Lawyers
Many of the residents in the 19th century were lawyers and the majority would have conducted, at least in part, their business from their house, with the ground floor front room acting as their chambers. For example, when William, the son of George Napier (Number 23), became a solicitor and moved with his new wife, Mary Low, to Howard Place, he continued to share the chambers at Albany Street with his father.
The legal profession was divided between solicitors and advocates. Solicitors were usually a writer of the Signet, and designated WS. If a member of the Society of the Supreme Courts of Scotland, they were designated SSC, and, additionally, could practise in the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary. Writers, and some SSCs, also acted as estate agents, conveyancers, factors for landed estates, trustees, and legal advisers. For the first part of the 19th. century many also acted as accountants, auditors and stockbrokers. (Drawing from Crombie's Modern Athenians of a writer to the Signet (WS) of the day, James Simson ) Law students studied at Edinburgh University, although the majority attended for as little as two years, chose which lectures to attend and left without qualifications as the route to qualification was by apprenticeship followed by an oral examination by the relevant law body - Writers to the Signet or Solicitors of the Supreme Court. There was no entrance qualification or exam required for students to attend university and in the first half of the century, many students entered at ages of 15 or 16.
In his account of his life, Sir Walter Scott gives a flavour of university in the late 18th century and this would have been a similar pattern until the second half of the 19th. The classes he attended were Humanities, Greek, Ethics, Moral Philosophy, History, and Civil and Municipal Law. Scott records that his attendance was ad hoc: ‘I imagine my father's reason for sending me to so few classes in the College, was a desire that I should apply myself particularly to my legal studies.’ That meant becoming an legal apprentice. The apprentice fee in 1815 was two hundred guineas.
Here an account by John Macdonald who studied in the 1850s: ‘I chose the Bar, and attended logic and law classes…. when I was faced with examinations in three languages, logic and metaphysics, and civil law, Scots law and conveyancing to follow, and all within two years, the necessity of the case was realised and study was paramount, social engagements were declined, and amusements, except on a Saturday, shunned. With the aid of a teapot, in which tea stewed for hours in the fender, and to which I applied time after time, I kept myself awake, and worked late as well as early.’ The subjects he studied at Edinburgh University were Logic, Scots Law, Civil Law and Conveyancing. ‘I will confess that, with the exception of the Civil Law, I found the law lectures very dry. Only one touch of relief do I remember, when the law on slavery was stated, and the dear old modest Professor More, who never looked at the class, but glanced up at the end of every utterance to the upper left-hand corner of the class room, said in most sober tone: “And so” (head up) “as the sun can never set on the British Dominions” (head up) “so that sun can never rise upon a British slave.”
The first WS to live in Albany Street was John Kennedy of Underwood (Number 9). In 1813, he was the agent for the sale of ‘The lands and Barony of Ratho consisting of about 500 acres.’ Sales or lets of estates, houses and workplaces were a main source of income for solicitors. In the earlier part of the century. many solicitors took on financial roles that later became the business of the banks - ‘Wanted to Borrow the sum of Seventeen Thousand Pounds for a few years at 3½ per cent. ….Apply to Messrs Nairne, 22 Albany Street.’ - and acted as accountants and auditors before the profession of accountants emerged - see Accountants and the creation of Chartered Accountancy. Some, such as Adam Ellis (Number 13), acted as stockbrokers.
The first SSC in the street was Thomas Johnstone (Number 37). In one case he acted as the legal agent in a defamation of character case brought by a Mr Henderson, a farmer, against a neighbour. The court heard that ‘Bad blood had got betwixt them, and occasional bickerings took place,’ and a letter was read out in which Henderson was described as ‘a blackguard and a very great pest to society in that part of the country.’ W.R. Skinner (Number 12) mainly handled sequestrations and bankruptcies, but also took on court cases. One was the defence of a shepherd who had shot rabbits on an estate and been convicted of poaching. The court decision caused outcry among the farmers in the area, for they saw this as undermining the long-standing right of farm tenants to shoot rabbits on their lands for the protection of crops. The case was referred to the High Court who over-turned the conviction, on the basis that rabbits did not count as game.
Advocates took cases in the higher courts, the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary, To bring a case to court, an individual would hire a writer who would find an advocate to plead the case in court. Advocates acted in a wide range of court work, including criminal cases, issues relating to estates, civil actions and bankruptcies. It was from their ranks that appointments were made for Sheriff-Substitutes, Sheriffs, Judges and other key legal posts. (Drawing from Crombie's Modern Athenians of an advocate of the day, Patrick Shaw)
Sir Walter Scott is without a doubt the most famous advocate of the period, though not because of his short-lived law career. However, one can still sense his legal training in his quotation, ‘Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life.’ It was not uncommon for men to train in the law, but to pursue other careers or interests and not practise.
Like many advocates, James Wallace (Number 8) had a number of roles during his law career. He acted as advocate-depute in the Spring Circuit Courts that travelled round the country, where he heard cases from forgery of documents to burglaries and assaults; was a member of a Board of Trade enquiry into a boiler explosion in Glasgow which had injured three workers; acted as the Sheriff of Chancery responsible for rights of succession; and was appointed Sheriff of Dumfries. In 1881, the advocate, David Brand (Number 9), prosecuted ten men arrested for attempted bombings in Glasgow, who, unusually, were charged under the Treason Felony Act. The men were members of ‘The Dynamitards’, as the Irish Fenians were known by their frequently frustrated opponents in the intelligence services, who exploited the new technology of high explosives. Accused of plotting to ‘wickedly, and feloniously, imagine, invent, devise or intend to levy war against her Majesty’, they were all convicted.
Advocates were not always held in great esteem by the newspapers of the day. William Murray (lodged at Number 13), who also owned a country estate, had written a letter concerning the repeal of the Corn Laws to which the paper responded: ‘(Mr Murray’s) signature is certainly a very enticing one, artfully designed, one might almost think, to procure readers to believe the effusions were from the clever and sprightly pen of the first living of comedians. That would be a great mistake indeed – this “W. H. Murray” being as solemn as an owl, and just as pleasant and instructive. ..(perhaps he) is not in reality the absurd and inflated person he makes himself appear on paper.’
The men who worked in the law were key figures in Scottish life in the 19th century, serving on a wide range of committees. William Ellis (Number 13) served for forty years as the legal adviser to the United Associated Synod, and was a director of the Edinburgh Bible Society. Brand was appointed to be the first Chairman of the Crofters’ Commission, and also Chairman of the Royal Commission (Highlands and Islands), and Edward Theodore Salvesen (lodged at Number 40) served as President of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Chairman of the Royal Scots Association and President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.