Number 52 - Information on residents

1819 – 1830 John Dinning

John Dinning was appointed as the solicitor to the Board of Customs and Excise in 1810. The chairman at the time was Edward Earl, whose office was at Number 2. Also working for the Customs Board as Secretary at this time were the Pemberton brothers who lived at Number 29. In 1824, Dinning’s salary was reported to be £300 a year, and he also earned money from seizure penalties and other fees which, in that year, amounted to an additional £821.

Like a number of other Albany Street residents he was a member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Established in 1780 to study ‘the Antiquities and History of Scotland, more especially by means of Archaeological Research’, it is the second-oldest in Britain after the Society of Antiquaries of London. It was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1783, on the same day as the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and initially both societies shared accommodation on George Street, and then in the Royal Institution building on The Mound. In 1891, the antiquaries moved into the purpose-built Scottish National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, located on Queen Street.

He moved to Lasswade. The 1855 valuation record shows that he still owned the house at that time and leased it. He died in 1859.

1831 – 1842 John Watson Gordon1831 - 1837 Henry George Watson

When John Watson Gordon [self-portrait] moved here, he was already one of Scotland’s leading portrait painters. He was born in 1788, the son of Captain James Watson of the Royal Artillery, and a second cousin to Sir Walter Scott on Scott's mother's side. He was initially expected to follow in his father's footsteps but on completing his schooling was too young to take up a cadetship in the Military Academy at Woolwich. As he showed a predilection for the arts, instead, he was enrolled in the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh where he received drawing lessons from a relation, the artist, John Graham. He received less formal tuition in painting from his uncle George Watson, a prominent portrait-painter, and from the successful painter, Sir Henry Raeburn, a family friend. He rapidly made such progress as to persuade his family to let him follow an artistic career.

In 1808, he exhibited The Lay of the Minstrel at the Lyceum Theatre in Nicolson Street – the first public exhibition of paintings in the city. While many of his early works were religious and genre pictures, from 1821 he concentrated on portraiture, and, following the death of Raeburn by whom he was deeply influenced, Graham became the leading portrait painter in Scotland. In 1826, he assumed the name Watson Gordon (sometimes hyphenated) in order to avoid confusion with his uncle and with his cousin William Stewart Watson, another distinguished Edinburgh-based painter. In the same year, he was a founding member of the Royal Scottish Academy, and displayed work at their annual exhibitions from 1830 until 1865. From 1827, he exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, achieving both critical and popular acclaim, and attracting many English sitters to his Edinburgh studio.

He was particularly successful in portraying the artists, literati, and intellectuals of his day, including Sir Walter Scott, the Prince of Wales, and Thomas De Quincey. David Cox, the landscape painter, chose to travel to Edinburgh to have his portrait executed by Watson Gordon, although he neither knew the painter personally nor had ever before visited Scotland.

A number of Albany Street residents had their portraits painted by him, including Alexander Brunton (Number 35) and Alexander Douglas (Number 40). One day when he was painting a portrait of another Albany Street resident, the Reverend William Cunningham (Number 16), he complained, ‘Doctor, I can’t make you out.’ A few minutes later a member of a group from Greenock arrived, having been told that Cunningham was at Watson Gordon’s York Place studio. The man had £50 to give to Cunningham for one of the Minister’s good causes. On receiving the money Cunningham’s face lit up and the painter exclaimed: ‘Now, Doctor, I have got you!’ So the expression on his face in the portrait is one of satisfaction.

In 1850, Gordon was knighted and appointed the Queen’s Limner. In 1581 the post of Court Painter was created and re-titled, Painter and Limner, in 1702. In 1860, Watson-Gordon enrolled in no. 1 City Artillery Volunteers; the volunteers being mainly artists. The volunteers had to learn ‘how to work a great gun mounted in their immediate neighbourhood.’ The unit’s first commander was Joseph Noel Paton whose painting, The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, hangs today in the National Gallery of Scotland.

Gordon died suddenly in Edinburgh in 1864. He never married. In his memory his brother, Henry, and sister, Frances, endowed the Watson-Gordon Professorship of Fine Art at Edinburgh University in 1879, the first chair in art history in Britain.

See also Painters and Photographers

1842 – 1853 Janet Dickson (neé Jobson) Janet Dickson was the widow of Reverend Dr David Dickson, the Junior. When her husband died she and her children had to leave the manse of St Cuthbert’s Parish Church in Edinburgh, where Dickson had been minister since 1803. Dickson was a reputed Hebrew scholar and was chosen to hold the service for Sir Walter Scott's funeral at Abbotsford. This splendid memorial was erected in his memory at St Cuthbert’s Church.

The Dicksons had seven children, but three died in infancy. The elder son, James Jobson Dickson, was an accountant, including acting as auditor of the Caledonian Insurance Company and the New Town Dispensary, and as Treasurer of the Baptist Home Missionary Society of Scotland. In 1854, he was one of a small group of about fifteen men working as accountants who had decided to form the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh. (Other Albany Street residents were also founding members, including James Dickson and Thomas Scott). 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.’

James was a member of the Royal Company of Archers and between 1857 and 1874 he won The Edinburgh Arrow, an annual archery competition, and the longest-running annual archery competition in the recorded history of the sport.

The other surviving son, Charles Dickson, was an advocate, and at this time both James and he worked from the house. For a time Charles was a lecturer and clearly extremely proficient as this report shows: ‘It was the unanimous opinion of those present that Mr Dickson's lecture was characterized by a deep and accurate knowledge of the principles of conveyancing, expressed in language at once clear, concise, and elegant; and that his appointment as Lecturer would have the effect of extending the utility of the Society's class as an efficient and practical course of lectures.’ After a year had passed the Society again expressed its appreciation of his lecturing skills and recommended that Dickson's lectures should be part of the curriculum of applicants for admission to their Societies. As a result the Faculty made attendance at the Society's Lectures equivalent to attendance at the University Course of Conveyancing. Unfortunately, by the time the decision was taken, Dickson had resigned his Lectureship, having been appointed Sheriff-Substitute of Forfarshire.

Nothing has been traced for the two daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth, except that they survived to 80 and 92.

The Dicksons moved to Clarendon Street.

1857 – 1863 Lodgings

The lodgings were run by Georgina Swan. Her seventy year old mother lived with her. The lodgers recorded at the 1861 census were two landowners Andrew Scott and Frances Fraser; and Anne Bander, a gentlewoman.

The house was then put on the market in 1861 at £1350, and eventually sold the next year for £100 less.