Erected at Luggie Green by public subscription, is in commemoration of the death of a fine young man, Mr. Hazelton R. Robson.

The river Luggie was in heavy flood, and a child fell in. The alarm reached the ears of Mr. Robson, who happened to be following his occupation of a surveyor on the banks of the stream. He at once volunteered to swim out to the child, , but took the precaution of tying a clothes-rope round his body, which was held by some persons on shore. Mr. Robson reached the child, and would in all probability have rescued it; but the people on shore, from want of skill, or presence of mind, instead of running down along with the current, and hauling in the rope gradually, allowed Mr. Robson and the child to drift below them, and then attempted to draw them in by main force. The consequence was that the rope broke, and both Mr. Robson and the child were drowned. The bodies were recovered the same night, and Mr. Robson’s was duly interred in the Glasgow Necropolis.

The sad event caused a universal feeling of admiration of Mr. Robson’s heroic effort, and regret on account of his death. Mr. George Readman of the Clydesdale Bank, and other friends, took the matter up, and resolved to erect a memento of the sad calamity, the result being the handsome monument we all know.

The base is of light grey Creetown granite; and the column of beautiful Peterhead red granite; the whole being enclosed by an elegant iron railing. The following is the inscription:—“ Erected by public subscription to the memory of Hazelton Robert Robson, of Glasgow, aged 17 years, who during a heavy flood in the Luggie, and while nobly endeavouring to save the life of a little child, was drowned near this place on 5th September, 1876. His remains are interred in the Glasgow Necropolis.” A monument with a similar inscription is also erected over Mr. Robson’s remains by the same subscribers at the Necropolis, Glasgow.

On 5th September, 1877, the anniversary of the sad event, the monument at Luggie Green was formally unveiled, and handed over to the custody of Provost Wright and the Magistrates of Kirkintilloch.

It is sometimes said that the age of chivalry is gone, but every now and again men and women, as well as boys and girls, appear, whose heroic deeds prove that never did the fire of love and self-sacrifice burn brighter than at the present day, amid the surrounding gloom.

The following extract from a sermon by Dr. William Pulsford, minister of Trinity Congregational Church, Glasgow, gives fitting expression to the feelings due to such an event, and the lessons it conveys.

Dr. Pulsford said at the close of his discourse that “ there had been no such benefactors to the world which now is, as those who are the firmest believers in the world to come, through the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ,” and then added the following words: “ I cannot refrain, before I sit down, from paying my tribute of admiration for the gentle character, devout piety, and true heroism of a Christian-bred youth belonging to this congregation who has just passed away from us, but who will long be remembered and spoken of as ‘ the stranger * who, out of a crowd of the relatives, friends, and neighbours of a drowning child was the only one who plunged into the fiood-stream to save an unknown, perishing life.

“I cannot disconnect that act from his character, nor his character from the elements which found and nourished it. He was a boy who built himself up by the Bible. He was a boy who knew God, and daily spoke to Him in prayer. At His feet he learnt the kindness which could not forget the sick and the sorrowing, nor any of those about him in need of sympathy and help. And as a result of the habits of his life, he was sensitive to feel and quick to render what aid he could. He was full of love and without fear. And so he passed away in an act of noble self-forgetfulness to save another at the certain risk and experienced loss of his own life.”