The area of Baberton Mains is thought to have been inhabited since 1320 and possibly much earlier as crop markings just north west of Baberton Mains Farm indicate a settlement dating from the late Iron Age. Find out below about some of the more famous and colourful characters that have lived in and around Baberton.
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KILBABERTON HOUSE
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| 14th Century Kilbaberton House |
The first written mention of Kilbaberton is thought to have been in 1320 when the land was granted to Hugh Taylor. 1320 was the year in which Robert the Bruce declared Scotland's status as an independent sovereign state.
It has been said that when he accidentally became king of both Scotland and England in 1603, James stood on the town walls of Berwick and, surveying all the land he could see around, threw his arms wide, yelling, "Mine, all mine". Whether or not this story is apocryphal, it is certainly true that he made every attempt to ensure a uniformity in certain aspects of his new kingdom, and Kilbaberton House encapsulates this standardisation when it comes to architecture.
The traditional Big Hoose owned by the Scots gentry was a castellated tower of asymmetrical aspect. To James this smacked of an uncouth lack of polish. He instructed his Master of Works, James Murray, to design new homes for the Scottish aristocracy and gentry on the English model - buildings set round U-shaped courtyards with windows symmetrically disposed, and with bartizans (little turrets) at the corners. The traditional Scots painted ceilings gave way to plasterwork, often depicting the thistle and the rose, symbolising the Union of the Crowns. Many of the buildings designed by Murray - Linlithgow Palace and additions to Edinburgh Castle, for example - are constructed on this plan.
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| Baberton House |
In 1612, Murray was granted land near Juniper Green, and a decade later he designed and built Kilbaberton House on the innovative symmetrical U-plan style (the present octagonal extension which fills the courtyard was built in the 18th century by the Christie family, by which point the house was named Baberton House).
So Kilbaberton House was, amongst other country houses in Scotland, a political and rhetorical statement, an ideological symbol of James's "Magna Britannia", an attempt to subsume Scotland within the domain of its traditional foe. This would have discomfited Robert the Bruce whose Declaration of Arbroath had asserted Scotland's independence in 1320, the year in which the existence of Kilbaberton was first recorded. Just over 300 years later, Murray completed his United Kingdom writ in stone.
Julie Watt -Baberton History Group
Further Reading: Aonghus MacKechnie, 'Sir James Murray of Kilbaberton: King's Master of Works, 1607-1634', In 'The Mirror of Great Britain' - National Identity in Seventeenth-Century British Architecture, Olivia Horsfall Turner (ed), Spire Books Ltd (Reading) 2012
( This article is reproduced by kind permission of C&B News, 2014)
THE LAST KING OF BABERTON
Part 1, Monsieur arrives in Scotland
Charles X of France and Navarre, as you may already know, spent some of his later years in Juniper Green. He was a king of very little brain. He didn’t understand the words, ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, even when they were written in French. This wasn’t only because he was uneducated – the concepts were totally beyond his comprehension.
He was an accidental monarch, being a youngest son whose older brothers dropped dead before their time. Before he succeeded to the throne he was known as Monsieur, the traditional name for heirs to the French throne, and he led an outrageously dissolute life, behaving like a stag in the rutting season and being even more lavish with money than he was with sperm. One royal obligation that he did undergo, however, was to get married – to the unfortunate Marie-Thérèse of Savoy, who dutifully bore Monsieur two children before retiring to Austria where eventually she was buried under her maiden name, with, understandably, no mention of her marriage. Monsieur had already taken up with a lady-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette, Louise de Palastron, whose fragile plainness was beautified by Fragonard. Pale Louise, although already married, gamely remained as Monsieur’s mistress for the rest of her consumptive life. Monsieur was no looker either, being stout (precisely thirteen and a half stone), and with a mouth that was always glaikitly open, his upper lip being too short (this Hapsburg Jaw was a proud sign of regality – and also of inbreeding). He was inordinately fond of the latest fashions and it was said that Monsieur employed four lackeys to hold open his buckskin breeches so that their master could drop down into them, thus avoiding wrinkles. Any resemblance to Wallace and Gromit is purely coincidental. Even more cracking was that the lackeys were also employed in the evening to help Monsieur struggle his way up and out of his tight trousers.
Monsieur gambled recklessly, ending up with enormous debts – estimated at two million IOUs - and even greater unpopularity. His advisers told him he really had to flee France – and the guillotine. On Monsieur’s behalf, his bemused best friend queried the advisers, “Is there a revolt?” –“No, sire, it is a revolution.” The Bastille had fallen earlier that day.
So began several years for Monsieur of wandering round Europe, before he eventually fetched up in Britain. The English refused him entry and told him to try Scotland. He is reported to have arrived with great secrecy in Leith, but twenty-one guns saluted him when he stepped ashore, and a similar salvo from the castle greeted his arrival at Holyroodhouse. Half the population of Edinburgh lined the route which ended in the filthy squalor of the Canongate.
Part 2, Bourbon on the Rocks
The Scots Chronicle for 2 March 1796 welcomed Monsieur with some doggerel which began:
O Scotia! take me to thy arms,Thy friendly arms o stretch to me!
Monsieur wouldn’t have been able to translate this, though he would doubtless have appreciated the cloying sentiment.
Holyroodhouse was hardly the Bastille: a large contingent of French emigrés inhabited the area, and Edinburgh’s polite society was made very welcome in Monsieur’s jail, though he also rubbed shoulders with the other debtors whose lot he shared. He remained there until the passing of the Aliens Act of 1798 which gave immunity to those who had accumulated debts overseas. He was therefore freed from jail and he hightailed it to London, Louise in tow.
This was a temporary sojourn, however, because a new version of the Aliens Act came into force in 1800 and this caused Monsieur to scurry back to his refuge in Edinburgh. He was now, though, sufficiently sure of his position to travel widely in Scotland and he accepted hospitality in aristocratic houses throughout the land. Whatever Monsieur’s many failings, the Scots attitude has aye been ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’ (though admittedly this wasn’t quite the scenario Burns had in mind). Anyway, Monsieur made himself quite popular among the nobility (who doubtless exhibited similar failings and weren’t bothered by his).
Part 3, Auld Lang Syne
Eventually he (the French royal heir) returned to London and by April 1803 he was settled at 46 Baker Street while his mistress, Louise, resided discreetly nearby in Thayer Street. There Louise’s tuberculosis was finally diagnosed. Her prescribed treatment was the steamy atmosphere of fresh dung; she was moved out to the country village of Brompton where a room was fitted up for her above a stable. Needless to say, she died soon after, in 1804, aged just 39. The effect of her death on Monsieur was dramatic – he suddenly became withdrawn and solemn.
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| Charles X of France and Navarre |
After twenty years of comparative solemnity, he succeeded to the throne as Charles X of France and Navarre. He became known as King Charles the Simple and he was so reactionary that he was forced to abdicate in 1830. It was, however, said of him that he was such a nonentity that he was not worth a revolution. He set sail for England. But no sooner had the ship reached the open sea than it dropped anchor and a small boat headed back to France. There was a sharp intake of breath on the French mainland. Could Charles have rescinded his abdication? The reason for the turnaround was even more dramatic: the ship had been heavily stocked with truffles and champagne, but they’d forgotten the baguettes.
Yet again England refused to welcome Charles – not surprisingly, since London had recently housed our very own ‘mad’ monarch, followed by his fat dissolute son. Charles was told to try Edinburgh instead. So once more he disembarked at Newhaven and made his way back to Holyrood House where there was much raucous singing of ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot’, so raucous in fact that The Scotsman reported that “there was a strong possibility that the whole party would have been […] obliged to answer at the bar of the Police Court for disturbing the public peace”.
Part 4: Baberton aka Blandings?
Shortly after his arrival in Edinburgh, Charles took out a lease on Baberton House. Letting his home was essential for its owner, Archibald Christie, so deeply in debt was he. It was extremely ironic that his tenant had been an even heavier debtor than he was. Perhaps Christie thought that a royal tenant would add some much-needed cachet to Baberton, or, more likely he was just desperate: cachet and Charles the Simple were mutually contradictory. As with Holyroodhouse, the house was refurbished and one of the principal bedrooms is still known as the ‘King’s Room’, the ceiling of which is decorated with the fleur-de-lys.
The reason for Charles’s decampment to Juniper Green was because of an outbreak of cholera in the city centre. Ironic again that Archibald Christie’s son would die of the cholera which was later rife in Juniper Green with its manky water supply next to a midden. Baberton House also became for Charles and his entourage a place of rest and recreation, which included small game hunting, and, paradoxically, feeding thrushes and sparrows. His guide to the area was an ‘amiable and witty’ Mr Robinson (actually Sir John Robison) who showed the royal party ‘the curiosities of the neighbourhood’. Unfortunately, sources do not reveal what the curiosities were. The mind boggles.
But politics meant that Charles couldn’t remain in Britain for long and once more he set sail from the Chain Pier, which was heavily guarded by a contingent of Newhaven fishermen. He wandered round the Continent for a few years, eventually ending up in the chateau of Graffenberg in Eastern Europe where, on 3 November 1836, he became ill, cholera was diagnosed, and three days later he expired. Thus died the last King of France and Navarre.
Really he might as well have remained in cholera-ridden Juniper Green. It should be said, however, that the village (what there was of it) was much better off without him and we should keep very very quiet about our last brush with royalty.
Further reading: A French King at Holyrood, A. J. Mackenzie-Stuart, John Donald Publishers Ltd (Edinburgh), 1995
Julie Watt - Baberton History Group
(This article reproduced by kind permission of C&B News, 2014)
The Saga of the Christie Family
Episode 1: Not Downton Abbey
“Yesterday forenoon, an inquiry was opened in the First Division Court-Room, before Sheriff Gordon and a jury, for ‘cognoscing Mr Alexander Christie of Baberton, residing at Juniper Green, as incompos mentis, profuse, and fatuous.’”
Thus began, on 7 June 1864, the account in that day’s issue of The Scotsman, a verbatim report of a court case to prove or disprove the level of battiness of the Laird of Baberton House. The situation was that Captain Archibald Christie, the previous laird, had died; his elder son, Alexander, then aged about 40, inherited Baberton House and lands, but the younger son, Braithwaite, contested this on the grounds that his brother was completely incapable of running a country estate, since he was “insane and of unsound mind”, “of very defective and imbecile intellect … combined with a habit of the lowest and grossest intemperance – a habit of continued drunkenness … It was quite impossible for a creature like this to continue in his father’s family, because he was unfit to be exhibited to decent or respectable society,” declared Sheriff Patrick Fraser on behalf of his client, Braithwaite. Braithwaite seems to have been, as Eddie Mair might have said, a “nasty piece of work” – his sister Sophia left nothing to him in her will “in consequence of his bad treatment” of her.
The fact is that the Christie family felt they had to keep up lairdly appearances, for all, except Alexander, suffered badly from a lack of social confidence, since the family had only relatively recently come into possession of the lands of Baberton. In the mid-eighteenth century, John Christie, a captain in the army, had been presented with a lottery ticket by his colonel, and by a stroke of unbelievable luck, he won the prize - £10.000. With this enormous sum, he bought the estate of Baberton. It was thereafter inherited by the eldest sons of the family, one of whom, Archibald, Alexander’s father, leased it in 1830, to the exiled and dethroned King Charles X of France (though this was actually Archibald’s desperate attempt to pay off mounting debts). Royalty living in their house added to the Christies’ belief that their blood was sapphire blue - until Baberton ended up in 1861 in the dubious hands of Alexander.
Before he inherited the estate, and because his father was embarrassed and ashamed of his elder son, Alexander was boarded out in the home of John Barr of Juniper Green. But because he had nothing much to occupy himself with, Sandy walked in almost every day to Edinburgh, “drinking whisky at the public houses as he went along … and then walking back to Juniper Green in a state of intoxication – sometimes being found lying drunk at the roadside, and sometimes being found lying drunk in common stairs. During these peregrinations he formed many low acquaintances; his person was dirty and his dress mean; and, in fact, he had not one of the characteristics of a gentleman.”
Was such a man capable, or not, of running a big estate? Was he posh enough? Was his blood blue enough? Or was poor Sandy just ‘profuse and fatuous’ as his brother claimed? That’s what had to be determined by the jury, in open court before the public, and not a single word was minced during the proceedings.
Episode 2: The Odd Couple
Alexander Christie, the elder son of the owner of Baberton House, inherited the estate on his father’s death. His younger brother, Braithwaite, contested the inheritance. Braithwaite Christie was not only anxious to prove that his brother Alexander was too “profuse and fatuous” to run the estate of Baberton, but was also worried that, if his brother married, the thread of inheritance might be affected. Braithwaite was determined to take over Baberton – for himself and his own heirs.
Despite the fact that the estate rendered £1000 a year, Alexander, instead of residing in the Big Hoose (because his father refused to give him house room), chose to stay at John Barr’s house in Juniper Green where he had been a lodger for many years, presumably because he felt more welcome there. “In going about Juniper Green [Alexander] had been accustomed to go into the house of Agnes Mossman [in Belmont Avenue – now Juniper Avenue], a woman well advanced in life, and a pauper. Mr Christie used to go into her house now and then and smoke his pipe by the fire. In consequence of these visits this woman acquired an influence over his mind, and induced him, along with a butcher named McDonald, and a mason named Law, to sign lines promising that he would marry her. Christie and Mossman subsequently went through a form of marriage without a clergyman.”
Agnes - aged, it was said, “about fifty”, a decade older than Alexander – was either a gold digger or had a heart of gold, or possibly both; she was certainly no looker: she always wore “a black patch over one of her eyes” and, in case anyone in the giggling courtroom assumed she was a female precursor of Long John Silver, John Barr assured them that “She has the use of both of her legs, but I cannot say whether she is lame or not. {Laughter}.” No parrot, though. Barr continued, “She used to work at the paper-mill, but I can’t say how long she did so.’” Barr went on to admit that she did not “bear a very good character in the village”. Under cross examination, he was asked, “Who was Nannie’s father?” He replied cautiously,”’Weel, that’s a kittle question. (Much laughter.) I do not mean to say that she is illegitimate.’”
Agnes was certainly not illegitimate – she was the fifth of the ten children of a road surveyor – and she seems to have charmed Alexander, who composed love songs to her. “I heard him one morning,” said John Barr, “singing a nonsense song about love. It ended ‘My Nanny, O’. I could not say whether he had been with Nanny the night before. I have seen him dancing”. Enough said.
The butcher and the mason presented a petition to the Sheriff to record the marriage in the parish register. But the Sheriff Substitute “was so much struck by the appearance of Mr Christie that he declined to grant the warrant … Being thus foiled by the intervention of the Sheriff from doing this most indecent and scandalous act [….] Messrs McDonald and Law took this poor man to the session-clerk” but “the kirk-session declined to have the papers proclaimed”.
It was Sheriff Fraser’s job to prove that Alexander was too dippy to have understood what he was being “inveigled’ into. John Barr, under interrogation related a conversation he had had, which began with Alexander’s confession:
“ ’John, I have been signin’ papers in John Law’s”…
”What were they about?” I said to him.
Says he to me, “John, I do not know.”
“Did you not know what they’re about at all, Mr Christie?” I says.
He says. “I suppose its about some grund over the hill.”’
The following Thursday, when Barr was planting potatoes in the garden, his wife called him in. “I went home and saw Mr Christie, and said to him, ‘Well, laird, you’ve been signin’ lines again.’ He said that he had, but he did not know what was in them.” So Barr said, “I went away to Nannie’s, and I said to her, ‘What lines have you and Mr Christie been signin’?’ and she turned round to me and said, ‘I’m his lawfu’ married wife.’ I said to her, ‘I wish you may na’ hae taen a stick to brak yer ain head,’ and cam awa’ out the door”.
Episode 3: An Everyday Story of Countryfolk?
The inquiry for “cognising Mr Alexander Christie of Baberton as incompos mentis, profuse, and fatuous” was resumed at the High Court of Justiciary, and the next witness called was Robert Atkinson, farmer at Baberton Mains.
“The laird,” said Atkinson, “was not like other people I conversed with. He sometimes gave a senseless laugh when I spoke to him [….] He was unable to converse with me either when he was in drink or out of it. I never knew any difference in him. He was in the habit of going about the place shooting […] He did not conduct his sports like other sportsmen. If a bird got up, he was not very particular as to whether any person was in the road when he was going to fire. He was not very guilty of killing game, but I have seen him kill a lame duck belonging to me, and carry it off. (Laughter).”
“There was a sale of wood belonging to Mr Christie […] He was bidding £10 for one of his own trees […] I asked him what he thought of the improvements on the farm. He answered, ‘I want all that planting out.’ He did not take the least notice about the improvements. [….] I once saw him in the kitchen with a loaded gun, with a cap on, and the gun at full-cock, the butt betwixt his legs, and the muzzle underneath his chin. I could hardly conceive a [dafter?] thing for a wise man to do […] I could not consider him a good shot. I never saw him shoot anything but a hare sitting, or a duck in a pond. (Laughter.)”
The Baberton House gardener, James Stewart, concurred with the farmer’s opinion. “He always carried the gun loaded, and would bring it into the house, and lay it down with a dunt. I have taken the gun from him. He was very much addicted to swearing. He would point the gun at a tree, and say, ‘Heave at the b___’. I once made a very narrow escape - he once aimed at a tree, and the shot came smash before me, at another time, I jumped back in case he would fire the other barrel, and called out to him, ‘Hold on.’ I then asked him if he was aware that he had nearly shot me. He just grinned, and said nothing [….]” On another occasion he said, “There’s a fine cock in the Wilderness. I want it.” Since the Wilderness Wood still exists, all 21st century Baberton golfers should beware of ghostly cartridges whizzing past their ears – badly aimed golfballs may not be the only hazard on the course – though the gardener admitted that he had “never heard of him causing any accidents.” Stewart continued his testimony: “He could get a drink any day except Sunday. He might get half-a-gill as refreshment. The woman in the public-house at Currie Muir End was restricted from giving him any more. The woman at Juniper Green public-house might also be restricted to giving him that amount, but they might exceed the amount to which they were restricted.” Presumably the pubs with the disobedient barmaids are now known as Tanners and the Kinleith Arms respectively.
Stewart’s wages were “£35 a year with perquisites”, not much when compared with the £1000 the estate was worth annually, an anomaly of which the gardener was painfully conscious. However, the laird’s tenants seemed very fond of him despite (or perhaps because of) his alleged disability, and the fact that he was so much richer than them. One of them, William Lawrie, observed that, “His clothes were not well put on. The tie of his neckerchief was often round the back of his neck.” Lawrie, along with other locals, attended the dinner which followed the tree sale. The laird “was going to give us a song. He gave a roar now and then […] I thought it very daft-like […] He roared the whole time of the dinner.”
It wasn’t the “daft-like” roaring that shocked the lawyer cross-examining Lawrie, but the scandal of the insouciant breaking of social codes: he demanded of Lawrie, “Do you consider it a creditable thing for a gentleman’s factor to sit down at dinner with his tenants and gardener, that gentleman being very drunk? – I think it was very kind. He was never any other way but drunk. (Laughter.) - Did you ever see any other man with his tie round the back of his neck? – I never saw anybody except an Irishman at harvest […] – Mention the most insensible thing he ever said? – He said he would put Baberton in good order, and then gave a laugh. – And that is what you consider the most insensible thing he ever said? – Yes; but he hummed and ha’d about it. There was more cleverness in him when he was drunk than when he was sober. (Laughter).”
Episode 4, Keeping Up Appearances
The next witness in the court case - in which Braithwaite Christie was contesting the competence of his brother Alexander to run the Baberton estate - was their cousin, also named Alexander. Cousin Alexander declared himself to be a farmer in Clifton, Cumberland (though census returns note that he farmed in Yorkshire).
He began his testimony by saying, “My cousin was always considered weak in mind, and his mother had a somewhat stronger affection for him on account of his weakness.” Such maternal partiality no doubt caused a lifelong rankle in his brother’s mind, though their mother died when Braithwaite was just a toddler. Cousin Alexander reported that Sandy had attended a “a very good school in Dunse. I heard from his father that it was his ruin that he got among the grooms at Dunse while he was at school.” Whatever ruination the grooms perpetrated on poor Sandy, it is clear that he was from the start a dunce in Duns – indeed his father had always regarded him as “a dense lad”. Cousin Alexander reported that Sandy’s father had “wished to get my cousin placed under restraint [because of] his natural weakness of mind, his depravity, and his coarse language”, but that medical men had advised against this. The cousin went on to say that he had accompanied Sandy to his father’s funeral in 1861. “I went with him in the same carriage to Currie, where his father was buried. He behaved quietly in the carriage; but when he left his father’s grave, he burst out into one of his idiotic laughs close to the church, and I rebuked him for it.”
So, “to improve his character”, Cousin Alexander took Sandy to England with him, accompanied by John Barr, tradesman of Juniper Green. Much to the cousin’s disapproval, Sandy dined with Barr “in the kitchen instead of the dining-room; and I told him I would not allow that, and that he must live like a gentleman while he lived with me. He was cleanly in his habits. He spat about the bed-room a good deal.”
It wasn’t the upstairs gobbing that disturbed the cousin as much as Sandy’s flagrant disregard of class divisions. He was also shocked when Sandy read a few verses of the Bible, burst out laughing and began “to make some remarks upon women”, presumably those involved in the world’s oldest profession. When rebuked, “he angrily threw the Bible on the floor”.
At the beginning of August, Sandy demanded to go “home to the moors or to Juniper Green to the shooting”. Cousin Alexander had failed in his mission to reform Sandy who, he declared, “had a particularly muddy mind […] He spoke broad Scotch and I had great difficulty in understanding him”. Before the leave-taking, his cousin gave Sandy “ten sovereigns. He took them in his hand, and looked at them six or eight minutes, and turned them over on both sides. He then ran out to the water-closet in the garden, and came again in a few minutes, and again pulled them out of his pocket, and tried to count them.” Sandy ran out again to the WC where he clearly didn’t spend a penny because he returned with the coins intact, still unable to count them.
So Sandy returned to his lodgings with John Barr in Juniper Green. Earlier, rooms had been found for him in Wright’s Houses in Bruntsfield – not perhaps the best choice for a man who liked his booze, since the houses are next door to the Golf Tavern.
Cousin Alexander then went on to agree with Solicitor General, Sir George Young, that Braithwaite Christie was also weak-minded, but added that he was savvy enough to marry a respectable woman from Cheltenham. “She had £2000, and surely that is evidence of respectability. (Laughter). Does he keep lodgings?” Young asked. “Witness looked surprised at the question, and, after a pause, warmly and indignantly replied – Do you think that a Christie would take in lodgers? (Much laughter).” Ignoring the fact that Baberton House had been constantly let by the Christie family to pay off their debts, the witness proclaimed indignantly that Braithwaite had “a very nice house in Trinity. I never heard of such a thing. (Renewed laughter).” Sir George Young responded, “That is quite beneath a Christie, you think? – Yes; I consider the blood of a Christie is quite equal to that of a Young. (Much laughter).”
Whether or not Sir George’s blood was equal to that of a Christie, his brains were certainly a lot sharper than those of Cousin Alexander who began to flounder and bluster hopelessly under Young’s continued incisive interrogation. After making mincemeat of Cousin Christie, to the raucous delight of the public gallery, Sir George then expressed his sympathy for poor Sandy who had had such a luckless life, surrounded by people who treated him viciously. Young ended the day’s proceedings by refusing to allow Sandy to “be exhibited here in this crowded court”, but decreed that he should be examined in private by the top Edinburgh doctors, Dumbreck, Peddie and Douglas. The case was adjourned until the following morning.
What were the findings of the medical men? Sandy was certainly less class-conscious than his brother and cousin, but was he actually any more “profuse and fatuous“ than they were?
Episode 5: End Game
On 8 June 1864, the report in The Scotsman - about the court case to prove that Alexander Christie was too “profuse and fatuous” to run the estate of Baberton -concluded with the request by the Solicitor-General that Christie should be examined in private by medical doctors. Since this examination was held in private, it could not be reported in The Scotsman of the following day.
The Solicitor-General, Sir George Young, seems to have been a man of some compassion and integrity, and to have felt that Alexander Christie was being picked on and made out to be more fatuous than the rest of his family. Young certainly ran rings round Sandy’s inarticulate and not very convincing cousin during the cross-examination reported on 8 June. You can almost hear the heavy sighs of the lawyer whose questioning the cousin rightly regarded as acute.
As one example of Young’s interrogation, he asked the cousin whether the latter had said that Alexander “was the most amiable and kind-hearted being that ever breathed? – Yes.
Well, do you think he was disobedient? – He was disobedient to his father.
In what respect was he disobedient? – Well, I cannot understand the meaning of these law terms. (Laughter.)
‘Disobedient to his father’ is not a law phrase. - Well, I am before a lawyer at any rate, and a ‘cute one. (Laughter)
Never mind the ‘cuteness, but tell me in what respect he disobeyed his father? – I have heard him swear like a trooper when he was a boy between sixteen and seventeen; and I spoke to him pretty sharply on the point.”
The cousin simply was unable to explain Alexander’s disobedient behaviour, except to say that he used foul language as a teenager. Plus ça change.
So the case was adjourned until the doctors’ opinions were sought. It seems that Peddie, Douglas and Dumbreck, Edinburgh’s top medical men, must have agreed that Alexander was no more batty than his brother or his cousin, and that he was not too fatuous to own the estate of Baberton. From the evidence reported in The Scotsman it seems to a 21st century mind that Sandy was not so much mentally retarded as eccentric. What seems to have got up his contemporaries’ noses was his total disregard for social ‘class’. But the lawyers must also have put their heads together - for the property was entailed: in other words, it had to be handed down through the line of descent, and Alexander was the oldest son. Needless to say his sister didn‘t get a look-in., despite the fact that she was older than Braithwaite. She also seems to have been much more on-the-ball than either of her brothers.
In order to get things on a safe legal footing, the lawyers presumably advised Alexander to regularise his relationship with Agnes, for, a couple of days later the two were married - in Newington. Presumably they didn’t choose to marry in Currie because that would have alerted locals to the fact that they had not previously been married in church. And Braithwaite’s attempt to take over the estate failed dismally, for the valuation rolls of, for example, 1867-8, indicate that Alexander was the proprietor of Baberton House, Baberton Mains, and the parks and plantations. There was also the quarry from which much of the stone for the New Town was built. In March 1867 the posts of Quarryman and Timekeeper were advertised – only sober and active first-class men need apply.
But a few months later, in May 1867 there is an advertisement for an auction of the household contents of Baberton House – it contains a wonderful catalogue of Alexander’s possessions: mahogany furniture, crystal, a four-poster bed, pianoforte, not to mention six chests of drawers, a hatstand and a loo table.
What Sandy and Nancy did for furniture thereafter is a mystery. Just over a year later, on 12 August 1868, Alexander signed a bond so that Agnes should receive an annuity of £275. Exactly ten days later, Alexander died. Did Agnes foresee his demise and twist his arm so that she would not be a destitute widow? Or was Sandy, despite desperate sickness, compos mentis enough to provide for her future? If so, he must for some days have exhibited relatively mild symptoms of his illness and these may have been treated to postpone death, for Alexander’s death certificate reports that he died of British cholera, a disease which can cause death within just a day or two, not ten.
He died in the home of a Miss Agnes Weir in Prestonpans. It is likely that he contracted his fatal disease in Juniper Green, for cholera outbreaks were horribly frequent because of poor sanitation and water supply. He may have been rushed for treatment by Miss Weir, who was a druggist. Her administrations, however, were ultimately ineffectual. The witness to Sandy’s death was John McDonald, the farmer who had, many years before, borne witness to the ‘marriage’ of Alexander and Agnes.
It was a marriage which did not produce any heirs, and so Braithwaite inherited the entailed Baberton estate after all. Alexander is memorialised on his father’s stone in Currie Kirk. As for Agnes, she died an old woman of 75, in Daisybank Cottage in Currie. She has no marked grave in Currie Kirkyard, however. Possibly she was buried in St Cuthbert’s Parish where she was born, or she lies in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Currie.
Julie Watt -Baberton History Group
(This article reproduced by kind permission of the C&B News)