CENTENARIES OF 1941

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1941, Page 6

CENTENARIES OF 1941

NAMES & EVENTS OF NOTE SCOTTISH PERSONALITIES. FIRST ELECTRIC CLOCK. Many interesting Scottish names and events are recalled by centenaries which will occur in 1941 (notes a writer in the “Weekly Scotsman”).

Sir Robert Sibbald, who was born 300 years ago, is most generally known for his informative historical and antiquarian works. He deserves to be remembered also as the first professor of medic/ie at Edinburgh University, one of the founders of the Royal College of Physicians and its first president, Geographer Royal for Scotland, and, with Sir Andrew Balfour, originator of Edinburgh’s Botanical Gardens. '

Among artists there is Sir David Wilkie. R.A., “the Raphael of domestic art,” who died on board ship off Gibraltar in 1841 and was buried at sea in the Mediterranean . A son of the manse of Cults, Fife, Wilkie was born in 1785. Two paintings at the age of 21 made him famous, and he was made an R.A. in 1811, and knighted in 1838.

Sir George Reid, born at Aberdeen a century ago, a noted portrait painter, was president of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1891-92.

Literary names include Robert Allan. the weaver poet of Kilbarchan. Renfrewshire, who emigrated to America when he was 67 and died on June 7, 1841, only six days after landing al New York. William Leighton, a poet of great promise, born at Dundee in 1841, was only 28 when he died; and Dugald Moore, the Glasgow bookseller poet, was 39 when he died a century ago.

Burns lovers will be interested in the centenary of the death of “Clarinda,” Mrs M’Lehose, wife of a Glasgow lawyer, whose impassioned letters to the poet, and his replies as "Sylvander,” provide one of the most discussed episodes in the affairs of Burns. Mrs M’Lehose is buried in Canongate Kirkyard. Edinburgh. Author of the popular Scottish song. “O, Weel May the Boatie Row,” John Given, born at Montrose 200 years ago, earned the praise of Burns for this composition. Among novelists the outstanding centenary is that of the birth of William Black, a native of Glasgow, whose "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton” and other works were long “bestsellers.” Two novels were published by Hariette Campbell (died 1841), daughter of a Stirling lawyer, and a promising career was cut short by death when she was only 24. Editor of the “Caledonian Mercury” and founder of "North Britain,” James Broune, who died a century ago and was a native of Perthshire, exposed the West Port murders —and, incidentally, fought a duel with Charles M’Laren, of “The Scotsman." James Chalmers — “Chalmers of New Guinea" —the famous missionary, born in 1841, began his career in the Glasgow City Mission, and. after a lifetime of service in the South Sea Islands and New Guinea, was murdered by cannibals there in 1901.

Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville, M.O. for Edinburgh County and holder of many Ministerial posts, including that of First Lord of the Admiralty, was the hero of a famous impeachment case, in which he was acquitted, in 1806. He was born in 1741. The seventh Earl of Elgin, who, when Ambassador to Turkey, brought from Greece the famous art relics known as “The Elgin Marbles,” died a century ago. Royal centenaries include the birth of Edward Vfl in 1841, the death of Malcolm IV of Scotland in 1141, and Margaret Tudor, wife of James V., who died in 1541. v Henry Morton Stanley, the man who found Livingstone in Africa, was born in 1841, as were also Admiral Lord Fisher, M. Clemenceau (France’s great Premier of the last war), Lord Cromer, our noted Proconsul in Egypt, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Liberal Premier .of Canada.

All Britain experienced acute distress and unemployment in 1841. with continuous agitation and petitioning for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and disturbances were not uncommon. These included a riot between Highland and Irish labourers engaged on the construction of the EdinburghGlasgow railway, then nearing completion. Edinburgh saw the start of a new industry, silk manufacturing, in Fountainbridge in 1841, but it was soon abandoned. In that year an Edinburgh man, Alexander .Bain, of Han-

over Street, perfected the first electrie clock. “Punch" will soon be a centenarian, the first number of this famous humorous weekly having appeared in July, 1841, It will also be a century ago since Hong Kong was proclaimed a British possession, and Victoria Land, in the Antarctic, was discovered by Captain James Clark Ross. In 1841. also, calotype photographs were invented by Fox Talbot, and the Chemical Society and the Pharmaceutical Society were founded. During 1841 Charles Dickens was a notable visitor to Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the publication of “Barnaby Rudge" also took place that year. Another interesting literary fact of 1841 was the appearance of Edgar Allan Poe’s grim work, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” for this is generally regarded as the pioneer of all detective novels and of the “crime yarn.” which in our own day enjoys such a vogue.