1899 – 1907 William and Agnes McLeod
McLeod worked for the British Linen Bank at South Bridge. It appears that a William Gunn lent the McLeods the money to buy the house and, in 1919, when Gunn died, the McLeods were asked to repay the loan. For whatever reason they didn't and the house was sold to Dr John Jamieson, who may well already have been a tenant in the house.
1908 - 1909 Malcolm Mackenzie Charleson
The house was rented by Malcolm Mackenzie Charleson, a solictor. Before coming to Edinburgh he had been working in Stromness, Orkney, as the town's Burgh Fiscal. He also was a keen archaeologist, being president the Orkney Natural History Society. He was married to Agnes Dewar. They only lived in the house for a year or less. Perhaps this was related to a report that Malcolm had been due to appear in the Edinburgh Bankruptcy Court in October 1909 but had absconded and a warrant issued for his arrest. What became of him remains a mystery. Certainly he did not reappear in Albany Street.
The house remained empty for a couple of years but then, around 1912, was rented by Dr John Jamieson. In 1919 he bought the house for £500.
1912 – 1951 John and Emily (neé Mathieson) Jamieson & John and Stella Jamieson
John Jamieson graduated from Edinburgh University Medical School in 1901 and served as a civil surgeon in the Boer War. In World War One, he served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corp. He later practised as GP.
John and Emily had one son and twin daughters. Both the son, John, and one twin, Elizabeth, became doctors. Elizabeth married in 1938 and at the time was Deputy Medical Officer at Scarborough and her husband, Donald Cameron, worked for the war Department as Deputy Commander of the Royal Engineers in West Riding. The other twin, Jessie, married James Crawford. In 1944, while still serving as a Sergeant in the RAF, John married Stella Hill in Grahamstown, South Africa. Dr Jamieson senior died in 1941, and Emily in 1950. Their son, John, and his wife, Stella, lived in the house and, from 1951 to 1955, John continued to rent the ground floor as a waiting room and surgery for his medical practice.
1951 - 1955 Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society
The Society was established in 1905, with the aim of strengthening the profitability, competitiveness and sustainability of Scotland’s farming, food and drink, and related rural industries and communities. It is a cooperative owned by its member businesses. It continue to operate.
1955 – 2016 Edinburgh Spiritualist Society
In the book, Voices of Scottish Journalists: Recollections of 22 Scottish Journalists, Billy Munro recounts: ‘The Chief Reporter when I joined in 1933 was James Herries, who was a bright chap. He was an art critic and had many gifts, including the uncanny instinct for being in the right place at the right time – which he sometimes attributed to guidance from the spiritual world: he was in fact a spiritualist. We used to have to go down to the spiritualist society in Albany Street once a week to get a note of what the speaker there had been saying.’
James Herries was a defence witness in the 1944 trial of Helen Duncan. A reputed gifted psychic, Duncan was the last person to be tried and convicted of witchcraft. Born in Callander in 1897, Duncan was an overweight mother of six and sometime bleachworks employee, who between the wars travelled round Britain, attracting large audiences to her séances. In 1941, at a séance in Portsmouth, she alarmed the authorities by revealing the attacks on two British warships before their losses had been made public. Eventually the authorities decided to put her on trial. At the trial, Herries, who as well as being The Scotsman’s Chief reporter, was a Justice of the Peace, and a much respected psychic investigator, stated that he could confirm that Duncan’s powers were genuine as he had seen Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famed author of the Sherlock Holmes books, materialise at one of her séance’s. He had especially noted the distinctive Doyle rounded features, moustache and equally unmistakable gravelly voice. In spite of this, and other testimonies on her behalf, Duncan spent nine months in Holloway women’s prison, where, it was reputed, prison staff queued up for séances. An irate Winston Churchill demanded what the cost to the state had been of this ‘obsolete tomfoolery’, and another observer questioned the hypocrisy of paying the Archbishop of Canterbury £5,000 a year for interceding between God and man when a poor medium could be imprisoned for making a few shillings.