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Kay's Originals Vol. 2

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12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. the politics of the day, or more intimately acquainted with the affairs of the Lawnmarket. His widow carried on business till her demise in 1804, and was succeeded by her son Henry, who died about 1832. He died suddenly one Sabbath morning in 1784. MR. MALCOLM WRIGHT, the next of the centre pair, was born about the year 1750, at Dolphinton, in Lanarkshire, on the borders of Tweeddale, where his father occupied a farm. He was originally bred to the profession of a writer in Edinburgh, and employed his leisure hours in keeping the books of a widow,’ who had a haberdashery shop in the Lawnmarket, betwixt Liberton and Forrester’s Wynds. In the course of time, having formed a matrimonial alliance with his employer, he took the management of the business into his own hands, and continued it for a considerable number of years-latterly under the firm of Wright and Henderson, having assumed a gentleman of that name into partnership with him. Mr. Wright was a member of the Town Council during a great part of the period he was in business, and frequently held office as a Magistrate. After retiring from the shop he obtained the office of agent for the French prisoners of war confined in Edinburgh Castle ; and, being unacquainted with the language, carried on the necessary intercourse with his constituents by means of an interpreter, who always attended him on his visits to the Castle. The duties of this office brought him into frequent contact with official persons. Upon one of these occasions the Lord President and Lord’Advocate had appointed to meet him in the Council Chamber, in order that they might accompany him to the Castle on some business relating to the prisoners. Mr. Wright, being unavoidably prevented from attending, desired his clerk hlr. Alexander Fraser, who usually officiated in his absence, to wait upon their lordships. This gentleman appears to have entertained no small opinion of his own consequence ; for, not only did he detain their lordships considerably beyond the time specified, but after apologising for his absence, had the effrontery to thrust an arm under that of each of these high legal dignitaries, and actually swaggered up between them in this fashion to the Castle. After the peace of 1815, his office being rendered no longer necessary, Mr. Wright got the appointment of Bulker at the Port of Leith, which he continued to hold till the period of his death in November 1825. His second wife, who survived, was a daughter of the late Convener Rankine, tailor to his Majesty for Scotland, Mr. Wright was twice married. 1 This lady was at that time among the most extensive and spirited haberdashers in Edinburgh ; as a proof of which, she went regularly every season to London to make purchases-a journey then attended with much diculty and delay. She always went by sea ; but in those days the only conveyance was by what were called the Berwick traders--arclass of vessels much inferior to the “Leith Smacks,” afterwards established ; and it is worthy of remark, in contrast with the remarkable improvements of our own times, that when any of the “ traders” were about to sail from Leith, the circurnstanwf was always announced throughout the streets of Edinburgh by the betlman, at least a fortnight previous to the day of sailing.
Volume 9 Page 14
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