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1818 – 1854 Walter and Henrietta (neé Gordon) Ferrier & 1851 - 1854 Susan Ferrier
Walter was the last of ten children born to James and Helen Ferrier. His siblings were Jane, Janet, Helen, John, Archibald, James, Lorn, Susan and William. As the family grew, they moved from Lady Stair's Close to George Street. In 1797, Walter’s mother Helen died. The two eldest daughters had moved away when they married; Janet to India and Helen to London. As Jane, the eldest daughter, was still living at home, it fell to her to take on the role of her mother. Jane had been engaged to an officer in the army but he was killed in battle before the marriage could take place. She was a great beauty and among her admirers had been Robert Burns, who sent her this poem.
When their mother died, three of the brothers were away in the army. William was fighting in India, James was involved in the Siege of Seringapatam and Lorn was in the West Indies. Sadly, all three died within a few years. Lorn in 1801, killed at the Battle in Demerara; and in 1804, both James and William, while abroad. Walter and two older brothers became solicitors. First to qualify in 1794, was the eldest son, John, and Walter was apprenticed to him, becoming a solicitor in his own right in 1811. Archibald qualified in 1796 but died in 1814. John and Walter worked together for many years in partnership. In 1804, Jane, now 37, married General Graham, and John married Miss Margaret Wilson, a close friend of the family who lived nearby.
Thus it was left to the youngest daughter, Susan, (portrait by R. Thorburn) to look after her ageing father. Susan was an aspiring writer, and would come to be seen as the Scottish counterpart to Jane Austen, but she had a weak constitution, possibly through being deeply affected by the death of her mother. During the winters of 1806 to 1808 she recounted that she had been too ill to write.The Ferriers were well connected with many of the few hundred people who formed the social elite of the time. Susan often visited the Duke of Argyll at Inverary Castle with her father and, as it had been her father who appointed Walter Scott a clerk of session, the Ferriers also visited the great writer. See Sir Walter Scott and Albany StreetIt was two years before this visit that Susan had begun writing her first novel, Marriage. Susan’s sister, Jane, negotiated with William Blackwood to have her sister’s first novel published, as Blackwoods had published a work by Jane, Lacuna Strevelinense; a Collection of Heads. Susan Ferrier received £150 for her first novel and it was published anonymously in 1818. The reasons for anonymity was partially because some of her fictional characters were based on real and recognisable people of her acquaintance, but primarily because at this time it was not considered appropriate for women to have a public role in their own right. Her first novel begins with a marriage, as a beautiful young English heiress marries the son of a Scottish laird. But Susan Ferrier shows that marriage does not always lead to 'happily ever after', as she tells the stories of two generations of heroines and their adventures north and south of the border. She wanted to create a believable portrait of the world she knew and so Scots language is included in the novel to reflect and describe the language that Ferrier heard around her. Marriage was an instant success, receiving many critical plaudits. It was translated into French and was equally well received there. She followed it with Inheritance. Again this was published anonymously and in a letter to her sister in London, Susan explained her desire for anonymity: ‘John (her brother) has now completed a bargain with Mr. Blackwood, by which I am to have £1000 for a novel now in hand, but
which is not nearly finished, and possible never may be. Nevertheless he is desirous of announcing it in his magazine, and therefore I wish to prepare you for the shock. I can say nothing more than I have already said on the subject of vigilance, if not of secrecy. I never will avow myself, and nothing can hurt and offend me so much as any of my friends doing it for me; this is not faron de parler, but my real and unalterable feeling; I could not bear the fuss of authorism!" However, many already guessed that she was the author of her first two novels, although it was not until 1851 that she allowed her name to appear on a revised edition.Sir Walter Scott’s positive view of Inheritance was passed on to Susan by her publisher, Mr. Blackwood: ‘On Wednesday I dined in company with Sir Walter Scott, and he spoke of the work in the very highest terms. I do not always set the highest value on the baronet's favourable opinion of a book, because he has so much kindness of feeling towards everyone, but in this case he spoke so much con amore, and entered so completely, and at such a length, to me, into the spirit of the book and of the characters, that showed me at once the impression it had made on him.’ As the Ferriers were an extremely close family, throughout their lives Susan spent time with her surviving siblings. She travelled to London to visit Helen and to Dumfriesshire, where Janet and family lived after returning from India. Eventually, Susan’s father’s failing health brought his resignation from his position at the Court of Session in 1826, and a reluctance to travel far, so Susan’s days were mainly spent with him as he became steadily more averse to company. However, every spring Susan and her father spent time in the country on the outskirts of Edinburgh, and it was here that her novel-writing mainly took place. When he died at the age of eighty-four. Susan moved to Nelson Street and was living there when her third novel, Destiny, was published in 1831. Sadly, Susan’s eye sight deteriorated, and writing became almost impossible. She was forced to spend a lot of her time in a darkened room to avoid pain, so her sister Jane, following her husband’s death, went to live with her. Susan wrote: ‘We are more recluse than ever, as our little circle is yearly contracting, and my eyes are more and more averse to light than ever…..I can say nothing good of myself, my cough is very severe, and will probably continue so, at least as long as this weather lasts; but I have many comforts, for which I am thankful; amongst those I must reckon silence and darkness, which are my best companions at present.’
In 1837, in response to a request from a London publisher, Susan attempted to write again but she was unhappy with the material she produced. Jane died in 1846, and, with her health deteriorating, she moved to live with Walter and Henrietta in Albany Street in 1851, and died in the house in 1854.
Walter and Henrietta had at least five children, Agnes, James, Thomas, Walter and Helen, but information has only been traced for two. Walter became a civil engineer, dying in India, when 40 years-of-age. There is a mention of a Walter Ferrier in the journal of James Robertson, who was the Sherriff in Kirkwall, from 1848. As Walter would have been aged 23 at this time, this mention may be of him: ‘Young Ferrier the Engineer dined alone with me; an objectionable cub. He left at 10.’ Thomas followed his father into law and, in 1871, when aged 50, married Elizabeth Key.
Walter and Henrietta moved to Muiravonside, Stirling, where Walter died in 1856. The house was put up for sale (advert) but clearly leased instead as the Ferrier family advertised it again in the 1860s, now priced at £1360, and again in 1869, priced upwards at £1,650, when the Pitcairns bought it..
1854 – 1864 Lodgings
The lodgings were run by Mrs Stott, the widow of William Stott, a house painter, glazier and paper-hanger, who had died in 1846. Mrs Stott died in 1859, and the lodgings were then run briefly by Marion Reid, and later by M McEwan. At the 1861 census the lodgers were: William Cairns, a trainee solicitor; Jane Binnie and her three children, all under ten years of age and the Carthews.
1861 - Lodgers - John Arthur and Annie (neé Sargent) Carthew
John Carthew was a cornet (equivalent to today's Second Lieutenant) in the 13th Regiment of Light Dragoons. He was lodging here with his wife, Annie and Annie's five-year-old sister, sister Helen. John and Annie had married the year before. However, their relationship was not a happy one. He left the army in 1862 and whatever he then worked at in Torquay, where they later lived, went wrong as he was made bankrupt in 1863. They had a daughter in 1866 but three years later Annie divorced John. A year or two later he died and, sadly, their only child also died in 1873.
1864 – 1868 Mary (neé Wallace) Leslie and her son, John.
Mary was the widow of John Leslie and she died in 1868. Following his mother’s death, John, a clerk, went to Calcutta, where he died soon after arriving.
1869 – 1870 Mrs Jackson
Nothing traced.
1870 – 1874 Alexander and Helen (neé Wyld) Pitcairn
The Pitcairns moved here with their three young children, and had three more children while living in Albany Street. Alexander Pitcairn was a solicitor (WS), and the son of the Reverend Thomas Pitcairn, Minister of Cockpen, and later, Clerk of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.
Of the six children, James (Janet's twin) died when an infant and Janet died when only 24, but already had been noted as ‘a young poetess of bright promise.’ She had begun writing poetry ‘as soon as she had learned to write’ and following her death a selection of her stories and rhymes was published, under the title of The Shepherd and other Verses. An extract: ‘What is best He sends. It oft is pain; But with it blest assurances remain, To aid thee in the conquest of thy will, To soothe thy spirit with His “Peace, be still,” To turn thy weary eye to Him for rest, In love to teach thee that His will is best.’
William went to Canada and in 1905, married Annabella Buchanan. He died in 1947. Nothing traced for the other three children.
The Pitcairns moved to Forth Street. Andrew lived until 1921, and Helen until 1932.
1874 – 1880 Mrs Bowe
It is likely that this was the widow of James Bowe, a partner in Bowe & Christie, Sugar Merchants.
1880 – 1894 John Hay and Jane (neé Mansel) Thorburn
John Hay Thorburn, a Grain Merchant, married Jane [photo] in 1879, in Newcastle and the couple moved here. Thorburn’s business was based in Leith. He had a deep interest in the problem of Britain’s wheat shortages and, in the 1900s, proposed a plan to Government to redress the situation. He advocated the construction of a system of granaries at British ports, the creation of a system of grain certificates and Government ownership of the industry. When he gave evidence at the 1923 Royal Commission on the subject of food shortages, he was reported to be an economic expert. In 1895, three African chiefs from Bechuana, including King Khama, came to Britain to persuade Queen Victoria not to give their lands to Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company. The visit is described in the book, King Khama, Emperor Joe, and the Great White Queen by Neil Parsons. Linked to this event, Thorburn, as Chair of the Scottish African Corporation Limited set up by a consortium of Scottish capitalists, approached the Colonial Office, offering to take over the land from the British South Africa Company, and give Karma a place in the development of his country alongside this new purely Scottish enterprise. Thorburn wrote: ‘As a Scotch enterprise has been long associated with all that is best in the history of African civilisation, this proposal might be found to be of practical value.’ King Karma visited Edinburgh but did not meet Thorburn, and the Scottish African Corporation’s plan was not progressed. Thorburn’s drive for commercial success often led to a frustration with those he saw as reluctant to new ideas. This is well demonstrated by his letter to The Times in 1911, on the high costs of phone calls in Britain’s - in 1930, a daytime phone call from Edinburgh to London cost the equivalent of £20 today. Thorburn recounted that when he approached the telephone company asking why every house in Britain could not be joined by phone wires and have calls at reasonable rates, as was the case in many other European countries, their reply was ‘that if it were adopted they would have so much business they would not be able to conduct it.’ His letter ends: ‘It is no wonder that we are being outstripped in the commercial race of the world when our destinies are in the hands of men of limited intelligence.’
Thorburn also was active in his role as General Secretary of The Free Church. He was a vociferous advocate of The Laymen’s League which promoted the reunion of the parts of the church that had split over the issue of the relationship between the church and the state. In another letter to The Scotsman he wrote: ‘The great advantage of the League is that through its branches the three Presbyterian Churches have now opened up to them a medium of conference where differences may be discussed, mutual concession arrived at, and the foundation for the reunion of our common Presbyterianism.’ However, while the League called for unity, it was against the idea of disestablishment and secularisation of the Church of Scotland.
Thorburn also wrote and published pamphlets on various subjects. One published in 1915, The Debacle of Kultur, is a dubious, but understandable in the atmosphere of the time, argument as to why God was on the side of Britain and its allies against the Germans. ‘The degradation of Germany, we have seen, comes from its Kultur, which destroyed the authority of the Word of God. Already we have many tens of thousands of aliens in our midst. After the war, when armies are disbanded, are we to receive hordes of these brutalised Kultured Germans into this country without let or hindrance?—the mere declaration of Peace will not change their character. To allow such free entry here will be a great moral and material wrong to our own people, especially to our working classes. Germany has, we know, lavished vast sums of money on its secret service of bribery and corruption in the U.S.A. and every European country. Millions were sent to the young Turks; even as far as China her gold was poured out. How much has been, and is being spent here, or who the traitors in high places are that have got it, no one has as yet found out; but that will come to light someday - truly “a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”’ Of course the opposing forces were also claiming that God was on their side.
They had five children. The eldest son, David Hay, joined the army, serving first in the 2nd Cameroonians (Scottish Rifles). In the First World War, he fought in the South African campaign and then in Egypt, where he was twice mentioned in dispatches, and awarded the Order of the Nile (4th Class). This was for his bravery during the British defence of the Suez Canal, in which various Turkish and German/Turk-led Senussi attempts to capture or damage the canal were rebuffed. He retired as a Major. In 1929, he married Katherine Dixon. He was later appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Ayrshire. He died in 1962.
The second son, Harold Hay, studied medicine at Edinburgh University and joined the Indian Medical Service in 1906. He served on the North West Frontier and, in 1913, was appointed Agent of the Government of India in Khorasan. During the First World War he was instrumental in leading local soldiers to prevent enemy forces entering Afghanistan. After the war he lived in India where held various medical positions, latterly as surgeon to the Viceroy of India, and Inspector-General of Hospitals in Kashmir. In 1933, he was Chief Medical Officer of Rajputana. While there a Hindu fanatic tried to assassinate him, but Thorburn disarmed and captured the assailant and handed him over to the police. He was made a Colonel and a Companion Class in the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire (CIE). He married Diana Ross in 1936, the year before his death. She later became Housekeeper for the Governor of Kashmiri, Sir George Cunningham, and established a handicraft business, employing uneducated and unemployed Kashmiri women in making quilts.
The third son, Mansel Hay, went to Canada around 1910, planning to work on the railroads. Instead he got a job as a clerk in the Vancouver office of Balfour, Guthrie & Co., a shipping import and export company, established by three Scots in San Francisco in 1847. In 1911, he married Annie Smallman, an Englishwoman who had arrived in Canada a few years earlier, and they had three children [photo of his three children and their nanny]. Sometime around 1917, he and his family moved to Shanghai and lived in the French concession. Until 1943, these were the parts of the Shanghai region owned by foreign powers, and predominantly overseen by the British until the late 1930s when Japan's involvement became of increasing importance. Mansel, like many of those working in Shanghai, joined the Shanghai Volunteer Force, serving in the Light Horse Corp - a multinational force controlled by the Shanghai Municipal Council. However, by 1930 he was unemployed and his wife was living apart from him in England, and one son had moved to Australia. Living with him was his nineteen-year-old son, John. On the last day of May 1931, Mansel arrived home to find a note from his son: ‘Dear Dad, I am leaving Shanghai and do not know when I will be back. I didn’t tell you because I know you would try and stop me. Please tell everyone who enquires that I have gone away for a business trip up country. Cheerio, John.’ Mansel then discovered that John had taken revolver with him, but not his passport; essential for travel outside of the foreign concessions. He contacted the Shanghai Police who issued a missing person’s report. There were then unconfirmed reports suggesting that John had been involved in a shooting incident and arrested by the Chinese, but the Chinese authorities denied all knowledge of the missing man. As weeks passed with no firm news, the affair developed into a serious diplomatic incident, with questions being asked in the House of Commons. Eventually, the British Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs flew to China to discuss the issue with Marshall Chiang Kai-Shek. This led to the Chinese admitting that John was dead. It transpired that on the night John had left home, he had been seen near a railway line by three Chinese policemen. On being challenged by them, John had shot at them, killing two, and then ran off, dropping a bag containing ammunition, a knife, a bottle of chloroform and a gauze face cover. The Chinese tracked him down the next day, and as he had no passport and refused to give his name, the Chinese suspected him of being a Russian spy. The interrogating officer, frustrated at the prisoner’s refusal to answer questions, and enraged by the killing of two of his men, killed John. As the treaty between the Chinese and British insisted that any British subject accused of any crime had to be handed over to the British for judgement, the Chinese had tried to cover up the young man’s death. The affair had an adverse impact on British opinion, and a negative impact on the negotiations between the British and Nationalist Chinese Governments over treaty port reform. Mansel died in Shanghai in 1954.
One daughter, Florence, remained unmarried and lived to be 83. The other daughter, Jane, married Hubert Dannreuther in 1916. He was the son of the German pianist Edward Dannreuther and a godson of Richard Wagner. He joined the Royal Navy and served first in Australia. During the First World War he served as gunnery officer of the destroyer HMS Badger. From 1916 to 1918, Dannreuther served as commander on HMS Renown. He was awarded the DSO, the Russian Order of St. Anna, 3rd Class and the French Croix de Guerre with palms. After the war ended, he was made Vice-President of the Chemical Warfare Committee, and from 1927 to 1929, served as Superintendent of Training of the Royal Australian Navy and in 1932 was appointed Naval Aide-de Camp to the King. Later he was promoted to Rear-Admiral and placed on the retired list. In 1939, he held the position of Assistant Director General, Control Division, Ministry of Information.
In 1894 the Thorburns moved to St John’s Place. J Hay died in 1931. While, happily, he lived to see his aspiration for the reunion of a number of the Scottish Presbyterian churches fulfilled in 1929, unfortunately he did not live to see similar ideas to his own about wheat supplies introduced by the British Government, nor telephone usage become affordable to all.
1894 – 1905 Robert and Marion (neé Wright) Thin Robert Thin (portrait by Henry Wright) and his family moved here from Number 6. He was the youngest son of James Thin and Catherine Traquair. James Thin founded the famous Edinburgh bookshop on South Bridge, that remained in the Thin family until 2002, when it was taken over by Blackwells. James Thin was friends with many of the well-known literary figures of Edinburgh of his day, including Lord Macaulay, Thomas De Quincey, Thomas Carlyle and Robert Louis Stevenson. While two of his brothers took over running the bookshop, Robert qualified in Midwifery Practice in 1887, having trained at the Edinburgh Royal Maternity and Simpson Memorial Hospital. Later, he became the first general practitioner to be appointed President of the Edinburgh Royal College of Surgeons. He wrote College portraits: being biographical sketches on portraits in the hall of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. When he died in 1941, aged 80, a ‘Grateful Patient’ wrote: ‘In his visits, while he never gave the impression that he was hurried in his examination and advice, he never wasted his time. And how could be afford to when during an epidemic of influenza he would have over eighty visits to pay in one day, besides a consulting room full for one or two hours. His patients were patients, suffering human beings, whom he would help to the uttermost of medical resources. He was generous for he had many patients to whom he gave his service free. To the last days of his practice his eye was bright and his step light, and he must have climbed many thousands of stairs, so that when he was well on into his seventies one did not think of him as old or even as an elderly man.’
The Thins had one son, Robert Traquair, who also became a doctor, and his son, again Robert, became the third generation to practise medicine.
The Thins moved to Number 38 and from 1894 until 1898 the house appears to be empty.
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