Number 42 - Information on residents

No information has been found on their eldest son, Laurence. In 1838, their youngest son, John, married Sarah McCallum and had ten children. Sometime after 1850, the whole family moved to New Zealand, probably to farm near Whanganui. At this time, around 40,000 acres had been made available for settlers and Wanganui grew rapidly. The town was a major military centre during the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s, although local Māori at Putiki remained friendly to the town's settlers. In New Zealand, the family had their share of sorrows. Two sons committed suicide, and another died falling from a horse. Others in the family had happier lives. Alexander Dundas became the District Surveyor of Wellington and married Ellen Elizabeth Trafford, the daughter of Major Benjamin Rawson Trafford and a Maori woman, Pango [This photo from around 1880 is of Pango and one of their children]. Another son became an Engineer, while another became Editor of the Nelson Evening Mail. George became an accountant - an appropriate career path for someone who had received a prize in Mr Wallace’s Mathematics Class when a boy. The two daughters, Margaret and Annie, remained unmarried and moved with their widowed mother, James having died in 1831, to live with George in Broughton Street. 1846 – 1849 Andrew Smith Andrew Smith was a partner with members of the brewing Younger family, and the main manager, of William Younger & Company, having taken over responsibility for the brewing firm from his father. The company had begun in the mid-18th century. The two sons of Archibald Campbell Younger and Grizel Syme were the second generation of a family of brewers, and each set up their own brewing businesses. Archibald started his in 1777, and after expanding in Edinburgh, moved to London. William opened his in 1796 within Holyrood Abbey precinct and by 1808, had expanded his business. In 1818, he took Alexander Smith, Brewer and Superintendent of the brewery, into partnership. Around 1820, both his mother and brother died and William consolidated all the family breweries under the name William Younger & Co. He expanded further into the Canongate and in 1836, William’s son and Alexander Smith’s son, Andrew, became partners in the firm.

By the 1840s, the company was trading all over Scotland, and exporting to North and South America, India and Australia. Both William senior and Alexander Smith died in 1842, and Andrew and one of the Younger sons carried on the business.

In 1858, the company built the Holyrood Brewery, which ran between Canongate and Holyrood Road, and three years later opened a London office. Andrew Smith retired in 1869, leaving the day–to–day control to his son and two of the Younger family. By 1891 the company was producing 400,000 barrels of beer per year and by 1907, the brewery covered 27 acres and brewed a quarter of all the ale produced in Scotland.

The valuation record for 1855 shows that at that date the Dundas family still owned the house and leased it.

1849 – 1852 John Spence and Catherine (neé Parker) Ogilvy

John Spence Ogilvy was born in 1805, the son of David Ogilvy, a house decorator. John first worked in the Stamp Office (Inland Revenue) and after studying law was working as an accountant by 1836, having an office in George Street. He was a director of the Lancashire Insurance Company and a trustee of the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum. Opened in 1797, originally as a half-way house for women coming out of prison, the asylum very soon became one of many such institutions set up to ‘shelter and occupy in useful labour, those women who may be reclaimed from prostitution to the paths of virtue.’ The female inmates were kept in solitary confinement for the first three months ‘to eradicate the taint of moral contagion.’ Their heads were then shaved and they were admitted to the asylum. There are many accounts of ill-treatment, including beatings. These institutions continued into the 20th century, renamed Magdalene Laundries, and equally infamous.

John and Catherine married in 1841.

In 1852, they moved to Great King Street and in 1854, John was one of a small group of about fifteen men working as accountants who decided to form the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh. (Three other residents of Albany Street - James Dickson, John Ogilvy and Thomas Scott also were founding members). This was the first ever professional grouping of accountants and became the model for the chartered profession throughout the world. Fifty years later there was an event to mark the Society’s creation at which the Lord Advocate described the significant change: ‘There are probably few professions which can show a greater contrast between the present and the past….in the beginning of the 18th century accounting was practised by solicitors and other persons of integrity and position. In the last century as the complexity of business and trade increased, as the intricacy of modern finance grew, and especially owing to the great development of joint-stock companies, the demands made upon the skills of the professional accountants increased so their position was much advanced. Before the middle of the 19th century no standard of proficiency was required for an accountant. There was no settled form of training and anyone who pleased to call themselves an accountant could set up in business. It was in these circumstances, in this city of Edinburgh, that the accountants resolved to apply for a Charter in 1854. Since then the designation of Chartered Accountant has become well recognised and honoured all over the country, and in the colonies and wherever civilisation is known. The result is that all of us who are favoured to meet accountants – and happily or unhappily we lawyers have that fortune often – recognise them always to be men of capacity and skill, men of sterling integrity, men fitted to be what they are – honoured members of a learned profession.’

In 1856, the Ogilvys emigrated to Melbourne, Australia; perhaps because two of James’s brothers had moved there around 1840. There John established an accountancy practice. Later, he became a Commissioner of the Savings Banks in Victoria and Treasurer of the Old Colonists Association. He died 1871.

When they moved the house was advertised for sale at £2,400.

1852 - 1871 Lodgings

These were run by Jane Gow, a widow.

1855 Lodger - Hugh and Florence (neé Penney) Fraser

Hugh Fraser served in the Bengal Engineers, and, when staying here, had just been promoted Lieutenant-Colonel for his work in Burma. In the attack on Rangoon in 1852 he had been highly commended: ‘Major Fraser took the Ladders to the Stockade most gallantly, and alone mounted the defences of the enemy, where his example soon brought around him the storming party, which carried the Stockade; but at very severe loss on our part.' It is likely that he and his wife were lodging here for her birth. Florence gave birth to a daughter, also named Florence. They had two more children. Later, Hugh was Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces in India.

1856 Lodger - Corbet Charles Catty

Corbet Catty lodged here as he was a Lieutenant in the 5th regiment West York Militia, based in Leeds, and had come to Edinburgh to marry Caroline Gray, who lived with her widowed mother and sister in Regents Terrace.

Catty’s mother was Sophie Stacey who, in 1819, went on a grand tour of Europe with an older companion. When Sophie and her companion reached Florence they called on Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley who were living on the Via Valfonde, and decided to lodge at the same pensione. Mary Shelley was heavily pregnant and soon after their arrival gave birth to a son. Sophia is credited with suggesting he be named Florence, and he became Percy Florence. Over about two months the poet showed Sophia around the city while she would play the harp and sing his verses. When Sophia left Florence, Shelley gave her a notebook with a number of verses inside. They went to Rome where Sophia received a lengthy letter from Mary with the Ode to a Faded Violet inscribed on the back by Shelley. Shelley drowned two years later and they never met again. So later she married Lt James Patrick Catty of the Royal Engineers.

4 June 1856 was a special day in the Gray’s house as both the daughters were being married on that day. At this time most weddings took place in the house of the groom or the bride. Perhaps the brides-to-be, Caroline and Sarah, had purchased new clothes from Mr Green’s shop in Princes Street which advertised ‘Ladies Marriage Outfits’ and emphasised that in stock were recent purchases from London and Paris. No doubt everyone would have been up early to prepare, although the two sisters may have had little sleep given their shared anticipation.

The two husbands-to-be would also have been up early. The tradition of the time was for the bride to accompany her husband to his house for a wedding breakfast with friends following the marriage ceremony, and that was arranged to take place at Number 42. The other groom, Captain Francis Grove of the Royal Navy, was the son of the Groves who lived at Kincardine Castle in Perthshire, and it is likely that friends of the family would have lent their Edinburgh house for his wedding breakfast.

It seems certain that Corbet Catty’s mother and stepfather, and his sister and her recent husband, would have travelled to Edinburgh for the wedding. His elder brother, although serving in the army, certainly is recorded as attending. Corbet’s mother, Sophie, would have been recalling her two weddings. The first, to Corbet’s father who had died in 1839, had been an impressive event as following a stylish London wedding, the couple had been given a reception by Maria Fitzherbert, the secret wife of King George the Fourth. Sophie’s second marriage in 1840 to George Hammond had been a quieter affair.

The two young grooms made their way to Regent’s Terrace for the small family ceremony at which the Reverend Dr William Muir of St Stephen's Church joined Corbet and Caroline, and Francis and Sarah, in holy matrimony. Then, the two couples left for their respective wedding breakfasts. It not being far, and one hopes a fine June day, Corbet and Caroline may have walked together to Albany Street to enjoy their wedding breakfast with a small number of friends and relations.

1857 Lodger - Helena Saville Faucit, Lady Martin

1857 There is a letter written by the renowned English actress, Helen Saville Faucit, Lady Martin, from this address that shows that she lodged here while performing in Edinburgh. While the letter is dated February, it carries has no year, and as she performed in the city on a number of occasions, it cannot be said for certain when she lodged here. However, her letter, written to the theatre manager, John Coleman, in response to a proposal that she perform in Sheffield, says that as her engagements would keep her in Scotland for three weeks, travelling to Sheffield was too far out of her way, and would 'prove tiresome & expensive'. Thus it is clear she was to be in Edinburgh into March and it was in that month in 1857 that she played Imogen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline at the Theatre Royal. As the Theatre Royal was at the top of Broughton Street, lodging in Albany Street would have been convenient. Helen Faucit’s performances as Imogen were extremely popular, and she was considered the draw, the Theatre Royal’s play-bill for the 1857 Cymbeline featured her name above the play title, and in a larger font, and included the popular actress’s name three times in the poster.

Playing alongside her in that same performance , in the role of Pisanio, was ‘a tall, thin, angular nervous-looking young man’ who had recently joined the company. However, his nervousness swiftly dissipated as he performed and on declaiming the lines, ‘Hence vile instrument; Thou shalt not damn my hand’, he flung his sword with such power that the electrified audience burst into a round of applause. Faucit was impressed by the young actor and was helpful in his early career. The young actor’s name was Henry Irving and, forty years later, the now knighted, acclaimed actor created his own production of Cymbeline, with the celebrated actress, Helen Terry, performing alongside him.

At the 1861 census, in the house was Jane Gow and her daughter, Ellen; Ellen’s husband, Walter Jackson, a glass cutter; their new baby; Robert and Sophia Cumming, a landowner, and their three children; and three servants. In 1863 Ellen took over as lodging house keeper.

In the 1860s a number of births are recorded as taking place here: the wives of Captain Campbell of Fairfield, George Young, a merchant in Glasgow, Captain Nicol, East India Service and Commander James Grant of the Royal Navy all had their babies delivered in the house.

In 1871 the lodgings were being managed by Bertha Thompson, a widow. On the census date, her son, a bank clerk, her seventy six year old sister-in-law and a middle-aged nice were living with her. The boarders were sixteen year old Ian Carmichael from Hawick, attending school; Thomas Smith, a bank clerk; Thomas Campbell and George Emerson, medical students; Alexander Neill, a young member of the army medical staff; Archibald Walker, a clerk; and three students of the arts, John McLean, Robert Russell and Robert Wilson. The busy house was supported by three servants.