Born in Halbeath, The Rt. Hon. William Adamson, PC, MP was a miner, trade union leader and MP for Fife West from 1919 to 1931. He was a member of the first Labour Cabinet and became Secretary of State for Scotland. In this short biography, George Robertson summarises his political achievements but also describes his early life and how it influenced politician he was to become. A Man of the People By George Robertson Between 1905 and his death in 1936, Willie Adamson became a Local Councillor in Dunfermline, Member of Parliament for West Fife, Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Secretary for Scotland, Secretary of State for Scotland and a Privy Councillor. This part of his life is well documented but not so well known is how his life outside politics shaped the man he was to become. William Adamson – referred to as Willie by his family and friends – was born in the tiny mining village of Halbeath, about three miles east of Dunfermline. His birth took place on 2nd April 1863 in Long Row, one of several rows of houses within the village. He was the youngest of eleven children and was given the name of an older brother who had died eighteen days prior to his birth. His father James Armstrong Adamson was a coal miner and his mother Flora Cunningham, was also from a mining family having worked in one of the Fife pits until the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842 banned all females and children under the age of ten from working underground and thus preventing…
The ‘Pernicious’ Society of Wheepmen
Did you know.. …about the ‘Pernicious Society of Dunfermline Wheepmen? By Dr. Jean Barclay In May 1735 Bailly John Lindsay, maltster of Dunfermline, was a worried man. As First Baillie of the Town Council he deputised for the Provost, the Marques of Tweeddale, who was rarely present, and he had had nothing but trouble. There was rivalry for the provostship between the Marques and Sir Peter Halkett, who had been elected provost in 1705, and a power struggle between the Halkett family and James Erskine of Grange, leading to vociferous arguments between councillors from the various camps. Erskine had been chosen in May 1734 to represent the Council at the election of the Member of Parliament for the district and the Halketts hinted at bribery, corruption and leading the councillors astray. There was also a legal dispute underway between the Council and Sir Alexander Murray of Melgum and Lochgelly for an unpaid family debt which seemed to have been going on for ever, and in addition Bailly Lindsay was preoccupied with building a new malt barn north of the Rottenraw, near the Rottenraw port. Now on Tuesday, May 6th the servants or workers of the town were refusing to work and Bailly Lindsay felt obliged to call a special meeting. It appeared that there had been a fracas, between the weavers and the servants, and each side had summoned the other before the Baillie or Magistrates Court. Lindsay reported to council that `several of ye servants in ye Town` had…
Stewarts Rubber Manufacturers
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…