The long Napoleonic wars seemed finally to be over – Napoleon had invaded Russia, and then retreated from Moscow, leading to a hundred French, German and Polish officers from his army coming to Hawick as prisoners of war ,  with a marked effect on the small burgh  “the presence of so many well dressed persons for so long a period [from 1812 until 1814 ] produced a marked reform of the costume of the inhabitants”
and as John Gibson was to find out, be very likely to turn the head of at least one respectable Hawick wife.

In 1813, Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig, and “the town is illuminated in honour of the victory at Leipsic”. Conveniently, the council had that year “resolved to light the streets with sixty oil lamps”

Then in 1814, Napoleon was forced to abdicate, and went into exile on Elba , arriving on 3 May 1814.

And there was lots going on in Hawick – in March 1814, the body of the new born child of Janet Weens, daughter of a shoemaker in the town, had been pulled out of the Teviot, and Janet was charged with concealing her pregnancy and murder.

On 11 April, the Caledonian Mercury reported that the Cossacks were near Boulogne, Wellington was nearing Toulouse,  the French Senate had deprived Buonaparte of the throne, and had appointed a Provisional Government which had declared that “property shall be preserved, as well as the public debt and public pensions, that the press shall be free, subject to certain restrictions”  … and that the Emperor of Russia had promised to release all French prisoners.

And then the paper printed a list of “persons indicted to stand trial at the following circuits”
Aberdeen – Robert Middleton rape
Ayr – Robert Gibson, collier for robbery; John Macmanua, private soldier in the 27th Regiment for murder; David Young and Adam and David Galt for riot and deforcing officers in the collection of taxes
Dumfries – William Wright horse stealing
Glasgow – Alexander Brown assault and murder; James Jackson murder; Agnes Findlater theft
Jedburgh – John Gibson murder; Robert Ford horse stealing.

John Gibson wasn’t a Hawick man – he was born in Ayr in 1774 and was a soldier in the 91st Regiment of Foot, the Argyllshire Fencibles, when he arrived in Hawick  in 1795. The soldiers been posted there in case of unrest – in case the spirit of the French Revolution spread amongst the workers in Scotland [and it did - the Government was increasingly concerned by the activities of the Friends of the People who erected Trees of Liberty in places like Auchtermuchty, leading to state show trials which transported their leaders]

John was in a good billet with Gideon Renwick, who was not only a butcher, but a butcher with an unmarried daughter, and the 21 year old John promptly married Janet Renwick before the year was out.
As a soldier, John was on the move with postings to Lanark, then Berwick, then to Ireland in 1798 to suppress Wolfe Tone’s  United Irishmen . Janet followed John, but after their 4th child [of 11] returned to Hawick, where John Gibson settled in 1802 as a nailer.
However he re-enlisted – or was tricked into re-enlisting – and deserted before being press-ganged into the navy , and jumping ship, then setting up in business in Langholm and Kelso before being arrested and tried – and acquitted – for desertion. By 1810 he was back in Hawick with Janet and her 11 children, and living in the Millport, which even today is an odd, out of the way place, even although it is a stone’s throw from the Tower Knowe.

Walter Wilson was a baker’s apprentice with his father, just up the Howegate.

There were three Wilson properties in the 1824 map – but people don’t move around all that much – so that moving up the Howegate we have Hugh Goodfellow’s baker’s shop at number 1 at the corner of the Sandbed [with the future John Goodfellow, 1822 Cornet] ; then Wilson the shoemaker at the bottom of the Howegate at number 2 – next to  Cumming the hardware shop; then another Wilson at 6 Howegate – a grocer and spirit dealer; and so up to 8 Howegate , where John Smith the whip and thong maker’s wife Elizabeth had just given birth to James Smith the 1846 Cornet.
And finally up to 10 Howegate, and our Walter Wilson the baker.
[and of course another baker - the Kedie house of the 1776 and 1836 cornets appears at the bottom right hand side of the map in Kirkstyle]

Back in the Millport, the 1814 inhabitants can’t have changed much from what they were in 1841 and the census. Running down from the Tower Knowe, at the first house, number 1 Millport, the trades of the inhabitants were listed as  chimney sweep, a pauper, a handloom weaver and family, and agricultural labourer. Presumably the chimney sweep and wife, and female pauper in basement rooms, the family weaving on the first floor, and the single ag lab up in an attic room. This is likely to have been the house where John Gibson murdered his wife, with a stocking maker in the attic; the Gibsons on the main floor, and soldiers billeted on the ground floor.

Next door at 2 and 3 Millport there was a collection of people presumably each in a single room – an army pensioner with his 3 children; 3 pauper children – a brother and sister aged 7 and 10 and a 10 year old boy; and a 70 year old pauper shoemaker – all locals born in Roxburghshire. Then people born outside the county – a woollen spinner with wife and child; two labourers; a printer; a basket maker and wife; a 20 year old “pit man”; husband and wife hand loom weavers from Ireland with three children; a widow with 2 children under 5; and a labourer.
At number 4 an army pensioner; and a four families of Irish weavers.

So Millport would be the sort of place that a soldier would be billeted in – and if the house belonged to Gideon Renwick, your wife’s father, it was exactly the sort of place you would live in.

John Brook, a stocking maker, had a room in the garret of the house [probably number 1], and described at John Gibson’s trial on 6 April 1814 , that he had heard an argument between the Gibsons about 11 o’clock one night, and then screaming at about 3 in the morning “which the witness conjectured were occasioned by some soldiers who lodged in the house” so he jumped out of bed and went down stairs to be told “Gibson’s murdered his wife”. In the room, he saw Gibson standing in his shirt , with blood on the floor and the bed. He said “Man, man, what have you done” to which Gibson responded “Frenchman! Frenchman!” and “yes, I have sold her to a Frenchman now”

The trial only lasted a single day, but appeared to be quite thorough – two doctors gave their accounts of the body., with three different cuts to the windpipe, one of which was a deep cut from the wind pipe across to the left side of the neck which had cut through two muscles, the jugular vein and the carotid artery. But there had been no signs of any other violence. The floor had been washed, but there was a pool of blood under the bed – and Gibson’s penknife could have been the weapon used.

James Turnbull a shoemaker who had lodged in the house, testified of quarrels with Gibson accusing Janet of keeping back fourpence from some nails she had sold; of finding “Gibson with his wife’s head under his arm, beating her very severely in the face with his fist” and thought that “Mrs Gibson a very respectable woman, and he had never heard any thing injurious to her character”.

Aside from some ill feeling towards the Renwicks because they had refused to transfer Janet’s share of the property into his name as her husband “the old people ought to be in hell, and he should burn the house”, the main motive appeared to be allegations about a French prisoner.

Although John had no doubts about the paternity of 10 of his 11 children, he was suspicious that the 7 month old baby belonged to “a French officer was in the habit of frequenting the house” although he had “never seen familiarities between them”.
Feeding this suspicion was his conviction that Janet was putting poison in his tea.
For about 10 days before the murder, “his wife always contrived to raise some dispute, then rose from the table, and she would take no tea. Last Thursday he took tea by himself and saw his wife sneer at him and immediately felt himself seized with a pain more severe than formerly; said to his wife she was poisoning him; she laughed but made no answer” He then had some high words with his wife, and went to bed about 10 o’clock – during the night, he thought he saw the Frenchman coming into the room …….  and so on and matters escalated until he felt for his penknife in his waistcoat pocket  …….

One witness who wasn’t heard was the one of the three children who were still alive – Gideon Gibson then 10 years old [and still living in O'Connell Street in 1841] but he was considered too young to give evidence, even although he said that he wanted to “tell about his mother’s death”.

Whatever Gideon might have said, the trial closed with evidence that John was “labouring under a considerable degree of melancholy”, and then on Saturday 9 April 1814 he was judged Guilty, and he was taken back to Jedburgh prison and fed on bread and water until 12th May, when he was to be “hanged by the common executioner on a gibbet until he was dead” and his body was to be given to the Drs Monro senior and junior , Professors of Anatomy in Edinburgh, for dissection. [They later turned to Burke and Hare to supply corpses for dissection]

On the day “a little before 10 o’clock he was put in a carriage at Jedburgh … and escorted by yeomanry cavalry of the county. About two o’clock they reached Hawick, where the gallows was erected on a green nearly opposite to the house where the murder was committed”
Presumably then, just across the Teviot Bridge on the main road out of town, on the common Haugh – and long before Commercial Road was built.

The 1824 map – but showing how the other side of the Teviot looked then – and where the gibbet would have been erected – symbolically facing the Millport for the condemned man to see as he was hanged; close to the main road so that the heavy timber for the gibbet could have been brought in easily enough, and with enough space for the cavalry to graze and water their horses – and keep the crowds at bay.

“the scaffold was surrounded by a detachment of local militia. After spending some time in devotion, he mounted the fatal drop and was immediately launched into eternity. Gibson was a stout, but not a tall man, of about 40 years of age. …   An immense multitude attended on the occasion, the first time that such a scene had taken place in the town  .. his body has been brought to the city [Edinburgh] for desection”

For Walter Wilson, it was a short stroll from the Howegate across the Sandbed to the Teviot Bridge

Down the Howegate, past Hugh Goodfellow [baker, farmer, corn dealer, later of Trow Mill] and round past where they were starting to prepare for the opening of Buccleuch Road and across the Teviot Bridge. There are accounts of public hangings – enjoyable and sobering at the same time. But any worse than the millions of people who sit comfortably watching TV cop series showing beatings, rapes, murder and grisly violence of every kind. At least Walter Wilson watched only one hanging – no rewind button, no close-up, no music playing in the background. Just a simple scene – a gibbet, on the Haugh, opposite Millport, with a short stout 40 year old who he probably knew – probably by sight and certainly by common gossip – “married to Renwick the butchers daughter” .

And then for Walter, it wasn’t long between mid-May and his moment as Cornet.
The same crowds on the same Haugh – but watching horse racing rather than a hanging.

Aftterwards – Walter married Isabella and carried on Wilson the Bakers at 10 Howegate, with son Walter a bakers apprentice; eldest daughter Jane about to marry another baker John Armstrong [of 1 Sandbed in the 1840s]; and another 7 children. [His wife Isabella was to carry on the business with sons Walter and James until the 1860s]

Walter became Burgh Treasurer, and was “the most prominent townsman to die” in the Cholera epidemic of July – September 1849 which claimed 197 lives. He was buried in the  Wellogate cemetery which opened only a fortnight before the first cholera funeral.

There was a particularly significant increase in the amount of drainage following the Land Drainage Act of 1847, but in 1846 Cornet James Smith experienced a noteable flood – possibly something like that of 2005

and from his house at 8 Howegate, the water must have seemed perilously close when the Slitrig burst its banks after midnight and poured down through Silver Street to flood the Sandbed to a depth of 6 feet.. The 2005 flood map shows how the waters lapped at the foot of the Howegate.

He painted the water level on the wall in Towerdykeside, and freshened it up during his life, until he and friends replaced it with the current plaque in 1902 “Flood Mark July 1846″ to remind him of the Flood, and the year he carried the colour.

Hawick in 1846 was still a different place – the railway was coming in 1849, but not quite there yet.

The navvies had a hard time of it, crammed  into their sod huts – according to the Scottish Herald of April 1846

If they were made when the earth was dry, they weren’t too bad. You could always whitewash the inside walls, they were often rent-free, and in summer they nodded pleasantly with grass and flowers. But if the sods were cut wet, the huts steamed. One sod cabin, twenty-seven feet by twelve, on the Edinburgh-Hawick railway in 1846, housed twenty people. Another was built on Saturday and occupied on Monday. Its back wall was a bank, sodden with ground water. Water, soaking through the sod walls, trickled into the beds (and the contractor charged a rent).

But in 1846 with no railway, people had to rely on stage coaches to travel, and travel slowly as the “Border Watch” reported

James Smith was a 22 year old cornet, a painter who must have served his apprenticeship with one of the painters businesses in the town – probably William Miller in the Howegate,

James lived at 8 Howegate west side, back house with his father John b 1791 a “whip and thong maker” [a thong being the braided part of the whip joining the flexible part to the handle], mother Elizabeth b1801 and his sisters Christian and Helen, and younger brother Walter b1835.

We have a good picture of the 1846 Common Riding – there is a painting in Hawick Museum dated 1846 by Andrew Kennedy, showing three horsemen crossing the cauld. [not the Coble Pool, Kennedy is painting from the Health Centre side of the river, looking across to the new Sainsbury's - with Wilton Mills on the far bank. The racing didn't move copletely up to St Leonard's until 1854 - see Charles Smith 1840 Cornet]

And the painting is also the first image ever of a Cornet  – James Smith in 1846, coming away from the horse racing on the Haugh with his Right and Left Hand Men, and Colour held proudly aloft. Photographs hadn’t been invented quite yet, so the first photo is Andrew Leyden in 1857  – but James must have looked very similar. In the painting, the principals seem to be wearing light trousers, short jackets and top hats – just like the 1857 group.

Although the 1846 painting no longer hangs where it used to hang in the Museum, so a painting of John Smith can’t be seen there, there is a photograph of him [flagged up by in Douglas Scott's magnificent Hawick Word Book ] together with his Right Hand man Francis Kyle. This “Group of Old-Time Hawick Cornets” organised by JED Murray in the 1890s has clear [though not alas in my snap!] of James 1846 with Francis Kyle 1845

and in the middle row, the 1845 and 1846 Cornets as old men

. No doubt it rained at the racing, just as it does up the Muir nowadays, but The Flood came after the Common Riding, at the end of July. James, as a painter, was quick to paint the level of flood water, and although his original painted, and annually repainted, mark has been replaced by a bronze plaque, the water levels were incredibly high

The cause of the floods was a gigantic thunderstorm which began on the evening of Wednesday 29th July  and continued all night – the Caledonian Mercury described flooding in Carlisle, Canonbie, Hawick and Newcastleton, Kelso and Berwick

Wednesday evening closed with an unwonted gloom at an early hour. The sky was murky – the air still and heavy. The skies were occasionally lit up by gleams of electric light, and it was soon evident that a fearful storm was about to burst upon us. The expectation was fulfilled. Each successive flash of fire became more vivid, and the distant rumbling of thunder waxed deeper and deeper till brattle followed brattle like the discharge of heavy artillery above the town. The storm was of long duration; commencing soon after seven o’clock , it continued with but short intermissions till near four o’clock on Thursday morning. The storm was evidently moving slowly north east, reaching Hawick a couple of hours later. There, the horizon started to become overcast between 7 and 8pm, the torrential rain started between 8 and 9pm and continued without a break for almost three hours. Shortly after midnight the Slitrig burst its banks, pouring through Silver Street and down into the Sandbed where it was about 5 feet deep. Several bridges were swept away and a 12 foot deep hole scooped out of the road at the Mill Port.

Letter writers passed on the news- here from Newcastleton

And Robert Renwick writing to George Wilson, Portobello from Hawick Mills on August 5th, 1846

After the excitement, life got back to normal, and James got on with his – within 5 years he was no longer an apprentice but a House Painter; married – to Agnes 20 in 1851, with year old Margaret and baby Elizabeth; and living in 8 Howegate west side [and up the same close lived the Gilligan family [Clothes Merchant, Furniture and General Broker - James had been born in Sicily], the Riddles [John a Shoemaker, Maria a Boot and Shoe binder], Wallaces [father and eldest son both Fleshers, son-in-law a wool sorter] – and still in one of the back houses, his father John Smith [now just - or would this be a step up? - a Thong Maker] and mother, and brother Walter an apprentice shoemaker, and unmarried sister Helen a glover with – oh dear – a six month old granddaughter.

Moving on to 1871, and James, now 48 and still a House Painter, and Agnes have moved to 3 Green Wynd, off Myreslawgreen with their their 7 children – Margaret now 21 and a Woolllen Hosiery Finisher, like Elizabeth, and 17 year old Hannah. The eldest boy John is at 15 a Woollen Factory Worker, but Jemima 7, Ann 4 and Agnes 10 months are too young to work.

John Smith became Cornet ten years later in 1881, when James was his Acting Father – and John has his own 1881 entry here.

By 1881, James had moved up to 4 Loan where he was a “House Painter & Keeper of House of Refuge” This wasn’t the Hawick Poorhouse / Workhouse  [what became the Drumlanrig Hospital ] In Hawick in 1881, both instituitions were there, and very close to each other – as I have scrawled on this map

The Hawick Poorshouse had a Governor who had been in post for over 10 years, and 42 inmates; the House of Refuge our James Smith  “Keeper and House Painter” with 6 inmates. The difference in inmate poulation appears to be that the poorshouse inmates are mainly Hawick people, with a few from Dumfries and Fife – whereas the House of Refuge has three English [one a 14 year old unemployed labourer], two Irish, and one Canadian inmate. The poorshouse would be paid for by the Town, and so only accepted people born in, or maybe having connection to, Hawick parish – shall I call them the “respectable poor”; whereas the House of Refuge was probably a night refuge or night hostel for short term, travelling, homeless people – here unemployed English and Irish labourers, joiners, tailors, iron turners, and woollen spinners. [England developed a casual ward system, think  Dickensian London ]

It may well be that the 1919 Cornet Tom Winning’s father John Winning, who was Chairman of the Parish Council and responsible for administration of Poor Relief might have been involved with the funding of the night refuge – or it might have been that James Smith just turned over a shed [or a stable?] up his close to house homeless people without payment – he was a civic minded character [ex-Cornet, maintainer of the Flid Mark, son a Cornet, Acting Father] and he might well have set up the Hawick House of Refuge as an act of civic pride, or Christian piety, or common humanity. Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee all provided Night Asylums or Refuges tor Shelters to those ‘on the road’ because the Scottish Poor Law system made no provision for those dealt with in England through the casual wards.

Edinburgh’s Queensberry House, now incorporated into the Scottish Parliament buildings had two units – a House of Refuge for semi-permanent occupants, and a Night Refuge for those on the move. And there was also a Night Asylum in Fishmarket Close, and a Girls House of Refuge in Dalry Road.

By 1891 James had given up the House of Refuge [maybe on the death of his wife Agnes?] and moved to 1 Silver Street, now a widower but still a Painter at 68, with  his four Factory Worker daughters Jemima, Elizabeth, Agnes and Nellie.

[1881 Cornet John was in a separate house at 1 Silver Street with wife Annie and infant James Dryden Smith - named after James Smith's grandfather James Dryden "Deacon Dryden" Cornet in 1772]

In 1901, James has moved again – not very far – to 19 Howegate and is now, at 78, a Retired Painter, living with Jemima 37 Woollen Powerloom Weaver, and Helen 27 Wool Hosiery Machinist.

I don’t know when James died but it must have been after 1902 when he replaced his painted Flood Mark with a plaque – it would be fitting if he died in 1903 at the age of 80 after a long and good life , before the sadness of the death of his son Cornet John Smith 1881 in 1904.

So – a West Ender with a long life lived in the Howegate, Myreslawgreen, Loan, Silver Street area.
A house painter for 60 years, and the Keeper of a House of Refuge for less than 10.
A Cornet’s grandson, a Cornet, a Cornet’s father
Strong and lasting memories throughout his life of the summer of 1846 – which began with the pride of being the Cornet crossing the Cauld with his Men, and ending with 6 feet of water pouring out of the Slitrig and down through Silver Street into the Sandbed at the foot of his street.

and having carrid out the ceremonies of the day, retired to a well earned meal at the Tower Inn for the “more aged and grave citizens”, and the livelier do in the Town Hall, provided by Mrs Hay of the Crown Inn

Living with Mrs Hay, and presumably helping with the sumptuous dinner , was 13 year old Thomas Hay – who would die by the time he was 23, having been Cornet in 1847.

The Old Town Hall which was used for the Cornet’s dinner – and then off to the Races – in the Haugh, they weren’t moved up to St Leonards till 1854.

They don’t write newspaper reports like this anymore! “and thus will the recreations and amusements of this year materially add in time to those voluntary subscriptions which alone form the groundwork of this humble but popular festival”

The racing was in the Haugh – here the scene in 1846, looking across the Coble Pool to Wilton [or I think more likely, looking across Laidlaw's Dam which used to cross from Teviot Crescent to the Victoria Laundry - with racing on the Haugh and the Wilton mills such as Langlands Mill clustered opposite]

But on the Friday, there were also races on the Muir, so that the Town Purse of £10 and the Trades Purse of £3 was on the Muir, and [followed by????] the Trades Purse of £5 on the Common Haugh.

and there were also races on the Saturday – had the racing moved down to the Common Haugh after the first races on Friday at the Muir?

and then there were the Saturday Sports – including sack races, as well as the more serious stuff

Charles Smith’s Common Riding had obviously gone well.

And that is the last we see of Charles Smith – he had appeared briefly in Pigot’s Commercial Directory as a Grocer in the High Street in 1837 [with Mrs Ann Hay at the Crown Inn also listed]

He is Cornet – and that is it – but he isn’t on the 1841 Census in Hawick, or elsewhere in the Borders. And there are very few Smiths at all – it just isn’t a particularly common name here.

The only candidate in the 1841 Scotland Census is Charles Smith a 25 year old, just married, grocer – living in Paisley

He is the only Charles/Chas  Smith [and there aren't many Smiths at all in Scotland] of the right age and the right occupation – and he would have been unmarried in 1840, since Elizabeth is only 4 months old in 1841.

But born in Paisley? At least it’s not G*l*shiels!

Thomas’ innkeeper father Robert Hay, had died aged 51 in January 1832 [according to Wilson's Record of Deaths], so Ann, born in Langholm, had been left as a 30 year old widow with 5 year old Thomas and 7 year old Jane, to run the Crown Inn since then.

In 1847, Thomas appears in the list of Cornets as a millwright, so he must have been apprenticed to the trade when he was 14-15 or so, in 1842 or 1843.

His mother dies in January 1848; and then Thomas himself dies in October 1851, just over 4 years after he was Cornet, at the age of 23, and he is buried with his mother and father in St Marys churchyard

His sister Jane was left to carry on the Crown Inn business as a married woman – she had married the boy next door, Robert Grieve, in May 1846 , so they had had about eighteen months to learn the business before mother Ann Hay died at the start of 1848.

Robert was a Solicitor’s Clerk from Teviothead who was lodging at Waldie the tailor’s shop next door to the Crown, and he would have been able to help with the legal transfer. Ann left £22 in cash, £202 in wines and spirits, and debts of £3 – an estate worth [though estimating "worth" is pretty tricky] £12,000 in todays money, which would be enough to buy 1,000 days of a tradesman wages or 13 horses or 40 cows = say  £100,000, which sounds right for a good-going and well established business on the High Street.

But Robert also died young in 1853, and Jane was left to carry on at the Crown as a widow for another 10 years until she had to give up the Crown Inn in 1863, with substantial debts to be settled. However, she was able to carry on as a hotel keeper till the 1870s at 8 Bridge Street, albeit on a smaller scale, with only one general domestic servant, and her daughter Annie Little Grieve, a governess.

But to return to our Cornet – what would his obituary have said about Thomas? At a guess, that he was

• sociable – brought up in the Crown Inn on the High Street, he would know and be known by most people in the town
• hard-working – with his father dead, he would be expected to play a full part in the running of the Inn
• popular with girls – he deserves this in his short life. He would be used to female company, with a mother and elder sister, and with the young female servants in the inn, his would be a working female environment
• bright and practical, good with his hands and his brain. Millwrights were key technical people in Victorian Britain – a look at The Young Mill Wrights  Guide tells us a lot about Thomas and where he worked – presumably at one of the water powered mills in the town – the current Tower Mill wasn’t built until 1852, but it may just be Thomas was involved in equipping it
• 

The proprietors promise that particular care is taken to preserve the fabric, and that a beautiful colour is given to the cloth, which would be “returned regularly within three months”

This was before bleaching became a chemical process with the discovery of chlorine, and the south facing slopes of the Pentlands may have provided a good, dry, sunny area with a clean water supply in which to spread cloth and fabrics on the ground to be bleached by the action of the sun and water  [the bleachfields are now the Roslin Glen Country Park Car Park ]

There were bleachfields in all textile towns, but the Roslin fields attracted custom from across the Borders area – cloth could be handed in at the Warehouse in North College Street, Edinburgh [now Chambers Street] or through agents – like William Beck, merchant in Hawick , and our cornet in 1808.

William Beck, hosier, was Cornet in 1808 – and his son Robert Beck was cornet in 1834.

The family was an important one in Hawick in the 1800′s – and I try to disentangle the original William Beck who came to Hawick from Dumfries/Carlisle to start the stocking making workshop you can see today in the Round Close, from his 1808 Cornet son William Beck hosier/merchant and his son, Robert Beck flesher [who rented the Bleachfields in the Under Haugh to graze his animals before slaughter, but moved away to a good job as a Third Class Clerk. All in Robert Beck 1834

William senior, merchant, didn’t get married until late – in 1841 he was a 40 year old grocer at 64 High Street, unmarried and with only a 25 year old Mary Harkness for company.
But of course, she was only a servant, and not that type of girl [except that maybe she was - 10 years later she had moved to 72 High Street, still an unmarried woollen shirt seamstress, with her teenage daughter]

Moving on – by 1851 William was still at 64 High Street, but had married [and gave his age now as 54] to 42 year old Jessie Best from a hotel which she ran with her widowed mother at 16 Buccleuch Street, and they had a two year old William Inglis – a Cornet’s son and future Cornet.

William senior was now a “Grocer and Spirit Dealer” and during this period 64 High Street developed into the Half Moon Hotel – this card was found around 1996 during alterations to the British Heart Foundation, at the bottom of O’Connell Street

The card was found with a handwritten weekly menu

Sunday

Breakfast : tea, 3 cups; Fried Smoked Haddock, Toast (Brown Bread), Toast and Marmalade
2.00 pm: tea, 1 cup; 1 cake (Chocolate Shortcake)
Tea: tea, 3 cups; Steamed White Fish and Sweet Corn, 1 Soda Scone and Plum Jam, Sponge Cake
Supper: tea, 3 cups; Poached egg and Toast, Cookie with Jam, 1 cake (Chocolate Shortcake)
10.00pm: coffee

You’d be glad of a coffee after all those cups of tea.

Unfortunately, the marriage didn’t last long – William died in May 1851, when he would have been 64ish; and Jessie moved as a widow along to 78 High Street [where the Green Cafe is now] where she lived with unmarried 30 year old John Inglis – a carter and farmer of 10 acres, and 9 year John Taylor, the son of her sister Elizabeth. John Inglis is a bit of a mystery – Jessie is described as his mother, but I can’t find any other trace of him.
But importantly for the Cornet’s story, her 11 year old son William Inglis wasn’t there – he was living in Kirkton Schoolhouse as a scholar and a boarder.

William Little had been the schoolmaster at the school , with his wife Mary, for 20 years or more. It is highly probable that sending William to school at Kirkton was Jessie’s way of ensuring that William had a good education, and a healthy upbringing.

I tend to drive past without looking, on the way to Bonchester Bridge and the Carter Bar, but the group of houses can’t have echanged much since the 1860′s.

By 1881 William was back at 64 High Street as a Hotelkeeper; three servants with him but no wife and no children – I need to follow him up to 1891, to see what happened to him

What was Hawick like in 1868? What was going on?

One big story was the closure of the oil refinery in the Haugh, after a short but contested life. I have found no pictures of the refinery, and it was shortlived, so does not appear on maps – except that its site was soon occupied by the Gas Works, as in the 1877 map.

[ Except that there is a plan in the National Archives of Scotland , Register House, Edinburgh which would be worth a look at in the Search Room - the reference is 
RHP20423 Plan of Teviotside Oil Works in Hawick 1876 ]

This was the first development of the “Bleachfields” section of the Under Haugh on the Wilton side of the river – there was no development of Commercial Road until 1871-74.

The owner John Wield from Blacketlees, Annan was an unmarried 23 year old Chemist & Druggist in 1861, lodging at 4 Bridge Street with a widow and 2 daughters aged 25 and 23; but by 1871 he had built and run and failed and been bankrupted and sold his Oil Refinery but had salvaged enough to be living at Wilton Grove – handily situated as you can see from the map, just across the road from the Refinery / Gas Works.

This was an exciting time to be in the Scottish Oil Industry – Paraffin Young was building the West Lothian shale oil industry

In 1848 Scottish chemist James Young experimented with oil discovered seeping in a coal mine as a source of lubricating oil and illuminating fuel. When the seep became exhausted he experimented with the dry distillation of coal, especially the resinous “Boghead coal” (Torbanite). He extracted a number of useful liquids from it, one of which he named “paraffine oil” because at low temperatures it congealed into a substance resembling paraffin wax. Young took out a patent on his process and the resulting products in 1850, and built the first truly commercial oil-works in the world at Bathgate in 1851, using oil extracted from locally mined Torbanite, shale, and bituminous coal.

In 1866 Young’s patents ran out – and an exhibition at Penicuik in 2008 illustrated the sort of developments which occurred in towns in the South of Scotland. It is likely that Wield used his chemical knowledge and his business drive to set up a refinery to produce paraffin for lighting and heating; or possibly even gas as those patents ran out.

The plant and equipment was considerable -this was no small undertaking for a young man  of 28: 12000 gallons of oil, “large numbers” of boilers, two 9ft by 5 ft stills, a “very large” quantity of lead and iron pipes up to 6 inches; 166 casks of tar, 400 thirty gallon Paraffin casks etc etc – and the capital required to set this up must have been equally great.

But there had been problems since the outset in August 1866, with a very suspicious Council

and in a very short space of time , Wield was bankrupt and out of business

So that was it -bankrupt in February 1868, and plant and equipment sold off in December 1868.

In November 1868 the land and buildings were up for sale …..

HAWICK- VALUABLE PROPERTY FOR SALE. To be SOLD by Private Bargain, ALL and WHOLE that Portion of the UNDER COMMON-HAUGH OF HAWICK, extending 1 acre 2 Roods 21 Poles 7 yards, or thereby, with the BUILDINGS and other HERITABLE OBJECTS thereon, lately occupied by Mr. John Wield, as a Paraffin Manufactory……… The Plan will be shown, and several Portions of Ground pointed out by Mr. YOUNG, the Manager of Hawick Gasworks. The Scotsman, 18th November 1868.

… with Mr Young of the Hawick Gasworks showing people around. I have no evidence at all, but the Penicuik exhibition includes the story of the Selkirk Gasworks which had been in existence since the 1840′s

[and on 11 November 1869, Joseph Smith Manager of Gas Works, Hawick was still advertising eqyipment for sale "To Oil Refiners, For Sale 2 Stills of 1500 gallons, 2 superheaters, 2 pumps, 12 oil retorts"

How much would be got from the sale? A - probably similar - refinery in Kirkintilloch was reported in the Glasgow Herald as being for sale on 3 September 1868 for £5,000 [about £200,000 at today's value - but comparing values is very tricky]

*Speculation alert* So maybe the Hawick Gas Works  – possibly under the management of the Young family from Selkirk – had responded to John Wield’s proposal for a paraffin refinery on some sort of “shared services” or downstream processing basis. I need a chemical engineer to sort this out – but I can imagine that the gas works heated coal to drive off the gas , and were left with coke [I remember coke being collected from the gas works in Mansfield Road] and various oils and chemicals [as in coal tar soap]. John Wield could have offered to distill their oil/tar waste products – maybe using the coke to heat his stills – and produce the lighter paraffin oil. The “boiling” of the oil/tar would probably produce vapours, and various sticky residues which the Sanitary Committee would be concerned about. However, a report to the Police Committee in 1870 on factory discharges to the Teviot says of the Gasworks “there is nothing discharged from these works into the River, Gas Tar and other refuse is collected and sold”. So maybe John Wield did try to refine this Gas Tar on site, rather than transport it elsewhere.

Where did his capital come from? One clue might be that he had married Christina Mary Turnbull aged 20 in 1866 – the only daughter of James Turnbull of 11 High Street, General Draper, employing 2 men, 2 boys and 5 women. A big draper might have accumulated enough capital, or enough credit, to support a son-in-law in what was a dot.com venture of its day. If the Kirkintilloch works were sold for £5000, and Hawick was similar in scale, then £5000 is worth aproximately 40 times more nowadays – father in law might well have been able to pay the equivalent of a mortgage on a house for his son-in-law. *speculation alert finishes*

Update – the Hawick Gas Works go back to at least 1838.

Hawick in 1846 is described as consisting of “one principal street, and of several smaller streets and lanes diverging from it on both sides; some new streets have been formed, and a handsome range of buildings called Slitrig-crescent, and another named Teviot-crescent. The streets are well paved, and lighted with gas“

and going back, the Caledonian Mercury of 1 October 1838 reported that “John Scott Superintendent of Hawick Gas Works has now in his posession a stalk of oats fully seven feet long, bearing one hundred and ninety four ears or pickles”

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William Inglis Cornet must have known the oil refinery well – something so big and so modern and so smelly must have had an impact on the town – and his year was the last year that Hawick had an oil refinery.

I thought it would be easy -  William Beck’s Stocking Shop is now clearly seen on your way through the Round Close to the doctors or the Haugh. William Beck came from Carlisle in 1772, married into a Hawick family, and by 1818 was producing 41,000 pairs of hose a year. [He taught frameknitting to John Pringle, the brother of Robert Pringle, founder of Pringles in 1815]

A traditional, former stocking-manufacturing premises marking the transition between cottage and factory industries at the turn of the 19th century, which largely retains its original profile, including the distinctive, small, square, first-floor openings which would each have lit the space of one stocking-maker. This building is the only survivor of the type in Hawick and is important to understanding the development of the textiles industry in the town.

William Beck was apprenticed to Bailie Hardie in 1775 and, according to Douglas Scott’s Hawick Word Book, became ‘one of the most popular employers in Hawick, being the only manufacturer to refuse to lower wages during the dispute that led to the “Lang Stand Oot” [strike] of 1822.’ His firm collapsed in 1826, possibly in connection with bank failures.

and his effects were sold in Hawick on 2 November 1827

Quite a mix here – the main items are the 9 stocking frames in various gauges, together with the leg boards etc. It looks like he must have had a shop – possibly at the High Street end of his property, with the stocking shop behind – because there is also for auction a shop counter and metal weights, beams and scales; together with what must have been his stock – 30 baskets, 120 pairs of womens shoes, and quantities of shawls, crystal bottles, and stuffed birds.

The Beck property is shown on Woods map of 1824 just along the High Street from the Tower Knowe stretching down from the High Street to the Teviot – so shop on the street, stocking shop tucked in behind?

[and there is one other Beck property named on the map - at the East end of the High Street]
No evidence for it at all, but my guess would be that William Beck [born 1760ish to be apprenticed in 1775??] could be the grandfather of the 1834 born 1814 Cornet Robert , so there would probably be a family of some sort to find.

And there is – William Beck Cornet in 1808 – also a hosier.
I have no evidence for this, but the strong likelihood would be that this is William Beck from Carlisle’s son, born in Hawick about 1788ish – the dates would be about right.

And if Cornet William waited a couple of years after 1808 before marrying, he could have had Robert Beck in 1814 or so, ready for him to become Cornet in 1834.

Maybe the family line would be : William Beck – Cornet William Beck 1808 – Cornet Robert Beck 1834

I cannot find where Cornet Robert Beck lived, but he was a flesher. In 1832 Robert Beck, flesher is recorded as paying £23 as rent for the Bleachfield – part of the Common Haugh. Before Commercial Road was developed, many of those who leased parts of the Haugh were butchers, presumably to keep stock before slaughter.

The Flesher Cornet Robert Beck may well have been based at the East end of the High Street, at the other end from hosier Becks and the workshop and shop.

[There is one other Beck listed as letting a part of the Haugh - the innkeeper John Beck of the Grapes, Buccleuch Street in 1825, and then Vintners, 4 Silver Street in 1837 presumaby to graze his, or his customers, horses. This John Beck born 1770 in England could have come to Hawick as the two year old son of hosier William Beck from Carlisle]

Of course there are still Becks in the town, involved with the Common Riding, and last year with the selection of the Cornet

However, the organisers reversed their decision on Friday and are now looking for potential candidates to fill the post. Mrs Mary Beck, who owns her own dress-making shop in the town, said: etc etc etc [from 2010 newspaper]

and 5 years before that, in June 2005, Robert Beck was remembered in a musical put on by the Gutterbludes

Gutterbludes set the stage

100 YEARS ago audiences packed the Exchange to see the first Gutterbludes show. Sadly the centenary shows were a poor reflection on present day Gutterbludes, or natives, with the Two Rivers Theatre Company performing to less than a half-filled Town Hall on each of their four performances.

The people who missed this treat will be kicking themselves, because they missed a gem of a show! It was a show liberally sprinkled with some of the best Common Riding tunes, performed by some of the best Common Riding singers. The acting was superb and Jean Wintrope once again ….

While many Hawick people couldn’t rouse themselves to make their way to the Town Hall, five descendants of one of the play’s authors, Adam Grant, had travelled all the way from Canada to take in the Two Rivers Theatre Company production. Great grandson Grant Ward was joined by great granddaughters Sharon McFarlane, Sheila Bolger, Louise Winterstein and Jan Delvecchio.

The early part of the show is based in ‘Teri Lodge’ deep in the Canadian Forests on New Year’s Eve 1834 while the second act sees the Town Hall stage transformed into Common Riding Friday, 1835 ….

….. From here on the Common Riding songs come thick and fast, delivered with passion by Bert Armstrong, Michael Aitken, Fran Barker, Iain Scott and the rest of the exhuberant cast. It is not often that someone with a non-speaking part can make such an impact on a show but Ian Landles in the role of ‘Gibbie the gowk’ did that in incredible fashion.This was entertainment. Hawick style!

By the end when Cornet George Young left the stage, accompanied by the rest of the Common Riding principals, the Hawick crowd, along with the Canadian guests showed their appreciation of a fine show. A show which J. E. D. Murray and Adam Grant would have been proud of.

The CAST
Meda, The Scout   Fran Barker
Wat Hardie Iain Scott
Dan Knox : Steve Brown
Colin Armstrong:    Stuart Gibson
Alex Maxwell:   Jim Arbon
Spunk: Bill McCraw
Jean Kaishie: Christine Lyon
Nannie Kaishie: Anne Clark
Mysie Maxwell: Karen Whinam
Gibbie the gowk: Ian Landles
Caleb Rutherford: Bert Armstrong
Senior Baillie: Colin Thorburn
His Wife: Janette Thorburn
Cornet William Turnbull: George Young
Cornet’s Lass: Leanne Stormont
Right Hand Man Robert Beck: Richard Walker
Right Hand Lass: Linda Walker
Left Hand Man James Millar: Stuart Irvine
Left Hand Lass: Gillian Patterson
The Bairns: Emma Elliot-Walker, Isla Elliot-Walker, Rachel Inglis, Lysney McFarlane, Natalie Paterson, Alison Rafferty, Emily Rafferty, Mandy Rayner, Abigail Tofts, Liam Caswell, Fergus Hislop, Stuart Mitchell, Jamie Scott, Aimee Fraser, Rhinna Graham, Sarah Whillans.
Crowd: Pamela Casson, Shelagh Duncan, Linda Mason, Gillian Patterson, Alison Seeley, Leanne Stormont, Michael Aitken, Bert Armstrong, Derek Inglis, Ian Landles.
Musicians- Ian Seeley (Piano), Pamela Walker (Violin)Drums and Fifes- Ronnie Nichol, Dougie Rae, Roddy McIntyre, John Riddell.

So you would expect that it would be very easy indeed to find traces of Robert Beck – but there weren’t any!

Robert Beck, flesher was running a business in the town in 1832 – 1833, and his father’s uncle? John Beck was running The Grapes and then an inn in Silver Street until 1835.
But his father William and grandfathers successful hosiery workshop and shop had folded and been sold off by 1828.
Maybe the Beck family were past their best in Hawick -  the 1841 census had no Robert Beck or Robert B*ck or indeed very few Becks at all.
The last of the old guard, 71 year old innkeeper John Beck was in Silver Street with Nanny Beck aged 66; and a few scattered children [eg in the Sandbed living with a Confectioner and her lodger Druggist] but no families.

Maybe a lot had happened in the 7 years since 1834, and lingering debts and the loss of the main businesses in 1827 had done for the Becks, with Robert Beck just hanging in there long enough to follow on from his 1808 Cornet father as the 1834 Cornet.

I need to have a look at the Scotlands People records – ie pay to look at them!
Maxwellancestry.co.uk is an absolutely amazing resource, and the Library edition of Ancestry.co.uk is OK – but maybe, just maybe there might be some trace of this Cornet to be found.        After all – he was in a musical with Ian Landles!

Update

Graham Maxwell has come up trumps with what happened to Robert Beck after he was Cornet in 1834.

He married Euphemia Thomson on 7 September 1835 in Hawick, and they had 2 boys John Beck baptised 6 August 1836 in Hawick, and Walter Beck baptised 6 July 1838 in Hawick.

By 1841, Robert, Euphemia and 3 year old Walter are not to be found in Hawick, but 5 year old John Beck does seem still to be there, living with 50 year old Janet Thomson – Euphemia’s mother? so John’s granny? – at her confectioners shop at 12 Sandbed.

Robert Beck doesn’t seem to surface again until 1858, when the Edinburgh based Caledonian Mercury on 8 March 1858 reported his promotion to Third Class Clerk in General Business, London.

This was a not inconsiderable post, and a rung up on the Civil Service career ladder – George Sheldrick and Benjamin Bond were moving up with him.

The grade was created in 1856. The number of Third Class Clerks was fixed at ten [in the Treasury]. The salary scale was £100 rising by annual increments of £100 to £250.

How much was that? £7,650 if using RPI, or £67,700 if using average earnings calculated here. Basically, he was in a secure Civil Service position, and heading for a comfortable Pooterish Senior Clerk position.

And then in the 1871 census , living in Peckham, London with Euphemia,  a First Class Clerk, HM Customs at 96 Gordon Road.

Now with the garden concreted over, and in the South London borough of Trotters Independent Trading and Damilola Taylor, but in its day a very appropriate residence for a Clerk. Next door at 98 lived a Stockbrokers Clerk, and at 99 a Commercial Clerk to an East Indian Merchant.

He had managed to get his three daughters into the Civil Service as well – Jessie, Agnes and Euphemia were Telegraphists. The machine here is from the 1880s, and  shows the job they did, transcribing Morse code to and from paper format.

Here illustrated by a man, but Telegraphy was the first job for women in the Civil Service – here in the 1910s in the GPO

By 1881, Robert Beck 1834 Cornet is dead, and his Hawick born widow Euphemia has moved along the road to 2 Gordon Road, Peckham , still with her three Telegraph Clerk daughters – but also with a 40 year old Ship’s Steward son – another Robert Beck.

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So it looks like the 1834 Cornet did leave some traces – a flesher renting part of the Haugh just before he became Cornet, he married Euphemia Thomson a Hawick girl, and then applied for a prized clerk’s job in the Civil Service and was posted away from Hawick to London, taking his wife and 3 year old with him, but leaving his 5 year old for a while in the care of his grandmother in her sweetie shop in the Sandbed. He died a comfortable First Class Clerk in suburban Peckham, with a pension for Euphemia, three Telegraphist daughters and a son Robert , home from the sea.

An interesting family, which played a major part in the development of the hosiery industry in Hawick, and then declined.

The Exchange Bar is probably Victorian, but the houses look older as you go towards the church.
However, they are on the West side, not the East side where Cornet Kedie was living.

The 1824 Woods Map is only a little earlier than Cornet Kedie in 1836 – and shows buildings on the east side – and one is clearly marked “R Kedie” so this must be his house. Long gone, it lies along the far bank of the Slitrig underneath the Corn Exchange, which became the Kings Picture House, and then the Heritage Hub.

The R Kedie would be Robert Kedie.
In 1836, Cornet Thomas was 20, a baker, living with his father Robert Kedie, 45 a baker, mother Jennet [50] and brother William 18 draper, and sisters Mary 20, Jennet 16, Mary 13, Jean 9; and Robert Rondsen another baker.

and going forward, brother William stayed in the house and prospered becoming a “Woollen & Linen Draper (Firm of Two employing 16 hands)” with several of the assistants staying in the house. Cornet Thomas’s father is still a baker employing 1 man, and there are “Bakers Daughters” and grandaughters in the house, but no ex-Cornet Thomas Kedie, and he soesn’t seem to be anywhere else in Hawick.

I haven’t yet tried to follow what happened to Thomas after 1841,
but looking back, he wasn’t the first Cornet Kedie, Baker – he was the third Kedie, Baker to be Cornet, and the second Thomas Kedie, Baker

1737 John Kedie, baker
1766 Thomas Kedie, baker
1836 Thomas Kedie, baker

and we find in the OPR Burial records for Hawick
Sep 10, 1831 Mary Scoon, spouse of Deceased Thomas Kedie, Baker
May 14, 1832 Walter Scoon, shoemaker, Kirkstylefoot

It could well be that this 1776 Thomas is 1836 Thomas grandfather – the dates would just fit.
Thomas born 1756 say, could have died at any time – but say he was 60, so 1816.
Mary Scoon his widow might have been 10 years younger than her husband, so born 1766 – and 65 when she died in 1831.
Here I am making a linkage -which may or may not exist – with Walter Scoon dying in Kirkstylefoot less than a year later, to suggest that the Kedies had been in and around Kirkstyle for quite some years.

If 1776 Thomas had died in say 1816, then a Kirkstyle house could have passed on to his son Robert [born 1791]  in good time for Wood to label the house as R Kedie’s when he published his map in 1824.

To add to my “things I must do” list:

• obtain and read  Charles John Wilson and James Edgar’s biography in the Hawick Archaeological Society’s Transactions of 1921 on Kedie, Robert baker 1791-1869. Then all , no doubt, will become clear.
• and the article in the Transactions in 1951 on the Kedie family tree

“Hawick Place Names” gives Allers Crescent being built in 1841 – after which the area looked like this

But at the time, it looked more like this map from the early 1800s [Woods Map of 1824] Allars Bank was a much more open area

The mill lade [which you can still trace running under the front of what was Turnbull the Dyers] – powered several mills – flour and corn mills. The Peth – Millpath – was Kiln Path, presumably to dry the grain

Next to the Corn Mill, on the south side of Allars, the 1824 map labels the building as Mr Turnbull
The 1841 census address for the Mr Turnbull Seedsman [and spirit dealer] is “Allars Bank south side” which looks about right – and so maybe that building is where Cornet George Turnbull lived. However, an alternative would be a building on the other side of the Millpath on the edge of the open Allars area.

Those two Corn Mill buildings are still there – other buildings were knocked down in the 1860s when the railway was built, and Allars Crescent was being put up in 1841 when George was Cornet.

By 1851, he was living in 4 Bourtree Place, east side as a “Seedsman and Merchant” in his own right, with his wife Agnes ,from Cavers, and two toddlers Violet and Helen.

Still a very open part of town, even in this map of 1858. “Hawick Place Names” suggests 1842 as the first date for Bourtree Place.

By 1861, George is still in 4 Bourtree Place, has a nursery, and is employing 10 women and 1 boy

Returning to what might have been – George would have been a 9 year old living near the Corn Mill when Pawkie Paiterson’s Auld Grey Yaud was written.

PAWKIE PAITERSON’S AULD GREY YAUD
By John “Soapy” Ballantyne, c.1830

As Aw was guan up Hawick Loan
Yeh Monanday at morn,
Aw heard a puir auld grey meer
Gie mony a heavy groan—
Gie mony a heavy groan, sir,
And this she said to mei—
“Aw’m Pawkie Paiterson’s auld grey yaud,
Sei how they’re guiden’ mei!

“The miller o’ Hawick Mill bred mei
And that Aw du weel ken;
The miller o’ Hawick Mill fed mei
Wi’ mony a sort o’ corn.
But now the case is altered,
And this ye plainly sei—
“Aw’m Pawkie Paiterson’s auld grey yaud,
Sei how they’re guiden’ mei!

Did Cornet George Turnbull have his first ride out on the Auld Grey Yaud itself?

Census information from the incomparable maxwellancestry.com

To add to my “things to do list”

• get hold of the biography of George Turnbull seedsman 1821-1872 by Charles Wilson and James Edgar in the Transactions of the Hawick Archaeological Society 1921