Number 51 - Information on residents
1818 – 1845 William and Helen Pringle
William Pringle was a Depute-Clerk of the Court of Session.
In 1826, economic problems and poor harvests led to a rise in unemployment and Pringle was a subscriber for the Relief of their Suffering Fellow Countrymen in the manufacturing Districts of Scotland. At the inaugural meeting the proposal stated: ‘The exemplary patience and resignation with which the distress of (the Workmen of Scotland) has been endured by the sufferers, their quiet, peaceable and orderly conduct under most trying circumstances, and the good sense and feelings of propriety and submission to law which that conduct evinces, given our suffering countrymen peculiar claims on the sympathy and benevolence of this country.’ One again senses a concern by those in power that the threat of revolution was still in the air.
William died in 1832, and Helen also had died by 1841. Their son, also William, and daughter, Helen, both lived in the house until moving to Scotland Street around 1844.
1845 – 1850 John and Catherine (neé Mackay) Brown
Dr John Brown (photo c.1860) and his wife, Catherine, moved here from London Street with their three children but, sadly, only one son survived to adulthood. His father and step-mother had lived at Number 53 a few years before. Brown was a physician and essayist. He served his apprenticeship with the surgeon James Syme, whom he referred to as ‘our greatest clinical teacher and wisest surgeon.’ Brown’s apprentice fee bought Syme’s first carriage, in which Brown was the first person to ride. Following this apprenticeship, Brown became an assistant to a surgeon at Chatham in Kent, at a time when tuberculosis, cholera, typhus, meningitis, measles, rubella and mumps were both common and deadly. Brown managed a severe outbreak of cholera in large, overcrowded prison hulks moored at Chatham.
On one of Charles Dickens's last visits to Scotland, Brown happened to meet him at a dinner. In the course of conversation, Dickens, who was a native of Rochester, near Chatham, said that the thing which had first given him a strongly favourable impression of the character of Scotsmen was what had occurred at Chatham in the year 1832, when the outbreak of cholera took place there. He told the dinner guests that there had been panic among the English doctors, and all had fled the town. However, a young Scotsman, an assistant to one of the doctors, stuck firmly to his duties and freely attended to every case he was called to. The young Scotsman that Dickens was referring to was no other than Brown who was sitting opposite the author and, on this coming to light, Dickens immediately went round the table to shake Brown's hand. Brown returned to Edinburgh from Kent, and soon built up a large practice, gaining a reputation as a highly sought-after diagnostician. In 1847, he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and for a while was Honorary Librarian. He held strong views on the inappropriateness of examinations to evaluate student progress, and was unimpressed by the view that scientific advances were in patients' best interests. He was a large, bluff, sociable man, and his homes were always a focus of the best of Edinburgh’s social and intellectual life.
Matthew Heddle, who became a renowned mineralogist and one of the founders of the Mineralogical Society, lived with the Browns for a time. His parents had died and when he was fourteen, Matthew was placed under the guardianship of William Fotheringham, Sheriff Clerk of Orkney, and John Brown had agreed to house the young boy while at school in Edinburgh. Heddle attributed much of his own love of natural history to the genial influence of Dr. Brown, who provided him with some of the paternal affection and guidance which he had been denied by the early death of his parents.
Brown was a great dog lover as is seen from his letters - see Dogs. Although Brown was a busy doctor he always found time for writing. Through his essays and books, he became a friend of many contemporary writers, including Ruskin, Thackeray and Mark Twain. His first writing was in response to a request for contributions about paintings exhibited by the Royal Scottish Academy. He wrote regularly about a wide range of subjects, and published a number of books. Brown’s love of dogs came to good use in his short story Rab and his Friends, his most popular book, and his most successful. The story begins with a fight between Rab, ‘a huge mastiff’ sheep dog, old, grey, brindled, as big as a Highland bull’ and a terrier, and ends with the faithful sheep dog's funeral.In 1851, the Browns moved to Rutland Street. In July 1873, Orion Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, and his wife, Mary, visited Edinburgh, and being fans of Brown’s book, Rab and His Friends, visited him at his Rutland Street house. Twain writes that for the next month Brown was the daily companion of his wife and young daughter and wrote: ‘Dr John was beloved by everybody in Edinburgh, everybody in Scotland, for that matter, and his story of Rab had won him a following throughout Christendom. He was an unpretentious sovereign. He was a friend of all dogs, and of all people. It has been told of him that once, when driving, he thrust his head suddenly out of the carriage window, then resumed his place with a disappointed look. “Who was it?” asked his companion. “Some one you know?” “No,” he said. “A dog I didn’t know.”’ When sailing back to America, Twain wrote to Brown: ‘We have plowed a long way over the sea, and there’s twenty-two hundred miles of restless water between us now. And yet you are so present with us, close to us, that a span and a whisper would bridge the distance.’
Catherine died in 1864, and from then until his death in 1882, Brown’s sister kept house for him.
See also Perambulations
The 1855 Valuation record states that the house was owned by Robert Ogilvie and leased.
1850 – 1852 Robert William and Margaret (neé Buchanan) Fraser
Robert William Fraser was the son of Captain Robert Fraser, sometime of the household of the Prince Regent. He married Margaret in 1828. Living in the house also was Robert’s sister, Mary. Mary did not marry until she was 56, becoming the second wife of William Cownie. In 1843, Robert became Minister of the parish of Burntisland, Fife, and a year later, was chosen to be minister of St John's Church, Edinburgh. He was a distinguished and popular preacher, and attracted a large congregation. Fraser wrote a number of books, including Moriah, or, Sketches of the Sacred Rites of Ancient Israel (1849), Turkey, Ancient and Modern: a History of the Ottoman Empire (1854) and Elements of Physical Science (1855). He edited, among other works, Ebb and Flow: the Curiosities and Marvels of the Seashore: a Book for Young People (1860) and The Seaside Naturalist (1868). He died in 1876. They had six children, two of whom died in infancy, and a daughter when only 16. Their eldest surviving son, Robert, followed his father into the ministry, becoming Minister of St Thomas’s in Leith. The eldest daughter, Margaret, married another Minister, Reverend Charles Macdonald , Minister of St Clement’s in Aberdeen.
1852 – 1872 William and Elizabeth (neé Wallace) Saunders William Saunders, a solicitor (SSC) moved here from Number 4. There he lived with his first wife, Marianne Milne, and they had six children. Marianne died and William moved here with his five small children. In 1858, he married Elizabeth, with whom he had a further four children. Saunders was a member of the Church Law Society, and on the committee of the Edinburgh Subscription Library. The library was founded in 1794; the main founder being the Reverend Dr Hall who went on to become the President of the Library. It opened because 'it was a matter of considerable difficulty to procure books of value, without an expense which few are able to bear'. The aim of the Library was to collect 'the most valuable books in miscellaneous literature' as well as 'the most eminent publications of the season'. When the Library was founded the entrance fee was £1.11s.6d and the annual subscription was 10s.6d. When a person paid the entrance fee they were given a share, which they could sell if the member no longer wished to use the Library, or it could be passed on to a descendant. When the Library first opened, the books were stored in the Session House of Rose Street Chapel, but by 1807 the Library could afford its own premises on South Bridge. The library included books by a number of Albany Street residents, including the fiction of Mary Brunton.
In 1872, Saunders was one of the hundred attending a dinner under the auspices of the High School Club in ‘honour of High School boys who have been abroad’. After dinner and ‘the usual loyal and patriotic toasts, Sir William Johnston allude briefly to the pleasant retrospect which he had of the time spent by him as head of the Council board. The Lord Provost, in replying, said that Sir William’s experience was unfortunately not his. (Laughter) Perhaps things had changed for the better, but he rather thought for the worse. (Laughter) He must say that he had found that in the Town Council there was anything but a soft seat for the man who presided there. (Laughter)’
Of the many children the ones 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.
The family moved on to Number 42, from 1872 to 1886. They then moved to Inverleith Terrace, and in 1904 William, their son, and his son, also William, moved back to Albany Street, taking Number 22, until 1923.
1872 – 1914 Apartments
These were managed by Mrs Cunningham. Three young ladies lived in one apartment and had their own lady maids. Mrs Simpson, a landowner, had another apartment and had her own ‘companion to do’. The other person living in the house was Jeannie Young, a music lecturer.
1894 Lodger - Dr W J Brock
Brock was the Medical Officer of Health Health for Mid-Lothian, West Lothian and Peebleshire. One issue he dealt with was the negative environmental impact of mining on the quality of river waters. In a number of rivers in the area fish stocks were almost completely wiped out. In 1892 Brock surveyed the Almond River and described the river’s extremely poor water quality: ‘The water along its whole course has an ochry colour. Fish cannot live in it. Horses, cattle and sheep drink sparingly of it, if at all, and for industrial purposes it is almost useless on account of its destructive effects upon boilers.’
While lodging here he was sued for wrongfully having closed down a restaurant in Pathhead.
He moved to Number 13.
In 1887 the apartments were taken over by two sisters in their 30’s, Jane and Maggie Bardner. At the 1901 census. living there were a typist, an army captain with his wife and daughter, and a Christian Science healer, Emily Mary Ramsay, author of Christian Science and its Discoverer.
