The Times Great Scottish Lives: Obituaries of Scotland’s Finest

Founder of the Labour Party who led a stormy political career

27 September 1915

Mr. J. Keir Hardie, Labour M.P. for Merthyr Tydvil, died from pneumonia after a long period of ill-health in a Glasgow nursing home yesterday. Born in Scotland in 1856, he was engaged in mining work from the age of seven to that of 24. He was elected secretary of the Lanarkshire Miners Union in 1880, and at once threw himself with great zeal and little discretion into the work of a trade unionist and political agitator. He attempted to secure election to Parliament as a Labour candidate for Mid-Lanark in 1888, but was badly beaten. At the General Election four years later, however, he was elected for South-West Ham, and made his first appearance at St. Stephen’s in circumstances which necessitated the interference of the police. He was defeated in West Ham in 1895, but at the General Election of 1900 was elected for Merthyr Tydvil, which remained faithful to him until his death. He was for many years chairman, and throughout his political career the obvious leader, of the Socialist body known as the Independent Labour Party. When the Labour Party became a distinct group in the House of Commons in 1906 he was elected its first chairman, and held the position for two Sessions.

For over 20 years Mr. Keir Hardie was regarded as the most extreme of British politicians. The hard and narrow environment of his youth predisposed him to take a gloomy view of the state of society, and sympathy for suffering humanity, he was one of those men who spend their lives in expressing the views of a minority. He certainly spent his public life in advocating unpopular causes. He did not hide his republican opinions; he was one of the strongest opponents of the South African War; he made speeches during a tour in India in 1907 which, in view of the unrest prevailing at the time, could only be branded as mischievous; and he was the most pronounced of all the pacifists before the outbreak of the European War. He was probably the most abused politician of his time, though held in something like veneration by uncompromising Socialists, and no speaker has had more meetings broken up in more continents than he.

Although showing courage in some of his earlier adventures in the House of Commons, when he constituted a Socialist party of one, he never caught the ear of that Assembly, and was an ineffective leader of the independent group which owed its existence in great measure to his unflagging energy. He did much good and unselfish work for Labour causes, but did not at any time gain the complete confidence of the working class. The Labour Party disappointed his hopes. He was out of tune with the more moderate views of the trade unionist majority for a considerable time, and his views ceased to have any influence in the councils of the party with the coming of the war. His health was declining and his voice has been hardly heard since the collapse of International Socialism in August, 1914. He seems to have accepted the war with resignation, and the bitter passions which he aroused in his life were in great measure forgotten before his death.

Dr. Elsie Inglis

Founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, whose work in Serbia made her a legendary character

28 November 1917

We regret to announce the death of Dr. Elsie Inglis, M.B., C.M., Commissioner of the London Units of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, which took place at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Monday. She had just returned from Russia.

Miss Inglis, to whom belonged the honour of originating the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, was pre-eminently a Scottish woman. As a medical woman she specialised in surgery, and for many years held the post of joint surgeon to the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children, and was also Lecturer on Systematic Gynæcology in the Royal Colleges School of Medicine, Edinburgh. She had a large practice in Edinburgh, and took an important part in connection with the medical education of women in Scotland.

On the outbreak of war Dr. Inglis felt that the medical services of women should be given to the country. She conceived and carried out with marked success the idea of forming the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, staffed entirely by women. Unfortunately the British War Office refused to consider hospitals staffed entirely by women, and Dr. Inglis and her committee offered their services to the Allies, and they were at once accepted.

In April, 1915, Dr. Inglis left for Serbia to act as Commissioner to the Scottish Women’s Hospitals established there. The typhus scourge was at its worst. She took with her a splendid group of colleagues of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Her splendid organizing capacity, her skill, and her absolute disregard of her own comfort, month after month, drew forth the love and admiration of the whole Serbian people, which they were not slow to express. The typhus epidemic carried off one-third of the Serbian Army Medical Corps, and the situation was desperate. About that time, Lady Paget was struggling against fearful odds in Skopje, in the south of Serbia. Dr. Elsie Inglis set to work in the more central districts of Serbia, organizing four big hospital units where the need was greatest. Her grasp of detail was wonderful, and she had indomitable resolution. Yet she was above all a woman. Never will the Serbians forget her cheerful and kindly greetings and her complete composure in the very worst circumstances. Never can they forget that most characteristic remark of hers which was heard so often at the Serbian Medical Headquarters Staff: − “Tell me, please, where is the greatest need for hospitals, without respect to difficulties, and we shall do our best to help Serbia and her valiant soldiers.” Among the Serbian peasants, in the very heart of the Shumadija, the stories gathering round her name assume almost a legendary character.

Thanks to the devotion and sacrifices of a band of British and French and American relief workers, the typhus epidemic was mastered. But tragedy deepened when the united hordes of Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, and Bulgarians assaulted an already shattered nation. Perhaps it was then that Dr. Inglis’s most heroic work was done. At Lazarevatz her hospital was overcrowded. Later, by Kragujevatz, the same state of things existed; wounded soldiers were lying in the streets. She gave up her own beds and rugs, and she and her colleagues passed whole nights in alleviating the sufferings of the men. Next, she was found at Kraljevo, where, declining to leave her Serbian wounded, she was captured with her staff at Krushevatz by the enemy. After enduring many discomforts as prisoners of war, she and her staff were finally released and sent home. She at once volunteered with a Scottish Women’s unit for service in Mesopotamia, but again War Office obstruction frustrated her plan. Giving herself no rest, she worked on for Serbia in this country, and took a leading part in the organisation of the Kossovo Day celebrations, in June, 1916. The equipping of a Southern Slav Volunteer Corps for the Dobrudja front was the occasion of yet another act of sacrifice on her part. She set out for the Dobrudja, and was attached, at her own request to the Southern Slav Division that fought alongside the Russian troops. She went through the Rumanian retreat with the Southern Slav Division, and remained with it till her recent return from Russia. The insanitary Dobrudja came after a long period of strain. Her work, however, was still as spirited and enthusiastic as ever, and she returned to England with new plans for service. For the splendid service which she rendered to Serbia the Crown Prince conferred on her the Order of the White Eagle. She is the only woman on whom such an honour has been conferred.

Apart from her war activities, Dr. Inglis was known throughout Scotland as one of the keenest supporters of all forms of women’s work, and her interest in the advancement of women was untiring. All who came in contact with her carried away with them the impression of energy, courage, indomitable pluck, and a most capable and striking personality.

The following tribute is paid to Dr. Inglis by a fellow-worker of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals: −

“Every one will hear with the deepest regret the death of Dr. Elsie Inglis, that splendidly brave woman, to whom belongs the honour of originating the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. She had not been well for several months, but she would not give in, and worked to the very end. After landing in England from Russia she had a collapse and passed quietly away.”

She was the second daughter of John Forbes David Inglis, of the Indian Civil Service, Chief Commissioner at Lucknow. She was born in India, and for some years lived in Australia. She was educated in Edinburgh and Paris, and received her medical training in Edinburgh, but she walked a hospital in Ireland.

The funeral will be at St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, on Thursday next, at 2. The date of a memorial service in London will be announced later.

Andrew Carnegie

Steel magnate who became one of the greatest of all philanthropists

11 August 1918

Mr. Andrew Carnegie died at 7.30 this morning at Lenox, Massachusetts. The cause of death is given as bronchial pneumonia. Mr. Carnegie had been living at his summer home at Lenox ever since the wedding of his daughter.

Andrew Carnegie was born in the ancient Royal Burgh of Dunfermline, in the county of Fife, Scotland. He himself gave the date of his birth as November 25, 1837, but local authority gives 1835 as the correct year.

The chief industry of his native town was then the hand-loom weaving of fine linen. The weavers were highly intelligent and disputatious, and Dunfermline was a centre of Chartist agitation and passionate Dissent. Carnegie’s father owned four hand-looms and employed apprentices. He was a revolutionary politician, a street orator, and an agitator against the industrial conditions which, by a singular irony, the son was destined to turn to such enormous profit. His mother, to whom he was devotedly attached until her death at the age of 80, was the daughter of Thomas Morrison, a man of mark in Dunfermline as an orator, lay preacher, reformer, and agitator.

The introduction of the power-loom ruined the business of Carnegie, senior, and was the cause of the emigration of the whole family to America when Andrew was about 12 years old. He had been taught by his mother and had been to a day school, but that was all the education he had until at the age of 30 he took courses of study in New York.

On their arrival in America in 1848 the Carnegie family settled in Alleghany, opposite Pittsburg, on the other side of the Ohio river. There they all found work at once, Andrew as a bobbin boy at 4s. 10d. a week in the cotton mill in which his father worked at the loom. Their next-door neighbour was a shoemaker named Phipps, who had a son a little younger than Andrew. This was Henry Phipps, after-wards second partner in the Carnegie steel and iron companies, the oldest of Carnegie’s early associates; and the only one who remained with him till the end, but even they quarrelled after 50 years of friendship.

From the cotton mill Andrew passed to a small factory where he fed the furnace in the cellar and tended the engine. That was all the manual work he ever did, for he was soon taken into the office. Next, by the patronage of a Dunfermline man who knew his father, he became a telegraph messenger under the Ohio Telegraph Company. He mastered the code, risked taking a message against rules, and was rewarded by being made operator at £60 a year. Then by the help of Colonel T. A. Scott he passed to the telegraphic service of the Pennsylvania Railroad, with another rise of salary.

He remained for 11 years in the employ of the railway company and got together a small capital by engaging in modest commercial enterprises more or less connected with the railway and under the benevolent advice of Colonel Scott, to whom he became private secretary. The whole region was humming with activity. There were oil companies, manufacturing enterprises, railways, and banks, and Carnegie, who was put in charge of important works during the Civil War, and became superintendent of the line in 1863, acquired friends and business experience, as well as money.

Carnegie thus was ready for the vast expansion of the iron and steel production which began about 1864. The protective tariff of 1861 was the general background; the local factors were the development of the Pennsylvania coalfields near Pittsburg, the substitution of coal and coke for charcoal in producing pig iron, the opening up of the Lake Superior iron ore deposits, the development of transport by rail and water, and the introduction of the Bessemer steel process.

Carnegie was responsible for none of these, but took advantage of all of them. He was neither inventor nor creator, like Krupp or Armstrong or Westinghouse, but a manipulator with a quick eye for opportunities and a rare sagacity in utilizing men. He used men of all sorts, raw youths or those of standing and influence, to their advantage when it served his purpose. He made many millionaires, but there is no record of those that he exploited and cast adrift.

In 1864 Carnegie bought his first interest in iron works, forming with his younger brother, old companions of his boyhood, and a German named Kloman, who had technical knowledge, the Union Iron Mills Company. Soon afterwards he secured the backing of the president and vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the greatest local magnates, for a new venture the Keystone Bridge Company. He resigned his railway appointment and devoted himself entirely to his private interests.

The Union Mills Company was not very successful, but Carnegie showed tenacity in holding on, and astuteness in buying out his senior partner when things were at their worst. His own part was to run about and get orders while the partners ran the works and the local business. He maintained this division of labour throughout his career, in all the successive enterprises being the travelling and publicity manager, but insisting on constant reports and keeping a firm grip on the actual works.

In 1873 he went into the steel business, employing as capital £50,000 which he had earned as commissions from Colonel Scott for placing the stock of a new railway on the European market. This was his share in the new company of Carnegie, McCandless, and Co., the total capital of which was £140,000. There were 11 partners. Twenty-six year later, when the business was sold for over £90,000,000, all Carnegie’s partners save one had died or gone out, and Carnegie’s personal share was more than one-half of the colossal total.

The story of the fortunes of the company is long and tortuous. It involved many commercial transactions of a mysterious nature. But the amassing of this portentous wealth is a most remarkable achievement. He went through no long-drawn struggle against adversity, nor is his story one of incessant toil and application. He escaped the daily grind and left it to others. The secret of his success in great measure lay in his withdrawal from the daily worries that beset the men on the spot and his consequent leisure to see the large movement of affairs and steer his course accordingly.

But he was a thorn in the flesh to his partners and the working officials, continually goading them to further efforts, playing off the output of one furnace or mill against that of another. He was insatiable. Even when in 1889 the profits rose to £4,000,000 the effect on him was determination to have them doubled next year. But this was not greed, but a love of winning the game, a game in which the measure of success was money.

Carnegie’s naturally kind and generous disposition and the memories and traditions of his Dunfermline proletariat days came into conflict with his consuming ambition. The business side always won. He would pay large wages because that paid him, but otherwise he was a relentless and unthinking employer. Notwithstanding the views in his book, Triumphant Labour, he fought strikes with bitterness, and in the great Homestead strike of 1892, the cause of which was the determination of the masters to force a return to the killing double shift, he was entirely against the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers.

Encouraged by Carnegie’s benevolent theories, the association had come to interfere more and more with the management of the works. Carnegie insisted, even against his partner, Mr. Frick, on making it a fight to a finish. After the most sanguinary of all labour conflicts, amounting to civil war on a small scale, in which in one day 10 men were killed and over 60 wounded, Carnegie won. He fought, however, from the safe distance of Atlantic City, leaving to his partners and managers the dangers of the battle.

In his “Gospel of Wealth” Mr. Carnegie stated his opinion that “surplus wealth was a sacred trust which its possessor was bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community”. How far he succeeded in divesting himself is not yet known, but the total amount of his benefactions is prodigious. In 1908 it was estimated that he had given over £57,000,000 in America, over £7,000,000 in Great Britain, and £1,000,000 in Europe. Education, public libraries, organs, peace movements, and the Hero Funds were the best known of his objects. The two conspicuous omissions from a set of objects thought out with much care were hospitals and churches.

There has been much difference of opinion as to the utility of his beneficence. His endowment of the Scottish universities, in particular, has been singled out for adverse comment. But it is to be remembered that the introduction of the system of options and several other important changes, such as the reflex effect of the endowments on secondary schools, were the work of the Carnegie Trustees and their advisers, rather than of Carnegie.

From boyhood Carnegie was a reader, and in middle age he developed an inclination to write. His first two books, An American Four-in-Hand in Great Britain and Round the World, were very obvious descriptions of luxurious travel. Triumphant Democracy, published in 1886, was an echo of political ideas imbibed in boyhood and a scream of eulogy of American democratic institutions, to the disparagement of his native country. Wealth, published in 1886, and The Empire of Business, which appeared in 1902, contained naïve but rather engaging egotism mingled with his philanthropic aspirations. Problems of To-day, published in 1908, is his best book. It consists of nine social-economic essays on wealth and labour, informed with his own experience and written from an anti-Socialistic point of view.

Carnegie’s private life was simple, wholesome, and unostentatious. He had no vices and eschewed luxury and display. He was a bachelor until he was 50, when he married Miss Whitfield, of New York. Thereafter he never wearied of extolling domestic life. He has one child, a daughter, whose recent marriage was one of the great events of American life.

His principal amusements were entertaining, fishing, and golf. There were few distinguished persons whose acquaintance he did not make, and no one could come in contact with him without being impressed by the strong and shrewd character underlying a superficial but real good nature.

In later life he lived chiefly at Skibo Castle in Sutherlandshire, and his early detestation of British institutions could not be maintained when he voluntarily made his residence there. One of his dreams was the union of Great Britain and the United States. The other great dream, the abolition of war, received a great shock in 1914. During the conflict he relapsed into complete silence and seclusion.

Alexander Graham Bell

Inventor of the telephone, whose interest was the mechanism of speech

3 August 1922

The whole world owes a great debt to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, whose death is announced on another page, for his invention of the telephone as it exists to-day. He will assuredly be remembered among the great inventors whose pioneer work has profoundly affected the daily life of all civilised peoples.

The telephone is an electrical instrument, but Bell was not an electrician nor primarily even a physicist, but rather a physiologist whose interest centred on speech and the mechanism of speech. This interest offers a remarkable example of heredity, for his father, Alexander Melville Bell, was an authority on physiological phonetics, and his grandfather, Alexander Bell, one on phonetics and defective speech. Both of them were Scotsmen, and he himself was born in Edinburgh, on March 3, 1847, and was educated at the High School and University of that city. When quite a young man he removed across the Atlantic with his father, and he was only twenty-five when he was appointed professor of vocal physiology in Boston University. The germ of the great invention with which his name is associated came to life white he was at Brantford, in Canada, and his first instrument was made at Boston, though it was descended, perhaps a little irregularly, from observations he had made when he was a pupil teacher in Elgin, Scotland.

At Brantford, in the middle of 1874, he was working on a tuned system of multiple telegraphy, and had attained the conception of an undulatory current, realizing that speech could be transmitted if an armature could be moved as the air is moved during the passage of a sound. At the same time he was studying, by means of a dead man’s ear, the movements of the air during the utterance of a sound, and it struck him that as the small membrane that forms the ear drum can move the comparatively heavy chain of bones in the ear, a larger membrane ought to be able to move an iron armature. By the linking up of these two branches of inquiry the telephone was evolved.

Bell made his first rough speaking telephone in 1875, and the first long-distance transmission of speech dates from August, 1876, when the Dominion Telegraph Company lent him their wires for experiments, the transmitting apparatus being in Paris, Ontario, and the receiver in Brantford, eight miles away. At first transmission was in one direction only, but a few months later, after his return to Boston, reciprocal conversations were carried on between two persons at a distance from each other.