Number 47 - Information on residents

1848 – 1851 Lady Anne Anstruther

No detail about Lady Anstruther (possibly of Balcaskie in Fife) except that James Young Simpson while living at Number 22 wrote in the mid-1840s: ‘Yesterday I had the honour of waiting professionally on severable Honourable Ladies, on the three daughters of the Lord President, on Lady Dundas, and in the evening on Lady Anstruther who had a nice little lively daughter after an hour or two of real suffering.’ This presumably was the birth of Lady Anstruther’s youngest daughter. In 1851 she was aged six, and with her nine-year-old sister was living here with her mother and being schooled at home by a governess.

1851 – 1863 Lodgings

Mr and Mrs Dangerfield moved their lodging house business here from Number 19.

1853 – 1855 Lodger - John Stewart Lyon of Kirkmichael, and Mary (neé Dickson) Lyon

The couple stayed here with their two children. Lyon had served in the Royal Dragoons and was a well-off landowner. In 1830, he had purchased the Kirkmichael Estate and commissioned the Edinburgh architect William Burn to design Kirkmichael House (seen here). In 1836, he married Mary, a Canadian heiress.

The couple had three sons and one daughter. One son, Thomas, was certainly at school in Edinburgh at this time and that may have been their reason for the Lyons requiring an Edinburgh base. Thomas became a merchant in Foochow in China. Their eldest son, George, served in the Royal Navy and later inherited the estate. No information known traced for the third son, Adam. Their daughter, Archange, married Captain John Pearson, an army officer who served in India.

In 1859, the lodgings advertised for ‘a good general servant, not under twenty.’ Later that year another advert appeared. ‘Stolen or strayed from 47 Albany Street on Saturday morning, a fawn coloured English Terrier pup, answers to the name of “Norad”. A handsome reward will be given for its return.’

By 1861 Mrs Guthrie was in charge of the lodgings. She was a widow and lived here with her four unmarried daughters and her son, Alexander, who was a solicitor. The lodgers at the 1861 census were Andrew Rutherford, an advocate; and Maria Brown, a widow of an army accountant, and her two unmarried daughters, both in their thirties.

In 1863 Mrs Guthrie moved her lodgings to Broughton Place.

In 1877, Robertson wrote to The Scotsman: ‘Regarding your paper’s remarks about the Navy, I recall some thoughts that ocurred to me a few years ago when I was harbour engineer for India and was cruising around the coasts of that country in various steamers. In the man-of-war of the past the sails, masts, and rigging might be called the engines of the ship; they were her only means of locomotion. Therefore the young officers were taught practical knowledge of all of this… Yet although steam has taken the place of the wind engine of the past, we still have midshipmen, leiutenants, etc though they no longer take charge of the engines of the ship as formerly. These officers do not amalgamate with, but rather look down on the real workers of the ship. But why should they? Is there anything more derogatory to an officer and a gentleman in knowing about the bolts, rivets, valves, etc than to a Nelson being aquainted with the ropes and sails of the past? Certainly not. The steam engine takes more brains than the wind engine, that is all. I believe the Navy will never be in a healthy state till all distictions in working duties are done away with. When that is made imperative, then the engineer officers of the future will be drawn from the same class as the engineers of the past.’ One rather suspects that he thought that such looking down on engineers was not just an issue for the Navy.

Their eldest son Francis became a solicitor and married Elizabeth Brown.

Lucy Robertson died in England in 1898. George may have retained the house and let it after they moved back South, as he was living here again in 1906 at his death.

1885 – 1896 George and Jane (neé Dudgeon) Tait

George Tate was a butcher. It is unclear if his wife died soon after they moved here as she is not listed in the 1891 census. George’s father, of the same name, was also a butcher (though described then as a flesher) but in 1844 became bankrupt.

George was Captain of Lothian Golf Club and President of Leith Caledonian Cricket Club. It is perhaps no coincidence that he was involved in both sports as prior to 1904, when golf ceased on the Links, golf and cricket were played in the same area. Thus, the cricketers had the unusual hazard of having to avoid the golf balls while they played. While they and their on-lookers, accepted this, on one occasion the cricketers and some 2,000 supporters chased the Edinburgh Rifle Volunteers away when they attempted to march across the cricket square.

At the 1891 census, Tait’s mother and widowed sister, Anne Hamilton, were living with him and his five teenage children, presumably to help following his wife’s death. Anne died in 1893, and Tait and his family moved to Abercromby Place in 1896.

Macknight had strong opinions, and these extended far beyond legal subjects. He was well-off through from buying and letting properties, and thus he spent the majority of his time attending a wide range of meetings where he ‘aired his views on social topics.’ The diversity of views on which he proffered an opinion is evidenced by the recurring mention of his name in newspaper reports: at a meeting of the United Liberal Association he argued for tenants’ rights; as a member of the City Parochial Board he objected to the idea of old age pensions as ‘compulsory provisions encouraged vice, imprudence, unthrift and every kind of wickedness’; at the Agricultural Society he commented on the cost of cheese, noting that due to unfair duties Scottish Cheddar cost more than English Cheddar; and he toasted the success of the Stewarton Bowling Club at its opening. Whether his interventions were always welcomed as positive contributions is less certain. In one account of a discussion, the reporter inserted ‘(Mr Macknight advocate – “no”) that suggests a passionate intervention, and another related that ‘the motion was adopted – Mr Macknight dissenting.’ He also may have, on occasion, extended the audience’s patience: ‘Macknight was here drawn up by a sharp cry of time, and the meeting rose at a late hour.’

In his earlier years, he had been a member of an Amateur Orchestral Society and was an excellent violin player. Thus he doubtless felt his view on the suggestion of introducing instrumental music into the services at St Mary’s Free Church in 1886 carried even greater credence: ‘an organ is always out of tune, and has the effect of killing the singing, and as a musical man (laughter) I object to its introduction. We are a well-sung congregation, and don’t need any so-called assistance. (Laughter) The organ came into the Christian Church through the influence of Popery. (Renewed laughter) First of all came the bishop, then the organ and next the Pope. (Continued laughter).’

This vociferous objection to Roman Catholicism is further reflected in an essay he wrote for a book published to celebrate the Ter-centenary of the Reformation in Scotland: ‘Whereby the priesthood is sent forth to corrupt, demoralise, and degrade a large portion of the people of Ireland, and to conspire and plot against the religion and liberties of Great Britain. Rome has ever been the enemy of the press and real popular education….The time is hastening for her final destruction. Witness Northern Italy, freed from papal despotism, and Sicily throwing off the yoke of the oppressor.’

Macknight was a keen huntsman. He kept his horse, a stallion named Rosinate, near to Albany Street - reputedly in a field near Pilrig - and was still riding with hounds into his late seventies. In his youth, it was said that he: ‘rode to hounds with considerable dash’, and at the Linlithgow and Stirlingshire Hunt he was described as: ‘a well - known character, nick-named "Paganini" in consequence of his skill in playing the violin, who, although noted for his parsimony, was undoubtedly a lover of the chase.’

While it was reported that in his youth, Macknight had been ‘one of the best dressed and smartest looking men in Modern Athens’, in his later years his dress sense and hygiene declined. A member of staff at the Advocates’ Library said that following a visit by Macknight, ‘the windows had to be opened, so strong the taint of the old clothes shop and stable did he leave behind whenever he went.’

As a landlord Macknight also had his failings. Perhaps his own disdain for washing was the reason for six of his houses being in a bad state of repair, with neither running water nor toilets. The city’s engineer’s demands that Macknight improve them went unheeded. One of his tenants, Jessie Morrison, sued him over the death of her husband, who had died from falling from the top step of the stairs leading up to their house, rented from Macknight. She claimed her husband’s death was due to the lack of a handrail and lighting on the stairs. Although Macknight countered that the deceased man had probably been drunk, the jury found in the favour of Mrs Morrison and awarded her £120 damages.

This was not Macknight’s first court appearance. That took place in 1885, when he appeared, aged around 70, accused of assaulting one of his employees, the sixteen-year-old Allan Ritchie, who was employed as a stable boy by Macknight. Ritchie told the court that Macknight had called him into the house and said he wished to examine his skin to see if he kept it clean. He instructed him to take down his trousers and when he did, Macknight knocked him down on to a chair, bound him and gave him five or six blows with a riding whip. Ritchie managed to escape into Albany Street and went to the police. When the police called, Macknight claimed that Ritchie had agreed to be flogged if he erred. At the trial the court heard from another boy called Heath who said that when Macknight employed him, he had agreed to sign an undertaking that if he offended, he would allow Macknight to flog him. He added that he was instructed by Macknight to go to Sunday School and on his return was, on a number of occasions, then flogged. Ritchie denied that he had ever agreed to any flogging and Macknight was fined £1 or ten days imprisonment. He paid the fine. Ritchie later brought an action of damages but Macknight settled out of court with a payment of £60.

A year later Macknight was back in court, accused of having assaulted another young man, Alexander Hutton, a tenant who had fallen behind in his rent. Macknight had asked Hutton to come to his Albany Street apartment. Hutton presumed it was to explain his failure to pay the rent, and so was surprised when, on his arrival, no mention was made of the rent. Instead, Macknight read Hutton passages from the bible – presumably including Proverbs 23.14, ‘Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell’ – as this was followed by: ‘a sort of moral homily, in which the importance of not spoiling the child by sparing the rod was dwelt on.’ Following this, Macknight took the young man into another room in the house, instructed him to take off his jacket, vest and trousers, bound him to a chair, and, with a small cane, whipped him on his legs and buttocks. The bewildered Hutton wrestled free of his bonds, quickly dressed and left, with Macknight shouting after him that we would feel the better for it afterwards. Not quite seeing the matter in this light, Hutton went straight to the police. When the police sought an explanation, Macknight said he had administered the punishment on scriptural authority. The police did not accept this defence. Nor did the Sheriff, who said he found the evidence extraordinary and wondered whether Macknight was ‘in a fit state of mind.’ Again, the elderly Macknight was found guilty, and as this was a second offence fined £2, or fifteen days in jail. And again Macknight paid the fine.

Later, there is an intriguing mention of a young man being arrested for sending threatening letters to Macknight seeking money, but no further information on this has been unearthed. It is hard not to leap to the conclusion that this may have had a link to Macknight’s bizarre need to punish young men with the cane. Following the second court case, one of the members of the Edinburgh City Parochial Board called for the resignation of Macknight on account of his ‘disgraceful conduct’, but as all members were up for re-election in a few months, other board members decided not to support the motion.

Around 1890, we have a glimpse of Macknight, aged about eighty, at home. George Fothergill, a British artist who painted hunting scenes (here The Ruby Hunt Club) and portraits for Vanity Fair, had been on a hunt in which Macknight had taken part. Intrigued by the sight of this very elderly man still riding with hounds, Fothergill visited Macknight to ask if he might paint his portrait. ‘The front door was opened, after I had rung several times, by a civil old housekeeper – the only servant. It was 11am and Mr Macknight was still reposing. “He has naethin in particular to get up for,” the housekeeper remarked. I was taken into the only room he occupied in the whole house – the large dining room on the left, where he fed, read, fiddled (he was a great violinist) and slept. He frequently went to bed in his day things, which saved him from washing…. The room had the appearance of something between an old clothes shop and a Dutch interior – his “wardrobe” scattered about on the backs of chairs and on the floor, and victuals, or what remained of them, books, papers, crockery, etc. all jumbled up together at the other end.’ Sadly, Alexander Macknight did not allow Fothergill to paint him.

Macknight died in 1899. When his house furniture was advertised for sale the list included a grand pianoforte, a number of violins, a mangle and an invalid carriage, but no riding crops or canes. His obituary glossed over his court appearances - and his nickname ‘Dirty’ - and simply noted: ‘Macknight was a well-known figure in the city and a bit of a character.’

1899 – 1904 The Edinburgh House of Rest

This was a Boarding house run by the Campbells who had five children. The 1901 census records that boarding there were a widow with private means, a retired teacher, a watch and jewellery salesman, a chemist, and a physician. Looking after the twelve residents were a cook and a maid. The Campbell’s advertised their lodgings as ‘a Christian resort’.