3 August 1855
The birth of inventor George
Johnstone at West Linton near Edinburgh. The son of a minister, he was
trained as an engineer and became the first Scottish motorist in 1894 with
an imported Daimler. The next year he was driving his own invention, 'the
Ghost Tram.' In 1896, Police in Glasgow stopped him for illegal driving in
St. Enoch's Square and Dixon Street. He was unable to convince the
magistrate that his car was not a locomotive and was forced to pay a fine,
thus becoming the first motorist in Britain to be convicted of a driving
offense.4 August 1870
The birth of music hall
entertainer, Sir Harry Lauder, at Portobello. The son of a potter, he
worked from a young age first in an Arbroath flax-mill and then in a
Hamilton coal mine. First prize in a singing contest encouraged him to
consider show business and he eventually joined a singing group that took
him on tour through the British Isles. His first songs were Irish or
English, but by the time he came to London in May 1900, he was wearing a
kilt and enthusiastically singing simple hearted Scottish songs. For many,
he would come to personify the image of the thrifty Scot with his tilted
Glengarry, long Inverness cape, MacLeod kilt, and six-inch briar pipe. His
early hit songs were comic but with I Love a Lassie and Roamin'
in the Gloamin,' inspired by love for his wife Nancy, he struck a
sentimental chord. With a large repertory of his own songs, he toured
America twenty two times and would eventually earn $5,000 a week and play
golf with presidents. He entertained the troops in France during World War
I and wrote Keep Right on to the End of the Road after his son John
was killed in action. He gave many concerts for war charities and was
knighted in 1919. He wrote four books of reminiscences, appeared in
several movies, and entertained soldiers again in World War II. He died 26
February 1950 near Strathaven in Lanarkshire.
5 August 1600
The foiling of the Gowrie Conspiracy, a
supposed plot against King James VI, soon to become King of England.
According to the King, whose self serving account is the primary record of
this odd event, he rode with Alexander, the Master of Ruthven, brother of
John, Earl of Gowrie, to Gowrie House in Perth to speak with a man who had
found a pot of gold. Once there, afraid he was about to be murdered, he
summoned help and the Earl and his brother were killed. James' story was
not widely believed as many thought he was jealous of the brothers’ close
friendship with his wife, Queen Ann. Others, suspicious of his conduct
towards Roman Catholics, suspected he was motivated by a desire to remove
the Gowries, who were Protestants stalwarts. James may have been concerned
by the arrival at Gowrie House of the sons of the first Earl of Gowrie, a
participant in the Ruthven Raid of 1582, which had imprisoned James. He
was not renowned for his courage so their presence may have caused an
excessive reaction and his cry of 'treason' which resulted in their doom.
This conspiracy, whatever its origins and extent, was the last attempt
against the King before he left for England.
6 August 1881
The birth of Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer
of Penicillin, at Lochfield near Darvel in Ayrshire. After working briefly
as a shipping clerk in London, he attended medical school and qualified as
both a physician and surgeon. Serving in a military hospital in France
during the First World War, he saw up close the failure of contemporary
anti-septics, that cost so many lives that could have been saved, and
determined to find an effective natural agent for treatment. He was to
have a long and distinguished career on the research staff of St. Mary’s
Hospital in Paddington where he developed more effective treatments for
Typhoid and Syphilis, searched less successfully for a cure for Influenza,
and had his famous encounter with the dirty lab dish with the Penicillin
that was growing on a mould. He found that in many instances it could
destroy or inhibit virulent germs and this research was published in 1929.
Unfortunately, this discovery remained a lab curiosity until the vast
medical demands of the Second World War prompted additional and wider
research. Building upon his work, two Oxford bio-chemists, Howard Florey
and Ernst Chain, found a means of purifying Penicillin with the result
that it was used worldwide as a highly effective healing agent. Fleming
was knighted in 1944 and all three men were awarded the Nobel Prize in
1945. Sir Alexander died on 11 March 1955 and was buried at St. Paul’s
Cathedral.
8 August 1746
Following the 1745 Jacobite
uprising, the last and most threatening, the British Parliament
promulgated the Highland Dress Act and the Disarming Act. This forbade the
wearing of tartan, as any part of attire, under the penalty of six months
imprisonment for the first offense and transportation overseas for the
second. No Highlander could receive the benefit of indemnity without first
taking the following oath: 'I, do swear, and as I shall answer to God at
the great day of judgement, I have not, nor shall have, in my possession
any gun, sword, pistol, or arm whatsoever, and never use tartan, plaid, or
any part of the Highland garb; and if I do so, may I be cursed in my
undertakings, family, and property; may I never see my wife and children,
father, mother, or relations; may I be killed in battle as a coward, and
lie without Christian burial, in a strange land, far from the graves of my
forefathers and kindred; may all this come across me if I break my oath.'
Not surprisingly, these severe measures were very unpopular. Because of
the discontent, and the fact that the rebellions had ended once and for
all, this legislation, through the influence of the Duke of Montrose, was
repealed in 1782.
13 August 1888
The birth of John Logie Baird,
pioneer of television and radio, at Helensburgh. Educated at Glasgow
Academy and the Royal Technical College (now the University of
Strathclyde), he lived for a while in the West Indies before returning to
England to work as an inventor. He promoted and popularized the concept of
television, making many test transmissions of images which enabled the
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to show the first television
picture in 1929. Unfortunately, Baird’s mechanical scanning process was
later superseded by EMI’s superior electrical scanning process, though he
continued to pursue refinements such as color and large-screen television.
He also worked on radio direction finding (radar), which was later crucial
in the defense of Britain during the Second World War, but for which he
received little acknowledgement. Though not destitute, his career was not
a great financial success. He died of bronchial problems in 1946 and was
buried in Helensburgh.
14 August 1040
MacBeth, whose name means ‘son of
life,’ commanding an army of clansmen from the northern province of Moray
and Norse allies from the Orkney Islands, becomes King of Scots after
defeating the army of Duncan I, consisting mostly of clansmen from Atholl,
the south of Scotland, and some Irish mercenaries, near Burghead. Contrary
to Shakespeare’s famous 'Scottish play,' Duncan was a relatively young
man, thirty-nine years old, who was killed the battle and not murdered at
Glamis Castle as he slept. In fact, said castle was not even built until
several centuries later. Duncan was a rather ineffectual king increasingly
unable to govern the kingdom and MacBeth, the Moramaer (Earl) of Moray,
had legitimate claims to the throne both on his own behalf and through his
wife, Gruoch, whose name has also been besmirched by the Bard. MacBeth is
considered by many to have been the last truly Celtic King of Scots and
appears to have been a wise ruler who presided over seventeen years of
general peace and prosperity. For example, in 1050, matters in Scotland
were quiet enough for him to go on pilgrimage to Rome where he "scattered
money among the poor like seed."
15 August 1057
The defeat and death of MacBeth,
King of Scots, at the Battle of Lumphanan in Mar near Aberdeen by Malcolm
Canmore, the elder son of Duncan I, who had been killed by MacBeth in
1040. This was the culmination of a three-year military campaign conducted
by Malcolm with the substantial backing of the English from Northumbria.
Malcolm had first been established in Cumbria in the southwest then
defeated MacBeth in the Lothians in the southeast and pursued him north to
Mar. Seven months later, Malcolm killed MacBeth's adopted son and heir,
Lulach, and became King of Scots in his own right. With Malcolm’s
permission, both MacBeth and Lulach were interred at St. Mary’s Abbey on
St. Columba’ sacred Hebridean island of Iona and are among the last
Scottish kings to be buried there. They are two of the forty-eight
Scottish kings, along with eight Norwegian and four Irish kings there.
Malcolm’s reign, 1058-1093, would bring many changes, none more important
than the efforts of Malcolm’s wife, the English St. Margaret, to romanize
the Scottish Church.
15 August 1771
The birth of influential poet and writer, Sir
Walter Scott, in Edinburgh. The son of a solicitor, he was lame from an
early age and spent much recuperative time at his grandfather’s farm
Sandyknowe near Kelso where he became enamoured with tales and songs
of the borderlands. Educated at Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh
University, he was admitted to the bar in 1792 and had a successful legal
career, serving as Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire from 1799 to 1832 and
Clerk of the Court of Sessions in Edinburgh from 1806 to 1830. However, it
was a poet and writer that he made his reputation. A collection of
ballads, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-1803), and a
series of long narrative poems, including The Lay of the Last Minstrel
(1805), Marmion (1808), and The Lady of the Lake (1810),
brought him enduring fame, national honors, and great fortune. In
addition, he practically invented the historical novel and many of them
had Scottish themes, especially Waverly (1814) and Rob Roy
(1818), which popularized a Romantic image of Scotland worldwide. Later
novels moved beyond the Scottish setting, with Ivanhoe (1819), set in
medieval England, remaining a classic favorite of generations of readers.
Unfortunately, his fortune was lost with the collapse of the publishers
Ballatyne and Constable in 1826. Working tirelessly to pay off his
creditors destroyed his health and he died in 1832 at his beloved home of
Abbotsford near Melrose Abbey. Considered one of the outstanding
literary luminaries of the Nineteenth Century, his legacy for later
centuries is mixed as many still read and revere his works while others,
primarily academics, subject his romantic vision, historical inaccuracies,
and often belabored prose to withering criticism.
15 August 1856
The birth of labor leader and politician,
James Keir Hardie, at Legbrannock, Lanarkshire. An illegitimate son of
coal-miner William Aitken and domestic servant Mary Keir, he took the name
of his stepfather, ship’s carpenter David Hardie. He was at first a
socialist but later converted to Christianity. He married Lily Wilson, a
publican’s daughter, in 1879. A coal miner from youth, he was fired and
blacklisted many times for his pro-union activity. He became secretary to
the Scottish Miners' Federation in 1886 and criticized certain Liberal
members of Parliament for their conservative views regarding state
intervention to assist miners. His agitation for an 8 hour work day and
election to Parliament for South West Ham in 1892 as an Independent Labour
candidate was widely noted, especially when he appeared at Westminster in
a cloth cap. He presided at the Bradford conference that created the
socialist Independent Labour Party (ILP) as an alternative to the
Liberals. He lost his seat in 1895 but was returned to Parliament in 1900
where he vehemently opposed the Boer War. In spite of his past conflicts
with the Liberals, he approved negotiations that reduced tensions and
resulted in 29 Labour members in 1906 with he as their leader in
Parliament. The following year, he traveled overseas and expressed support
for Egyptian independence, Indian home rule, and the rights of native
Africans. He detested both imperialism and militarism and promoted a
general strike of international workers to prevent war. When World War I
broke out in 1914, he was devastated by the lack of support from his own
constituents and died of pneumonia on 26 September 1915. Many
contemporaries regarded his single-minded devotion to the workers cause as
fanatical but this has only added to his reputation with generations of
Labour Party members.
19 August 1745
Charles Edward Stuart, otherwise known as
‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ and ‘The Young Pretender,’ raised the royal
standard of his exiled family at Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel in
the western Highlands, thus beginning the last and greatest Jacobite
Rebellion. Charles, who was born in Rome in 1720, was the son of James
Edward Stuart, ‘The Old Pretender,’ and grandson of the Roman Catholic
King James II and VII, who had been deposed in 1688. Though poorly
supported by France and landing in Scotland with only seven men, Charles’
invasion was well timed as substantial numbers of British forces were
engaged on the continent against the French in the War of the Austrian
Succession. Several clans, including the Camerons and various branches of
the MacDonalds, came out for Charles and Edinburgh was quickly occupied.
Early military success, such as the Battle of Prestonpans, could not
offset the lack of support for the Rebellion in the Scottish Lowlands and
especially in northern England where the march of the Highland army on
London was aborted near Derby. By this time, British reinforcements had
gathered and the Jacobites were pursued back to Scotland and final defeat
in April 1746 at the Battle of Culloden near Inverness. The British army
under William, Duke of Cumberland, son of the Hanoverian King George II,
and known in Scotland as ‘The Butcher,’ slaughtered the poorly equipped
clansmen although Charles was able to escape. After months of hiding in
the Highlands, he made his way back to the continent and spent the
remainder of his life in exile, dying at Rome in 1788.
19 August 1808
The birth of engineer and inventor,
James Nasmyth, in Edinburgh. The son of an artist, he studied engineering
in London, operated machine shops in Edinburgh and Manchester, then
settled at a foundry in Paticroft, England. He became known for his
craftsmanship and steam-powered tools, building hydraulic presses and
locomotives, and inventing a cylinder boring machine and the steam hammer.
The forerunner of the pile driver, the steam hammer allowed large
materials to be forged with accuracy and was an integral part of the
Industrial Revolution. Nasmyth worked to improve efficiency in production
and standardization of machine tools, which undermined skilled craft labor
and ushered in the age of mass production. He retired early, in 1856, to
devote the remaining years of his life to astronomy, building his own
telescopes, charting the surface of the Moon, and being the first to
observe the phenomenon of solar flares. Attaining a rare achievement as a
financially successful inventor, he died on 7 May 1890.
21 August 1754
The birth of William Murdock (Murdoch),
pivotal inventor of the Industrial Revolution, in Ayrshire. The son of an
innovative mill wright and fascinated by steam engines, he migrated to
Birmingham in 1777 and became an assistant in the company of James Watt
and Matthew Boulton. He subsequently worked in the tin mines of Cornwell
installing, repairing, and modifying engines. In 1784, he invented and
built a model steam carriage, in effect a primitive locomotive. In the
1790s, he developed methods for making coal gas and using it to light his
home. Returning to Birmingham to manage Watt and Boulton’s Soho factory in
1798, he began to manufacture coal gas commercially and the factory became
the first industrial site to be lit by gas in 1803. Murdock was honored by
the Royal Society with a gold medal in 1808, became a partner of Watt and
Boulton in 1810, and died in 1839. He is remembered not only as the father
of the gas light industry but as an ingenious engineer who also created
the slide valve, a free standing engine, an oscillating engine, and early
applications of compressed air systems still in use for the brakes of
trucks.
22 August 1138
The Battle of the Standard fought between the
invading Scottish army of King David I and local levies in the English
county of Yorkshire at Northallerton. Taking advantage of the civil war
raging between the usurper King Stephen and his cousin the Empress Maud,
David marched through the northern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland,
and Durham. The size of his army is uncertain but it included lowland
Scots as well as contingents from the Highlands, the western Isles, and
the Orkney Islands, and carried all before it until brought to a halt upon
entering Yorkshire, the largest county in England. The elderly Archbishop
of York declared that it was disgraceful to be conquered without a fight
and rallied both the barons and people into raising an army. In its midst,
they placed the mast of a ship, and on top of that a cross and the banners
of three saints as well as a consecrated communion wafer, from which the
battle got its name. The Archbishop blessed the army and presented it with
the banner of Saint Peter, the patron saint of Yorkshire. David made a
great mistake in his deployment, placing the men from Galloway, who had
little armor, in the front ranks where they were no match for the mail
clad Anglo-Norman knights. The arrows of the English were particularly
telling against the Scots and, when an Englishman held aloft a bloody head
that the Scots mistook to be that of their king, they retired from the
field. However, despite losing the battle, David only retreated as far
north as Carlisle. Indeed, King Stephen was so beset by the forces of Maud
that he made a treaty with David in 1139 granting him Northumberland and
parts of Cumberland and Durham counties. David then retired from the
English wars and died in 1153, the year before Maud’s son, Henry II,
succeeded Stephen with the intent to retake the lost counties.
23 August 1305
The execution of patriot and former Guardian
of Scotland, Sir William Wallace, on the orders of King Edward Longshanks,
in London. According to tradition, Sir William was born about 1270 at
Elderslie in Renfrewshire, the son of a minor Knight. He apparently took
up brigandage at an early age and only emerged from obscurity in May 1297
when he killed the English Sheriff of Lanark, supposedly in revenge for
the death of his wife or lover. He soon became a leader, along with Andrew
Murray, of a popular revolt against the hated English king who had deposed
King John Balliol and ‘suspended’ the Scottish crown and nation in 1296. A
series of Scottish military successes culminated at the Battle of Stirling
Bridge on 11 September 1297, where Wallace and Murray destroyed an English
army and killed the Treasurer of England, Sir Hugh Cressingham. Murray
died soon after while Wallace took the war to the enemy by raiding into
northern England. He was made Guardian of Scotland in March of 1298 but
was defeated by Longshanks at the Battle of Falkirk on 11 July 1298, when
the mounted Scots deserted and the spearmen were decimated by the English
archers. Resigning the guardianship, Wallace traveled in France and
perhaps Rome seeking to raise military support and diplomatic recognition
for Scotland. Returning home to continue the fight, he was betrayed by Sir
John Menteith and surrendered to the English who subjected him to a brutal
death by hanging, drawing, and quartering. His head was placed on London
Bridge, and his limbs displayed at Newcastle, Berwick, Perth, and Stirling
as a less than successful warning to other rebellious Scots. Sir William’s
refusal to ever acknowledge Edward’s lordship and his uncompromising
opposition to the English has made him a symbol of Scottish nationalism to
the present day. Though historically inaccurate, the 1995 movie
Braveheart helped inspired efforts for greater self-government
resulting in the reestablishment of a Scottish Parliament in 1999 and
making the name of William Wallace famous worldwide.
28 August 1640
The Battle of Newburn on Tyne fought between a
veteran Scottish army commanded by Alexander Leslie and a hastily
assembled English force. Angered by the attempts of King Charles I to
impose an Anglican prayer book upon Scotland, as well as other religious
'reforms,' a Scottish army invaded northern England in a pre-emptive
strike. Since Charles was attempting to rule England without a parliament,
he did not have the financial means to raise and support a strong army.
Bypassing the English garrisons of Newcastle and Berwick near the border,
the Scottish army advanced to the banks of the Tyne River at the crucial
crossing at Newburn. Action ensued with superior Scottish firepower
raining down upon the English who had neglected to secure the high ground.
The English fled, abandoning the line of the Tyne as well as the cities of
Newcastle and Gateshead, while the Scots advanced through northern England
with impunity and occupied Durham. With no defensive positions to fall
back upon, the English retreated back to York. Lacking numbers and
supplies, the Scots halted their advance but would not retreat until the
King came to terms. Shortly thereafter, and for a variety of reasons, the
English Civil War broke out in which the Scots would be major players
though by 1651 they as well as the English, Irish, and Welsh would be
under the thumb of the war’s victor, the dictator, Oliver Cromwell.
By William John Shepherd
Note On Sources: Some dates are
based upon concise chronologies published by Ronald McDonald Douglas in
his Scottish Lore And Folklore (1982) and John Wilson McCoy in the
pages of The Highlander magazine in 1997. Additional dates and information
have been gleaned from my varied readings in Scottish history. These
sources include but are not limited to the following: Brown, P. Hume. A
Short History Of Scotland (1908, 1961); Donaldson, Gordon and Morpeth,
Robert. A Dictionary of Scottish History (1996); Fisher, Andrew.
A Traveller's History Of Scotland (1990); Gordon, Ian Fellowes.
Famous Scots. London: Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers, 1988; Keay, John
and Julia (eds.). Collins Encyclopedia Of Scotland (1994); Mackie,
J.D. A History Of Scotland (1964, 1991); MacLean, Sir Fitzroy. A
Concise History Of Scotland (1970, 1988); Magnusson, Magnus.
Scotland: The Story of a Nation (2000); Prebble, John. The Lion In
The North (1971, 1973); Sadler, John. Scottish Battles (1998);
Smout, T.C. A History Of The Scottish People, 1560-1830 (1969,
1998); Traquair, Peter. Freedom's Sword: Scotland's Wars Of
Independence (1998). |