Two Female Physicians of the early 20th Century

(This post was sparked off by a recent similarly-themed one from 'lenathehyena')

A Flett from Findochty and a MacCallum of Muckairn Manse

By the 1920s the occurrence of women's names in the Medical Register (and Medical Directory) had become less of a rarity than it had been, although they were still very much in the minority and would remain so for many decades. As it happens, two such names in particular leapt to the eye in the course of previous research for this blog, those of Nelly Flett (no relation, as far as is known, to other Fletts looked at here) and Margaret MacCallum, sister of Dr John Cameron MacCallum.

Nelly Flett is not the only woman with that surname listed in the 1927 Medical Register (MR) - the others were Jessie from Uddington and Isabelle from Bathgate - but her address, 5 Seafield Street in the Flett stronghold, Findochty - links her geographically at least with the family background of Joe Flett and of two First World War Conscientious Objectors. She gained her registration on 10th May 1924, having qualified MB ChB (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) at Aberdeen. (Joe's elder brother Alexander was a doctor: MB ChB Aberdeen 1904; MD 1906).

The more likely of two Nelly Fletts in the 1901 Census was living at 18 Blantyre Place, Rathven (the parish/registration district, often used interchangeably with Findochty in the records). Her father John was a fisherman. (Joe's family were in the fishing and fish-curing business).

Findochty Harbour

In 1930 Nelly is still appearing (Registration being for life, unless struck off) but her address has changed to 'c/o National Bank of India, Bombay' - no clue as to her reason for emigrating, whether off her own bat or in order to join her future husband. 'Nelly Flett' disappears from subsequent MR volumes, to be replaced by (Mrs.) Nelly Tarlton:
British India Office Marriages - on 2-2-1929 at Calcutta, Bengal:
Nelly Flett (30) and Edward Smedley Tarlton (43).

The Bombay address continues through MR 1933 and 1936 (volumes in the National Archives library) but by 1939 Nelly is evidently back in Britain, at Cherington Park, Avening, Stroud.

The Tarltons duly appear in the 1939 Register of Electors online, although it doesn't give Nelly her due. Her 'MB ChB' is transcribed erroneously as if middle intials, 'Ma Mb C?' and her occupation as the default for married women,'Unpaid Domestic Duties'.  Her d.o.b.is 26-12-1898. Edward is described as 'Engineer (Mechanic) Retired', d.o.b.19-1-1884.

It is not clear without further research whether or for how long Nelly practised medicine in Gloucestershire, where she evidently continued to live. She appears in the Medical Directory for 1942 and 1944 as 'Tarleton, Nelly, née Flett', and (consistently as Tartlton) at the same Avening address in the MR until 1966, when she would have been in her 68th year.

*********
Incidentally, Alec Flett's daughter and Joe's niece Elizabeth Horne Flett joins her father on the MR listing in 1942, with the qualification MRCS Eng (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England) LRCP London (Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London) 1941. Her home address was 34 The Avenue, Bedford Park, Chiswick.

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Margaret Nathaniel MacCallum, apart from being female, was a more likely candidate for the medical profession, being the daughter of a Church of Scotland minister and younger sister of a doctor. What's more, her family showed signs of holding progressive views. Her brother's stand as a 'conchie' is well documented, along with his concern for workers' health and rights, while her father Malcolm stood as a Labour and Land League candidate in the 1920 Argyll by-election.

Margaret, born in 1892, studied medicine at Edinburgh - scene of notorious rioting against women in the medical faculty a few decades earlier - and qualified MB ChB in July 1913, so that she appears in the Medical Register and Medical Directory from 1914. In 1916 she added a Diploma in Public Hea;th (DPH) from Birmngham, suggesting an inclination towards social involvement rather than an elitist career. Her address until 1921 is given as the family home, Muckairn Manse, Taynuilt in Argyllshire (now a Category B listed building).

Muckairn Manse, designed by Thomas Telford (1828)

Changes in the listings from 1922 are explained, like Nelly's at the end of the decade, by the fact that she married. This record too is slightly inexact, but clear enough in meaning:
McCallum, Margaret Nathan married Dunst[a]n, Robert at Newington in 1922.
Robert Dunstan was also a doctor, registered from 9-11-1900 (MRCS Eng, LRCP  London).

Margaret continues to appear under her married name, Dunstan (Mrs.) Margaret Nathaniel (formerly/née MacCallum), coincidentally also until 1966 like Nelly, when she would have been about 75. But for a time in the MR, at least until 1933, she had remained as MacCallum. Her address and Robert Dunstan's are the same: 84 Boyson Road, London SE17 during most of that time. In MD 1929 Robert has the additional address 'Paper Ridge, Temple'; this and other volumes show his additional attainments: Barrister-at-Law, Gray's Inn; Mem Med Leg (Medico-Legal) Soc; late Lt.RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps - one wonders how he got on with his brother-in-law John).

The Dunstans do not seem to show up on the 1939 Register of Electors (frustratingly England and Wales only) online, although the MD for that year lists them both as living at South Green Cottage, Fingringhoe, Essex. Twenty years later (MR 1959) they were at Ivy Lodge, Martock, Somerset, and from 1964 Margaret was at Shipley Avenue, Torquay.

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Neither of these is a noted pioneer among women in the medical profession nor celebrated for having practised medicine in a particularly adventurous or dangerous environment, but they like many others are part of the story of what the pioneers enabled women to achieve, even if the process was slow.* It took even longer in some specialisms, as indicated by the moderately well-known 'riddle' about the surgeon who turns out (spoiler alert) to be a woman  - who would have thought of that?!
* http://www.medicalwomensfederation.org.uk/about-us/facts-figures

Looking Back at 1920s Stornoway from 60 years on.

In a rare return to exercising her writing talents (apart from letters to family and friends), Peggy (Flett) Smith once penned a short account of how she had perceived Stornoway as a child.

Other Times, Other Places

Recollections of Life in Stornoway iin the 1920s

A view of old Stornoway

   My earliest memories of Stornoway are seen, not through a glass darkly, but through rose-tinted spectacles.The herring fleet had not yet declined, the summers were always sunny, and for the duration of the Minch fishing which was primarily the months of June July and August the town was a lively bustling place to live. Far out to sea the smell of kippering was borne on the winds - a sure sign to the exiles returning home from the city tenements for their annual holiday that they were nearing their longed-for ancestral homes.


   The town was quiet at night through the week when the boats were at sea but morning brought their return, success or failure indicated by the number of screeching herring gulls in attendance and then the scene rapidly changed. Sample baskets of fish were swung ashore and taken to the Fish Mart where the buyers with much deliberation and solemnity made their bids. Then the waiting carters came into their own, transporting each ship's catch to the curers' yards. These yards or "stations" were leased by a host of curers - Woodgers, Stephens, Fletts and McConnochies, alien names at one time but now [in the 1920s] as familiar as the local Macivers, Mackenzies and Macleods.

P.F./M.I.S.

Written probably in the mid-1980s.

The fishing industry remembered in modern Stornoway.

--------------------------------------
POSTSCRIPT
From Timeline in SY Gone By, Stornoway Historical Society Journal
Winter/Spring 2018/2019, pp.4-5

1917  75,000 barrels of cured herring lying on the piers at Stornoway with the Government refusing to issue a permit for their export. They were eventually exported to Russia but were landed at the same time as the Revolution and were never paid for.

1922  3000 barrels of cured herring exported to Hamburg, Germany.

1923  Russian agreement to buy 250,000 barrels of cured herring.

1927 Stornoway's greatest year as a herring port. Estimated 30 million herring taken from Loch Erisort alone in a 6-week period.

------------------------

"By 1876, the demand for fishing stations in Stornoway harbour was so great that they were let out to the highest bidders... Before long, the town was recognised as the major herring port of Britain – if not of Europe."
 - http://stornowayhistoricalsociety.org.uk/herringindustry/

A Stornoway Girl from Away

In her centenary year, it is intended that this blog will look at the earlier part of the 'ordinary' life of Margaret Isobel (Peggy) Flett, married surname Smith, 19th December 1918 to 7th July 2015, in the context of her time, with particular attention to interactions with the town of Stornoway on  the Isle of Lewis.

By way of Introduction and taster, here are some links to previous posts:-

Family background

Two great-grandmothers
https://smothpubs.blogspot.com/2017/07/lewis-connections-and-coincidences.html
In December 1913 a grandson of Catherine (via her second son, Alexander), married a grand-daughter of Janet via Jessie. In due course there were therefore joint great-grandchildren of Janet and Catherine, and so on unto the third and fourth (so far) generations.

Ancestry. Mostly Paternal (Flett) side
https://smothpubs.blogspot.com/2018/06/examples-of-family-reading-in-scotland.html
Among the many Flett families of Findochty this one had achieved comparative prosperity by the 1890s, owning fishyards as far away as Stornoway. It was mainly Alexander's father James who built up the family fortunes, establishing himself as a well-known figure in the fishing community of the north east, nicknamed 'the Auld Cooper.' This group of siblings were probably the first generation of the family to have the resources and motivation to acquire books - apart from those required for religious observance - in any numbers.

https://smothpubs.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-findochty-flett-in-canada.html
Joseph Flett was aged 27 when he sailed to North America in August 1915, 28 when his young wife and baby daughter joined him in May 1916. While he may at that time have intended to make a permanent home in Canada, circumstances decreed otherwise and he had returned to Scotland 13 years before his novel Bid for Fortune was published in 1934. 

https://smothpubs.blogspot.com/2014/05/diamonds-among-silver-darlings.html
This summer sees the 80^th anniversary of the publication of an unusual novel, “Bid for Fortune” by “J.S.” (real name Joseph, no middle name) Flett - not a famous one by any means but worthy of some consideration from several points of view, not least in its historical context…  

(And other posts about Joe Flett and his novel.)

Mostly Maternal (Maclean) side
https://smothpubs.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-trip-to-mainland-from-stornoway-1952.html
An aunt's letter
Dear Peggy,

https://smothpubs.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-stornoway-girl-in-new-york-100-years.html
A letter from mother to grandmother
The writer of the letter transcribed below, aged 22 at the time of writing, was the daughter of a Stornoway shopkeeper. After some time as a student at the prestigious Atholl Crescent College of Domestic Science in Edinburgh, in 1913 she married Joe Flett from Findochty, whose family's fish-curing business took him to Canada in August 1915. 

Siblings
https://smothpubs.blogspot.com/2017/09/so-proud-he-registered-her-twice.html
Older sister
It was as 'Marjory Joan Flett' that the baby's birth on 5th February 1915 was registered - twice.

The three children of Joe and Lizzie, in Canada

Later, in Scotland. - Not a very happy time

 

All nevertheless survived and flourished

A rare picture of Peggy (front row, left) with her father and all her siblings
(and several of their partners).
The occasion was a sad one, the funeral of her stepmother, Joe's second wife.

Schooldays
https://smothpubs.blogspot.com/2017/03/stornoway-schooldays-more-on-nicolson.html
"The old Nicolson Institute school provided education which was second to none in all of Scotland."

Margaret I. Flett completed her Junior Secondary education in 1934

Work
https://smothpubs.blogspot.com/2017/02/history-of-stornoway-airport-fragment.html
"During part of the war I worked as a clerk at the Stornoway aerodrome, which was expanded to meet the military needs of the time. "

There are also, as regular readers will know, numerous posts about Calum Smith, whom Peggy married in 1942.

Objectors and Resisters, 1914-18: example 1, Edward Gaitens

A passage (pp.94-95) in Robert Duncan's book directs the reader to an "undeservedly neglected novel" not published until 1948 but rooted in the experience of a Scot who opposed the First World War. The author, Edward Gaitens, was a Conscientious Objector (CO) who like many other COs spent time in prison. His work is not entirely neglected; he has an acknowledged place in Scottish literature of the 20^th century and his stories of Glasgow working-class life were published and appreciated in his lifetime. What is overdue for acknowledgement and appreciation is his contribution in this novel to the literature of the First World War.

From "fair daffodils" to dungeons dark...

Canongate Classics edition, 1990

(This blurb's interpretation is open to question, to say the least).

The Introduction by Scottish writer James Campbell to the 1990 edition, although more perceptive than the blurb, touches rather briefly on the pervasive theme of the Great War:  (p.vi) "Eddy tries to spring himself from his slum prison... only to be dumped in a real prison for his idealistic opposition to the Great War..." and 'revolutionary socialist' Gaitens' attitude to it. He mentions the three convicted COs, and the depiction of Wormwood Scrubs as a hell-hole in an "amalgam of fiction and undoubted authentic direct experience." The narrative of Gorbals life includes the "world of ideas", from poetry to left-wing politics, although rooted in everyday reality. 

How He Wrote

The novel is in two sections of six chapters each. Book 1 is prefaced by a quotation from German poet Hans Sachs: "Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn! " - "Madness everywhere!" and Book 2 by "Was gilt's, was ich dir sagen kann?" -  [approximately] What can I tel you it's worth, what can we say it's all for?

Book 1 is mostly set in the pre-war background, introducing characters, setting them in context, and in the case of the younger ones describing their explorations in literature, politics and relationships, their arguments and different standpoints. Women, in some variety, are strongly present and often centre stage in scenes set in tenements, closes, streets and dance-halls. The main protagonist, Eddy Macdonnel, and his two friends Neil and Donald, attend a meeting offering an "open platform to all exponents of progressive political thought" in the Pavilion Music Hall. Among other names dropped are George Bernard Shaw, W W Jacobs, and probably the best-known of Glasgow's war resisters, John Maclean: (p.131 - Eddy wants to attend "Jonny McLean's class on the Significance of the Paris Commune").

In Chapter 6 the effects of war are being felt, with each male of an age to be conscripted constrained to make choices, whether to conform, take a principled stand or compromise. One of Eddy's brothers has already joined the Territorials although "not irresistibly driven by patriotism" and duly obeys the call; another earns comparatively big money doing work of national importance in the shipyards. The friends are opposed to the war effort but Neil argues that it's fair enough to work in protected industries on grounds of Marxian Expediency since "the only logical way to escape participation in a Capitalist war is tae live on a desert island or commit suicide". Both he and Donald opt for conscientious objection when it comes to the bit. The latter's decision is shown in his family context: the arrest of COs "always came in the small hours".  Eddy stages his own one-man demonstration in the recruiting office when it is his turn, loudly denouncing it all and ending this section on a high note of internationalist optimism and revolutionary fervour: 

(pp.135-6) ... mutinies everywhere... He believed the War would end suddenly, any time now, and the Workers all over the world would fraternize.... The great Socialist Revolution would blaze up... John McLean had said it, Guy Aldred had said it, that Glasgow would be the nucleus of World-Wide Revolution... 

 - except that, notwithstanding Eddy's (later self-mocked) heroic stance the doctor keeps right on "passing man after man into the Army and the ordeal of War". 

'Corner-boys' in the Gorbals, 1948

Something of the Gorbals world Edward knew
 was still in existence when his book was published.

The second book considers the consequences of the choices made in relation to the war, and the subsequent fate of Eddy's three older brothers (James, John, Francie) and two friends (Donald, Neil), again firmly rooted.in their families and community as these adapt to the changed world. The reader learns something of what COs have had to go through. Donald has spent time in a Corporation Mental Home after a (para)suicide bid: since the war and the Work Centre for COs "his nerves had slowly gone to pieces". He looks back on the 18 months spent in Dartmoor, remembering the comradeship and the intellectual buzz, but no longer identifies with that youthful idealism. Neil too feels alienated from former political comrades and from his formerly supportive, politically aware sisters (Christian pacifist and uncompromising revolutionary socialist). He notes that fellow members of left-wing social groupings tend to follow the opinions of leaders of their parties instead of thinking for themselves. Both men have apparently settled for conventional post-war existence in 'normal' non-ideal relationships, though not without some mental strife.

Of Eddy's own post-war existence next to nothing is said, apart from a passing mention of his being in London (the fact that a perceived 'normal' relationship was not on the cards for him as EG's alter ego may have something to do with this). Instead, Chapter 6 disrupts the chronological sequence and plunges back to one of the darkest days in the life of a CO, in prison. As well as describing some of what they had to suffer, it goes some way to suggesting how those who survived coped. Eddy is confined to his cell after reporting to the doctor and dreads the prospect of the solitary hours ahead. In the course of them he reflects on prison life and what has brought him to it, ranging over the past, analysing his complex motivation and interrogating his ideals. He refers to key points of COs' history as later confirmed by non-fictional accounts: the behaviour of prison doctors, warders, fellow prisoners including Sinn Feiners; prison diet; the risk of insanity in 'solitary' - three "went mad" including one CO; the pros and cons of 'Absolutism'; alternative 'service' - road-making in the Highlands; a Zeppelin raid; and the impact of the Russian Revolution.

Eddy gets through, and even achieves a sense of well-being in the end, not consoled by religion or even revolutionary fervour, nor by any self-glorifying notion of martyrdom, but thanks to his inner resources: imagination, intense awareness, capacity for enjoyment, and power of rational thought. It has not been entirely a dark day in the life of the mind. And Edward survived to bear witness, to have said what he wanted to say and be listened to, and to get on with his life, eventually finding a long-term partner.

Perhaps surprisingly - for something that so manifestly "should" be read - it's a highly readable book, whether for the first time as a sequential, unusually structured novel, or a collection of stories to keep going back to for particular episodes. 

Time for a new edition, with some notes? Or an adaptation or two in another medium?

The cover of the Canongate Classics edition is "Self-portrait, 1914", by Stanley Spencer - Striking, certainly, but is it appropriate, given that the artist was neither working-class nor Glaswegian and that he served willingly in the First World War? Apart from the great poignancy, with hindsight, of the face of a young man in 1914 (EG would have been 17 in that year) there is however another tie-in: 

"In May 1940 WAAC  [the War Artists' Advisory Committee] sent Spencer to the Lithgows Shipyard in Port Glasgow on the River Clyde to depict the civilians at work there. Spencer became fascinated by what he saw.."

How He Lived

The Pearce Register gives details of what happened to Edward in the war, as follows:
Edward Gaitens

Occupation         'unskilled labourer' - later a writer and novelist

Age        -

Birth year            1897

Year       -

Death year          1966

Soldier Number                -

Address               364, Govan St. (?)

Address 2            Glasgow

Local authority  Glasgow City

County Lanarkshire

Country                Scotland

Latitude               55.85

Longitude            -4.25

Ordnance Survey reference        NS590650

Absolutist            Yes?

Motivation          -

Military Service Tribunal                MST (Military Service Tribunal) Central Tribunal at Wormwood S. 20.12.16, CO class A, to Brace Committee

Central Tribunal                Central Tribunal Nos. W.2557 Class: A - Genuine

War Service        3 (R) H.L.I., Edinburgh; CM (Court Martial) Edinburgh 8.12.16 - 1yr.HL (With hard labour) com.to 28 days, Wormwood S.

Magistrates Court            Arrest reported 15.12.16

Magistrates Court comments     Absentee

Prison   Wormwood S.; 'spent two years in Wormwood Scrubs' (Oxford DNB)

Work Centre      HOS (The Home Office Scheme, administered by the Brace Committee) Ballachulish - 16.5.17 sent home and awaiting arrest. Agent found his work unsatisfactory.

Work Centre comments  Rejected by The Home Office Scheme, administered by the Brace Committee

WO363 false

Notes    'He was homosexual and never married'. His only novel, 'Dance of the Apprentices' (1948) contains descriptions of his time in prison as a CO

Sources                Cumbria RO(Carlisle)D/Mar/4/97; Oxford DNB (2004); NA/WO86/73/20; NA/MH47/1 Central Tribunal Minutes; Not found in NA/WO363; FH/SER/VOPC/Cases/2(4207) also FH/SER/VOPC/Cases/3(3820 and 3350 - spelling 'Gatins')

Record set          Conscientious Objectors' Register 1914-1918

It looks as though the 1916 prison sentence mentioned led to his case being considered by the Central Tribunal and his being sent to work on the Home Office Scheme at Ballachulish, then on being found "unsatisfactory" (perhaps having been involved in the unrest among COs there) he was sent back to the Scrubs for a period which would match the circumstances of 'Eddy' as above. 

Biography [Canongate]

Edward Gaitens 1897-1966), was born in the Gorbals of Glasgow. Leaving school at fourteen, he undertook a variety of casual jobs to support himself over the years. When the First World War broke out he became a conscientious objector and was imprisoned for two years in Wormwood Scrubs. In the 1930s he started to write, and his early attempts were greatly encouraged by his fellow Glaswegian, the successful dramatist James Bridie, who had become chairman of the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre at the time. A number of Gaitens' short stories were first published in the Scots Magazine. mostly based on his own life in the Gorbals, these were later collected as Growing Up and Other Stories (1942).* Six of these stories were incorporated into Dance of the Apprentices (1948), a novel of city life and the turbulent years between the First World War and the Depression. Gaitens continued to write from time to time during the years in which he lived - virtually anonymously - in London and Dublin. Growing Up ... and Dance of the Apprentices remain his only published books.

*At the time of writing this blog the short story collection is rare:

Growing Up and Other Stories. GAITENS, Edward. Published by London: Jonathan Cape, (1942). "Duplicate Proof for Retention", of the first edition. (1942)   Used   Quantity Available: 1

Price: £ 244.12 + Shipping from Canada

Description: Navy blue wrappers, 168pp. Gaitens was born in Glasgow's Gorbals and left school at the age of 14. He was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War I. His friend O. H. Mavor ("James Bridie") encouraged him to send stories to the Scots Magazine, later published in this collection "Growing Up". His novel "Dance of the Apprentices" (1948) is a realistic and unsentimental depiction of working-class life in Glasgow. Gaitens lived in Dublin and London for several years and died on 16 December 1966. Spine cocked and slightly worn at base, else a very good copy of a most uncommon proof. 

With the online records now available it is possible to trace more of the life, as in:
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB):
 Gaitens, Edward (1897–1966),short-story writer and novelist
... was born on 26 February 1897 at 104 South Wellington Street, in the Gorbals, Glasgow, probably fourth of six surviving children of Edward Gaitens, stationer, and his wife, Mary, née Colwell. Gaitens was educated locally and left school at the age of fourteen, taking up a succession of unskilled jobs. During the First World War he spent two years in Wormwood Scrubs prison as a conscientious objector. He was homosexual and never married.
Gaitens began writing in his middle thirties. His first short story, ‘Growing Up’, was published in the London Mercury in 1938 on the recommendation of the playwright Osborne Henry Mavor (James Bridie)*, to whom he later dedicated his only novel. His first book, Growing Up and Other Stories (1942), was well reviewed. H. G. Wells wrote to the author, ‘I do not exaggerate when I say that at least two of these stories are among the most beautiful in the English language’ (Gaitens, Dance of the Apprentices). These ten lively, social–realist pieces depict a sensitive boy observing and responding to his Glasgow background—family, shipyard work, unemployment—and discovering transcendental moments of beauty, as in ‘The Sailing Ship’. They appear to draw their inspiration from Gaitens's own experience. His long-term companion (and later literary executor) Charles Turner has been quoted as saying that ‘he put his life into his writings’ (Urquhart and Gordon [see below], 203).
Gaitens lived in London during the Second World War and served for four years as a firewatcher. He returned to Glasgow after the war, working as a night telephonist. Encouraged by an Atlantic award in literature (1946) for Growing Up, he wrote Dance of the Apprentices (1948), the novel for which he is best-known today. It is episodic in structure, six stories from Growing Up appearing, with minor alterations, as chapters in the novel. Again the book seems to be semi-autobiographical, charting the adolescent experiences of Eddy Macdonnel and his friends, the apprentices of the title. Part 1 closes as they go gladly to prison as conscientious objectors at the outbreak of the First World War. Part 2 covers the next twenty years as they come to terms with the unsatisfactory ‘world fit for heroes’ to which they have returned, but the last chapter is a strikingly detailed and bitter depiction of Eddy's—or Gaitens's—experiences in prison.
Gaitens published little else during his lifetime and his work was neglected for some years, perhaps owing to the restricted scope of his subject matter, perhaps to the ephemeral nature of his true medium, the short story. During the early 1960s, renting a basement flat in Edinburgh in poor health and considerable poverty, he sublet a room to the poet George Mackay Brown, who later wrote ‘I think his gift had deserted him, but he kept still a bright eye and an eager spirit … He had long abandoned Catholicism, but men must be believing something and Edward's religion was art’ (Brown, 159). Gaitens died of a heart attack in Deaconess Hospital, Edinburgh, on 16 December 1966.
* A pre-title page in the Canongate edition is headed "To Dr O. H. Mavor, a Glasgow man", presumably Gaitens' original dedication although this is not explained.

1901 England, Wales & Scotland Census: Govan, Hutchesontown, Lanarkshire, Scotland:
In 1901 the family were to be found at South Wellington Street in the Gorbals

     Name           Household                        Age       Birth year  Occupation       

Edward Gatens Head     Married    Male      35           1866        News Agent       

Mary     Gatens Wife      Married    Female   34           1867       -              

James   Gatens Son        -              Male      11           1890         Scholar 

John      Gatens Son        -              Male      9              1892       Scholar 

Frank     Gatens Son        -              Male      5              1896       -              

Edward Gatens Son        -              Male      4              1897       -              

-              Gatens Son        -              Male      0              1901       -              

William Caldwell  Brother-In-Law Single    Male      17     1884       Bleachfield Worker    
 Place of birth for all of the above is given as Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland.

The fictional Macdonnel family in the novel closely matches the Gaitens (spelt Gatens in the Census) household as it appeared in 1901: in the novel, Eddy has brothers called James, John and Francie, and a maternal Uncle Wullie who lives with them. ('Francie' dies young not long after the war, in a mental hospital; Frank/Francis Gaitens died in 1923.) On the other hand, the father in the book is not called Edward, and the mother usually just gets 'Mrs', perhaps distancing their sometimes harsh protrayal from the real parents.

In 1911 the family can be found via Scotland's People, once you get past another misspelling, at 364 Govan St., as a household of 9 occupying 3 rooms with 1 or more windows, and sharing the address with five other families. The parents are listed at the end of one page, their six children (and the uncle) on the next.

GAITENS EDWARD  aged 45 Brassfinisher, Foundry b.Lanark, Glasgow

GAITENS Mary aged 40
... GAITONS EDWARD 1911 M 14 [page 644/15 32/ 20] b. Hutchesontown Lanark ...

At this point. James, aged 20, was an Engineer’s Labourer; John (19) working in a Shipyard; Francis (15) an Engineering Apprentice; Edward (14) and Cuthbert (7) Scholars; and a sister, Mary, was 3 years old. William Caldwell (26) was a Lamplighter, Edward senior a Brassfinisher in a foundry. Cuthbert, if aged 7, was not the unnamed 1901 baby who may not have lived long. A few more autobiographical boxes are ticked: in the novel, as well as the 3 older brothers, Eddy has a sister, Mary, and a younger brother, Egbert - the rather incongruous choice of name is blamed on his mother - appears fleetingly. 

... and some daffodils

A different sort of tenement?
 No.37 Church Rd.

In the 1939 Register of Electors (England & Wales) 

Edward appears in the "Turner Household (2 People) 37 Church Road, Barnes M.B., Surrey, England":

Edward Gaitens 25 Feb 1897        Male      Commercial Traveller (Cereals Selling To Retail Trade)     Single

Charles Turner  14 Nov 1901        Male      Private Sec To Film Scenario Wrist [Writer] Single    

The ODNB article above refers to Gaitens' "long-term companion (and later literary executor) Charles Turner."

A section of Church Rd., SW13 including nos. 27-37
(looking over Barnes Pond).

Charles and Edward shared No.37 with two other 'households' of electors (and possibly some non-electors),  one of 4 people, the other consisting of a (married) shorthand typist whose husband, from her surname, may not have been eligible to vote.

"A lasting place in Scottish literature"
The title story of Growing Up and Other Stories (London: Jonathan Cape, 1942) - about a 14-year-old going to work in a shipyard - was published in a 1978 anthology. (As noted above, the full collection is currently available in the form of a used ‘Duplicate Proof for Retention’ of the first edition at £244.12 plus shipping from Canada).

From Modern Scottish Short Stories

In some illustrious company.

A Findochty Flett in Canada

In Imagination and Memory...

Joseph Flett was aged 27 when he sailed to North America in August 1915, 28 when his young wife and baby daughter joined him in May 1916. While he may at that time have intended to make a permanent home in Canada, circumstances decreed otherwise and he had returned to Scotland 13 years before his novel Bid for Fortune was published in 1934. The book contains several chapters set in Newfoundland where he had spent over five years. Although a work of fiction presented as an escapist adventure story, it clearly draws extensively on the author's knowledge and experience (as well as his thoughts and feelings), including some about his temporarily adopted country.

Written on May 21, 1916:
"No desire to return to Scotland", but circumstances decreed otherwise five years later

In the context of post First World War alienation and lack of prospects the four main protagonists in the novel, after a failed business venture, turn to less legal schemes for securing some kind of future for themselves. While one takes care of the main plan, to smuggle accidentally-acquired diamonds into the USA with a view to disposing of them, the other three proceed via Newfoundland to rendez-vous with him in New York. Rather than wait idly, they decide to have a go at putting another idea into practice, rum-running from the French colony of St. Pierre to the Prohibition-era dry States. Rum-running to the USA, one of them has argued, would constitute a "real service" as well as being "almost respectable":

"For the greater convenience of rum-runners and Newfoundland fishermen - they've got Prohibition even in their foggy clammy island, poor devils! - there happens... to be two bits of rock off the south coast of Newfoundland that still belong to the sensible and thirsty Républque Française... an oasis in an arid land." (Chapter 5, p.55)

Anyway: "The Americans didn't despise law-breakers; the only thing they really despised was poverty. And rum-running was by now almost a respectable industry in the States."  (Chapter 14, pp.128-9)

On board ship their fellow passengers "cursed Prohibition. It was leading the youth of the country astray... It was killing the young men and corrupting the young women." (Chapter 17, p.148)

The next morning they were swishing through slob ice, with an occasional bump and grinding into the harder hummocks. Late in the afternoon they came up to the narrows of St. John's harbour. Huge cliffs towered above the narrow channel, bare grey rock plastered white in every cranny with snow, formidably wild and desolate-looking. Wooden huts and scaffoldings of fishermen [boats] perched on shelves of rock just above the water. A grim land it looked. Passing through the narrows, they entered a calm, land-locked harbour, full of drifting ice and little anchored schooners, Christmas-toy-like in their frosted shrouds and the long icicles pendent from bow and stern and gunwales.

 ... A small fleet of sleighs awaited the landing of the passengers... A grim country. A devil of a climate. (Chapter 17, p.148-149)

These first impressions are expanded into a more elaborate description of the place (with a small sting in the tail): "A rover of the sea turned merchant... St John's achieves, too, the metropolitan air... shares in the councils of the nations. She has a parliament all of her own... active mentally, and that's the great thing... It loves to take the stranger in, in one way or the other." (Chapter 18, p.150)

The next objective was to be Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, travelling to which was possible but advised against by locals at this time of year, the advice being heeded by only one of the three: "Jimmy, listening to the proposed itinerary, ruled himself out of it. He wouldn't, deliberately and of his own free will, shove himself into such horrible discomforts. But Tommy and Jock were still of the mind to go through with it." (p.151)

Tommy and Jock decide to kit themselves out, gradually, in seamen's clothing –

Then, on pretence at first of touring the outports, they crept down the coast, from one fishing hamlet to the next... until at last, from long rubber thighboots to mackinaw and ear-flapped cap, there was naught to distinguish them outwardly from the most native of natives. The local accent, a peculiar blend of West-Country English with the Irish brogue, presented much more difficulty to Jock... Jock, they decided, would have to pass as a Cape Breton Gaelic-speaking Scotsman, in whom any variety of English, from the purest to the most broken, gives no surprise to anybody - or at least so they had gathered from their boon companions in St. John's.

From Placentia... they drifted down... Everywhere they landed they found houses that would take in the weary traveller for a dollar or two... (p.154)

After an enforced wait that turns out to be "comfortable and jolly" in Grand-Bank, Fortune Bay, "there came a morning at last, even in a Newfoundland February, when the raging seas simmered down into a sullen heave of swell."

They landed on rocks at an unfrequented part of the island...

Saint-Pierre was quiet.. The transatlantic headquarters of the French cod-fishing fleet, its busy time was over for a year, except for the occasional visit of a big French trawler and its surreptitious activities in the rum-running trade...

The cod-fishing business was not what it had been. Newfoundland long ago had done its direst to kill that trade by prohibiting the sale of Newfoundland bait to the French, and in any case the business of fishing was getting more and more into the hands of big steam-trawling companies... (p.157)

While this adventure proceeds:

Jimmy put in the three weeks' waiting at St. John's pleasantly enough. He skated on the ice-rinks; he practised snow-shoeing until he quite fancied himself as an expert; he played poker and bridge; avoided women... As soon as it was certain that Jock and Tommy had made the passage, Jimmy packed up and took sleigh for the railway station.

The journey turns out to be something of an epic one. "The train lurched and bumped... in a manner disconcerting to the novice", eliciting the reassurance that [JF does the voice] 

"This ain't the season yit foh upsets. Next month now, yoh go to sleep mebbe in a lowah berth and waken up in a uppah berth with the train turned right upside down"  - in which case the procedure would be to climb out by the windows, with "drifts of snow fawty feet deep sometimes" at the "tops'ils". Asked "How do you like it up here?" the attendant replies that there are drawbacks and 'vantages: "We coloured gemmen have fah moah considuation up heah, sah. But dis consumption play the devil with coloured folks up heah, sah." (p.181-182)

The same attendant breaks the news to him when they get snowed in, and the conductor confirms that nothing can be done until the storm blows itself out and the "rotary" clears a way for them, which might take weeks. There are very few passengers in the sleeper - "Only the strongest urgency could persuade anyone to do the cross-country voyage at this time of year" - and after three days of being cooped up with them Jimmy, "ready for anything, no matter how desperate, that would break the monotony", decides to set out walking. Grand Falls he reckons is only about 80 miles away; some houses are scattered along the route; he expects to find "lots of English people there, employees of Northcliffe's paper mills".  Although he goes equipped with snow-shoes and green-tinted spectacles bought from a fellow passenger, his initial optimism as he begins "to follow the line of railway telegraph posts over the deep and pathless snow" is seriously misplaced.

On the point of collapse, he is rescued by a gaunt elderly woman and then tended by her two young attractive daughters, in whom he observes "that peculiarly well-bred manner, direct and fearless, treating all as equals and none as superiors, of those brought up in the complete independence of the wilds". However (half way to Grand Falls after ten days):

The happy interlude was brief, as usual. One morning smoke was seen down the line; then came the rotary, throwing up cascades of snow before it.. [The train] did not come along until the next day. With the usual obligingness of Newfoundland trains it stopped for Jimmy's excited wavings and took him aboard. (p.204)

The remainder of the journey is more pleasant - 

Without much apparent thaw the snow had long since begun mysteriously to disappear... The first taste of spring comes sudden and sweet in the countries of the long long snows…

The barren monotony of the interior changed as they came to the West Coast to high hills and woodlands. The River Humber roared through its steep and matted gorge down to Bay of Islands, still fast and serene under six feet of ice. It was a strange sight to Jimmy to see horses and heavily laden sleighs creeping over the frozen sea.

The country had a further test of endurance in reserve - 

"... when they arrived at Port-aux-Basques, the terminus of the railway and the port of transhipment for Canada. The s.s. Kyle had already been waiting there two days, already full of passengers who had come with her direct by sea from St. John's; the gulf was full of heavy ice, now packed close and tight to the land by the in-wind that had been blowing... The usually spick-and-span mail-boat had been putting up a losing fight against overcrowding and delay... (p.206)

"Another day of dank, smelly, tedious misery... then Jimmy woke up to woke up to the throbbing of engines and the swish and grind of a ship forcing her way through ice...

Up on deck the air was dancing, the ice-fields glittering in the strong sunlight. 

Finally - 

Here was the land again, praise be! and freedom from the mob. A drink!.. He had been looking forward to it ever since he smelt that ship. Now without preparation or softening the blow was dealt to him. Nova Scotia was dry. The country of all countries that needed a drink to was down its miserable dullness was dry!

The Syrian, who had been a fellow-passenger... now proved a friend in need. Nova Scotia was dry all right; but you could get all you wanted just the same; the only real difference was that you now had to pay through the nose for it.

... In defiance of all law, Jimmy was a bit flushed and smiling when he joined the train at North Sydney that evening. (p.209)

Jimmy's farewell to Canada is not final. After the four friends are reunited and share some further adventures and difficulties, they each end up (spoiler alert) with a substantial sum of money, and the partnership is dissolved. Jimmy,'with whom the narrative has opened, also occupies the closing chapter, in which after much soul-searching and existential agonising, he diagnoses the root cause of his troubled state as "nothing but that most common of ailments, the mating fever".

He had been unhappy... ever since he had left that lonely spot in the wilds... His mind went back to that scene, visioned the snow and the lake and the little fir tree.. Suddenly young Susie's face flashed up and filled his mind...

Having been characterised as English (distancing him from Joe) and therefore prone to snobbery, he has to account for his choice of this young woman from the wilds (while remaining apparently unfazed at the prospect of an intermittently homicidal axe-wielding mother-in-law). A momentary misgiving is set aside - "Susie was not a young savage; she was a native princess in her own right... glorious and free." (pp.271-273)

Recollecting -  her mother had said there was "no keeping young girls at home nowadays"  - that "she had been thinking of going away, of leaving home; a lamb going out innocently unafraid into the jungle" (pp.275-276) he loses no more time in organising his return, "a different man", to a different experience:

The s.s.Kyle, now neat and clean enough. Port-aux-Basques, raining as usual, but this time warm muggy rain. The casual leisurely crawl of the Newfoundland train... the homely genial atmosphere that more than made up for all discomforts... No such thing as time in Newfoundland: nothing for it but to wait, as tranquilly as everybody else. (pp.277-278)

The train may be slow, but the story now skips briskly onwards to the required happy ending.

*****************

(A more thorough and critical review of the novel appears later on this blog.)

J.S.Flett, Bid for Fortune. Moray Press, Edinburgh & London, 1934

The adventures of four young men. Price 7/6 [Seven shillings and sixpence = 37.5p. 
Second-hand copies have been available on-line at different highish prices, e.g. at £35 about 12 years ago, £399 (80 years after publication), £50 without jacket (currently).]

The book sat well with its mid-1930s contemporaries in the Moray Press list
 of (would-be) popular but far from unintelligent adventure yarns.