. When I go to Scotland, in particular, I feel my ties to that country very strongly, having traced my ancestry there back to the 16th century. I never want to have to show a passport at the border.
• On the other hand, I was born and raised in England, have lived nowhere else in the UK, and I supported England against Scotland in the rugby this afternoon (we won 22-16). I feel that England should enjoy the same autonomy and self-government as the other constituent nations and strongly object to their MPs voting on purely English affairs in Parliament. I also hated the militant "anyone but England" attitude of some Scots during the World Cup. As a result, I feel more English identity and nationalism now than at any previous time of my life.
• I decided that my recent acquisition of Canadian citizenship, backdated to birth, as one of the generation of Lost Canadians, was a complication too far for this particular exercise.
• In the end, I ticked both British and English.

Postcard from the Past

From time to time I buy old postcards of ancestral places on eBay. They are usually very cheap and provide windows into a vanished world.

 

 

My latest purchase is a postcard of Coupar Angus, Perthshire, dating from 1917. My family has had a long association with the town, from the 17th century to the 1950s. Some of the names I am researching there are Clark, Fife, Gibb, Haliburton, Hay, Hood, Lowe, Malcolm and Smyth.

When my postcard arrived I turned it over, expecting to see the usual few lines, scrawled by a holidaymaker. Imagine my surprise at finding the following information instead:

 

 

I'm a genealogist so, naturally, I started to research R Bingham Adams. So far I've been able to piece together the following facts:

Richard Bingham Adams was born in Portsmouth in 1873 and married Violet Plater there in 1897. They had two children - Violet Plater Adams, born in 1898, and Dorothy Plater Adams, born in 1901. Richard appears in the 1891 census as a solicitor's clerk in Portsmouth. In the 1901 and 1911 censuses he was working for an insurance company, first in Horsham, then back in Portsmouth. During the First World War he served in five different units, including the Labour Corps. After the war he continued to serve in the Territorial Army, which awarded him the Territorial Efficiency Medal in 1928. His Medal Card gives the details of his previous service:

 

 

Richard died in Portsmouth in 1956, aged 82. His elder daughter, Violet, married Alfred Tree in Portsmouth in 1922. They had a son, Kenneth, who was born and died in 1924, and a daughter, Olive Violet, born in 1925. According to a well-sourced family tree on Ancestry, she is still alive.

I also did some research on Richard Bingham Adams' ancestry. His father, James Lewis Adams, was a pilot who worked for the Colonial Service in Port Louis, Mauritius, and all of Richard's siblings were born there. James himself was born in the then new town of Anglesey in the parish of Alverstoke, now part of Gosport, in 1833. His father was the wonderfully named Balthazar Bowman Adams, who was a ship's carpenter in the Royal Navy.

Balthazar's father, also Balthazar, was the son of Henry Adams, the Master Shipbuilder at Bucklers Hard, who built many famous ships of the Royal Navy. These included Nelson's favourite, HMS Agamemnon, and two other ships which saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Balthazar Adams senior and his brother, Edward, inherited the thriving business when their father died that same year, but they over-extended themselves and by 1811 they were bankrupt.

Every Picture Tells A Story

Last November a cousin in Canada emailed me with exciting news – her sister had found an old photo album containing photographs of our Lowe ancestors in Coupar Angus, Scotland, dating from the 19th century.

My cousin sent me a copy of a picture from that album showing five young girls – the daughters of my 2x great grandfather John Lowe, a Coupar Angus solicitor, and his wife Cecilia, nee Malcolm. The girls were Georgina (my great grandmother) b. 1853, Marjory b. 1855, Cecilia Anne (Annie) b. 1857, Catherine (Kate) b. 1860 and Maria b. 1863.

I was thrilled to have this photograph. Georgina died in May 1890, one week after giving birth to my grandfather, Lawrence, and his twin sister, Georgina. Only one photograph of her had passed down to us, dating from the time of her marriage in 1876. I had never seen any photographs of her sisters.

Judging by the girls’ apparent ages in the photograph, I guessed it was probably taken in the second half of the 1860s. Looking more closely, I realised that all the girls were dressed entirely in black and had black ribbons in their hair. They were also wearing crosses on black ribbons or necklaces round their necks. Clearly they were in mourning.

That sent me scurrying back to the family tree to try and identify a family death in the late 1860s. The one that seemed most likely was the death of the girls’ older brother, John James Lowe, in September 1867. I had his death date from a gravestone in the Kirkyard of the Abbey Church, Coupar Angus, so had never bothered to purchase his death certificate. Now I decided it was time to do so.

I quickly found the death certificate for John James Lowe on the Scotland’s People website. Reading it pulled me up with a start.

John James died at 4.10 pm on the afternoon of 9 September 1867 at the General Railway Station in Perth. His death was certified by Dr George W Absolom who had entered the cause of death as “Probably Heart Disease?”. It looked like John James had dropped dead from a heart attack or heart failure in the railway station.

My next stop was the family's local newspaper, the Dundee Courier. Fortunately for family historians, the British Library has put a large number of 19th century newspapers online, including several from Scotland. And I am one of the lucky people who has free access to this database from home, courtesy of my library’s subscription.

I found a death notice, published on 11 September 1867, which confirmed that John James had died suddenly. Sadly, there was no other report - probably because, as the death certificate shows, there was no inquest. There certainly would be today, if an apparently healthy 16 year old dropped down dead in a railway station. The death also took place at a time when a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was taking place in Dundee. The columns of the Dundee Courier were so full of the doings of the eminent visiting scientists that there was little space for anything else.

However, the Dundee Courier did provide me with an unexpected bonus in the shape of a railway timetable for September 1867. This shows that the Highland Railway train from Dundee arrived at Perth Station at 4.10 pm - the time of death given on the death certificate. It would seem that poor John James died as he got out of the train.

The informant on the death certificate was John James' 17 year old cousin, Henry James Lowe, who registered the death at Perth on 11 September. Since he gave his place of residence as Coupar Angus, I can think of no reason for him to be in Perth, registering the death, other than that he was John James' travelling companion on the ill-fated train journey. He must have been in a state of shock, as he could not remember his aunt's first name.

The moral of this tale is, of course, that one should always purchase the death certificate - particularly for deaths in Scotland, where the certificates are so informative. Had I not done so, John James would have remained just a name on a gravestone.

A footnote for those familiar with Scottish research - Henry James Lowe went on to work as a clerk in the Register House in Edinburgh, up until his own untimely death in 1886. Now that's another certificate I must buy.

10 things my ancestors did to annoy me

The Society of Genealogists sells a booklet called "My Ancestor was a Bastard". I have to admit that is often the way I feel about my own kin.

Here are 10 things they did to annoy me:

1. They settled where three counties meet. That way they could get married in one county, baptise their children in a second and be buried in a third, all without travelling more than a few miles from home. But I have to travel to three different record offices, miles apart, to have any hope of tracing their complicated genealogy.
2. Namesake cousins married namesake girls. I am either descended from John Coles and Mary Holloway, who married at Damerham, Wiltshire on 23 October 1737, or from John Coles and Mary Holloway, who married at Damerham, Wiltshire on 16 December 1738. I bet they are all having a good laugh about that one at the great family reunion in the sky.
3. They were not wise children and did not know their own fathers. Mary Ann Baldwin gave her maiden name as Blakey but her father's name as William Clayton. It took years to find the marriage of Susannah Blakey and William Clayton which proved he was her step-father. William Prebble Barnes invented a bank manager called George Barnes as his father. It took decades to find his illegitimate birth to Elizabeth Prebble.
4. They moved around. Joseph Bentley served as a Methodist minister in 17 different places. Frederick Davis lived in nine different counties and three different countries.
5. They baptised their children in batches, in a place remote from where they were born. Susannah Baldwin was born in Portsmouth and baptised four years later in Gravesend. Thomas Heale baptised his first four children as babies but made the last two wait over twenty years until he had died.
6. They left the country at census time. Thomas Bluett went all the way to New Zealand to avoid an entry in the 1841 census which would have told me whether or not he was born in Ireland.
7. They lied about their ages. Frederick Rayman claimed to be 23 when, aged just 15, he married his pregnant 21 year old bride. Catherine McCarthy stayed 40 for two successive censuses. Alice Wiles was 55 in one census and 72 in the next.
8. They kept just off the page of any printed pedigree. The Red Book of Perthshire contains detailed family trees for the Haldanes, Haliburtons, Reids and Stewarts which stop just short of connecting with my own proven research. Douglas' Baronage of Scotland mentions two of the children of John Smith of Glasswall, but not the daughter through whom I am descended.
9. They disappeared. John Winn sailed to North America, where he vanished. Clement Davis went out prospecting in the Nevis mountains of New Zealand and never came back.
10. They spent all the money. When William Winn died in 1891 he left £82,446 12s 9d, the equivalent of £5.5 million today. His son, William, inherited one quarter. By the time he died in 1906 it was all gone. In the space of 15 years he had squandered the equivalent of over one million pounds on yachts and gold plated taps.

Amanuensis Monday - The insolent misbehaviour of one of my own tenants

This is an extract from a letter written by Patrick Lyon, 3rd Earl of Kinghorne (1643-1695) to James Ogilvy, 2nd Earl of Airlie (c1615-1703), in March 1670. It concerns my 7x great grandfather, Alexander Hood (d. 1729), the tenant of an estate called Readie in the parish of Glamis, Angus.

The Earl of Kinghorne's family had been virtually bankrupted by the Civil War and the Earl's Book of Record, dated 1684, shows that he had borrowed a large sum of money from Alexander Hood. This may explain the animosity between them. The Earl was ultimately successful in restoring the family's fortunes. One of his descendants was the late Queen Mother.

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My Lord,

... excuse me for giving you the trouble of narrating the insolent misbehaviour of one of my own tennants, who obraided me in my face with an ordinary guilt of the breatch of word & write¹ (A thing very inconsistent with A gentleman & which I hope non has reason to accuse me of). I believe the fellow said it in ignorance and wishes he had not said it, yet it being befor four or fyve² as first spoke & for the terror of such, he being fugitive and disobedient to two severall lawfull charges to my Bailies Courts, I caused cease upon his person about fyve dayes agoe and had him as I thought in sure firmance³ till I should bring him to A forder condigne & exemplar⁴ punishment but this last night he has made his escape and I suppose may have his shalter among some of his wife's friendes who are of your name.⁵ So my Lord I shal entreat of you & accept of it as A peculiar favour that you will cause intimat to all your tennantry and dependers not to protect him by A glandestine⁶ keeping of such A person amongst them. He is A young man one Alexr Hood youngest son to the late John Hood in Readie. My Lord this will not only be an act of good neghbourhood but is for the maintenance of that authority which is the inherent right of landlords over ther own people betwixt whom non else ought to interest themselves. This I thought fitt to acquaint you with for preventing such misinformation as possibly might induce you to permitt his wife residence within your bounds, which I hope now you will positively discharge, the injury being against my person , in the way as I have related to you, upon the word of him who avouches to be

Your most affectionat & humble servant

Kinghorne

Glamis 18 March 1670

I only apprehend that he shall lurke amongst the country people for I hope no gentleman will receive him.

National Archives of Scotland GD16/34/212

Amanuensis Monday is an idea I found on Geneabloggers.

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1. breaking his word

2. in front of four or five witnesses

3. confinement

4. further suitable & exemplary punishment

5. Alexander's wife, Margaret, was an Ogilvy from Airlie

6. clandestine

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A map showing the location of Airlie and Glamis in Angus (Forfarshire).