2a Albany Street
Some other plots had already been built on the North side when James Dodds, a builder, received permission to build the corner tenement in 1814. It was completed in 1817 and consisted of two shops on the street level and three flats entered from a common stair. A third shop was entered from Dublin Street (and so not included in this history).
The first residents in 1818 were Miss Hay and Mrs Kennedy but no more found. Also Miss White who moved to Number 33 to live and run her boarding school. See Number 33.
As 2a was flats, only a selection of residents are given below.
1824 - 1837 Peter and Marion (neé Dods) Crooks
Peter Crooks was a solicitor (WS). He married Marion in 1824 and they moved here. In 1831, Crooks was elected Commissioner of Police for the ward. The election of Edinburgh Police Commissioners was introduced in 1805, and was a unique system for the time. It gave residents the right to elect local representatives to serve on the police boards, both to oversee policing matters and regulate the police force. These commissioners were to provide: ‘a more regular police for apprehending vagrants, suppressing begging, removing nuisances, lighting and cleaning the streets, etc. and also for giving more ample powers to the Magistrates for regulating hackney coaches, sedan chairs, and crafts, and for porters ..(and) to adopt regulations with respect to the weights of bread in the city.’ As one might expect, in the year Crooks was elected, a number of other solicitors and advocates were listed as also having been chosen to serve. Yet lawyers were a minority of those elected; the range of occupations of the elected Commissioners is surprisingly varied, including a brewer, a gilder, a seed merchant, a dyer and a shoemaker. After two years, Crooks resigned as a Commissioner and in 1837, the Crooks moved to Abercromby Place. They had five children, two died when children. One daughter, Christina, married John Blyth and went with him to live in Dublin. Another, Eliza, married Thomas Watson, and they emigrated to Ontario, Canada. Nothing traced for the eldest son, Peter.
1831 - 1834 John Mathison
John Mathison advertised as a ‘Classical Teacher, continues to Board and Superintend the Education of Young Gentlemen attending the High School, New Academy, etc. the most satisfactory reference can be given.’
1841 - 1852 William and Marianne (neé Milne) Saunders
William Saunders was a solicitor (SSC). He and Marianne set up house here after they married. They had six children while living in the house, one of whom died in infancy. In 1852, Marianne died, leaving William to care for their five small children. He moved with his children to Number 51 and, in 1858, married Elizabeth Wallace, with whom he had a further four children. The family later moved from Number 51 to Number 42, living there until 1886. In 1904, William’s son, also William, moved to Number 22, where he lived until 1923. Saunders was a member of the Church Law Society. He also served on the committee of the Edinburgh Subscription Library.
Of the many children, those traced are: Henry, who worked for Scottish Widows Fund; Frederick, who worked in insurance; Charles, who became an accountant; Ernest, who went to India; and William, who became a Chartered Accountant in 1871, and later a SSC. He joined his father in the family legal practice and later became the senior partner. He often acted on behalf of Edinburgh Corporation in legal cases.
Other 19th. c. residents included Mrs Leslie and her daughters, Miss Reynolds(who advertised ‘Fashionable dancing and exercises classes’), the Reverend Samuel Kerr, Dr John Stewart, James Martin of the Stamp Office, William Gillies; James M'Dougal who ran a grocers and wine merchant business at 8 Dublin St.; the Hepburn sisters(dressmakers who appear to have run their business from the house as they were often seeking dressmaker assistants), the Cuthbertsons (see Number 4 (shop)), Charles Christie (Clerk at the Office of the Inland Revenue Office), Peter Clelland (retired teacher of drawing), Edward Hoffer (Produce Broker), Anna Ogilvie (widow living on private means), James Bertram (stockbroker), John Fleming (retired hotel keeper), and Samuel Mullay (retired clerk who had worked for the Edinburgh and Leith Corporation Gas Light Company). Mullay originally came from Lerwick and when he died in 1905, bequeathed £1,000 to the Provost of Lerwick to ‘maintain a properly qualified nurse to reside in Lerwick, and attend poor people in their homes.’ The bequest continued until 2013, at which point Shetland Islands Council closed it down and transferred the funds to other charities.
At least one of the flats became lodgings. These were run by Marion Simpson and her lodgers in the 1850s included John Anderson (retired merchant), Alexander Grieg (clerk in a cork merchants), Alexander Campbell (apprentice to a solicitor), James Hay (insurance clerk) and David Hay (photographer).
In 1871 one of the flats was occupied by Mrs Dyce, a widow. She lived there with her three children Lisbet (22) was working as a governess, William (20) as an assistant draughtsman and David (18) as an assistant clerk. In that year they had a lodger who, unusually for the time, was a black American. His name was George Rice (photo left) and he was studying at Edinburgh University Medical School. His ambition to become a doctor had been a frustrating one. First denied admission to Dartmouth College Medical School in USA he travelled to Paris to study, but the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War forced him to move to Edinburgh. In Edinburgh he suffered from racial prejudice – a fellow student published a poem mocking him that clearly arose from racist views – but graduated in 1874 and went on to be House Surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, working to the famous Dr Lister.
My thanks to Lauren McKay at Lothian Health Services Archive for this information. Her blog has more on Rice https://lhsa.blogspot.com/2023/01/dr-george-rice-1848-1935-at-royal.html
Peter Cleland, an artist, lived in one of the flats from 1890 to 1895, when in his seventies. He first began working as a professional artist in Edinburgh around 1840 and lived in Howe Street. Over his career, Cleland worked in a range of styles, from watercolours of Scottish landscapes to portraits: one from 1840 is of a fellow artist, William Young, and is in the collection of the University of Dundee. In 1847, he moved to Aberdeen to take up the post of drawing master at the Mechanic’s Institute, forerunner of Gray’s School of Art. The year after the city welcomed Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and like many other cities that welcomed the Queen, a Triumphal Arch was built specially. Cleland's painting shows the great and the good of the Aberdeen welcoming their monarch. Cleland included himself in the back row of the right-hand group. Around 1870, Cleland left Aberdeen and returned to Edinburgh. One son, Patrick, married Agnes Smith who was running the lodgings at Number 11.
No supplementary page for 2a.