Number 54 - Information on residents
1820 – 1833 David Clyne
David Clyne was a solicitor (SSC) and, from 1819 to 1823, the Lyon Clerk and Keeper of the Records. Appointed by the Crown, the Lyon Clerk's duties include heraldic research, the preparation of papers, lectures and conducting and assisting with the preliminary business of application for a grant or matriculation of armorial bearings. This included scrutiny of documents supporting the application. As Keeper of the Records the duties included maintaining the records of the Court of the Lord Lyon, overseeing the preparation of documents, allowing inspection of the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland and other records, and issuing certified extracts when required.
He was a member of The Edinburgh Phrenological Society. A German physician, Franz Joseph Gall, introduced the idea of Phrenology during the end of the 18th Century, although then it was called ‘Cranioscopy’. His pupil, Johann Gasper Spurzheim, renamed it Phrenology and Gall and Spurzheim toured Europe lecturing on their new science, convinced they had found the key to understanding the mind. A lawyer, George Combe, heard Spurzheim lecture in Edinburgh and was quickly convinced of the science, so founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, the first and foremost phrenological group in Britain. The Society helped boost the subject’s popularity with large debates, and phrenology became hugely popular in the city in the 1820s. Phrenologists believed that the brain was the organ of the mind and that human behaviour could be usefully understood in neuropsychological rather than philosophical or religious terms.
On a visit to Edinburgh, Audubon, the well-known naturalist and bird artist, described having his personality assessed by Combe. ‘I reached Brown Square at 9, and breakfasted most heartily on mutton, ham and good coffee with George Combe. We proceeded upstairs into his sancto sanctorum. A beautiful silver box containing the instruments for measuring was opened. I was seated facing the light. Combe thrusting his fingers about my hair, began to search for miraculous bumps! My skull was measured as accurately as I measure the bill or legs of a new individual, and all was duly noted by a scribe. Then with the most exquisite sense of touch each protuberance was found, as numbered by the phrenologists, and also put down to their respective sizes. I was astounded when they both said that I must be a strong and constant lover and affectionate father, that I had great veneration for highly talented men, that I would have made a brave general, that music was not to be compared with painting in me, that I was extraordinarily generous, etc. Now I know all these to be facts, but how they discovered them to be so is quite a puzzle to me.’
At the meeting at which Clyne was elected a Councillor of the Society the minutes record that: ‘A cast of the head of Gesche Margarette Gottfried, executed at Bremen in 1830, for poisoning, during a course of nearly twenty years, upwards of fifteen individuals, mostly her nearest relations, was laid at the Society’s table’. The Society thanks were voted for this valuable donation. The society’s comparison detail of her head was titled, ‘The head of Gesche Margarethe Gottfried, a cruel and treacherous female.’ (photo)Phrenology’s claim to be scientific was mocked by many at the time, yet it had many strong supporters. One was Dr John Scott (Number 41), a surgeon and contributor to the Cyclopedia of Practical Surgery: ‘Your writer takes the liberty of communicating to his Lordship his thorough conviction of the truth of Phrenology. He has not passed a day for the last twenty years, without bestowing at least some thought upon it; and the vast number of facts which he has witnessed, without any certain exception as to any of the chief points, convince him that it is as real a science as Astronomy or Chemistry. Nor does he know any branch of science more important, as it is interwoven with morals, religion, government, education, and in short with everything that regards human or brute nature.’ Clyne died in 1833.
1833 – 1841 David Manson
David Manson, also a solicitor (SSC), had been the assistant to Clyne and he took over the house. He was a member of the Edinburgh Caithness Association. Manson was one of many signing a petition in 1841 against the censure and suspension of seven Ministers of the Presbytery of Strathbogie. See Religion. Manson moved to Moray Place.
1841 to 1844 Alexander and Mary (neé Haigh) Stevenson
Alexander Stevenson was the third solicitor (SSC) to live in the house. He also represented the Burgh of Inverkeithing at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
Stevenson was a member of the Caledonian Horticultural Society, which had been established in 1809 by a group of seventeen Edinburgh worthies who met at the Royal College of Physicians. The outcome of this meeting was the establishment of a Society for the ‘encouragement and improvement of the best fruit, the most choice flowers and most useful culinary vegetables.’ Edinburgh was in the throes of the building of the New Town, but by then only two of the gardens, St Andrew Square and Charlotte Square, were laid out.
The inspiration for the Society came from the Horticultural Society, founded in London five years earlier, and there were many links between the two societies. Sir Joseph Banks and Richard Salisbury, founders of the London Society, and Thomas Andrew Knight who was President of the London Society from 1811 until 1838, were honorary members from the outset. From the beginning the Society flourished, bringing together ‘skilful professional gardeners and zealous amateurs’, and the support of nurserymen and professional gardeners was very important. The initial subscription was one guinea a year for ordinary members, but noblemen or gentlemen were invited to join free as honorary members. By 1829, the membership numbered about 1,000. Many well-known figures of the City joined, among them the artist Henry Raeburn, judge Henry Cockburn and architect William Playfair, and there were strong links between the Society and the creation of the gardens of the Edinburgh New Town.
The Society was ambitious and the creation of a garden, first mooted in 1810, was a high priority. The garden was designed to provide advice on the best varieties and methods of cultivation, and to test, in local conditions, the many new plants arriving as a result of the travels of the plant hunters. The original proposal was for a site near Holyrood Palace, but in 1823 the Society took on the lease of ten acres of land in Inverleith, adjacent to the new site of the Botanic Garden, which was moving from the cramped quarters of its Leith Walk site. In 1825 William McNab, Curator of the Botanic Garden, drew up a plan for the new garden which included something for everyone: orchards, a lockable experimental garden, a culinarium where ‘new and or little known varieties of culinary vegetables will be fairly tried’, an area for growing stocks for grafting and budding, nurseries, a wall for the finer kind of fruit trees, a rosary and compartments for perennials and annuals. The plan was very largely executed and the garden was known as The Experimental Garden.
Donations of plants were received from all over the world, including fifty different types of strawberry sent by the London Horticultural Society. A cottage was built for the head gardener and James Barnett from the London Society’s Garden at Chiswick appointed. Many shows were held in the garden, usually with a military band and dancing, and for a time the shows became fashionable events, with beautifully dressed ladies arriving in carriages.
The Stevensons had seven children. The only information traced is for Alexander, the eldest son, who set up a stockbroking business but went bust in 1847.
1845 Mrs Littlejohn
Nothing traced.
1846 – 1847 Alexander and Elizabeth (neé Wood) Riddell
Alexander Oliver Riddell worked mainly as a civil engineer, although he also described himself as an Insurance Agent. In 1837, he was employed as the Assistant Engineer on the development of the Glasgow and Edinburgh railway, and gave evidence to the House of Commons Committee who were investigating problems with the railway line. Riddell was asked if he had surveyed the line himself. Riddell replied: ‘I surveyed from Glasgow to Castlecary, and again from Almond water to beyond Linlithgow, to Nicolton, two or three miles west of Linlithgow. About thirty miles.’ He then explained that while others had surveyed the rest he had checked their surveys. ‘Did you satisfy yourself of the accuracy?’ He replied yes.
In 1847, he was Deputy Chair of the company developing the Edinburgh and Bathgate railway line that had received its assent the year before. Yet in spite of his work with the new railway lines, or possibly as a result of unwise investments in them, in 1848 he was declared bankrupt. It may be why he had to leave Albany Street.
The eldest son, also Alexander Oliver, who had been born two years before they moved here, became a partner in Andrew Usher & Company, Brewers, and a JP in Edinburgh. He was later knighted, and lived with his wife Jane (Hornby) at Craiglockhart House.
Another son became secretary of the Roads and Bridges Department of Victoria in Australia and a third moved to South Africa.
1851 – 1897 George and Margaret (neé Anderson) Monro & James Monro
George Monro, a solicitor (SSC), bought the house. Some years earlier he was involved with the notorious Burke and Hare murders. Following one further murder they were apprehended. William Hare was granted immunity in return for testifying against Burke, who was found guilty and hung in January 1829. Although Hare was still in custody, he felt safe having been given immunity by informing on Burke. However, the mother of one of the victims, a teenager, James Wilson, brought a charge for civil damages for £500 against Hare for the murder of her son, and employed George Monro as her solicitor, funds having been raised from an incensed public. Hare was brought to court and Monro questioned him about the killing of James Wilson but Hare remained silent. Monro requested the court to keep Hare in prison as there was evidence that he would flee Scotland if released. Although this was done, the family realised that as Hare was penniless, continuing the costly action would be pointless and so they withdrew their complaint. Immediately, the authorities quietly released Hare and given the anger among many at his walking free, smuggled him on to a coach under the false name of Mr Black, and Hare disappeared from Scotland, never to be heard of again. George died in 1866 and his widow and their unmarried daughter, Margaret lived on in the house. There was another unmarried daughter, Penelope, who died in 1868. Mrs Monro died in 1888. There were three sons. but information has only been found two. George married Agnes Snodgrass and lived in Glasgow.
The eldest son, James, (photograph c. 1880s) was thirteen when the Monros moved to Albany Street. He was educated at Edinburgh and Berlin Universities. In 1857, he was successful in gaining a position in the legal branch of the Imperial Civil Service, the élite higher civil service of the British Empire in South Asia, through the newly instituted open competitive examination system. Introduced in 1855, this open examination system replaced the system whereby civil servants in India were nominated by directors of the East India Company. Initially, open competition diminished the Scottish contribution to the Indian administration. The earlier patronage recruits tended to look down on the generation of competition recruits as socially awkward successors, and used the derogatory label of ‘competition wallahs’ to describe them. The Times reported why the civil servants selected by examination were judged less merited: ‘first, that the physique and activity of the competition men are below the former standard; secondly, that their personal character is not equally calculated to impress the native mind; thirdly, that they are deficient in the social virtues of “gentlemen”.’
The examinations required special preparation and few Scots managed to gain admittance to the Indian Civil Service through this open route. That James did shows him to have been a gifted scholar.He was posted to Bengal and served as a magistrate and collector in Calcutta from 1864 to 1874, and then became a district judge. In 1863, he married Ruth Littlejohn, daughter of William Littlejohn, a banker from Aberdeen. In 1878, the lieutenant-governor of Bengal, Sir Ashley Eden, appointed him inspector-general of police in Bengal, and there he commanded a force of 20,000 men. He also displayed a capacity for detective work, and became ‘a veritable terror to the criminal classes.’ While on leave in Britain in 1884, Monro was appointed to take charge of the criminal investigation department (CID) of the Metropolitan Police. Monro's experience of tackling secret societies in Bengal was thought valuable as London was then the target of a Fenian dynamiting campaign. In 1885, he oversaw the arrest of the perpetrator of the Fenian explosion at the Tower of London, but complained that further investigations were hindered by the activities of the Dublin Castle ‘spymaster’, Edward Jenkinson, who ran an independent counter-Fenian operation using Irish officers in London. Monro alleged that Jenkinson withheld intelligence, and that some of the plotters were found to be in Jenkinson's pay. Monro's complaints led to Jenkinson's dismissal, leaving Monro to take charge of the newly constituted Metropolitan Police special branch, alongside his CID duties. He oversaw operations against the so-called Jubilee Plot against Queen Victoria in June 1887, and in the following year his detectives deterred Irish-Americans plotting in Paris to assassinate the Irish secretary, A. J. Balfour. Monro and Sir Charles Warren, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, did not see eye to eye and eventually Monro resigned. However, the Home Office gave him responsibility for special branch operations in the interim, and when Warren resigned a little later, Monro was appointed his successor. He was considered ‘the first trained police official’ to be Metropolitan Police commissioner. He took over after the last of the Jack the Ripper Whitechapel murders, but had to report: ‘regret that in spite of most strenuous efforts on the part of the police, the criminal has up till now remained undiscovered.’ He had many successes and it was he who named the force’s new headquarters on the Thames Embankment, New Scotland Yard. IN spite of his success, frustrations over the Government’s inability to improve the police’s pension rights and other issues brought his resignation, after just seventeen months as commissioner. While popular within the force, Monro was not viewed so favourably by some politicians.
When in India, Monro had been a member of the Church Missionary Society's committee, and after his resignation he and his family moved to Calcutta to carry out missionary work. He founded, and financed, the Ranaghat Medical Mission at a railway junction north of Calcutta, providing medical assistance on condition of attendance at religious services. With a Scottish staff of four men and eleven women, he made many converts among the Hindu and Muslim population. He returned to Britain in 1905, and lived latterly in Cheltenham, where he died in 1920.
Intriguingly, James Monro continues to live on in modern fiction. He appears as a character in the award winning graphic novels series, From Hell, written by the acclaimed British comic book writer Alan Moore and drawn by Eddie Campbell. Published in ten volumes between 1991 and 1996, the stories re-imagine the Ripper murders, and the series was rated number six in Rolling Stone Magazine‘s Best Non-Superhero Graphic Novels.
1897 – 1927 Jane Fortune (neé Penny) and her daughter, Alice Durie (neé Fortune) In 1838, Jane Penny was working as as servant for Miss Hannah Loraine at Number 43 and married Robert Fortune on 1 October 1838 (marriage certificate). Jane and Robert had both lived previously in Berwickshire and came from poor farming families. When Robert left school he started work as an apprentice gardener on the Berwickshire estate of George Kelloe, one of a number of estate owners at the time who were interested in all matters botanical, including particularly plant breeding and the introduction of new species. There Robert gained knowledge and expertise in botany.
When Robert and Jane (photo in later life with their children) married he had just got a job at Edinburgh's Botanic Garden working for the renowned botanist William McNab. Clearly his experience with new species impressed as in 1842 McNab recommended Robert for the post of Superintendent of the Hothouse Department of the Horticultural Society in Chiswick, London.
The following year he was appointed the Society’s Collector for China and set out on an expedition to that country ‘to collect seed and plants of an ornamental or useful kind not already cultivated in Great Britain and to obtain information upon Chinese gardening and agriculture together with the nature of the climate and its apparent influence of vegetation’. His first trip to China lasted three years. When he set out Fortune had no knowledge of Chinese and during the course of the tour was several times attacked by bandits and pirates. Additionally he had to battle against severe attacks of fever and tropical storms and typhoons. In spite of the Chinese authorities banned foreigners to travel any distance from the European treaty ports, by wearing Chinese clothes and shaving off his hair and growing a pony tail, Robert was able to travel to the forbidden City of Souchow. On his return from China in 1846 he was recommended to the position of curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden. His salary was £100, a house for himself and family plus coals and the right to cultivate vegetables along the river bank.
In 1848, he was commissioned by the East India Company to undertake another trip to China; this time specifically to collect tea plants for cultivation in the northern hills of India. The purchase of tea plants by Westerners was illegal as the Chinese authorities as they wished to protect their monopoly. To circumvent the Chinese restrictions, he again disguised himself as a Chinese merchant and thus travelled to areas of China that had seldom been visited by Europeans. There he gathered tea plants and seedlings in secret, and by pioneering the use of the Wardian Case, a miniature glasshouse for the safe transport of plants by sea, introduced 20,000 tea plants and seedlings to the Darjeeling region of India. He also took a group of trained Chinese tea workers to India help establish the tea plantations. Fortune wrote: ‘I do not know anything half so refreshing on a hot summer’s day as a cup of tea; I mean pure and genuine as the Chinese drink it, without sugar and milk, It is far better and much more refreshing that either wine or beer.’
Fortune introduced many trees, shrubs and flowers to the West, including the cumquat, and many varieties of tree peonies, azaleas and chrysanthemums. Ill-health plagued him for the last eighteen years of his life and Jane cared for him at their family home in London. there Robert died in 1880 aged 68.
Jane returned to Edinburgh with her daughter, Alice Durie, also now a widow, and purchased Number 54. One wonders at Jane's thoughts on returning to live in the street where she had once been a maid as a now respected and well-to-do owner of her own house. She lived here until her death, and Alice lived on in the house until 1927. Alice was the widow of John Durie who had died relatively young the year before she moved here with her mother. He had been the owner of Elphingstone Collieries, Tranent.
