Dunfermline’s Industrial Heritage Ralph W. Stewart & Co, Ltd., Scottish Central Rubber Works, Elgin Street, Dunfermline. by George Beattie In the late 1890’s, the linen industry in the Dunfermline was passing through a period of serious depression. Most of the factories were working short time, and, in some cases there were dismissals of female workers on a fairly large scale. Local businessmen exercised their minds on the subject of creating alternative employment, especially for the female section of the community. Prominent among these was Mr Ralph W. Stewart, whose yarn and cloth bleaching works was suffering from the general industrial decline. Mr Stewart’s younger son was a rubber planter in Malaya, and so a factory for the production of rubber materials was built at a Dunfermline Bleach Works. Ralph Stewart, had inherited the Elgin Beach Works from his uncle, Mr Thomas Walker, of Thomas Walker & Co. That company was founded in 1860 at Elgin Bleach-field to purchase linen yarn, to bleach it and to sell it on. This the company did until the 1880s, when they also undertook the bleaching of woven linen and the finishing of it, mainly for local firms, but also from Ireland. On the death of Thomas Walker, in 1895, the company was left to Mr Ralph W. Stewart, who changed the name of the bleaching company to his own. With a keen appreciation of the necessity for safeguarding the industrial prosperity of his native town, Mr Stewart caused to be erected,…
Shopping in Victorian Dunfermline
Shopping for Food and Drink in Victorian Dunfermline By Sue Mowat How different, how very different, was shopping in Dunfermline a century and a half ago! In 1861 there were more than 70 shops in the High Street alone – grocers, greengrocers, bakers, tobacconists, booksellers, pawnbrokers, drapers, shoemakers, clockmakers, ironmongers, confectioners, chemists, china merchants and toy dealers. Bridge Street was largely given over to drapery shops and shoemakers and there were more shops in Chalmers Street, Bruce Street, Cross Wynd, Gibb Street, Chapel Street, Guildhall Street, Kirkgate and Queen Anne Street. Everything the household could need or the heart could desire was for sale within a few minutes’ walk. This article will concentrate on shopping in the 1860s, mainly because there is a lot of easily-available information about that decade, but also because there had recently been a considerable expansion in the local retail trade. Country-dwellers were no longer restricted to shopping on market and fair days. The Stirling and Dunfermline Railway, built in the 1850s, provided daily access to the town from the west, and an extension to Thornton and beyond brought passengers from the east. The railway station (on the site of the B&Q retail park) was just a stone’s throw from the town centre. Shoppers from the Limekilns and Charlestown district could ride the Elgin Railway train to its terminus in the Netherton, a few minutes walk from the shops. Village shops would have…
William Beveridge and Dunfermline
Did you know… …about the Dunfermline links of the author of the Beveridge Report? by Dr. Jean Barclay The Second World War brought many changes, not least in Britain`s health and welfare services, changes in which the name of William Beveridge looms large. In 1941, William Beveridge was appointed chairman of a Government committee of investigation into Social Insurance & Allied Services, which presented its report in November1942. The ethos behind the report was the banishment of the five `Evil Giants` of want, disease, ignorance, squalor & idleness and, from the outset, Beveridge insisted that the war provided the opportunity to make radical changes for the better, stating that `A revolutionary moment in the world`s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching`. At the heart of the new system was the principle that working people would pay a weekly national insurance contribution and in return payments would be made to the sick, the unemployed retired or widowed. A national health service was also envisaged – the population was to be protected `from the cradle to the grave`. In 1945 Clement Attlee, Labour Prime Minister, announced the introduction of the radical changes outlined in the Beveridge Report and it is still considered the corner stone of the foundation of the modern Welfare State. William Henry Beveridge was born in India in 1879 to Henry Beveridge and his wife Annette, nee Ackroyd, was schooled partly in England and partly in India, and went…
The Rev. Ralph Erskine
Rev. RALPH ERSKINE (1685-1752) – SECESSIONIST MINISTER” By George Robertson Faith, without trouble or fighting, is a suspicious faith: For true faith is a fighting, wrestling faith. Ralph Erskine, 1733. There are two statues in Dunfermline which commemorate eminent men. One can be found in Pittencrieff Park and honours the well known philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The other stands at the front of the former church at the corner of Queen Anne Street and Pilmuir Street and honours the Rev. Ralph Erskine. The story of the former is well documented but the question arises – who was the other? Before looking at Ralph’s life, perhaps it would be advisable to say something about his father, the Rev. Henry Erskine, who at the time of Ralph’s birth, was residing at Monilaws, near Cornhill, Northumberland, as this might give an indication of the influence the father had on the son. Henry Erskine was born in 1624 at Dryburgh, Berwickshire and graduated M.A. from Edinburgh University on 15th April 1645 and later ordained – date uncertain – to the church at Cornhill. Being of Puritan persuasion, when the English Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity 1662, Henry, together with around 2,000 other clergymen, refused to take the necessary oath – which would have required them to preach an Episcopalian form of religion – and he was required to vacate his church. However, at great risk to himself, he continued to preach at conventicles what he considered…
Hills Laundry
By George Beattie This business had its origins in Cowdenbeath where, in 1897, Mrs Janet Hill began a small hand-washing enterprise in Moss-side Road. A short time later, Mrs Hill was joined in the business by her husband, Charles Hill, with the enterprise then becoming known as Charles Hill & Co, Moss-side Laundry and Cleaning Works. Mr & Mrs Hill, in the early years, worked a 16 hour day in order to establish their small business. It was with remarkable foresight that Mr and Mrs Hill set up their business in the midst of what was then predominantly a mining area – though it expanded much more quickly than even they could have visualised. In those days part of the business was the cleaning and starching of stiff collars, as the people didn’t have the facilities to do them at home. Mr Hill would boast that ‘during Communion Week’, the firm would do about 1000 starched collars for the Kelty area alone’. By 1908 the laundry at Cowdenbeath employed about 30 people and cleaning processes were becoming more mechanised and more efficient. Even in the early days, there were washing machines of a type, but all the ironing was done by hand – the average woman ironing 11 or 12 shirts an hour. In 1918 Mr & Mrs Hill acquired much larger premises in the shape of Dunfermline & West Fife Laundry Ltd., which had been started in Halbeath Road, Dunfermline, in 1912 – See Note. Two years later, in May 1920, the Cowdenbeath laundry was closed and the whole…