Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born on the 7th of June, 1868.
In the late 1890s, Glasgow School of Art was one of the leading art academies in Europe, with its reputation in architecture and the decorative arts at an all time high. That was primarily down to one talented man, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the celebrated architect, painter and designer. Rennie’s reputation quickly spread beyond his native city and he was regarded as one of the foremost British figures in the art nouveau movement, and as the principal exponent of the ‘Glasgow Style’. No, that’s not a contradiction in terms, despite what anyone from Edinburgh might say.
Few designers can claim to have created a unique and individual style that is so instantly recognisable. Charles Rennie Mackintosh is famous as a designer of chairs, but he was also an architect who designed schools, offices, churches, tearooms and homes. He was an interior designer and decorator, an exhibition designer, a designer of furniture, metalwork, textiles and stained glass and, in his latter years, a watercolourist. Without doubt, Mackintosh had a distinctive style. With a spirit of romanticism, he mixed together traditional Scottish forms, the English arts and crafts tradition, Art Nouveau, and simple styles reminiscent of Japanese, to produce his own unique brand of progressive modernism.
Mackintosh was born in the Townhead area of Glasgow on the 7th of June, 1868. Charlie was one of eleven children, and after his junior education at Reid’s Public School and Allan Glen’s Institution, he was apprenticed to a local architect, called John Hutchison. However, in 1889, he transferred to the larger, more established city practice of Honeyman and Keppie, where he later became a partner. In 1883, Mackintosh also enrolled for evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art, where he pursued various drawing programmes, under the watchful eye of the headmaster, Francis Newbery.
Mackintosh’s talents flourished and in the School’s library, he consulted the latest architecture and design journals, gaining an excellent knowledge of his contemporaries, both at home and abroad. He won numerous student prizes and competitions, including the prestigious Alexander Thomson Travelling Studentship, in 1890, which allowed him to undertake an architectural tour of Italy.
Mackintosh’s projects for Honeyman and Keppie during the early 1890s included his design for the Glasgow Herald Building, which incorporated cutting-edge technology, such as a hydro-pneumatic lift and fire-resistant diatomite concrete flooring. However, it was in 1896 that Mackintosh gained his most substantial commission, which was to prove to be his ‘Meisterwerk’. That was to design a new building for the Glasgow School of Art; his former school.
Significantly, the building was constructed in two distinct phases, due to a lack of money, between 1897-99 and 1907-09. Stylistically, the building was a combination of Scotland’s earlier baronial tradition and twentieth century materials and technology. The most dramatic interior was the new Library, which was a complex space of timber posts and beams, completed in 1909. Its construction drew upon traditional Japanese domestic interiors, but ultimately the building was an eclectic mix of styles and influences.
Mackintosh’s originality of style quickly gained him admirers in Germany and Austria, where he contributed to the 8th Vienna Secession. He also participated in international exhibitions in Turin and Moscow. In 1900, he famously entered an open competition to design ‘ein Haus eines Kunstfreundes’ (a house for an art lover), put forward by a German design journal, ‘Zeitschrift fur Innendekoration’. He didn’t win the competition, but his architectural designs were of such a high standard that they were later reproduced as a portfolio of prints. The following year, he designed a music room at Carl-Ludwigstrasse, in Vienna, for Fritz Warndorfer, a supporter of the Secession Movement and later of the ‘Wiener Werkstätte’.
Throughout his career Mackintosh relied on just a few patrons and supporters, one of these being the Glasgow businesswoman, Catherine Cranston. His series of tearoom interiors, which were designed and furnished between 1896 and 1917, provided him with a virtual freedom to experiment. Mackintosh was responsible for their ‘total design’ and provided the tearooms with furniture, including the famous and instantly recognisable high-back chairs, light fittings, wall decorations and even, equally recognisable to folks the world over, the cutlery. Miss Cranston’s Willow tea rooms were designed in 1903 and you can still visit them in Sauchiehall Street or you can book a table in the August 1997 recreation, in Buchanan Street.
Mackintosh often worked in partnership with his friend and colleague at Honeyman and Keppie, Herbert MacNair. Together with two fellow students from the Glasgow School of Art, the sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald, this artistic alliance became known as ‘The Four’. The group produced innovative, and at times controversial, graphics and decorative art designs, which made an important contribution to the development and recognition of what became known as the ‘Glasgow Style’.
Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald married in 1900, but they moved to London, in 1914, in search of the recognition Mackintosh felt he deserved. For some reason, perhaps because he demanded total control of both the interior and exterior design, he was never really commercially successful, despite his contemporary celebrity status. He was also reputedly obstinate and incapable of compromise. These days, Glasgow loves Charles Rennie Mackintosh – as it should.
In 1923, Mackintosh moved to Port Vendres in the south of France, where the last years of his life were spent painting. However, he died in London from cancer of the tongue, on the 10th of December, 1928.
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Monday, 6 June 2011
Thomas Blake Glover
Thomas Blake Glover was born on the 6th of June, 1838.
Thomas Blake Glover was the holder of the ‘Order of the Rising Sun’ and became known as the ‘Scottish Samurai’. Now, there’s an idea for a movie. Starring? Who do you think; Ewen Macgregor or Gerald Butler, perhaps? Glover became one of the first westerners to establish a business in Japan, where he was an entrepreneur, merchant and reformer. Glover was also an arms dealer, which would make that movie all the more innerestin’. He was involved in ship building and in procuring Japan’s first iron-clad warship. Today in Japan, Glover is widely remembered as one of the founding fathers of the modern industrial country. Interestingly enough, although it’s likely that most Japanese would recognise his name, few of his countrymen would. Glover’s name is synonymous with Japanese technology and the Mitsubishi Corporation, which he helped to found.
Thomas Blake Glover was born in Fraserburgh on the 6th of June, 1838, the fifth son of a family of seven boys and one girl. For the first six years of his life he lived at number 15 Commerce Street in Fraserburgh. The house no longer remains, because it was destroyed after a bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II, which was not the only time a bomb would feature in Glover’s story. In 1851, the Glovers moved to Bridge of Don.
After leaving school, Glover began working for a trading company and travelled the world. He visited Shanghai with his brother, in 1857, and in 1859, in the closing days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, he arrived in Nagasaki. At the time Glover arrived in Japan, it was widely viewed as a closed society where business was both difficult and dangerous for outsiders. Initially, he worked for the Scottish trading house and tea merchants, Jardine, Matheson & Co., and two years later set up his own independent trading company, the Glover Trading Company (Guraba-Shokai). He was clearly successful as a merchant, trading in weapons and ships in Japan during the 1860s, which was a politically unstable and particularly violent neuk of the world.
Glover’s trade in ships and arms led to his forming strong links with the former samurai clans, the Satsuma and Chôshu, helping them to overthrow their military leader, the Tokugawa Shogun. That action helped to restore the Meiji Emperor to his throne and earned Glover the nickname, ‘The Broch Samurai’ or ‘The Scottish Samurai’. In 1862, Glover was instrumental in sending youths from those samurai clans to study in Britain. Amongst those he sponsored was Hirobumi Ito, later to become the first Prime Minister of Japan.
In the early days of the Meiji Period, after the Restoration in 1868, Glover provided technical know-how for shipbuilding and mining in Japan, playing a key role in the industrialisation of Japan. He introduced a great deal of western technology ‘firsts’ to Japan. Glover owned the first mechanised coal mine, the Takashima Coal Mine and, in 1869, he constructed the first western-style shipyard in Japan, in an inlet of Nagasaki harbour. In 1865, Glover also introduced Japan’s first railway locomotive, the ‘Iron Duke’ and, not forgetting the economy of his native land, he also ordered three warships for the Japanese Navy from the shipyards of Alexander Hall & Company back in Aberdeen. One of these ships was the Jho Sho Maru (later called the Ryujo Maru), which was Japan’s first iron-clad warship.
Eventually, Glover overstretched himself and, in 1870, he became bankrupt. However, that didn’t hold him back for long and he went on to found a shipbuilding company, which later became the Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan, retaining Glover as a consultant. The great Mitsubishi yard, which dominates Nagasaki harbour today, was also the main reason for the United States targeting of the city with its atomic bomb. In case you’re not sure, that was the second bomb to feature in Glover’s story. Ironically, as you’ve just read, Glover’s main business was arms dealing and the selling of ships.
In an interesting side-bar to his life story, it is said that Glover’s Japanese wife Tsuru, whom he married in 1867, was the inspiration for ‘Madame Butterfly’, a story written by the American author, John Luther Long, and later turned into the famous opera by Puccini and first performed at the Scala, Milan, in 1904. Tsuru’s nickname was ‘Ochô-san’, from the butterfly motif on her kimono, hence the name of the popular opera heroine.
Glover himself became the most popular and famous foreigner in Japan and he was the first non-Japanese to be presented with the ‘Order of the Rising Sun’, one of the country’s top honours. To Japanese, this expatriate Scot remains the symbol of commercial involvement and enterprise. He was also a thirsty chiel and helped set up the Japan Brewery Company, later to become the Kirin Brewery Company.
In launching the Thomas Blake Glover Aberdeen Asset Management Scholarship Fund, in 2008, Lord Bruce, Honorary Patron of the Japan Society of Scotland, said, “Thomas Glover and his generation of Scots left an indelible mark on [a] formative period in Japanese history. The launch of the ‘Fund’ honours their role in the foundation of modern Japan… and [will] perpetuate that special relationship, which emerged from the first contact between our countries 150 years ago.”
Glover died in Tokyo, on the 13th of December, 1911. His ashes were later interred in the Sakamoto International Cemetery in Nagasaki, where his name is remembered in Glover House and Glover Garden. In an interesting postscript, Glover House on Minami Yamate overlooking Nagasaki Harbour, is the oldest western-style building in Japan, where recently the plaque on the wall was changed to describe him as a Scotsman, rather than English. Good grief!
Thomas Blake Glover was the holder of the ‘Order of the Rising Sun’ and became known as the ‘Scottish Samurai’. Now, there’s an idea for a movie. Starring? Who do you think; Ewen Macgregor or Gerald Butler, perhaps? Glover became one of the first westerners to establish a business in Japan, where he was an entrepreneur, merchant and reformer. Glover was also an arms dealer, which would make that movie all the more innerestin’. He was involved in ship building and in procuring Japan’s first iron-clad warship. Today in Japan, Glover is widely remembered as one of the founding fathers of the modern industrial country. Interestingly enough, although it’s likely that most Japanese would recognise his name, few of his countrymen would. Glover’s name is synonymous with Japanese technology and the Mitsubishi Corporation, which he helped to found.
Thomas Blake Glover was born in Fraserburgh on the 6th of June, 1838, the fifth son of a family of seven boys and one girl. For the first six years of his life he lived at number 15 Commerce Street in Fraserburgh. The house no longer remains, because it was destroyed after a bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II, which was not the only time a bomb would feature in Glover’s story. In 1851, the Glovers moved to Bridge of Don.
After leaving school, Glover began working for a trading company and travelled the world. He visited Shanghai with his brother, in 1857, and in 1859, in the closing days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, he arrived in Nagasaki. At the time Glover arrived in Japan, it was widely viewed as a closed society where business was both difficult and dangerous for outsiders. Initially, he worked for the Scottish trading house and tea merchants, Jardine, Matheson & Co., and two years later set up his own independent trading company, the Glover Trading Company (Guraba-Shokai). He was clearly successful as a merchant, trading in weapons and ships in Japan during the 1860s, which was a politically unstable and particularly violent neuk of the world.
Glover’s trade in ships and arms led to his forming strong links with the former samurai clans, the Satsuma and Chôshu, helping them to overthrow their military leader, the Tokugawa Shogun. That action helped to restore the Meiji Emperor to his throne and earned Glover the nickname, ‘The Broch Samurai’ or ‘The Scottish Samurai’. In 1862, Glover was instrumental in sending youths from those samurai clans to study in Britain. Amongst those he sponsored was Hirobumi Ito, later to become the first Prime Minister of Japan.
In the early days of the Meiji Period, after the Restoration in 1868, Glover provided technical know-how for shipbuilding and mining in Japan, playing a key role in the industrialisation of Japan. He introduced a great deal of western technology ‘firsts’ to Japan. Glover owned the first mechanised coal mine, the Takashima Coal Mine and, in 1869, he constructed the first western-style shipyard in Japan, in an inlet of Nagasaki harbour. In 1865, Glover also introduced Japan’s first railway locomotive, the ‘Iron Duke’ and, not forgetting the economy of his native land, he also ordered three warships for the Japanese Navy from the shipyards of Alexander Hall & Company back in Aberdeen. One of these ships was the Jho Sho Maru (later called the Ryujo Maru), which was Japan’s first iron-clad warship.
Eventually, Glover overstretched himself and, in 1870, he became bankrupt. However, that didn’t hold him back for long and he went on to found a shipbuilding company, which later became the Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan, retaining Glover as a consultant. The great Mitsubishi yard, which dominates Nagasaki harbour today, was also the main reason for the United States targeting of the city with its atomic bomb. In case you’re not sure, that was the second bomb to feature in Glover’s story. Ironically, as you’ve just read, Glover’s main business was arms dealing and the selling of ships.
In an interesting side-bar to his life story, it is said that Glover’s Japanese wife Tsuru, whom he married in 1867, was the inspiration for ‘Madame Butterfly’, a story written by the American author, John Luther Long, and later turned into the famous opera by Puccini and first performed at the Scala, Milan, in 1904. Tsuru’s nickname was ‘Ochô-san’, from the butterfly motif on her kimono, hence the name of the popular opera heroine.
Glover himself became the most popular and famous foreigner in Japan and he was the first non-Japanese to be presented with the ‘Order of the Rising Sun’, one of the country’s top honours. To Japanese, this expatriate Scot remains the symbol of commercial involvement and enterprise. He was also a thirsty chiel and helped set up the Japan Brewery Company, later to become the Kirin Brewery Company.
In launching the Thomas Blake Glover Aberdeen Asset Management Scholarship Fund, in 2008, Lord Bruce, Honorary Patron of the Japan Society of Scotland, said, “Thomas Glover and his generation of Scots left an indelible mark on [a] formative period in Japanese history. The launch of the ‘Fund’ honours their role in the foundation of modern Japan… and [will] perpetuate that special relationship, which emerged from the first contact between our countries 150 years ago.”
Glover died in Tokyo, on the 13th of December, 1911. His ashes were later interred in the Sakamoto International Cemetery in Nagasaki, where his name is remembered in Glover House and Glover Garden. In an interesting postscript, Glover House on Minami Yamate overlooking Nagasaki Harbour, is the oldest western-style building in Japan, where recently the plaque on the wall was changed to describe him as a Scotsman, rather than English. Good grief!
Sunday, 5 June 2011
Sir John Richardson
Sir John Richardson, surgeon, physician, sailor, explorer, navigator, natural historian, ichthyologist, and scholar died on the 5th of June, 1865.
Sir John Richardson took part in Sir John Franklin’s first two voyages to the Canadian Arctic and during those voyages, Richardson surveyed more of that wilderness than any other explorer. On Franklin’s first Arctic expedition, if it hadn’t been for the efforts of Richardson, the entire party would have perished. Later, accompanied by Dr. John Rae, who was yet another notable Scottish explorer, Richardson took command of an expedition to search for the unfortunate Franklin. It seems like John was a popular name for explorers. In any event, it wasn’t until Rae returned, in 1853, that the mystery of Franklin’s fate was solved, albeit leading to controversy and the denigration of Rae. Richardson is famous for his major work, ‘The Natural History of the Arctic Regions’, which established him as one of the foremost biologists of his time.
A true generalist, Richardson was also an expert in ichthyology and described forty-three still-accepted genera and over two hundred new species of fish. Ichthyology is the branch of scientific zoology that deals with the study of the physiology, history, economic importance, etc., of fishes. The word comes from the Ancient Greek for fish, which was (is) ‘ikthus’ and is made up of the prefix ‘ichthyo-’ and the suffix ‘-logy’, which originates in loanwords from Greek, typically via Latin or French and German, where the suffix is an integral part of the word loaned. Common examples today, where the suffix has come to represent a ‘branch of learning’ would be: astrology, from ‘astrologia’; insectology from ‘insectologie’; and terminology, from ‘Terminologie’.
John Richardson was born in Dumfries on the 5th of November, 1787, the eldest of twelve children. He attended Dumfries Grammar School with Robert Burns’ oldest son, whose father influenced John towards literary tastes that lasted all his life. When he was fourteen, he was apprenticed to his uncle, James Mundell, a surgeon in Dumfries, and later to Dr Samuel Shortridge. He attended the medical school of the University of Edinburgh, from 1801 to 1804, studying botany, geology, and Greek, in addition to the usual subjects of anatomy, chemistry, materia medica, and therapeutics.
From 1804 to 1806 Richardson was a house surgeon at the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, and in 1806–7 completed his qualification at Edinburgh. His teachers at Edinburgh included some famous figures in a period when its medicine was the model for the world. Upon obtaining his licence, Richardson joined the Royal Navy and went to London, where he became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. Richardson served on board six ships during the Napoleonic wars and saw action in the Baltic, off Portugal, in the Mediterranean, and off Africa. In 1814, he was appointed surgeon to the Royal Marines in North America.
After the War of 1812–14 Richardson went on half pay and returned to Edinburgh to complete his doctorate. Besides medical subjects, he took botany and mineralogy with Robert Jameson, the geologist. He graduated MD, in 1816, offering a thesis on yellow fever, and set up a practice in Leith. This wasn’t too successful, because of the post-war surplus of physicians.
Richardson took part in Sir John Franklin’s first two voyages to the Canadian Arctic. On the first expedition, between 1819 and 1822, he held the post of surgeon-naturalist-mineralogist. Travelling 1,350 miles in 1820, the group wintered at Fort Enterprise on Great Bear Lake, before continuing down the Coppermine River by canoe, in the summer of 1821, to reach the Arctic Ocean and subsequently, Melville Sound. On their return to Fort Enterprise they suffered from famine and cold, and would have perished except for the efforts of Richardson and a seaman called Hepburn. At one point, they existed for several weeks on lichen, which Richardson said was extremely nauseous and produced bowel complaints. One other significant event occurred when Richardson was compelled to execute a member of the party who had murdered midshipman Robert Hood. They were rescued by the Indian Akaitcho and made it to the Great Slave Lake by June 1822, having travelled some 5,550 miles, much of it through unexplored country.
In 1824, Richardson accompanied Franklin on his second Arctic expedition as surgeon, naturalist, and second in command. This time they wintered on Great Bear Lake and, in 1826, went to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Whilst Franklin explored the coast westward, Richardson, working in two boats with eleven men, mapped the coast eastward back to the Coppermine River, a journey of 900 miles. On his return Richardson wrote his major work ‘Fauna Borealis Americana’, or ‘The Natural History of the Arctic Regions’, which established him as one of the foremost biologists of his time.
Richardson went back to the Canadian Arctic in 1848, when he was 60 years old, in command of an expedition to search for Franklin, who had gone missing in search of the Northwest Passage. Accompanied by Dr. John Rae, Richardson travelled to Cape Kendall, abandoned the boats at Icy Cove and went overland to winter at Fort Confidence on Great Bear Lake. They never found Franklin, nor any trace of his ships. It wasn’t until Rae returned, in 1853, that the mystery of Franklin’s fate was solved. His ships, ‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’, had been crushed by the ice and he and his men had tried to return by foot, but ill-prepared for such a trek, they all perished.
Richardson was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1825 and was knighted in 1846. Apart from his explorations, Richardson spent most of his working life as Senior Physician at the Haslar Naval Hospital in Gosport. Although it was never formally organized, Sir John Richardson also belonged to a group of famous Arctic explorers, which came to be known as the ‘Arctic Committee’ (or the ‘Arctic Council’). Richardson advised Charles Darwin on matters of Arctic ecology and the taxonomy of Arctic animals and thus contributed to the early development of Darwin’s ideas. Richardson was also a friend of Florence Nightingale.
Richardson was also a key member of the Strickland Committee, which set the rules of zoological nomenclature. His name is perpetuated by numerous plants, fish, birds, and mammals, including Richardson’s ground squirrel, and by such geographical features as the Richardson Mountains, River, Lake and Bay in Canada. In 1855, Sir John Richardson retired to Grasmere, at Lancrigg, in the English Lakes, which is where he died ten years later on the 5th of June. He is buried at St Oswald’s Church in Grasmere.
Sir John Richardson took part in Sir John Franklin’s first two voyages to the Canadian Arctic and during those voyages, Richardson surveyed more of that wilderness than any other explorer. On Franklin’s first Arctic expedition, if it hadn’t been for the efforts of Richardson, the entire party would have perished. Later, accompanied by Dr. John Rae, who was yet another notable Scottish explorer, Richardson took command of an expedition to search for the unfortunate Franklin. It seems like John was a popular name for explorers. In any event, it wasn’t until Rae returned, in 1853, that the mystery of Franklin’s fate was solved, albeit leading to controversy and the denigration of Rae. Richardson is famous for his major work, ‘The Natural History of the Arctic Regions’, which established him as one of the foremost biologists of his time.
A true generalist, Richardson was also an expert in ichthyology and described forty-three still-accepted genera and over two hundred new species of fish. Ichthyology is the branch of scientific zoology that deals with the study of the physiology, history, economic importance, etc., of fishes. The word comes from the Ancient Greek for fish, which was (is) ‘ikthus’ and is made up of the prefix ‘ichthyo-’ and the suffix ‘-logy’, which originates in loanwords from Greek, typically via Latin or French and German, where the suffix is an integral part of the word loaned. Common examples today, where the suffix has come to represent a ‘branch of learning’ would be: astrology, from ‘astrologia’; insectology from ‘insectologie’; and terminology, from ‘Terminologie’.
John Richardson was born in Dumfries on the 5th of November, 1787, the eldest of twelve children. He attended Dumfries Grammar School with Robert Burns’ oldest son, whose father influenced John towards literary tastes that lasted all his life. When he was fourteen, he was apprenticed to his uncle, James Mundell, a surgeon in Dumfries, and later to Dr Samuel Shortridge. He attended the medical school of the University of Edinburgh, from 1801 to 1804, studying botany, geology, and Greek, in addition to the usual subjects of anatomy, chemistry, materia medica, and therapeutics.
From 1804 to 1806 Richardson was a house surgeon at the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, and in 1806–7 completed his qualification at Edinburgh. His teachers at Edinburgh included some famous figures in a period when its medicine was the model for the world. Upon obtaining his licence, Richardson joined the Royal Navy and went to London, where he became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. Richardson served on board six ships during the Napoleonic wars and saw action in the Baltic, off Portugal, in the Mediterranean, and off Africa. In 1814, he was appointed surgeon to the Royal Marines in North America.
After the War of 1812–14 Richardson went on half pay and returned to Edinburgh to complete his doctorate. Besides medical subjects, he took botany and mineralogy with Robert Jameson, the geologist. He graduated MD, in 1816, offering a thesis on yellow fever, and set up a practice in Leith. This wasn’t too successful, because of the post-war surplus of physicians.
Richardson took part in Sir John Franklin’s first two voyages to the Canadian Arctic. On the first expedition, between 1819 and 1822, he held the post of surgeon-naturalist-mineralogist. Travelling 1,350 miles in 1820, the group wintered at Fort Enterprise on Great Bear Lake, before continuing down the Coppermine River by canoe, in the summer of 1821, to reach the Arctic Ocean and subsequently, Melville Sound. On their return to Fort Enterprise they suffered from famine and cold, and would have perished except for the efforts of Richardson and a seaman called Hepburn. At one point, they existed for several weeks on lichen, which Richardson said was extremely nauseous and produced bowel complaints. One other significant event occurred when Richardson was compelled to execute a member of the party who had murdered midshipman Robert Hood. They were rescued by the Indian Akaitcho and made it to the Great Slave Lake by June 1822, having travelled some 5,550 miles, much of it through unexplored country.
In 1824, Richardson accompanied Franklin on his second Arctic expedition as surgeon, naturalist, and second in command. This time they wintered on Great Bear Lake and, in 1826, went to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. Whilst Franklin explored the coast westward, Richardson, working in two boats with eleven men, mapped the coast eastward back to the Coppermine River, a journey of 900 miles. On his return Richardson wrote his major work ‘Fauna Borealis Americana’, or ‘The Natural History of the Arctic Regions’, which established him as one of the foremost biologists of his time.
Richardson went back to the Canadian Arctic in 1848, when he was 60 years old, in command of an expedition to search for Franklin, who had gone missing in search of the Northwest Passage. Accompanied by Dr. John Rae, Richardson travelled to Cape Kendall, abandoned the boats at Icy Cove and went overland to winter at Fort Confidence on Great Bear Lake. They never found Franklin, nor any trace of his ships. It wasn’t until Rae returned, in 1853, that the mystery of Franklin’s fate was solved. His ships, ‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’, had been crushed by the ice and he and his men had tried to return by foot, but ill-prepared for such a trek, they all perished.
Richardson was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1825 and was knighted in 1846. Apart from his explorations, Richardson spent most of his working life as Senior Physician at the Haslar Naval Hospital in Gosport. Although it was never formally organized, Sir John Richardson also belonged to a group of famous Arctic explorers, which came to be known as the ‘Arctic Committee’ (or the ‘Arctic Council’). Richardson advised Charles Darwin on matters of Arctic ecology and the taxonomy of Arctic animals and thus contributed to the early development of Darwin’s ideas. Richardson was also a friend of Florence Nightingale.
Richardson was also a key member of the Strickland Committee, which set the rules of zoological nomenclature. His name is perpetuated by numerous plants, fish, birds, and mammals, including Richardson’s ground squirrel, and by such geographical features as the Richardson Mountains, River, Lake and Bay in Canada. In 1855, Sir John Richardson retired to Grasmere, at Lancrigg, in the English Lakes, which is where he died ten years later on the 5th of June. He is buried at St Oswald’s Church in Grasmere.
Saturday, 4 June 2011
The Merchant Maiden Hospital
The Merchant Maiden Hospital was founded by Mary Erskine on the 4th of June, 1694.
The name of the Merchant Maiden Hospital is a wee bit of a misnomer by modern interpretations of the word ‘hospital’. In fact, the role of the Hospital was the housing and education of women who had fallen upon hard times, rather than a place for curing the sick. The Merchant Maiden Hospital is now better known for what it later became; the Mary Erskine School. Named after its eponymous benefactor, the Hospital was founded in the Cowgate, in Edinburgh, by the philanthropist, Mary Erskine.
Born Mary Erskine, this interesting woman lived from 1629 until, unsurprisingly, her death, when she passed away on the 2nd of July, 1707. Mary had a home in a close off the High Street in Edinburgh, to the east of St Giles Cathedral and near to the Cowgate, which was then a fashionable suburb. In 1661, Mary married he first husband; a writer whose name was Robert Kennedy. ‘Mr Erskine’ died in 1671, leaving Mary with considerable debts, although she managed to pay those off through careful management. She was a canny wee creatur.
Then, on the 23rd of September 1675, Mary Erskine married her second husband, James Hair, in North Leith. They had a daughter named Eupheme. James Hair was a chemist or druggist in the parlance of the day and owned a chemist’s shop on the High Street. He was considerably younger than Mary Erskine, but he also died, in 1683. Mary was a tad unfortunate in some ways in her choice of husband. However, all was not doom and gloom if you like as by the contract of marriage, Mary Erskine inherited most of what belonged to her husband. It seems that this was not a large sum, but Mary used the money to set up a private bank, and built up a considerable fortune.
After being widowed for the second time, Mary established herself in business by letting out property she owned in Edinburgh. She was considerably financially astute and became a successful businesswoman and financier. She was also an upmarket moneylender or private banker, dealing with clients, including professionals and businessmen, and women seeking to carry on their husbands’ businesses after widowhood or establish businesses of their own. Thus, when she generously donated funds to help create the Maiden Hospital, she had survived two husbands and the loss of at least one fortune.
In 1694, Mary was approached by the Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh to help establish a hospital school in the Merchants’ Hall in Edinburgh's Cowgate. Mary Hair generously donated 10,000 merks for the foundation of the Merchant Maiden Hospital, which opened its doors on the 4th of June, 1694. The newly formed Company of Merchants of Edinburgh was the co-founder of the hospital, whose purpose was to be the housing and education of destitute daughters of decayed merchant burgesses of Scotland’s capital. It was in the Merchants’ Hall in the Cowgate that the first girls took up residence, in 1696.
Later, in 1704, Mary Erskine went on to found the Trades’ Maiden Hospital in Edinburgh, which was situated on the eastern side of Argyle Square. The book, ‘Old & New Edinburgh’, comments that “the hospital was intended for the daughters of decayed tradesmen and was a noble institution, founded in 1704, by the charitable Mrs. Mary Erskine, the liberal contributor to the Merchant Maiden Hospital [who] was a joint foundress of both.”
In 1706, after the Merchant Maiden Hospital had been in existence for ten years, Mary enabled the purchase of premises and land to allow the school to relocate and expand. With this second major donation from its benefactor, the school was able to purchase a house and garden-grounds outside the City wall, near Bristo Park. Upon Mary’s death, on the 2nd of July, in the following year, she left a large bequest of a further 4,000 merks to the Hospital School, retaining the right to appoint two members of the Erskine family as governors. And, in 1707, through one of the very last measures passed by the Scottish Parliament before its extinction, the foundation obtained statutory ratification.
Although the Merchant Maiden Hospital found a new home in Lauriston, in 1818, the essential foundation remained unchanged for 163 years after Mary Erskine’s death. The Merchant Company continued to administer the Hospital with great care and zeal. Britain, however, already lagged behind other states in its provision of mass education and a Royal Commission on Scottish education recommended that the benefits of educational trusts should be applied more widely. The Merchant Company took immediate advantage of this and the Merchant Maiden Hospital of 75 girls was re-founded as a day school and became, in 1870, the Edinburgh Educational Institution for Girls, with a population of 1200. In the following year the new school moved to Queen Street.
In 1889, the Edinburgh Educational Institution for Girls was renamed Edinburgh Ladies’ College and it rapidly became one of the famous schools of the day. Since 1944, on the 250th anniversary of Mary Erskine’s original foundation, the school has been known as The Mary Erskine School and currently caters for some 700 pupils. It is one of the oldest girls’ schools in the world.
The Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh, also known as the Merchant Company of Edinburgh or just the Merchant Company, is a livery company of the City of Edinburgh. It was originally founded in order to protect trading rights in the City and also carried out a significant amount of charitable and educational work. In keeping with its Guild origins, its members shared many common interests. The Merchant Company took an interest in the running of the City, covering such fields as taxation, postal services and the water supply. The Company was also involved in educational and charitable work. As it grew in importance and repute, charitable trusts were often left to the Company to be administered. In such a manner, the Company came to operate several hospital schools.
The name of the Merchant Maiden Hospital is a wee bit of a misnomer by modern interpretations of the word ‘hospital’. In fact, the role of the Hospital was the housing and education of women who had fallen upon hard times, rather than a place for curing the sick. The Merchant Maiden Hospital is now better known for what it later became; the Mary Erskine School. Named after its eponymous benefactor, the Hospital was founded in the Cowgate, in Edinburgh, by the philanthropist, Mary Erskine.
Born Mary Erskine, this interesting woman lived from 1629 until, unsurprisingly, her death, when she passed away on the 2nd of July, 1707. Mary had a home in a close off the High Street in Edinburgh, to the east of St Giles Cathedral and near to the Cowgate, which was then a fashionable suburb. In 1661, Mary married he first husband; a writer whose name was Robert Kennedy. ‘Mr Erskine’ died in 1671, leaving Mary with considerable debts, although she managed to pay those off through careful management. She was a canny wee creatur.
Then, on the 23rd of September 1675, Mary Erskine married her second husband, James Hair, in North Leith. They had a daughter named Eupheme. James Hair was a chemist or druggist in the parlance of the day and owned a chemist’s shop on the High Street. He was considerably younger than Mary Erskine, but he also died, in 1683. Mary was a tad unfortunate in some ways in her choice of husband. However, all was not doom and gloom if you like as by the contract of marriage, Mary Erskine inherited most of what belonged to her husband. It seems that this was not a large sum, but Mary used the money to set up a private bank, and built up a considerable fortune.
After being widowed for the second time, Mary established herself in business by letting out property she owned in Edinburgh. She was considerably financially astute and became a successful businesswoman and financier. She was also an upmarket moneylender or private banker, dealing with clients, including professionals and businessmen, and women seeking to carry on their husbands’ businesses after widowhood or establish businesses of their own. Thus, when she generously donated funds to help create the Maiden Hospital, she had survived two husbands and the loss of at least one fortune.
In 1694, Mary was approached by the Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh to help establish a hospital school in the Merchants’ Hall in Edinburgh's Cowgate. Mary Hair generously donated 10,000 merks for the foundation of the Merchant Maiden Hospital, which opened its doors on the 4th of June, 1694. The newly formed Company of Merchants of Edinburgh was the co-founder of the hospital, whose purpose was to be the housing and education of destitute daughters of decayed merchant burgesses of Scotland’s capital. It was in the Merchants’ Hall in the Cowgate that the first girls took up residence, in 1696.
Later, in 1704, Mary Erskine went on to found the Trades’ Maiden Hospital in Edinburgh, which was situated on the eastern side of Argyle Square. The book, ‘Old & New Edinburgh’, comments that “the hospital was intended for the daughters of decayed tradesmen and was a noble institution, founded in 1704, by the charitable Mrs. Mary Erskine, the liberal contributor to the Merchant Maiden Hospital [who] was a joint foundress of both.”
In 1706, after the Merchant Maiden Hospital had been in existence for ten years, Mary enabled the purchase of premises and land to allow the school to relocate and expand. With this second major donation from its benefactor, the school was able to purchase a house and garden-grounds outside the City wall, near Bristo Park. Upon Mary’s death, on the 2nd of July, in the following year, she left a large bequest of a further 4,000 merks to the Hospital School, retaining the right to appoint two members of the Erskine family as governors. And, in 1707, through one of the very last measures passed by the Scottish Parliament before its extinction, the foundation obtained statutory ratification.
Although the Merchant Maiden Hospital found a new home in Lauriston, in 1818, the essential foundation remained unchanged for 163 years after Mary Erskine’s death. The Merchant Company continued to administer the Hospital with great care and zeal. Britain, however, already lagged behind other states in its provision of mass education and a Royal Commission on Scottish education recommended that the benefits of educational trusts should be applied more widely. The Merchant Company took immediate advantage of this and the Merchant Maiden Hospital of 75 girls was re-founded as a day school and became, in 1870, the Edinburgh Educational Institution for Girls, with a population of 1200. In the following year the new school moved to Queen Street.
In 1889, the Edinburgh Educational Institution for Girls was renamed Edinburgh Ladies’ College and it rapidly became one of the famous schools of the day. Since 1944, on the 250th anniversary of Mary Erskine’s original foundation, the school has been known as The Mary Erskine School and currently caters for some 700 pupils. It is one of the oldest girls’ schools in the world.
The Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh, also known as the Merchant Company of Edinburgh or just the Merchant Company, is a livery company of the City of Edinburgh. It was originally founded in order to protect trading rights in the City and also carried out a significant amount of charitable and educational work. In keeping with its Guild origins, its members shared many common interests. The Merchant Company took an interest in the running of the City, covering such fields as taxation, postal services and the water supply. The Company was also involved in educational and charitable work. As it grew in importance and repute, charitable trusts were often left to the Company to be administered. In such a manner, the Company came to operate several hospital schools.
Friday, 3 June 2011
James Thomson
The poet James Thomson died on the 3rd of June, 1882.
James Thomson was a Scottish poet who was known as the ‘poet of doom’ and may have been the man who coined the phrase, “We’re doomed!” Of course, that expression was made popular, very much later, by Private Fraser of ‘Dad’s Army’ fame. James Thomson wrote under the pen-name ‘Bysshe Vanolis’ or ‘BV’. The pseudonym ‘BV’ was used to distinguish him from another James Thomson; the fellow Scot who wrote ‘Rule Britannia’. Thomson’s short life can be loosely compared to that of Edgar Allan Poe. There are similarities in that Thomson is most remembered for his scenes of horror and, like Poe, he suffered from a melancholy resulting from the early death of a lover, and he also died in middle age as a result of substance abuse.
Thomson’s most famous work is the somberly intense epic, ‘The City of Dreadful Night’, which is very much an expression of bleak pessimism in a de-humanised, uncaring, urban environment. ‘The City of Dreadful Night’ was inspired by Thomson’s own experiences whilst living in London, where he was raised as an orphan in an asylum. It was fuelled by his melancholy and driven by his insomnia as Thomson wandered the fog-bound streets at night, lonely as a shadow. Apart from the fog, London hasn’t changed much.
James Thomson was born in Port-Glasgow, Renfrewshire, on the 23rd of November, 1834. On the death of his mother when he was seven James was sent to the Caledonian Orphan Asylum. Then, in 1850, he went to the model school of the Military Asylum, in Chelsea. From there, he became an assistant army schoolmaster at the garrison in Ballincollig, near Cork, in Ireland. It was whilst there that he encountered the one brief happiness of his life, when he met the armourer’s daughter, who was a girl of exceptional beauty and a cultivated mind. They fell in love. Two years later he received the tragic news of her fatal illness and death; in truth, a blow from which he never recovered. Thereafter, his life was one of gloom and doom, misery and disappointment.
Thomson’s earliest publication was in Tait’s ‘Edinburgh Magazine’ of July, 1858, under the signature ‘Crepusculus’. Later his work appeared in the ‘National Reformer’, including, in 1863, the powerful and sonorous verses of ‘To our Ladies of Death’ and, in 1874, after four years in gestation, his chief work, the sombre and ultra-imaginative ‘City of Dreadful Night’. That can be considered a precursor to both T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ and to some extent, the more recent ‘Lanark’, by another Scot, Alasdair Gray. The landscape of the ‘City’ in Thomson’s poem, which is not identified, appears as a projection of the unconscious mind. Its de-humanised population consists of phantoms and outcasts, such as drunks and tramps who wear “tragic masks of stone.” The only thing offered in this existence is “the certitude of Death.” In Thomson’s imaginary realm, there are no joys or blessings, only the stark reality and grim necessity of living, before the arrival of death brings a blessed oblivion, without fear of waking.
The poem is filled with wonderfully dark images and characters, such as the atheist preacher who brings the news that there is no God…
“The man speaks sooth, alas! The man speaks sooth:
We have no personal life beyond the grave;
There is no God; Fate knows nor wrath nor ruth:
Can I find here the comfort which I crave?”
From 1866, to the end of his life, except for two short trips abroad, Thomson lived in a single room, first in Pimlico and then in Bloomsbury. He became an alchoholic, which was aggravated by his gloomy nature, but perhaps the attacks of delirium tremens helped create his most vivid poetic imagery. In 1869, ‘Fraser’s Magazine’ published his long poem (most of them were long – check out the ‘City of Dreadful Night’), ‘Sunday up the River’, on the advice of Charles Kingsley.
In 1872, Thomson went to America and in the following year he ended up in Spain, for a couple of months, under a commission from the ‘New York World’ as its special correspondent with the ‘Carlists’, during which he saw little real fighting. His best-known book, ‘The City of Dreadful Night, and other Poems’, was published in April, 1880, and at once attracted wide attention. He then produced ‘Vane’s Story, and other Poems’, and ‘Essays and Phantasies’. All of his best work was produced between the years of 1855 and 1875.
According to poetry snobs, Thomson holds such a unique position as a poet that any effort at classification is difficult. He did produce some lighter work, such as ‘Sunday up the River’ and ‘Sunday at Hampstead’, but these are considered “less interesting.” Perhaps, his major poems can be compared to those of Thomas De Quincey, the author of ‘Suspiria de Profundis’, which is a collection of short essays in psychological or prose fantasy. The pessimistic nature of Thomson’s output wasn’t a literary affectation, nor was it assumed, it stemmed from the man and much of his revelations were, like the poem ‘Insomnia’, distinctly biographical.
James Thomson died at University College Hospital, in Gower Street, on the 3rd of June, 1882, and he was buried in unconsecrated ground at Highgate cemetery.
As another example of Thomson’s work, here’s a verse I like from ‘A Polish Insurgent’…
“They do not know us, my Mother!
They know not our love, our hate!
And how we would die with each other,
Embracing proud and elate,
Rather than live apart
In peace with shame in the heart.”
James Thomson was a Scottish poet who was known as the ‘poet of doom’ and may have been the man who coined the phrase, “We’re doomed!” Of course, that expression was made popular, very much later, by Private Fraser of ‘Dad’s Army’ fame. James Thomson wrote under the pen-name ‘Bysshe Vanolis’ or ‘BV’. The pseudonym ‘BV’ was used to distinguish him from another James Thomson; the fellow Scot who wrote ‘Rule Britannia’. Thomson’s short life can be loosely compared to that of Edgar Allan Poe. There are similarities in that Thomson is most remembered for his scenes of horror and, like Poe, he suffered from a melancholy resulting from the early death of a lover, and he also died in middle age as a result of substance abuse.
Thomson’s most famous work is the somberly intense epic, ‘The City of Dreadful Night’, which is very much an expression of bleak pessimism in a de-humanised, uncaring, urban environment. ‘The City of Dreadful Night’ was inspired by Thomson’s own experiences whilst living in London, where he was raised as an orphan in an asylum. It was fuelled by his melancholy and driven by his insomnia as Thomson wandered the fog-bound streets at night, lonely as a shadow. Apart from the fog, London hasn’t changed much.
James Thomson was born in Port-Glasgow, Renfrewshire, on the 23rd of November, 1834. On the death of his mother when he was seven James was sent to the Caledonian Orphan Asylum. Then, in 1850, he went to the model school of the Military Asylum, in Chelsea. From there, he became an assistant army schoolmaster at the garrison in Ballincollig, near Cork, in Ireland. It was whilst there that he encountered the one brief happiness of his life, when he met the armourer’s daughter, who was a girl of exceptional beauty and a cultivated mind. They fell in love. Two years later he received the tragic news of her fatal illness and death; in truth, a blow from which he never recovered. Thereafter, his life was one of gloom and doom, misery and disappointment.
Thomson’s earliest publication was in Tait’s ‘Edinburgh Magazine’ of July, 1858, under the signature ‘Crepusculus’. Later his work appeared in the ‘National Reformer’, including, in 1863, the powerful and sonorous verses of ‘To our Ladies of Death’ and, in 1874, after four years in gestation, his chief work, the sombre and ultra-imaginative ‘City of Dreadful Night’. That can be considered a precursor to both T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ and to some extent, the more recent ‘Lanark’, by another Scot, Alasdair Gray. The landscape of the ‘City’ in Thomson’s poem, which is not identified, appears as a projection of the unconscious mind. Its de-humanised population consists of phantoms and outcasts, such as drunks and tramps who wear “tragic masks of stone.” The only thing offered in this existence is “the certitude of Death.” In Thomson’s imaginary realm, there are no joys or blessings, only the stark reality and grim necessity of living, before the arrival of death brings a blessed oblivion, without fear of waking.
The poem is filled with wonderfully dark images and characters, such as the atheist preacher who brings the news that there is no God…
“The man speaks sooth, alas! The man speaks sooth:
We have no personal life beyond the grave;
There is no God; Fate knows nor wrath nor ruth:
Can I find here the comfort which I crave?”
From 1866, to the end of his life, except for two short trips abroad, Thomson lived in a single room, first in Pimlico and then in Bloomsbury. He became an alchoholic, which was aggravated by his gloomy nature, but perhaps the attacks of delirium tremens helped create his most vivid poetic imagery. In 1869, ‘Fraser’s Magazine’ published his long poem (most of them were long – check out the ‘City of Dreadful Night’), ‘Sunday up the River’, on the advice of Charles Kingsley.
In 1872, Thomson went to America and in the following year he ended up in Spain, for a couple of months, under a commission from the ‘New York World’ as its special correspondent with the ‘Carlists’, during which he saw little real fighting. His best-known book, ‘The City of Dreadful Night, and other Poems’, was published in April, 1880, and at once attracted wide attention. He then produced ‘Vane’s Story, and other Poems’, and ‘Essays and Phantasies’. All of his best work was produced between the years of 1855 and 1875.
According to poetry snobs, Thomson holds such a unique position as a poet that any effort at classification is difficult. He did produce some lighter work, such as ‘Sunday up the River’ and ‘Sunday at Hampstead’, but these are considered “less interesting.” Perhaps, his major poems can be compared to those of Thomas De Quincey, the author of ‘Suspiria de Profundis’, which is a collection of short essays in psychological or prose fantasy. The pessimistic nature of Thomson’s output wasn’t a literary affectation, nor was it assumed, it stemmed from the man and much of his revelations were, like the poem ‘Insomnia’, distinctly biographical.
James Thomson died at University College Hospital, in Gower Street, on the 3rd of June, 1882, and he was buried in unconsecrated ground at Highgate cemetery.
As another example of Thomson’s work, here’s a verse I like from ‘A Polish Insurgent’…
“They do not know us, my Mother!
They know not our love, our hate!
And how we would die with each other,
Embracing proud and elate,
Rather than live apart
In peace with shame in the heart.”
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Professor Sir William Boog Leishman
Major-General and Professor Sir William Boog Leishman, pathologist and bacteriologist, died on the 2nd of June, 1926.
Lieutenant-General Sir William Boog Leishman was Director-General of Army Medical Services, from 1923 to 1926, and is noted for his discovery of the protozoan parasite responsible for ‘dumdum fever’, ‘kala-azar’ or ‘black fever’ and now known as ‘visceral leishmaniasis’. He also developed the clinical technique known as the ‘Leishman stain’, which is still used today to detect protozoan parasites such as plasmodium, which are the cause of malaria. Amongst his many accolades, Leishman is noted for his work in improving the typhoid vaccine; a significant activity that contributed to the wellbeing of many soldiers in the First World War.
It may be an understatement to suggest that Boog is an uncommon name as ‘YeahBaby.com’ doesn’t list ‘Boog’ in the more than 26,500 baby names in its database of popularity. However, as that only goes back to 1990, perhaps it’s not the best source. In contrast, you’ll find 15,440,648 entries for ‘Boog’ – both given name and surname – at ‘Ancestry.co.uk’. Boog, recorded variously as Boag, Boage, Boig, Bog and Boog, is a Scottish surname of some antiquity, according to the Internet Surname Database at ‘surnamedb.com’. Its origins may be locational and as ‘Bog’, the name appears fairly frequently in 17th Century Berwickshire. There was a priest called Edward Bog at St Andrews in 1505 and a George Bog held the position of ‘Master of the Queen’s beer celler’ in 1563. According to the ‘Urban dictionary’, Boog means: an enigma, one that cannot be defined; awe-inspiring; impressive. Guess that’s good enough.
William Leishman was born in Glasgow, on the 6th of November 1865 and followed his father into Medicine. After attending Westminster School, in London, Wullie went to the University of Glasgow, in 1880, presenting himself as fifteen in order to be accepted, to study Greek, Latin and Mathematics. The following year, when he was really fifteen, he signed up for Professor John Veitch’s Logic class. Then, in 1883, he enrolled for Medical Faculty classes in Anatomy, Zoology and Chemistry. Three years later, despite his being too young to graduate, the Faculty approved his taking Finals. Leishman had to wait until the November to graduate as medical students could not graduate until they were twenty-one. William Boog Leishman, graduated MB CM near the top of his class, with a ‘High Commendation’.
After the delay in graduating, William was raring to go and took a commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Three years later, he was posted to India to receive his baptism of fire in a punitive military expedition to Waziristan on the frontier. It was there he began his lifelong research into microbiology and developed an interest in ‘kala azar’ with which his name is permanently associated. He identified its causative parasite whilst Assistant Professor of Pathology at the Army Medical School at Netley, in 1900.
Unfortunately, he delayed publication until 1903 and was forced to share his discovery with Charles Donovan. The ovoid bodies he discovered came to be known as ‘Leishman-Donovan’ bodies (‘Leishmania donovani’). The disease is now known as ‘visceral leishmaniasis’ and remains a killer in parts of Africa and India. During this time, Leishman also developed a modification of ‘Romanowsky’s stain’, which is still in use today; known as ‘Leishman’s stain’. This is a method of staining blood, using a compound of methylene blue and eosin, which makes it easier to detect such protozoan parasites as ‘Plasmodium’ (malaria).
By January 1914, Leishman was a very distinguished doctor, having been knighted, in 1909. However, his greatest accolades were yet to come. From the turn of the century, Leishman worked for the best part of a decade to improve the typhoid vaccine developed by Sir Almroth Wright, in 1896. His success made an outstanding contribution to the health of the soldiers in the First World War. When war began, in August, 1914, 170,000 doses of vaccine were issued to the troops. It is estimated that, without it, there would have been about 551,000 cases of typhoid and over 77,000 deaths. Thanks to Leishman’s vaccine, there were only 1,191 deaths from 21,139 cases.
During the Great War, Leishman was the War Office’s expert on tropical diseases, when he investigated conditions affecting the troops, such as ‘trench fever’. He was Mentioned in Despatches three times and gazetted Major-General, in October 1919. After the war, he became the first Director of Pathology at the War Office and later the Medical Director of the Army Medical Services.
Amongst the many honours conferred on him, he became a Grand Officer of the Legion d’Honneur and received the Distinguished Service Medal of the United States of America. He was a President of the Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and, in 1910, became a fellow of the Royal Society. Leishman was created Companion of the Order of the Bath, in 1915, Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, in 1918, Knight Commander The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, in 1924, and a member of the Athenaeum, in 1925, the year before his death.
After a remarkable career in the service of his fellow man, Professor Sir William Boog Leishman died in London, on the 2nd of June, 1926, at Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital. He was buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Lieshman is commemorated as one of five Scots amongst the twenty-three names of the great and the good in the fields of hygiene and tropical medicine that form the frieze on the exterior of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in Keppel Street, London.
Lieutenant-General Sir William Boog Leishman was Director-General of Army Medical Services, from 1923 to 1926, and is noted for his discovery of the protozoan parasite responsible for ‘dumdum fever’, ‘kala-azar’ or ‘black fever’ and now known as ‘visceral leishmaniasis’. He also developed the clinical technique known as the ‘Leishman stain’, which is still used today to detect protozoan parasites such as plasmodium, which are the cause of malaria. Amongst his many accolades, Leishman is noted for his work in improving the typhoid vaccine; a significant activity that contributed to the wellbeing of many soldiers in the First World War.
It may be an understatement to suggest that Boog is an uncommon name as ‘YeahBaby.com’ doesn’t list ‘Boog’ in the more than 26,500 baby names in its database of popularity. However, as that only goes back to 1990, perhaps it’s not the best source. In contrast, you’ll find 15,440,648 entries for ‘Boog’ – both given name and surname – at ‘Ancestry.co.uk’. Boog, recorded variously as Boag, Boage, Boig, Bog and Boog, is a Scottish surname of some antiquity, according to the Internet Surname Database at ‘surnamedb.com’. Its origins may be locational and as ‘Bog’, the name appears fairly frequently in 17th Century Berwickshire. There was a priest called Edward Bog at St Andrews in 1505 and a George Bog held the position of ‘Master of the Queen’s beer celler’ in 1563. According to the ‘Urban dictionary’, Boog means: an enigma, one that cannot be defined; awe-inspiring; impressive. Guess that’s good enough.
William Leishman was born in Glasgow, on the 6th of November 1865 and followed his father into Medicine. After attending Westminster School, in London, Wullie went to the University of Glasgow, in 1880, presenting himself as fifteen in order to be accepted, to study Greek, Latin and Mathematics. The following year, when he was really fifteen, he signed up for Professor John Veitch’s Logic class. Then, in 1883, he enrolled for Medical Faculty classes in Anatomy, Zoology and Chemistry. Three years later, despite his being too young to graduate, the Faculty approved his taking Finals. Leishman had to wait until the November to graduate as medical students could not graduate until they were twenty-one. William Boog Leishman, graduated MB CM near the top of his class, with a ‘High Commendation’.
After the delay in graduating, William was raring to go and took a commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Three years later, he was posted to India to receive his baptism of fire in a punitive military expedition to Waziristan on the frontier. It was there he began his lifelong research into microbiology and developed an interest in ‘kala azar’ with which his name is permanently associated. He identified its causative parasite whilst Assistant Professor of Pathology at the Army Medical School at Netley, in 1900.
Unfortunately, he delayed publication until 1903 and was forced to share his discovery with Charles Donovan. The ovoid bodies he discovered came to be known as ‘Leishman-Donovan’ bodies (‘Leishmania donovani’). The disease is now known as ‘visceral leishmaniasis’ and remains a killer in parts of Africa and India. During this time, Leishman also developed a modification of ‘Romanowsky’s stain’, which is still in use today; known as ‘Leishman’s stain’. This is a method of staining blood, using a compound of methylene blue and eosin, which makes it easier to detect such protozoan parasites as ‘Plasmodium’ (malaria).
By January 1914, Leishman was a very distinguished doctor, having been knighted, in 1909. However, his greatest accolades were yet to come. From the turn of the century, Leishman worked for the best part of a decade to improve the typhoid vaccine developed by Sir Almroth Wright, in 1896. His success made an outstanding contribution to the health of the soldiers in the First World War. When war began, in August, 1914, 170,000 doses of vaccine were issued to the troops. It is estimated that, without it, there would have been about 551,000 cases of typhoid and over 77,000 deaths. Thanks to Leishman’s vaccine, there were only 1,191 deaths from 21,139 cases.
During the Great War, Leishman was the War Office’s expert on tropical diseases, when he investigated conditions affecting the troops, such as ‘trench fever’. He was Mentioned in Despatches three times and gazetted Major-General, in October 1919. After the war, he became the first Director of Pathology at the War Office and later the Medical Director of the Army Medical Services.
Amongst the many honours conferred on him, he became a Grand Officer of the Legion d’Honneur and received the Distinguished Service Medal of the United States of America. He was a President of the Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and, in 1910, became a fellow of the Royal Society. Leishman was created Companion of the Order of the Bath, in 1915, Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, in 1918, Knight Commander The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, in 1924, and a member of the Athenaeum, in 1925, the year before his death.
After a remarkable career in the service of his fellow man, Professor Sir William Boog Leishman died in London, on the 2nd of June, 1926, at Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital. He was buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Lieshman is commemorated as one of five Scots amongst the twenty-three names of the great and the good in the fields of hygiene and tropical medicine that form the frieze on the exterior of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in Keppel Street, London.
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Sir David Wilkie
Sir David Wilkie, the Scottish painter, died on the 1st of June, 1841.
Sir David Wilkie was a celebrity in his day and if he’d been born a century later, he might’ve been mobbed by screaming teenagers like the Beatles were. When one of his paintings was exhibited in 1822, it generated so much interest that crowd control measures had to be employed. Maybe a closer comparison, in terms of Wilkie’s star status and occupation, would be David Bailey, the famous photographer from the 1960s. Wilkie is perhaps best known for his historical and religious pictures, but he was also a successful painter of portraits and other subjects. Wilkie was greatly admired by Sir Walter Scott, whom he painted several times; returning the favour in his own way. Wilkie’s most famous works include paintings with long titles, such as ‘Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo’ and his colourful portrait of George IV.
In 1817, Wilkie painted the first of his several portraits of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, which now hangs in the Scottish National Gallery. Wilkie developed a talent for depicting scenes from everyday life, although he later chose more historical subjects, like ‘The Preaching of John Knox before the Lords of Congregation, 10 June 1559’. He might have changed his style, but he didn’t change the habit of giving his pictures long titles. Art experts would say that the homely simplicity of Wilkie’s compositions stood in marked contrast to the artificial and contrived nature of the then contemporary genre of painting. In fact, Wilkie’s arrival signalled a turning-point in British Art. Together with Sir Henry Raeburn, Wilkie was hailed as the founder of a new ‘Scottish School’ of painting. Wilkie also collaborated, with Abraham Raimbach, on popular print versions of his paintings, which brought both men considerable financial success.
David Wilkie was born in the manse at Cults, near Pitlessie, in Fife, on the 18th of November, 1785. Davie showed considerable artistic talent from an early age and, in 1799, his father agreed, albeit reluctantly, to his studying to become a painter. With the help of the influential local laird, the Earl of Leven, Wilkie gained admission to the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh, where he studied under John Graham. He gained an early reputation for his ability to draw characters and became well known for visiting markets and fairs, sketching people and scenes that caught his attention.
In 1804, Wilkie began work on his first major painting, ‘Pitlessie Fair’, which portrayed a mere 140 characters, including neighbours and relatives. The following year, he sold this painting for £25 and, together with the income he had made from portrait commissions, he had earned enough to move to London to attend the Royal Academy. Two of his early works, the ‘Village Politicians’ and ‘The Blind Fiddler’ (1806; oil on panel), which now hangs in the Tate Gallery, attracted considerable interest and he became known as ‘the Scottish Teniers’ (after the Flemish painter). A later work, ‘The Village Festival’, which now hangs in the National Gallery, was first sold by Wilkie for 800 guineas. By 1811, Wilkie was a full member of the Royal Academy and considered to be amongst the greatest artists of his day.
In 1822, Wilkie began work on ‘The Entry of George IV into the Palace of Holyroodhouse’, which was to record the first visit of a reigning British monarch to Scotland since 1650. He took several sittings and a sabbatical to Europe before he completed the portrait. I guess he had to steel himself to trim the King’s rigging a wee bit. In the end, the Royal subject is flatteringly portrayed in subdued lighting, in order to tone down the livid scarlet tartan of his kilt. This painting, which is well worth seeing, hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, in Edinburgh. Another reason for Wilkie’s quitting to the continent appears to have been the tragic deaths of his mother and two brothers, in 1824. Wilkie was always frail of health and he was badly shaken by these bereavements, and by the financial collapse of his printsellers, Heath & Robinson. He recovered sufficiently, after three years travelling and convalescing and painting in Italy and Spain, to be able to return and complete King’s portrait, in 1828.
Wilkie’s sojourn in Europe was the catalyst for a change of style, which wasn’t so well received by his popular following or several critics. But the King, who owed him a favour you might say, remained an admirer and, in 1830, appointed Wilkie to the honourary post of ‘Painter in Ordinary to the King’, to add to an earlier title, ‘His Majesty's Limner for Scotland’. Wilkie retained that post under both William IV (from whom he got his Knighthood) and Queen Victoria. A Spanish influence can be detected in Wilkie’s most important later works, such as the painting with the longest name ever, ‘The Preaching of John Knox before the Lords of the Congregation, 10 June 1559’, which he exhibited in 1832. That is now owned by the National Trust, and resides in Petworth House, Sussex.
Wilkie was a great friend of Sir Walter Scott and provided sketches for his Waverley Novels. In a letter of thanks, Scott wrote [that] “you, who are beset by the sin of modesty, will be least of all men aware what a tower of strength your name must be in a work of this nature, which, if successful, will go a great way to counterbalance some very severe losses which I sustained.” This was a reference to the collapse of Hurst & Robinson, a misfortune in which the two men shared. Wilkie responded by assuring Scott that he would be delighted to “assist in the illustration of the great work, which we all hope may lighten or remove that load of troubles by which your noble spirit is at this time beset.” Wilkie was certainly moved by Scott’s writing and, in reference to a passage in chapter ten of ‘The Antiquary’, where Steenie Mucklebackit’s mourning family present “a scene which our Wilkie alone could have painted”, he responded to Scott’s praise thus; “…you took me up, and claimed me, the humble painter of domestic sorrow, as your countryman.”
In 1840, Sir David Wilkie embarked on a major tour of the Middle East. On his way back to Britain, he was taken ill on board ship off Malta and died on the morning of the 1st of June, 1841. He was buried at sea in the Bay of Gibraltar. There is a memorial to Wilkie in the Kirkyard at Cults.
Sir David Wilkie was a celebrity in his day and if he’d been born a century later, he might’ve been mobbed by screaming teenagers like the Beatles were. When one of his paintings was exhibited in 1822, it generated so much interest that crowd control measures had to be employed. Maybe a closer comparison, in terms of Wilkie’s star status and occupation, would be David Bailey, the famous photographer from the 1960s. Wilkie is perhaps best known for his historical and religious pictures, but he was also a successful painter of portraits and other subjects. Wilkie was greatly admired by Sir Walter Scott, whom he painted several times; returning the favour in his own way. Wilkie’s most famous works include paintings with long titles, such as ‘Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo’ and his colourful portrait of George IV.
In 1817, Wilkie painted the first of his several portraits of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, which now hangs in the Scottish National Gallery. Wilkie developed a talent for depicting scenes from everyday life, although he later chose more historical subjects, like ‘The Preaching of John Knox before the Lords of Congregation, 10 June 1559’. He might have changed his style, but he didn’t change the habit of giving his pictures long titles. Art experts would say that the homely simplicity of Wilkie’s compositions stood in marked contrast to the artificial and contrived nature of the then contemporary genre of painting. In fact, Wilkie’s arrival signalled a turning-point in British Art. Together with Sir Henry Raeburn, Wilkie was hailed as the founder of a new ‘Scottish School’ of painting. Wilkie also collaborated, with Abraham Raimbach, on popular print versions of his paintings, which brought both men considerable financial success.
David Wilkie was born in the manse at Cults, near Pitlessie, in Fife, on the 18th of November, 1785. Davie showed considerable artistic talent from an early age and, in 1799, his father agreed, albeit reluctantly, to his studying to become a painter. With the help of the influential local laird, the Earl of Leven, Wilkie gained admission to the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh, where he studied under John Graham. He gained an early reputation for his ability to draw characters and became well known for visiting markets and fairs, sketching people and scenes that caught his attention.
In 1804, Wilkie began work on his first major painting, ‘Pitlessie Fair’, which portrayed a mere 140 characters, including neighbours and relatives. The following year, he sold this painting for £25 and, together with the income he had made from portrait commissions, he had earned enough to move to London to attend the Royal Academy. Two of his early works, the ‘Village Politicians’ and ‘The Blind Fiddler’ (1806; oil on panel), which now hangs in the Tate Gallery, attracted considerable interest and he became known as ‘the Scottish Teniers’ (after the Flemish painter). A later work, ‘The Village Festival’, which now hangs in the National Gallery, was first sold by Wilkie for 800 guineas. By 1811, Wilkie was a full member of the Royal Academy and considered to be amongst the greatest artists of his day.
In 1822, Wilkie began work on ‘The Entry of George IV into the Palace of Holyroodhouse’, which was to record the first visit of a reigning British monarch to Scotland since 1650. He took several sittings and a sabbatical to Europe before he completed the portrait. I guess he had to steel himself to trim the King’s rigging a wee bit. In the end, the Royal subject is flatteringly portrayed in subdued lighting, in order to tone down the livid scarlet tartan of his kilt. This painting, which is well worth seeing, hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, in Edinburgh. Another reason for Wilkie’s quitting to the continent appears to have been the tragic deaths of his mother and two brothers, in 1824. Wilkie was always frail of health and he was badly shaken by these bereavements, and by the financial collapse of his printsellers, Heath & Robinson. He recovered sufficiently, after three years travelling and convalescing and painting in Italy and Spain, to be able to return and complete King’s portrait, in 1828.
Wilkie’s sojourn in Europe was the catalyst for a change of style, which wasn’t so well received by his popular following or several critics. But the King, who owed him a favour you might say, remained an admirer and, in 1830, appointed Wilkie to the honourary post of ‘Painter in Ordinary to the King’, to add to an earlier title, ‘His Majesty's Limner for Scotland’. Wilkie retained that post under both William IV (from whom he got his Knighthood) and Queen Victoria. A Spanish influence can be detected in Wilkie’s most important later works, such as the painting with the longest name ever, ‘The Preaching of John Knox before the Lords of the Congregation, 10 June 1559’, which he exhibited in 1832. That is now owned by the National Trust, and resides in Petworth House, Sussex.
Wilkie was a great friend of Sir Walter Scott and provided sketches for his Waverley Novels. In a letter of thanks, Scott wrote [that] “you, who are beset by the sin of modesty, will be least of all men aware what a tower of strength your name must be in a work of this nature, which, if successful, will go a great way to counterbalance some very severe losses which I sustained.” This was a reference to the collapse of Hurst & Robinson, a misfortune in which the two men shared. Wilkie responded by assuring Scott that he would be delighted to “assist in the illustration of the great work, which we all hope may lighten or remove that load of troubles by which your noble spirit is at this time beset.” Wilkie was certainly moved by Scott’s writing and, in reference to a passage in chapter ten of ‘The Antiquary’, where Steenie Mucklebackit’s mourning family present “a scene which our Wilkie alone could have painted”, he responded to Scott’s praise thus; “…you took me up, and claimed me, the humble painter of domestic sorrow, as your countryman.”
In 1840, Sir David Wilkie embarked on a major tour of the Middle East. On his way back to Britain, he was taken ill on board ship off Malta and died on the morning of the 1st of June, 1841. He was buried at sea in the Bay of Gibraltar. There is a memorial to Wilkie in the Kirkyard at Cults.
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