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1808 – 1819 Professor John Playfair & 1813 - 1817 William Henry PlayfairProfessor John Playfair (portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn - collection of the University of Edinburgh) was a scientist and mathematician, and one of the figures of the Edinburgh Enlightenment. He was the eldest son of the Reverend James Playfair, minister of Benvie, a small town near Dundee. Although he studied for the ministry, he was noted for his outstanding mathematical ability. When he left university in 1769, he spent four years in Edinburgh mixing with the luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment, including the economist, Adam Smith, the chemist, Joseph Black, and the geologist, James Hutton. He tried for further academic posts, but again without success, and eventually was ordained the Minister of Liff and Benvie in succession to his father.
His interest in a wide range of subjects continued and, in 1774, he made an excursion to Schiehallion, Perthshire, to conduct experiments with Neville Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal. They became lifelong friends and Maskelyne introduced him to the leading scientific men of the day. It was he who encouraged Playfair to submit a paper on mathematics to the Royal Society of London. Entitled On the Arithmetic of Impossible Quantities, it was described as exhibiting: ‘a greater taste for purely analytical investigation than shown by any of the British mathematicians of that age.’
Playfair became Moderator of the Synod, but soon after resigned as he was offered a well-paid job tutoring two boys that enabled him to return to involvement in Edinburgh’s intellectual life. He was one of those who established the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. In 1785 he was appointed Joint Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, a position which he held for twenty years. He published widely, including a series of books that revised Euclid's Elements and made its study clearer for students. He also published an Essay on the Accidental Discoveries Which Have Been Made By Men of Science, Whilst In Pursuit of Something Else, Or When They Had No Determinate Object in View.
Playfair was the first President of The Astronomical Institution of Edinburgh and his efforts led to the building of The New Observatory on Calton Hill. Following the death of his friend James Hutton, Playfair reworked cast Hutton’s geological theories. With peace declared in Europe in 1815, Playfair set out on an arduous and extensive journey through France and Switzerland, travelling over 4,000 miles even though he was sixty eight year of age. The purpose was to gather geological material for his book, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, which ensured Hutton’s fame as the first great British geologist and created the modern science of geology.
Playfair’s brother, the Scottish architect James Playfair, died in 1793, and John adopted James's four–year-old son, William Henry Playfair. In 1804, William, was sent by his family in London to live with John while he attended school and university in Edinburgh. He then returned to London where he began his architectural studies before coming back to live with his uncle in 1813. In 1816, while still living in Albany Street, William was one of nine architects to submit designs for the completion of Edinburgh University's Old College. His design was selected and he worked on site, refining his design and overseeing the building work. The building contains the outstanding Playfair Library (photo). In 1817, William moved out of his uncle’s house to live in George Street. Playfair was commissioned in 1820 to design Regent Terrace, Royal Terrace and Calton Terrace, and over the following thirty years played an important part in designing many of the buildings that make Edinburgh the city it is today. These included the City Observatory on Calton Hill; the Royal Institution; George Heriot's Hospital; the Advocates' Library; the Royal College of Surgeons; and the National Gallery of Scotland. Although John Playfair had died a wealthy man, he was buried in an unmarked grave in Old Calton Cemetery. In 1825, as part of his creation of works on Calton Hill, William designed a monument in his uncle’s memory.
William Playfair inherited the house and at the 1855 valuation was still the owner.
1820 – 1823 Andrew and Elizabeth (neé Wightman) Kenney
Andrew Kenney became a member of Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh in 1812. His graduation paper was on hydrophobia. In 1820, he was appointed a physician at the Edinburgh New Town Dispensary. At the meeting at which he was appointed, it was reported that in the previous year the number of patients who had received medicines or been treated there in the five years since the Dispensary had been established was 34,004, of which 12,264 were regularly attended in their own homes.
In 1820, he married Elizabeth, the daughter of Dr Charles Wightman, who owned the Concordia estate in Tobago. A record from 1821 recounts that there were 169 slaves working on the Concordia Estate. Wightman also owned the property in Dunbar in which John Muir, the famous Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness, was born. In 1823, Kenney resigned from the Dispensary, and he and Elizabeth sailed to Tobago with their two young daughters. On leaving Edinburgh, the Kenneys sold all their Albany Street house contents, including ‘some valuable paintings, among which are a Portrait of Prince Charles and several Battle pieces by eminent masters.’ A shower bath also was listed in the items for sale.
Three years after arriving, Andrew died. Elizabeth later returned to Edinburgh and in 1829 remarried another doctor, John Argyll Robertson.Although the slave trade had been abolished in 1807, estates such as Concordia continued to own slaves. In 1830, George Graham Bell (Number 19), an advocate and a member of the Edinburgh Society for Promoting the Mitigation and Ultimate Abolition of Slavery, attended an anti-slavery meeting in the Assembly Rooms: ‘as numerous a meeting as could be (full of) respectable, enlightened and fashionable citizens.’ This meeting reflected an increasing public impatience with the slow speed of parliamentary action to end slavery, and the need to set a date to begin that process. Eventually, in 1833, t the Slavery Abolition Act was enacted, three days before William Wilberforce died. As part of the Abolition Act, slave owners received compensation. extract from an appraisement of the Invera Estate, Tobago, 1829 (collection of University of Glasgow)listing slaves, their condition and value.
While there is no information on the pay out to the Concordia Estate, another slave owner, Dr Alexander Murchison, who retired on the proceeds to live in Scotland (Number 46), received £1,996.16s.10p for the release of 104 slaves, a further £1,645.12s.4p for 87 slaves and as one of the trustees of the Free School part of £88 for 4 slaves. The pay-outs varied from colony to colony based on the value of slaves to their owners, but in total the British Government authorised that £20 million be given to the slave owners. This was a huge sum and in today’s terms would be well over £60 billion. Of course no freed slaves received compensation for their years of unpaid labour and suffering, but the plantation owners were richly compensated for the loss of their ‘property.’
1823 – 1826 John Archibald and Emma (neé Legh) Campbell
John Campbell was a solicitor (WS). The couple married in 1823, and their son and two daughters were born in the house. Like many solicitors, Campbell’s legal work included a large amount of acting as the agent in property sales. Coincidentally, in 1849, Campbell acted as the agent for the sale of Number 24 Albany Street. He also served on the boards of various insurance companies.
He later became the Sheriff-Clerk of Mid-Lothian.
Campbell’s grandfather , also John Campbell, was reputed to be ‘a son of a marriage which did not exist, at least it could not be proven. ….When it comes to John’s father, Colin of Armaddy, all records states that he died without lawful issue. For John of the Bank, all records acknowledge him as descendant of the noble house of Breadalbane. Not a word of the actual parents, though. The present head of the family is attempting to have the marriage of John's parents proven.’ Yet this uncertainty over his parentage did not hold John senior back. He became the cashier – equivalent of Chief Executive – of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and was in charge when Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Jacobite army occupied Edinburgh in 1745. John Campbell’s diary recounts that a fortnight after the Jacobite army took control of Edinburgh, on 17 September 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s secretary informed him that he had £857 of Royal Bank banknotes and wanted payment for them in gold. Furthermore, he said that if Campbell failed to comply, the Jacobites would seize property from the Bank and its directors to the value of the notes. This was a problem, for all the Bank’s valuables, including its reserves of gold, had been moved to Edinburgh Castle for safekeeping during this time of turmoil. Although the city was under Jacobite control the castle was still in government hands and locked down. Campbell managed to obtain a special pass from the Jacobite authorities permitting him to pass through the streets safely on his way to the castle. He also gave advance warning to the castle’s commander that he required access. In spite of continual shooting between government forces in the Castle and Jacobites around the castle, Campbell, accompanied by colleagues and directors from the Bank, successfully gained access and withdrew the gold to meet the Prince’s demands, which by now had risen to over £3,000. The money was paid to the Prince’s secretary at his office later that evening and the Jacobite army left Edinburgh on 1 November, marching on into England in a bid to claim the British throne. The army’s progress funded in no small part by the gold it had received from The Royal Bank of Scotland.
The Campbell’s son, also John, became the Vicar of Hopestone in Northamptonshire.
The Campbell’s moved to Albyn Place.
1826 – 1828 David and Mary (neé Reid) Cannan David Cannan was a surgeon. The couple moved here with their new born son, named Horatius after Cannan’s father. They had another son while living in the house. Cannan became Secretary of the newly launched Medical Provident Institution of Scotland when it was set up in 1827. The Medical Provident Institution of Scotland was the first of its kind to offer health insurance. Although Friendly Societies assisted members when ill, this Institution was aimed at medical professionals and, through a mutual fund, offered cover in times of sickness or accident. It also offered annuities in old age, and death benefits for widows. The chairman at the Institution’s first annual general meeting held in The Physicians’ Hall said: ‘the contributor derives, when incapacitated by sickness, or any of the casualties of human nature, an income which would relieve him from dependence on the benevolence of private individuals, or the sympathy only of any corporate body to which he might be attached.’ Cannan also was a member of The Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society, founded in 1821 along the lines of the London society of similar name. the Society’s aim was to improve medicine and surgery through gatherings and publications of papers: ‘illustrating rare and interesting forms of disease; and the exhibition of Pathological and other specimens, so essential to the proper understanding of the morbid changes which take place in the human body.’ Discussions took place on a variety of subjects, including one entitled The Necessity for further Legislation for the Care of Habitual Drunkards.
The couple moved to Northumberland Street and there had two further children.
Horatius, their eldest son, moved to London where he married Maria Watson, before the couple moved to Brazil. One of their sons, David, followed in his grandfather’s footsteps by becoming a doctor. Although born in Brazil he studied at Glasgow University (university record) and after training at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital practiced in London.
Nothing traced for the other children.
1828 - 1840 Miss Weir’s Academy and Boarding School.
This was probably one of the small academies that provided education for girls from well-to-do families. There were four other similar establishments run by women of the same name in Edinburgh at the time, presumably relations.
1840 - 1862 Alexander Carnegy and Sophia (neé Gordon) Ritchie Carnegy and Sophia had recently married in Belfast and came to live here. He was the son of Alexander Ritchie, a banker in Brechin, and Sophia was the daughter of Thomas Gordon, a WS. Carnegy was an Advocate and became a Writer to the Privy Seal and the Registrar of Friendly Societies. See Friendly Societies. In 1861, Sophia ‘printed only for private circulation among friends’ the book, Poems Serious and Comic which she dedicated to her friend, Sophia Lumsden who lived in Cushnie, Aberdeenshire. Perhaps the book also was for the amusement of visitors they had staying with them in that year: Mary Klinke and four teenage brothers named Wecht, all from the Cape of Good Hope.
In one poem she shows that the peril of lost luggage predates air travel. She recounts that her sister had been on a visit from Ireland, and 'by a strange mischance, her largest trunk, containing all her most valuable dresses and ornaments, in place of being taken on board of the steamboat for Belfast, was taken by a porter and put on board of a Dumbarton steamer. The address had been rubbed off, and for a whole year the missing trunk was kept in a cellar in Dumbarton'. Eventually, opened and by a letter inside, restored to its owner.
The Wanderer's Return Come, all my friends, with one accord, Along with me rejoice, My long lost trunk is now restored With its contents all so choice. Alas! 'tis almost a whole year Since last I saw its face, Or looked upon the cherished gear That used to form my grace. My gowns, my caps, my chemisettes, Which so becoming were! My ribbons, laces, blonds and nets, So lovely all and rare! And when again we leave our home Upon some pleasant tour, Be sure that, whereso'er we roam Your safety I'll secure.
1862 - 1868 Andrew Paterson
Andrew Paterson was an accountant, and was admitted to the Society of Accountants in 1855. In 1862, the Companies Act came into law, and Paterson formed one of the first companies, The Heritable Securities and Mortgage Investment Company. The company that he managed was one of the pioneers in the formation of heritable investment companies. Heritable was a modest sized mortgage company with assets of just under £400,000, mostly invested in small property developments and commercial developments in Glasgow. It later was acquired by Standard Life. The Heritable expanded, especially in the post war years, and by 1950 loans to the company from Standard Life were around £4 million.
Paterson also acted as secretary to the British Empire Mutual Life and Fire Insurance Company. In the 1860s, his office was in North St Andrew Street.
He moved to Abercromby Place. In 1883, he married Margaret (neé Howatson), the widow of James McTurk, and died in 1900.
1868 – 1880 James L. and Roberta (neé Leny) Mansfield
James L Mansfield was an advocate. He was the son of Thomas Mansfield, one of the founders of the Society of Accountants. In 1854, a group of about fifteen men decided to form the Society (Two residents of Albany Street, James Dickson - Number 52 and Thomas Scott - Number 41 were also founding members) that was the first ever professional grouping of accountants and became the model for the chartered profession throughout the world. Thomas Mansfield served as its second president of the Society. James’ elder brother, also Thomas, followed his father into accountancy, although he died when only 33.
James was educated at Loretto School, recently established in Edinburgh, and then was a boarder at Rugby School. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge and became an Advocate in 1866. He married Roberta in 1868 and set up home here. While Mansfield worked diligently in his law practice, and also as a Director of the National Bank of Scotland, his passion was sport. At school he had been active in cricket and rugby, and he continued his sporting pursuits. He was a member of the Caledonian Curling Club, and a skilled golfer. See Sports for an account of his golfing career.
In 1879, the Mansfields moved to Chester Street. Unfortunately, in 1889 James had an accident: ‘Yesterday forenoon Mr James Mansfield, advocate, was thrown violently from his horse while riding along Queensferry Road and seriously hurt. The accident happened near Dean Park House the residence of Sir William Muir, where he was conveyed and attended by a doctor. He was afterwards removed in an ambulance wagon to his house where he was attended to by Dr Gillespie, Dr Cumming and Professor Annandale. His skull, it appears, has been fractured and he has sustained injuries to other parts of his body. He was still unconscious at eight o’ clock last evening but hope is held out for his recovery.’ Sadly it was not to be and Mansfield died.
1881 – 1893 William and Jane (neé Smith) Archibald
William Archibald was a solicitor (SSC) and a partner in the firm, Duncan, Archibald and Cunningham, with chambers in Heriot Row. He was a registered voter in Alloa as he owned houses in the town. He and Jane had three young children. William died in 1887 and Jane lived on in the house.
1893 – 1913 Jemima Bennett (neé Perey), James and Margaret Bennett and Mary Perey
Jemima Bennett was the widow of George William Bennett. Living with her was her son, James, a solicitor; her daughter, Margaret; and her sister, Mary Perey. Another son, George Henry Bennett, later became Bishop (RC) of Aberdeen. Jemima died in 1911. See 20th century for extraordinary shooting in the house.
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