6 Albany Street
1898 – 1907 Apartments
These were run by Miss H Carlisle, Eliza Porteous and William Carlisle Baillie. Elizabeth and William were cousins, but it is not clear what Miss Carlisle’s relationship was to the other two. William was an artist (his painting of Fountain’s Abbey in Yorkshire) and gave drawing and painting classes.One of their lodgers was Jane Campbell, the widow of Archibald Campbell from Oban, and she died here in 1897. In 1907, William and his cousin Elizabeth sued a Mr and Mrs Tod. Their claim was that the Tods had destroyed the will of Henry Cheape Harrison. Harrison, a retired clergyman, who, with his wife, Jane, had lived in the apartments for a number of years. William and Elizabeth claimed that, following the death of Harrison’s wife in 1904, he had indicated that his revised will would leave them a provision for life. The claimants said they had seen Harrison’s will in his own handwriting shortly before his death. However, following Harrison’s death, Mrs Tod had taken all his papers away and the Tods denied that these had contained any will. Without clear evidence from the claimants that a will had been destroyed the case was deferred. When it reconvened at a later date, neither William nor Elizabeth attended and so their claim was dismissed.
From 1904 to 1907 they also ran Number 28 as apartments.
Around 1908 – 1910 the building was altered and moderinised into two office spaces and two flats.
1911 George Marr
George Marr was a solicitor and acted as the Edinburgh agent for Hughes & Young, patent agents.
1912 – 1938 Alexander and Margaret Galletly
Alexander Galletly was a solicitor and had practiced since 1895. His father, of the same name, was the first curator of the Royal Scottish Museum.
Galletly was an inveterate letter writer on diverse matters including the Government purchase of Scottish raspberries, unclaimed bank deposits, the Feudal Casualties (Scotland) Act, the Registration of Business Names Act, and the proposed Chair of German at Edinburgh University. One, complaining about his inability to get information from the Edinburgh Cable Company on the matter of whether or not the cars were supposed only to stop at designated stops ended: ‘Complains are neither fanciful nor isolated, but very real and very general, as I have discovered since the publication of my former letter.’
In another, in 1917, on the subject of whether Britain should retaliate by bombing Germany in response to German bombing raids, he wrote: ‘We read daily in the in the newspapers that in Germany the truth is being suppressed, and the real condition of matters concealed from the people. If, therefore, an incursion into the unprotected parts of that country of the aeroplanes of the British and their Allies would disabuse the minds of the people of Germany and assist, however little, to bring about an earlier termination of the war, in the name of Christianity and for the cause of humanity let it be made forthwith and without further protest.’
Alexander died in 1925. The Galletlys had three children. Their son, Charles, a Chartered Accountant, married Mary Hood, and their youngest daughter, Mary, married John Maxwell, whose father was proprietor of the Kirkubrightshire Advertiser.
Following their marriage, Charles and Mary lived in the flat with Mrs Galletly. They moved out about 1933 leaving Mrs Galletly living there. She died in 1938.
1912 – 1918 Office of Andrew McDougall
Andrew McDougall was a solicitor. He was a director with George Downie in a company called the Central and South American Land Produce Company and in 1913 they were jointly sued by Costa Rica merchants, Bremnes & Co., for failure to pay owed bills.
1917 – 1931 Ogston & Tennant
Richard Mitchell was the Manager of the Edinburgh office of Ogston & Tennant, an Aberdeen based company making soap and candles. The company was begun by Colonel James Ogston, known as ‘Soapy Ogston’. It was founded in 1802 and in 1892, merged with Glasgow based Charles Tennant to form Ogston and Tennant. In 1910, the company’s Aberdeen factory was destroyed by fire. Reports of the blaze mention machinery crashing through the floors. In need of funds, the company agreed to an association with Lever Brothers, becoming part of the Lever group until ceasing trading in the 1970s.
1918 – 1920 Office of Sir Thomas Hunter
Thomas Hunter (portrait by David Allison) was a solicitor (WS) and acted as the Town Clerk of Edinburgh for 23 years. In the 1890s, he was closely involved in the legal issues relating to the expansion of the railway line through Princes Street Gardens, and the Parliamentary Bill amalgamating Portobello into the city. His obituary said that ‘his manner of speech was both rapid and precise’ and that ‘He had no other hobby that his official work, as although he was a member of the Burgess Golf Club, he was not really a devotee of the game.’ He was knighted in 1911. He was unmarried. 1920 – 1950 Independent United Order of Scottish MechanicsThe Mechanics Society’s origins were closely related to freemasonry, but, in 1757, the Society broke away from other Masonic lodges. It then functioned as a type of mutual benefit society that also served ceremonial and friendship purposes. (Here an Independent United Order of Mechanics Apron, from around 1920). At the annual meeting of the Order in 1920, the Chairman unveiled the Roll of Honour for the war which contained the names of 166 members who had died. 1933 – 1937 Brodie & Hall Brodie & Hall were agents for Kelvinator Refridgerators. Kelvinator was founded in 1914, in Detroit, USA, and in 1926, Kelvinator England, was started in London. The British company developed from simply selling the products of the American factories to becoming a production company in Britain.
1936 – 1943 Office of John Armstrong & SonsArmstrongs were a firm of slaters and roughcasters. The company closed in 1943 and the contents of the business auctioned off, including a Morris truck.
1939 – 1951 Mrs Thomasina Murray
Nothing traced.
1952 – early 1970s McKenzie and Black Ltd
Wholesale and manufacturing opticians.
1979 to at least 1980 Aegis Insurance and Society of Civil Servants