George Shirran, born 1866

George Shirran, son of Alexander Shirran and Jessie Tawse, was born at Bogside at 10am on 27^th August 1866. His birth was registered in the parish of Auchterless, and described in the register as taking place at "Bogside Auchterless", which ought to mean he was born at the Bogside near Cushnie about half a mile south-west of Kirktown of Auchterless: but he would later tell both the army and the SNSPCC that he was born in the parish of Monquhitter. [GROS Statutory Births 1866 173/00 0063; GS Medical History form; National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/2/8 Application for Inspectorship with the SNSPCC]

This may have been an error, but if true it would mean he was probably born either at Bogside of Greeness, next to what would later be his father's croft, or at Bogside Croft a few hundred yards east of Mill of Muirtack, both of which are in Monquhitter. He might have been registered at Auchterless just because it was the nearest significant town.

However, Bogside near Cushnie is probably the more likely location, because it seems to be the only Bogside in Auchterless and is quite near Logie Newton where the family would be living in 1871. The 25-inch Ordnance Survey Aberdeenshire Map Sheet XXVIII.52, surveyed 1869 and published 1873, shows that Bogside is the farmstead now called Sunnyside: in 1861 there were four families living there, between them comprising six adults and fourteen children. [Census 1871 249/0B 002/00 006] Since the family moved around a lot from fee to fee, George may not even have known exactly where he was born and have been guessing. The census of 1881 does give his place of birth as "Abdnshire Auchterless" and that of 1911 as "Bogside Auchterless". [Census 1881 223/00 005/00 018; Census 1911 692/02 054/00 018]

There is some evidence that George didn't get on very well with his father. Wherever his signature is present (as opposed to filling in his name in normal handwriting) the capital "G" on "George" is generally more flamboyant and/or larger than the capital "S" on "Shirran", sometimes strikingly so, which suggests that he had much happier and more confident feelings about his personal identity than about his family identity. [GS attestation on re-enlisting in 1914; GS signed consent on discharge, confirming he has received all his pay] His first child, Florence Caroline Jessie, was named in part after George's mother, but his son was not named after George's father, and nor do any feminine variants of Alexander appear among the middle names of any of his several daughters. His five children had thirteen first and middle names between them, of which the names Jessie and George come from George's side of the family, Christina is unidentified, and the other ten are all derived from his wife's family.

Anne BurgessGeograph

He appears in the census of 2^nd April 1871, aged four, living at Logie Newton with his parents and his siblings Robert, Alexander, Charles and James (mark II). [Census 1871 249/0B 002/00 006] An older brother, Adam, had already left home and was living in Aberdeen, whence he would soon emigrate to America. Another brother William, aged fifteen, was currently working as a farm servant at South Loop Farm near Fyvie [Census 1871 197/00 008/00 009] but was to join the army in 1878 and be invalided out again with a damaged leg in 1880 [National Archives, Kew, army pension document PIN 71/5247].

In the census of 3^rd April 1881, when he was fourteen, George is listed as working on the 140 acre farm run by Elspet Matthew at Haremoss. There are several locations called Haremoss but we know that this was the Haremoss which is about two miles north of Greeness and a mile and a half west south-west of Cuminestown, because it is listed in the census on the same page as Mill of Haremoss (now the Delgaty estate, location of the famous Barnyards o' Delgaty) and Hill of Castle (probably modern Castlehill), both of which are just north of Greeness. It is now, and probably was then, a livestock farm. [Census 1881 223/00 005/00 018] George was probably the orra-loon, the odd-job boy. Orra means "other", in the sense of "miscellaneous": the orra man carried out general maintenance and had quite high status, but the orra-loon was what we would now call a gopher - go fer this, go fer that.

You can get some idea of the life of a farm-hand in that time and place by listening to the traditional Bothy Ballads, the work-songs of the Buchan farmhands, or by reading The Ballad and the Plough: A Portrait of Life in the Old Scottish Farmtouns by David Kerrcameron. A bothy was a barracks-like arrangement for sleeping single male farmhands on the farmtouns, the big semi-industrialised farms of 19^th C lowland Scotland. In the North-East area where George lived and worked, however, despite being the heartland of the so-called Bothy Ballad, the men usually slept in "chaumers" (chambers, presumably), which were more like shared bedrooms, sleeping six or less.

The feeing markets at Turriff were held at Whitsuntide (the seventh Sunday after Easter) and Martinmas (11^th November) so if George was working at Haremoss on 3^rd April 1881, he must have been there at least since the previous November. A few years later, he was to join the army in November, and many years after that he would work for the SNSPCC in Edinburgh and his job-application form would show him as having worked in two blocks of a year each, prior to enlisting. [The New Statistical Account of Scotland (1845), Volume XII - Aberdeen, Parish of Turriff; National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/2/8 Application for Inspectorship with the SNSPCC]

So, we don't know whether he stayed at Haremoss until November 1881 - he could have fee'ed at some other farm for six months from Whitsuntide to Martinmas 1881 - but we do know from his employment records that from November 1881 to November 1882 he worked as a farm servant for a farmer called Mr Cruikshank, who paid him £6 a year. The census shows that this was probably the James Cruikshank who had a 168-acred farm at Keithen, a mile south-east of Ewebrae. From November 1882 to November 1883 George was farm servant to a farmer called Thomas Knox, who farmed 120 arable acres at Sprottyneuk, of which more anon: Knox paid George £4 every six months: so he was going up in the world slightly. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/2/8 Application for Inspectorship with the SNSPCC; Census 1881 222/0B 003/00 013; Census 1881 222/0A 000/00 004]

George evidently had at least some schooling, since he would later be assessed by the army as having basic literacy. He had certainly left school by fourteen: he may well have left it at ten, since that was the minimum school-leaving age at that time, but on the other hand the 1881 census shows that two of his brothers were still "scholars" at twelve. In May 1870 when George was three the family were evidently living at Logie Newton; if they were still there a few years later George probably went to the boys' school at nearby Badenscoth. According to A Vision of Britain Through Time: Gazetteer entries for Auchterless there were five schools in the parish of Auchterless at that time: separate schools for boys and girls in each of Badenscoth and Kirkton of Auchterless, and a fifth school, gender mix unspecified, at Backhill to the east of the parish. The census indicates that there was also once one at Greeness itself, since it includes an entry for Greeness Schoolhouse [Census 1881 223/00 005/00 018; GROS Statutory Births 1870 249/0B 0032; Census 1881 ???]

Circa April 1882, when he was fifteen and working for Mr Cruikshank, George had a liason with a nineteen-year-old girl called Eliza Rettie, and she became pregnant. Their daughter Margaret was born at 7pm on 23^rd January 1883, in Cuminestown, at which point Eliza was described as a domestic servant, resident in Cuminestown. [GROS Statutory Births 1862 223/00 0070; GROS Statutory Births 1883 223/00 0010]

Greg StringhamGeograph

We know that in spring 1881 George was working at Haremoss around a mile and a half west south-west from Cuminestown, and in spring 1883 he was working at a farm called Sprottynook or Sprottyneuk (which sounds like an embarrassing skin disease), two miles east south-east of the family croft at Ewebrae/Greeness, and three and a half miles south of Cuminestown. Although we don't know where Mr Cruikshank's farm was, where George was working in spring 1882, it was probably in the same area. So the couple lived within a fairly easy walk of each other and probably met at church, since the church at Cuminestown seems to be the nearest one to Sprottyneuk. [GROS Statutory Births 1883 223/00 0010 RCE]

On 9^th May 1883 a paternity-suit at Monquhitter

Roger BostonGeograph

established the now sixteen-year-old George as Margaret's father: it is not clear whether he was trying to evade responsibility, or whether this was a legal convenience to enable his daughter to bear his name, as she went on to do. The father could only be added to the register entry for an illegitimate birth if he was there when the birth was registered, or if paternity was established in court: the birth was registered on 12^th February 1883, a Monday, when George may have been unable to get time off work to go to the registry office. At the time of the paternity suit, in May 1883, George was a farm-servant at Sprottyneuk (so Sprottyneuk must have been the farm owned by Mr Knox), but the case was written up on 9^th July and the amendments weren't processed until 31^st May 1884, by which point George had enlisted, and hence his occupation is given as "soldier" on his daughter's amended birth certificate. [GROS Statutory Births 1883 223/00 0010 RCE]

The actual text of the findings of the paternity suit is given in the section on Margaret Rettie/Shirran.

They're affy lads, the bothy lads;
Fin they get what they're seekin',
They'll pack a kist and ga'n enlist,
And leave the lasses greetin'.

Whether he was consciously running away from paternity or not, by that summer George was obviously already thinking of following his brother (and perhaps his father) into the Colours, even if he was constrained by having fee'd at Sprottyneuk until Martinmas, for on 28^th August 1883, the day after his seventeen birthday, he gained a military 4^th Class Certificate of Education. This was a qualification indicating very basic literacy and numeracy and he would probably just have had to demonstrate his skills, such as they were, to an Army schoolmaster: only candidates for the 1^st Class Certificate, those seeking to be commissioned from the ranks, sat a formal exam.

Later, as a soldier, he would go on to study and get his 3^rd Class Certificate in March 1886, and his 2^nd Class Certificate in March 1888. For the 3^rd Class Certificate, necessary for promotion to the rank of Corporal, "the candidate was to read aloud and to write from dictation passages from an easy narrative, and to work examples in the four compound rules of arithmetic and the reduction of money". The 2^nd Class Certificate, necessary for promotion to Sergeant, entailed "writing and dictation from a more difficult work, familiarity with all forms of regimental accounting, and facility with proportions and interest, fractions and averages". [Military History summary as at 1905; Certificates of Education in the British Army]

On the 19^th of November 1883 George enlisted with the Black Watch at Turriff, at which time he was seventeen, and was described as a farm servant, Presbyterian, and as being 5'4" and weighing 8st10lb, with a 34½" chest, a fresh complexion, grey eyes and light brown hair, and no distinguishing marks. The fact that an army clerk would later scramble the address of his next of kin suggests that he probably also had a powerful Doric accent, and kept it. His regimental number at that time was 2183. He told the recruiting officer that he was nineteen, exactly, and for the rest of his life the army treated the 19^th of November 1864 as his birthdate - despite the fact that when he re-enlisted in 1914 he owned up to his real age, accurate to two days.

At seventeen, he had clearly not yet finished growing. A job application form he completed in 1910 would describe him as being 5'6¾" with a 38" chest. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/2/8 Application for Inspectorship with the SNSPCC]

We do not know why he lied about his age, since the minimum age for enlisting at that time was fourteen, but the front-running theories are either that if he had admitted to being seventeen he wouldn't have been allowed to join up without parental consent, which he didn't have; or that he wanted to serve overseas and wouldn't have been allowed to until he turned nineteen (as was the case in world War One). [The Long, Long Trail: Enlistment in the army] My mother, being from an army family, commented that he probably would have felt that serving overseas meant being "a proper soldier".

A proper soldier he certainly did become. He served over twenty-one years in the Black Watch, from 19^th November 1883 to 30^th June 1905, and then was recalled for a further four and a half years during and after World War One.

He was initially posted as a Private to 2^nd Battalion Royal Highlanders (The Black Watch), who were the "home battalion" at that point, while he did his training at Aldershot - where he was hospitalised with a blistered foot. After his training he was re-assigned to 1^st Battalion, the current "overseas battalion", and posted to Egypt, where he arrived on his eighteenth birthday and a few weeks later was sent upriver from Cairo as part of the Nile Expedition, a.k.a. the Gordon Relief Campaign.

The Sudan had been administered since 1819 by an Egyptian regime under the Turkish Ottoman Empire, but this regime had got into such financial difficulties that the British Empire had become involved effectively as receivers. In 1870 a Moslem Sudanese cleric called Muhammad Ahmad had proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the champion of faith and liberty, and raised a substantial following on the basis of a potent mixture of justified resentment about punitive taxation and oppression of the Sudanese by Egypt; Sudanese patriotism and the desire for liberty and self-governance; religious faith shading towards fanaticism and ethnic and religious bigotry.

Egypt eventually decided to concede defeat and withdraw their forces from the Sudan, leaving the Mahdi in command, but could not trust the Mahdists not to massacre the Egyptian soldiers as soon as they left their garrisons. A British force under General Gordon, who had been attempting to suppress the slave trade in the Sudan, was sent to the capital at Khartoum to oversee the withdrawal, but was besieged and trapped.

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In August 1884 Colonel JD Stewart, one of General Gordon's staff, and his team had been massacred by the chief of the Manasir, Suleiman wad Gamir, and villagers acting under his command. Colonel Stewart was a soldier and so a legitimate target for an enemy, but because he was killed by treachery his death was considered to be murder. He had been on board the steamer Abbas carrying refugees downstream when his vessel was wrecked on a rock at Hebbeh (Al Heybah). He asked Suleiman for camels on which to continue his journey downstream and Suleiman came on board, accepted presents from the British party and promised them the camels, then invited them to a conference ashore to which they came unarmed, except for Colonel Stewart's small revolver. Once he had them ashore and surrounded, Suleiman ordered his men to kill them and almost the whole party were lost, although the steamer's stoker survived to tell the tale.

The Nile Column, formed with the twin intentions of relieving the British garrison in Khartoum and punishing the Manasir tribe for the murder of Colonel Stewart, consisted of some six thousand men in eight infantry battalions (including 1^st Battalion The Black Watch), a cavalry regiment and a field artillery battery under the command of Major-General Earle. In addition, a Camel Corps was formed to reach Khartoum by desert. On the first phase of the campaign the force as a whole proceeded from Cairo to Sarras (Saras), the southern end of the railway system, seventeen miles south of Wadi Halfa on the border with Sudan, by a combination of rail and sail.

Przemyslaw "Blueshade" IdzkiewiczWikipedia

The Black Watch left Cairo on the evening of 23^rd September 1884, proceeding by rail to Assiout (Asyut) and then sailing upriver to Assouan (Aswan) in two steamers and four barges. There are two Aswans, one near Edfou, the other seventy-five miles upriver where the famous temples are: probably the one with temples is meant.

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They arrived at Aswan on 5^th October and disembarked on the following morning: George Shirran's records show him at Aswan on the 6^th. However, The Black Watch had suffered two cases of smallpox among its men and so was ordered to march two miles downriver to a palm grove by the riverbank, and camp there in quarantine until 12^th November.

The infantry component of the relief force was to travel in a fleet of thirty-foot whale-boats (variously said to be two hundred, four hundred or eight hundred strong) while the cavalry rode alongside: The Black Watch would occupy eighty-four of these vessels. Each boat carried a crew of around eight soldiers plus a Canadian pilot, as well as stores of food and ammunition etc sufficient for fourteen men for a hundred days; these stores not to be touched until they reached Hamdab, some six hundred and fifty miles upriver. The boats also carried supplies for their crews' current daily needs, replenished from commissariat stores along the riverbank.

BibleOrigins.net

The first of the whale-boats set out from Sarass on 6^th November, even though the last company didn't leave Aswan for Sarass until 22^nd November, so the head and tail of the riverborn column were more than a fortnight apart. From Sarass they inched their way upstream towards Khartoum.

BibleOrigins.net

The first stretch of the Nile they had to climb, between Sarass and Sarkamotto (Sarkamatto), was supposedly impassable by boat even at high water, and in fact the river was low. To reach Sarkamotto they first had to pass through water rushing between the gates of Semneh (where a Corporal of 1^st Battalion The Gordon Highlanders was drowned) and above that the cataracts at Wady Attireh, Ambigol, Tanjour, Ockma, Akasheh and Dal (modern spellings: Semna; Wady Attiri; Ambikol; Tanjure Island; Ukma; Akasha and Dal) - several boats belonging to the Gordons were wrecked during this stretch. Often the boats were holed by rocks and had to be hauled out onto the bank, unloaded and repaired by the soldiers, and over the most dangerous stretches the boats and stores had to be dragged along the shore, blistering the men's hands: but they were well fed and in high spirits. As their tartan trews wore out they replaced them with plain grey suits, preserving their kilts for battle.

Beyond Sarkamotto the river was quieter but they still had to tackle the cataracts of Amara, Shaban (just downstream from Simit Island, near Jebel Sudayk) and Hannek (the heart of the Third Cataract) before reaching Abu-Fatmeh (immediately south of Tumbus). At Shaban several more vessels were wrecked, including a boatload of Gordons under full sail which struck a rock and sank. Lieutenant Burney swam back and forth, providing boxes and other floatation devices for those who couldn't swim and helping them to reach the safety of rocky islets. After three quarters of an hour in the water he was so exhausted that he himself had to be rescued by a company of The Black Watch.

Truscott\'s African Travels

From Abu-Fatmeh to New Dongola (now just called Dongola) the wind was squally and the current swift, yet the boats made good headway, sailing and rowing up to thirty miles a day. Beyond Dongola itself (now called Old Dongola) Major Brophy of The Black Watch drowned when a boat under sail was swamped.

Meanwhile the Camel Corps, which had set out from Sarass on the 12^th of November, cut across the desert to cut out a loop of the river, reaching Korti on 14^th December. From here they struck out again across the Bayuda desert, heading south-east to pick up the next loop of river about a hundred miles below Khartoum, nearly two hundred miles away.

The head of the waterborn flotilla rounded the curve into the Great Bend of the Nile and reached Korti on 17^th December, but the lead boats of The Black Watch didn't reach Korti until the first week in January. Here they were about halfway to Khartoum and about to attempt to get though the sixty-mile-long chain of rapids called the Fourth Cataract, and the crews and loads of the boats were re-distributed in preparation for what was intended to be the final push.

The head of the Nile Column left Korti on 28^th December 1884, passed through Merowe, paused at Hamdab from 3^rd to 24^th January and then proceeded up the Fourth Cataract towards Birti. The Black Watch, including Private Shirran, occupied eighty-four boats and were still in the rear, arriving at Hamdab between 13^th and 20^th January.

To find these places on a map, look for Merowe, which is a largeish town with an airport and a dam, identifiable on any atlas. Korti is about thirty miles downriver of Merowe, on the east side of the Nile. Hamdad is on the west side, about eighteen miles north-east of Merowe as the crow flies but rather further by boat. Birti is a village occupying a two-mile stretch of river bank on the south side of the river opposite Hawsh al Juruf, plus a neighbouring island, about thirty-eight miles nor'-nor'-east of Merowe.

The Irish soldier and writer Sir William Butler, then a Colonel, reported that once the force advanced beyond Hamdab, they came under attack from the desert and had to have outlying riders to defend the teams with the boats, and these advance scouts also picked the column's camping places. He himself was part of this group.

Leaving Hamdab on 24^th January, the flotilla was now occupying two hundred and seventeen boats. They were heading broadly north-east into Dar al-Manasir, the country of the Manasir people, that they called "our rocks" - an austere but beautiful landscape of stony deserts and low, fertile islands, full of fascinating history and archaeology. Close to the river it resembled a more fertile version of the Flow Country in the Hebrides, with the tops of the islands barely above the water and so close together that for much of its length there the Nile wasn't so much a single flow dotted with islands, as solid ground bisected by braided streams, as if the river were a vast plait the middle section of which had unravelled into its component strands. It was lovely and strange, and all of it is lost now - drowned by the Merowe Dam.

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On the 25^th the right half-battalion of The Black Watch, now apparently the lead party of the flotilla instead of the tail, made it through the very difficult Edermih Cataract (Edermi), the true Fourth Cateract; the left half followed on the 26^th. A few miles above the Edermih Cataract the river narrows and passes between a pair of ruined forts which overlook the river on either side. On 28^th January, two miles above the forts, they passed the Kab-el-Abd Cataract but the river passage was becoming more and more difficult, and it took all the skill of the Canadian voyageurs and the labour of the army men to get through.

The Sudan Archeological Research Society

On 31^st January, three days later but only four miles further on, they bivouacked at the village of Gamra, before tackling the Rahami Cataract and reaching Birti on 5^th February, a day behind the South Staffords: it had taken The Black Watch four days to get through the seven miles of the Rahami Cataract, and one man had drowned.

At Birti they expected to meet opposition from Mahdist forces, but found the place deserted. On the 5^th of February, according to Butler, the commanders of the Nile Column received intelligence that the British garrison in Khartoum had fallen, but the fate of Gordon was unknown.

From 5^th - 8^th of February 1^st Bttn Black Watch and 1^st Bttn South Staffordshires bivouacked at Castle Camp, on the south-west bank of the Nile opposite A'rag Island, a small island with a ruined castle on it about five miles upstream from Birti (not seven miles as Electric Scotland: The Black Watch 1882-1886 - from an account by William Melven, M.A., Glasgow erroneously says: a map by Major-General Brackenbury, one of the commanders of the column, clearly shows the position of the camp).

While they stayed at Castle Camp the men spent their time destroying the wells in the area, to avenge the murder of Colonel Stewart - an action we would nowadays regard as disgraceful, although since the villages concerned were all on or very close to the banks and islands of the Nile, the destruction of the wells must have been more of a nuisance than a catastrophe. That seems to make the whole exercise more pointless, in fact: a strong punitive attack might be reprehensible but it might at least scare the enemy into submission, whereas petty vandalism could do nothing except create more ill-will.

At 10am on the 8^th, 1^st Bttn Black Watch and 1^st Bttn South Staffordshires advanced to Dulka or Dirbi Island, just round a corner where the Nile bent towards the north-east, arriving there on the evening of 9^th February - all except for G Company 1^st Bttn Black Watch, who with the Duke of Cornwall's Regiment were left behind at Castle Camp to await the arrival of the Gordons, who were still at Birti. It is not known which company Private Shirran was in.

David HaberlahWikipedia

Just upstream from Dulka Island, in the tribal area of Birti el Kirbekan, a jagged broken line of high sawtooth ridges, made of black rock crested with white quartz, runs at right-angles right across both banks of the river and the intervening Boni Island. Between Jebel Kirbekan, the three-hundred-foot-high ridge on the eastern side, and the water there is only a narrow pass choked with rocks, and a group of ruined buildings (not sure if these buildings were there in the 1880s or not). Jebel Kirbekan is paralleled by ranks of lower hills to either side of it. Two miles further on the river runs for seven miles between towering black rocks through a narrow defile called Shukook Pass (or Shukuk or Shookook), and there is also a foot-track which bypasses the defile, cuts through the hills and comes out at the upstream end of Uss (Us) Island.

By the evening of the 9^th of February it was clear that a substantial Mahdist force of about two thousand spearmen was occupying the high ridge of Jebel Kirbekan to the east of the river, a vantage-point from which they could rain down fire on the column and prevent it from proceeding to Shukook Pass. They were firmly established in fortresses among the rocks, firing down through loop-holes in the walls.

Those British troops who had come up as far as Dulka Island numbered about eleven hundred men. Acting on the advice of Brigadier-General Butler (at least according to Butler!), who had carried out a reconnaissance of the ridge a few days before the Mahdist forces arrived, and leaving the Egyptian Camel Company and two companies of the South Staffords, with guns, to feign an assault through the hills to the south-west of the ridge, Major-General Earle led six companies of 1^st Battalion The Black Watch, six companies of the South Staffords and a mounted squadron of the Hussars on a wide loop to the south and round the end of the range of hills, to launch an attack from the east and also cut the enemy forces on the ridge off from their reserves at their base-camp in Shukook Pass. This meant passing south-east of the Mahdist force across open ground and they came under heavy fire. The Black Watch troops in this group seem to have been the whole of 1^st Battalion, other than G Company who were still at Castle Camp, and since he got the Kirbekan medal we can assume George Shirran was with this party who followed Major-General Earle.

Once they were on the lea side of the hills north-east of the Mahdist force, one company of Staffords were dropped off to approach the Mahdists from the north-east, between the hills, and "suppress enemy fire", while the cavalry of the Hussars were sent further north-east across the desert to take the enemy's camp at Shukook Pass. According to Butler most of the Mahdists, seeing that they were being outflanked, retreated towards Shukook, leaving only three hundred brave men to hold the ridge. The Hussars tried not very successfully to head off those who retreated: the Mahdists simply abandoned their camp and scattered into the narrow ways around the main pass, whence they could take pot-shots at the Hussars.

The remainder of the British troops continued on behind the hills to come at the main ridge from the north-east. Rounding the end of the hills the force split into three prongs, with two companies of The Black Watch, dressed for battle in kilts and red serge, being sent to the right of the group, along the edge of the Nile, in order to cut off escape by that route, and two companies of South Staffords to the left to take the western shoulder of the ridge. The idea was to box the enemy in on three sides and give them nowhere to escape to except out into the desert, away from the column.

The remaining four companies of The Black Watch and three of The South Staffords outflanked the ridge, swarmed up it to from the rear to the sound of the pipes and dislodged the Mahdist force by heavy gunfire and hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets despite sustaining heavy casualties, including Major-General Earle himself, who was killed by a sniper during this final phase of the battle. The Mahdist forces on the ridge, from young boys to elderly men, fought equally bravely and the ridge was subsequently renamed Jebel Musa, after Musa wad Abuhegel, one of the three Mahdist commanders at Kirbekan, all of whom were killed in the battle.

Command now fell to Major-General Brackenbury, but according to Butler on 11^th February British troops found a dropped saddlebag belonging to one of the Mahdists, and containing a despatch in Arabic which revealed that General Gordon had been killed on 26^th January. The Nile Column however kept going, since they had received no contrary orders and might still be needed to evacuate British or Egyptian garrisons near Khartoum.

David HaberlahWikipedia

On the morning of the 11^th the front of the flotilla passed through the rapids near the island of Dulka/Dirbi, through the Shukook Pass and up the very difficult cataracts by the islands of Uss and Sherrari (Us and Sherari) and sailed into clearer water. On 18^th February the boats carrying the sick and wounded reached Salamat, the headquarters of Suleiman wad Gamir, chief of the Manasir people and the man responsible for the massacre of Colonel Stewart and his team about six months earlier.

Once the Gordons had come up with the flotilla it proceeded to Hebbeh (Al Heybah), the place where the wreck of Colonel Stewart's steamer still lay, where the whole column, including those bits of it which had been going on foot or donkey-back, crossed from the left to the right bank of the Nile (confusingly, these are the left and right banks if you were some anthropomorphic personification of the Nile which was facing downstream: as the men were facing upstream the left bank of the Nile was the one on their right and vice versa). This crossover was completed by the 21^st. Here the men exacted revenge for the recent murder of Colonel Stewart by blowing up Sheik Suleiman's house - after retrieving such of Colonel Stewart's papers and effects as Suleiman had stored there - and destroying many other properties, cutting down palm trees and sabotaging wells. Although this was harsh it wasn't entirely random: six months previously a high proportion of the villagers they were punishing had actually taken part in the massacre of unarmed men who had been lured ashore to what they thought was a peaceful conference.

The flotilla had lost only two boats since Hamdab, according to Butler, and he reports that the men were in excellent shape. From Hebbeh they rowed seven miles against swift currents to reach El Kab (Khor el Kab) on the 22^nd, and a further ten miles to arrive at Huella (El Khulla) on the afternoon of the 23^rd.

The Battle of Abu-Kleael Gran Capitán

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Here they were only about fifteen miles from Abu Hamed, the point at which the river would turn south towards Khartoum; but Gordan was dead and the Camel Corps of the Desert Column had evacuated their riverside camp at El Gubat (Gubati or Qabati, near Kiteiyab) and fallen back towards Korti.

The Camel Corps had crossed the Bayuda desert, fighting and suffering heavy losses first at Abu Klea and then at Abu Kru, four miles inland of El Gubat. Abu Klea became famous as the battle where the so-called Fuzzy-Wuzzies - soldiers of the Hadendoa people, who got the nickname because of the peculiar bouffant hairstyle they affected - "broke the British square". At El Gubat on the river the survivors of the Corps had set up a camp to care for the wounded and then proceeded upriver, where they fought a battle at Metemmeh (Al Matama) before being picked up by four river steamers sent by Gordon to collect them. They had steamed upstream to within sight of Khartoum only to learn that the garrison had fallen two days beforehand.

Orders from Lord Wolseley reached Huella on the morning of the 24^th, telling the River Column to fall back to Egypt.

Heading downstream proved to be a novel experience. If not for the experienced Canadian sailors steering them through the rushing water, many boats might have been lost. At Salamat The Black Watch fell back to become the rear-guard. The flotilla passed the rapids at Uss Island on the 27^th, and the Shukook Pass on the 28^th, with no molestation by enemy forces. They rested at Birti on the night of the 2^nd of March before tackling the Rahami Cataract, which they flew down at high speed, the boats leaping where they contacted the rocks. One boat of Gordons and one of Staffords were wrecked.

Eight miles downstream at Kab-el-Abd, according to the account of Major-General Brackenbury, "It was a long straight run of a mile and a half or more (distances are hard to measure when flying like an express train) of water broken and rough, studded with rocks, both seen and unseen, a dangerous rapid to the unskilled or careless, yet safe to the trained eye and skilled hand. As my boat shot down we passed the Adjutant of the Gordons with his boat stuck fast in the very centre of the boiling rapid, a useful beacon to the following boats. His was not the only boat that struck, four others of the same Battalion were on the rocks. Three were repaired, but two of the five sank and were abandoned. The Quartermaster was thrown into the water and lost all his kit. The Adjutant had a narrow escape for his life. Thrown into the water, as his boat sank, his head had struck a sharp rock, and he was severely cut. The Black Watch had also to abandon a boat that struck on a rock near Kaboor."

Passing through the Fourth Cataract at Edermi on the 4^th of March the boats had to go from midstream towards the right bank (now also on the troops' right), pass through a narrow gap between a rock and the shore and then head back towards midstream. A boat became stuck across this narrow gap and the following boats, instead of pulling over and waiting for the blockage to be cleared, attempted to take the cataract at midstream and "the greater part of the boats of three battalions" shot over a three-foot weir and belly-flopped. It is likely that Private Shirran was on one of them. A boatload of South Staffordshires hit a rock downstream of the weir and turned over, drowning two wounded men and a sergeant.

At the foot of the Fourth Cataract half of The Black Watch remained as rearguard, while the rest of the Nile Column camped opposite Hamdab on the night of the 4^th. On the 5^th they proceeded to Abu-Dom (Ad Duwaym), just above Merowe, where most of the column camped on the left bank, leaving only a few mounted troops on the right bank. Butler wrote that Abu Dom meant "father of Dom palms", and that "no spot of greater interest and possessing more of what makes for real Nile beauty exists along the fifteen hundred miles from there to the sea."

On the 6^th a violent dust-storm blew at Abu Dom until late afternoon. As soon as it dropped Major-General Brackenbury held the first and last parade of the River Column. He later wrote that "two thousand of the finest fighting men that it ever was any man's lot to command were inspected in line, marched past, re-formed in line of quarter-columns, and advanced in review order.

"The life of the men", he said, "has been one of incessant toil from the first to the last day of the expedition. In ragged clothing, scarred and blistered by the sun and rough work, they have worked with constant cheerfulness and unceasing energy. Their discipline has been beyond reproach ; and I do not hesitate to say that no finer, more gallant, or more trustworthy body of men ever served the Queen than those I have had the honour to command in the 'River Column'."

The following day Brackenbury and the Nile Column sailed on, leaving behind a number of units - a troop of Hussars, the Egyptian Camel Corps, the Naval Brigade, a section of Engineers, one hundred transport camels and the whole of 1^st Battalion The Black Watch, including Private Shirran - as a garrison under Colonel Butler. The intention was that they would spend six months sweltering through the hot season in tents, waiting to take part in a full-scale offensive in the autumn. Butler however decided to at least get the men into huts.

parcours d\'artistes

Ad Duwaym or Abu Dom, the place where the man were encamped, faces across the river to the ruins of the ancient city of Napata, once the southernmost outpost of Ancient Egypt and then the centre from which the Nubians of Kush ruled over Egypt (see Ancient Nubia: Map and History of Rulers).

Wikipedia

Gebel or Jebel Barkal is a strange miniature mountain, sticking up from a flat plain at the back of Napata in the manner of Ayers Rock. It was once believed to be the personal house of the god Amun, and is surrounded by important ruins.

digNubia

On 8^th March, Butler wrote: "We have to hut the men, put the place in a state of defence, and reduce what is now chaos to something like order. I shall, however, have some sort of a rest in other ways : shall be able to take off my boots at night, get clean things, and lie down on something besides sand. We are on the left bank of the Nile, nearly opposite Gebel Barkal, the site of the old capital of Queen Candace's kingdom, which is still a perfect mine of relics, columns and capitals, broken pedestals, overturned tombs, stone lions, and strange sheep-faced animals, all lying in confused ruin, half or wholly buried in mounds of masonry and rubbish.

Wikipedia - Portal:Sudán

The rock face to the east of the flat-topped mountain is hollowed into a temple, covered with hieroglyphics. The place is a mine of Egyptian art and antiquities as yet untouched ; it is fifteen hundred miles from the sea, and is, nevertheless, by no means the last remnant of that once mighty Empire. A group of eight pyramids lies a little way to the south of the hill ; some of them are very perfect, scarcely a stone being out of place ; they are small, only about forty feet in height, but beautifully built. If the Mahdi or his myrmidons give me time during the summer, I would like to clear away some of these piles of rubbish, and examine the ruins."

There exists a filk song (an SF or fantasy-based modern folk-song) about a farm-boy who joins the army looking for adventure, but discovers that army life mainly involves digging with a shovel just like on the farm, except that every so often somebody tries to kill you. George Shirran's army life may have involved a great deal of manual labour - not just hauling boats up the sides of rapids but, later, building block-houses in South Africa - but if he went looking for adventure and wonders, he certainly found them, even if they were accompanied by even more heavy construction work than he would have had to do back at Sprottyneuk.

On 15^th March Butler wrote: "A week of hut building, cleaning, scraping, entrenching. . . . We are here about one thousand Robinson Crusoes, building mud cabins, biscuit box lean-to's, and shelters of palm leaves and straw, the advanced sentinels in this great Soudan desert. Every one is bent upon making the best of it, and many an old trick of camp or lodgment learnt long ago in the North-West comes in handy now. ... So far, the heat is not trying, the nights are pleasant, the thermometer ninety-three degrees to ninety-seven degrees in the afternoons."

The wounded were accommodated in huts first, and by 20^th May the whole force was hutted except for the officers and staff sergeants. The men spent the two months that they were at Abu Dom in a state of high alert: by the 27^thof March the temperature was sometimes as high as a hundred and ten degrees, and a violent sandstorm that night made the sentries think that an attack was starting. In early April however they strengthened their position, and their nerves, by building a small impromptu fort, christened Fort St Andrew in honour of the Black Watch. During the building of the fort they discovered the remains of an ancient temple.

On 1^st May Butler reports that plans to build a railway to the Red Sea port of Suakim (Suakin or Sawakin) had been abandoned and political tensions (previously identified as being with Russia) meant that the troops were likely to be recalled to Egypt, despite having spent eight weeks "busy all day and every day" building huts which he described as "real beauties".

On 22^nd May he wrote: "This should be my last letter from Meroe. We march on the 26^th for Dongola and Egypt. They have given me the hot job. I command the rearguard to Dongola, picking up as we go the various lots of horses, camels, guns, and men at the different stations. The weather has become excessively hot, one hundred and ten and one hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade, with a wind that seems to come from a furnace mouth. To-day we have the climax : first stifling heat, then a vast sand-storm ; and behind the storm came some most welcome rain, but not enough even to sprinkle the hard, hot lips of the fevered desert. All preparations are complete, and at daylight on Tuesday I blow up the fort and move off for Dongola."

On 26^th May they indeed blew up their fort with gun-cotton and began the long journey back to Egypt with a flotilla of fifty-one boats, and that night they halted six miles above Korti. They were following a few days behind the large house-boat owned by a character called Jandet Effendi, Vakil of Dongola, described as "Circassian" so probably an Ottoman official, who claimed to be going from village to village downstream preparing defences against a possible Mahdist attack after the British had left - but who in fact was looting the villages of everything not nailed down. Despite their campaign to punish the Manasir, in other regions the column had evidently behaved as courteous travellers, not raiders, for Butler complains that the Vakil is stripping the villagers along the banks of the money they had made selling goods to the soldiers on their way upstream.

Butler, who remained on the shore during this part of the journey, writes: "The march from Meroe to Dongola, two hundred miles, in end of May and early June, was the hottest work that had ever fallen to my lot. I had to pick up at each summer station in succession — Korti, Tani, Kurot, Abu Gus, and Handak — the horses, guns, camels, and transport of the whole force, all the remnants of the Desert Column that could not be put into our old boats. I can never forget the last day's march from Handak to Dongola. A desert blizzard blew straight in our faces, hot, strong, and bitterly biting with the grit, sand, and small stones that it hurled in our teeth. Camels and horses often turned aside, unable to face it. We had orders to leave no camels behind us. The wretched animals that had been in the Desert Column were spectres, mere bones and sores. As they fell they had to be shot by the rearguard.

circaNational Army Museum

"Two-thirds of the camels collected at Tani and Kurot thus perished. I had taken the precaution of feeding up my camels at Meroe for weeks before the move, giving them the large stores of grain laid in in anticipation of the autumn campaign, and ordered to be destroyed on evacuation, and although the camels had a double distance to travel to reach Dongola, I lost only one or two on the march down. But the strangest part of the proceeding was that the general officer in command of the force thought fit to report me to the commander-in-chief for not having obeyed the orders to destroy the grain by fire. Called on for an explanation, I replied that, although I had departed from the letter, I had still observed the spirit of the order, inasmuch as I had used the grain as extra fuel to keep the ebbing fire of life in my unfortunate camels, and while expressing regret at even the seeming departure from the letter of the regulation, I added that my penitential feelings were somewhat mitigated and consoled by the reflection that while the camels of the censorious commander had lost some eighty per cent of their numbers on the short march, mine on the longer route had not lost above two per cent. My temporary commander at the time was an excellent but choleric little man, and I learnt afterwards from one of the staff that, as the thermometer was that day about one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, he was able to relieve his over- burdened feelings when perusing my letter, written on a sakeyeh wheel at Debbali in the middle of the night and left at his hut when I passed it at daybreak three hours later, only by making several short leaps into the air as he ejaculated, ' Consoled ! — consoled ! — mitigated ! — mitigated ! — d d !'

"At Dongola my rearguard duties ended, and I got once again into my old boat. I shall never forget the change from shore to river. The heat was terrific, but it felt as nothing on the water. As we sped down the shrunken but still lordly Nile, now changed in colour from the old muddy tint to a bright green hue — the true ' eau du Nil ' of the Parisian fashion-plates — our boats were still able to run the Third Cataract, Shaban, Kaibar, and Amara down to Dal."

On the morning of 1^st June the flotilla camped at Abu Fatmeh. The right half-battalion of The Black Watch shot the Hannek or Third Cataract that afternoon, and the left half-battalion followed on the 2^nd. Later that day, as the right half-battalion were passing through Shaban Cataract, a boat struck a rock and capsized in midstream with thirteen on board. Ten men clung to the overturned boat: of these ten Private Williams drowned but the other nine were rescued by a boat launched by Captain Moubray. The other three men were left stranded on a rock in the midstream of the cataract, and were only rescued after eight hours when Lieutenant Macrae and six men were lowered down the flow of the cataract in a boat until they were close enough to bring the stranded men on board with a life-belt and rope.

That night the battalion camped nine miles above Kyber (Kajbar), and on the 7^th they arrived back at Sarkametto. On the 8^th of June they disembarked and marched across country to the foot of the Dal Cataract, where they embarked in fresh whalers and proceeded downriver to Akasheh where they spent the night. From there they marched twenty-four miles in intense heat until they reached a point (which must have been somewhere past Ambigol) where they could pick up the railway line and take a train to Wadi Halfa where they evidently took to the water again. The line actually went to Akasheh at that time, but there must have been some reason they couldn't get the train there: the line would later be destroyed by the Mahdists and perhaps they'd already made a start. The troops reached Shellal (Shallal) on 16^th June, disembarked and then took a train to Aswan. From Aswan they went by boat to Asyut, and then by train to Cairo, where they arrived on 27^th June (George Shirran's records say 26^th) in "splendid condition".

After returning to Cairo on 26^th June 1885, Private Shirran was awarded Good Conduct Pay of the princely sum of a penny a day on the second anniversary of his enlistment. He was appointed as a Lance-Corporal in January 1886 and probably celebrated not wisely but too well, for in March/April of that year he was hospitalised for seventeen days with primary syphilis (his treatment notes say "Contagion, local heat, no mercury", local heat being a known treatment for venereal disease at that time). In May he was sent to Malta, where he was promoted to Corporal and continued with his education. He remained in Malta until August 1889, when he was sent to Gibraltar.

artnet

circaBiography of Robert Brownlee 1833-1908

Gibraltar proved to be an eventful posting, if probably not a very taxing one. George was promoted to Sergeant in December 1889, and in August 1890 he was allowed to extend his period of Army Service to twelve years - that is, he signed up until November 1895. From 10^th March 1890 to 28^th January 1893 he was joined on the Rock by his younger brother Alexander Cowie Shirran, a Private in 1^st Battalion The Black Watch, but probably not in the same company as George because his posting dates were slightly different. [ACS medical history table]

During this time George must have been courting, for on 10^th February 1892 he married Florence Blanche, an English girl aged sixteen, in the Presbyterian church on Gibraltar. Florence was the daughter of William Franklin, formerly a Colour Sergeant in the 31^st Regiment of Foot (later the East Surrey Regiment) and now a prison warder, and the couple were living at South Barracks, Windmill Hill at the time of their marriage. [GROS Statutory Marriages 1892 055/AF 0063]

Biography of Robert Brownlee 1833-1908

In December 1892, George evidently changed his mind about staying in the Army until 1895, and instead re-engaged with The Black Watch until he should have complete twenty-one years' service - that is, until November 1904. His and Florence's first child, Florence Caroline Jessie, was born on Gibraltar on 4^th May 1893. [GROS Statutory Births 1893 048/AF 0087] She would later be known just as "Jessie" - taking the place, perhaps, of George's sister who had died before his birth.

By the end of May 1893, a few weeks after his daughter's birth, George was back home in Scotland at the Black Watch Depot in Perth - which presumably means he and Florence had had to sail on a troopship with a two-week-old infant. The following summer he was sent to Mauritius off the south-east coast of Africa: a long voyage, for he embarked on HMS Tamar on 4^th July 1894 and arrived on 21^st August. Florence certainly went with him, and presumably their daughter came too, since she was probably too young to be left with relatives. George's brother Alexander Cowie Shirran, still a Private in 1^st Battalion The Black Watch, was already stationed on Mauritius but he left it for Cape Town on 27^th August 1894, George's birthday. [ACS medical history table] The next year, on 29^th June 1895, a second daughter called Lillian Christina Edith was born in Mauritius.

The following year, in February 1896, the family were sent to India. For four years from February 1896 until February 1900 George and his unit bounced like pinballs back and forth around a series of little railway towns and villages at the foot of the Himalayas in Uttar Pradesh - Ambala Sabathu Ambala Jutogh Sabathu Dagshai Sabathu Ambala Sitapur Kanpur Sitapur Khairabad Sitapur - before being posted to the city of Varanasi (a.k.a. Benares), also in Uttar Pradesh, where he remained until March 1901.

BhanuAhluwalia: Scenic Pictures of Oldest Cantonment in India \"Subathu Cantt.\"

During this mad zigzag across northern India, which was probably conducted on foot, in April 1896 during a stay in Sabathu George was promoted to Colour Sergeant: a career choice which may have been influenced by his father-in-law. He became, at least in principle, responsible for protecting the Ensign who carried the company's colours in battle, and hereafter he would be addressed as "Colour Shirran" or "Colour Sergeant Shirran" - even after he later became a quartermaster sergeant.

On 7^th January 1898 George's daughter Edith Blanche (later known just as Blanche) was born in Sitapur, although George himself was still in or en route from Ambala and didn't reach Sitapur until 11^th January. George's father Alexander died of kidney failure a year later on 11^th January 1899, aged sixty-nine, in the presence of his son William, having produced eight sons but only the one, dead daughter, and George and Florence's only son, William John George, was born the following year in Varanasi, on 12^th April 1900.

In March 1901 George, and presumably his unit, arrived at a place called Kamphi in his army records. Comparison with the history of James Anderson, another soldier in 1^st Battalion The Black Watch who must have been in the same unit as George because he followed the same route around Uttar Pradesh at the same time, shows that "Kamphi" was almost certainly the military station more commonly known to the British Army of the time as Kamptee. This is the town now usually spelled Kamthi, near Nagpur in Maharastra in central India.

Stations of British Troops in India indicates that The Black Watch went on from Kamthi to Mumbai (Bombay): they certainly travelled to a port of some kind, because in December 1901 George embarked on the Hospital Ship Armenian to sail to South Africa. There is no indication as to whether his wife and four small children went with him or not - but as he was heading into a war zone, it is to be hoped that they did not.

The list of George's army stations shows only that he arrived in South Africa on Christmas Eve 1901 and left it again, heading for Perth and home, in September 1902, which presumably means that in between he had been on the move, not based at any regular station. The Second Anglo-Boer War ran from 1899 to 1902, so he had landed in the thick of it. The British Army in the Boer War was a regular force struggling to fight guerrillas and fast light cavalry on their own ground: George Shirran's Boer War, however, was probably comparatively uneventful.

In an effort to restrict the movements of Boer geurrillas, the British Army had set up lines of blockhouses and barbed wire across the veldt of the Orange Free State. While they were under construction these lines were protected by four considerable forces each of hundreds of men plus artillery, one of which was station on a hill called Groenkop. At 2am on Christmas Day 1901, the day after George Shirran landed in South Africa, a Boer unit under Christiaan de Wet scaled the steep slope of Groenkop in their stockinged feet and surprised 11^th Battalion Imperial Yoemanry under Major Williams in their beds, despite being so short of supplies that (according to Wiki) some of them were wearing women's clothing, and were reduced to stripping their prisoners naked and nicking their clothes before turning them loose.

The Boers were in some respects attractive - brave, ingenious, free-spirited - but it should not be forgotten that one of the freedoms they were fighting for was the freedom to take away the freedom of their black neighbours, and the British Empire, for all its many faults, was fighting in part to preserve the political rights of native Africans.

Hearing that almost a whole Battalion of Yoemanry had been killed, wounded or captured, Lord Kitchener at once sent 1^st Battalion The Black Watch to join Major General Rundle, the officer in charge of defending the blockhouses, as reinforcements: they were praised for the speed and efficiency with which they marched to join him. Consequently, whilst 2^nd Battalion The Black Watch fought and died at the terrible night-battle at Magersfontein, 1^st Battalion were "chiefly employed on the construction of the blockhouse lines, and in guarding these lines during the big driving operations which went on in the north of the Orange River Colony down to the close of the campaign." Their base was at the town of Harrismith. [from Our Regiments in South Africa by John Stirling, quoted at Roll of Honour: Edinburgh South Africa (Boer War) Black Watch War Memorial; South African Military History Journal Vol 8 No 2]

The Boer War came to an end on 31^st May 1902 with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging, but Colour Shirran remained in South Africa until September, when he embarked on a month-long voyage on the Hospital Ship Michigan, arriving back at the Depot at Perth at the end of October.

Scot Sites

The following May he was transferred to the permanent staff of 4^th Volunteer Battalion The Black Watch as an Instructor.

The family evidently took rooms in Doune, Perthshire, because their youngest child, Ethel Maud (the future Kazini Elisa Maria Dorgi Khangsarpa of Sikkim), was born at 13 George Street, Doune at a quarter past midnight on 10^th January 1904, her father being present. The birth was registered fifteen days later: George's signature, normally quite clear and legible, looks like unravelled knitting. Two weeks later is a bit of a long interval for him to have been "wetting the baby's head" - possibly she was a difficult infant who kept her parents awake all night.

The house at 13 George Street looks as if it was probably some military building in which George had digs. It is just down the road from the Mercat Cross and next door to the Moray Institute, a gift to the town from the Earl of Moray. The Moray Institute seems to be a private house now but at the time it was some kind of community hall with a library, a reading room and a billiard table which George probably frequented.

On All Fools' Day 1904 he was granted Service Pay Class 1 (seven pence a day) and in September that year he applied for and was granted permission to stay on beyond the twenty-first anniversary of his enlistment on 19^th November.

stMedals of England

He received a lump sum in deferred pay to mark his twenty-one years' service, but by mid June 1905 he was back at the Depot in Perth, and on 30^th June he was discharged from the Army.

The Egypt Medal 1884 with bars: Nile 1884-1885; Kirbekan

The Bronze Star (probably the Khedive's Star) 1884-1885

The Queen's South Africa Medal with the following bars: Transvaal; Orange Free State; South Africa 1901; South Africa 1902

The Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, with gratuity

The LS&GCM was normally awarded after eighteen years of good conduct.

Rootsweb

medalblog

Judging from the placement of the note about it on his Statement of Services, George received his some time in autumn 1904. Probably it was counted from 19^th November 1885, the date on which he started receiving Good Conduct Pay, plus some months to process the award.

19^th November 1883 – 27^th August 1884 Home
28^th August 1884 – 30^th April 1886 Egypt
1^st May 1886 – 7^th August 1889 Malta
8^th August 1889 – 28^th May 1893 Gibraltar
29^th May 1893 – 4^th July 1894 Home
5^th July 1894 – 17^th February 1896 Mauritius
18^th February 1896 – 5^th December 1901 India
6^th December 1901 – 27^th October 1902 South Africa
28^th October 1902 – 30^th June 1905 Home

although the dates are often one day out relative to his more detailed day by day records, presumably reflecting some difference in how the army decided when you were officially counted as arriving at a given station. [GS medical history table #1; GS medical history table #2]

George Shirran officially began working for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Scottish Branch, on 1^st June 1905, according to the Society's own documentation. It is not clear quite how this worked out, since he doesn't seem to have been discharged from the army until the 30^th: he might have been still in the army for a month whilst on leave from a job he had been accepted for but hadn't started yet, or he might have started work for the society whilst still nominally a soldier, and then travelled to Perth for a few days to be discharged. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/2/8 Application for Inspectorship with the SNSPCC; National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21]

Initially, he and his family were living in at the Murrayfield Children's Home, which we know from the 'phone directory was on Corstorphine Road, and seems to have been at n° 235 which is now an office for Barnardo's. Later on, in 1910, George applied for promotion and his job application gives his job description at this point as "Sergeant Children's Home", and says that he was paid £52 per annum (presumably 20/- per week, assuming he had paid holidays) plus an allowance for "House coal and gass" [sic]. A Post Office directory for 1907-1908 shows that the matron at the Murrayfield Children's Home at that time was a Miss Russell. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/2/8 Application for Inspectorship with the SNSPCC; Post Office Edinburgh & Leith Directory 1907-1908; Canmore: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland; National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21]

The NSPCC (Scottish Branch), which changed its name to the Scottish National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SNSPCC) in 1907, had been formed in 1889 by the fusion of pre-existing local city children's societies which had grown up during the 1880s. It performed many of the functions now carried out by Social Work Departments: monitoring the well-being of children; advising parents about childcare; investigating cases of cruelty or neglect; removing children from their guardians where necessary; giving evidence in court and also making recommendations to the courts on what measures should be taken in individual cases; and running shelters where children in need could be taken into emergency care until they could either safely be returned to their families, or be passed on to the government-funded Industrial Schools or Approved Schools which provided either day-care or safe residential accommodation, basic education and vocational training in a trade.

Children with criminal behaviour went to Reformatories, not Industrial Schools, but even so conditions in the Industrial Schools were not always ideal and had to be monitored. GA Mackenzie, who worked for the SNSPCC in both Edinburgh and Perth for fifty years, beginning in the 1880s or 1890s, wrote a book-length account of his experiences ([National Archives of Scotland GD409/25/9]) in which he comments that "There was an Industrial School where not so many years ago, the boys were driven desperate by the treatment they received that they ran amok and chased the superintendent his wife and two sons, who composed the staff, taking off their heavy nailed boots and throwing them at their heads. // There were about one hundred and fifty boys and they made the staff run for their lives and nothing would induce them to go back again."

The Children's Home at Murrayfield where George was working was a long-term residential facility, built or adapted in part by the architect James Jerden in 1899. Mackenzie writes of a family of children whose mother had died and their father, though loving and well-intentioned, was having trouble coping with both work and child-rearing: he was advised to let his children go to Murrayfield, where he paid a contribution to their upkeep a week in advance, and visited them every Saturday afternoon. Mackenzie speaks of this as typical of the use to which the Murrayfield home was put. Later on "when the Society found it expedient to dispose of their Home at Murrayfield" it was taken over by a Miss Maclean, an heiress who had previously expressed a desire to use her money to open a children's home. Later still it became the headquarters of Dr Barnardo's children's charity.

The main SNSPCC Children's Shelter in Edinburgh, which was used to admit abused or abandoned children for emergency short-term care, was at 142 the High Street. It is difficult to find clear information on this building because at the time, everybody knew what they meant by it so well that they didn't need to explain it, but by much digging through the records I have ascertained that the Children's Shelter was in what is now called the Lord Reid Building, "an outstanding example of early 19th century Edinburgh Classicism" which is now the offices of the Faculty of Advocates. This strange little building exists in its own circumscribed bubble which must have given the children the surreal sense of entering into another world, Narnia-like. At the foot of the flat six-storey fronts of The Royal Mile, a few doors east of Bell's Wynd, is a formal archway which lets into a pend (that is, an alley which passes tunnel-fashion through the body of a building, rather than passing between buildings with open space above it), beyond which is a courtyard containing something which looks like a cross between a very small country mansion and a Greek temple, surrounded on all sides by the towering backs of the older buildings.

The history of the area is complex. Bell's Wynd was also called Clamshell Close after the "Clamshell Turnpike", a 16^th Century ecclesiastical residence which had a turnpike stair enclosed in a tower embellished with the scallop-shell of St James of Compostella, and which originally stood at the entrance to the Wynd. The adjacent close in which the Lord Reid Building now stands, and which originally ran down to the Cowgate, was called Snadoun's, Snaddoun's or Snawdoun's Close as early as 1525, probably because a Snadoun Herald (an official at the court of the Lord Lyon) lived there: Thomas Tod, a later Snadoun Herald, had a "land" (a tenement building) in the adjacent Bell's Wynd in 1579. Later on it was also known as Murray's Close, after John Murray of Blackbarony, father of the first Lord Elibank, who in 1580 took over a house at the head of the close which had formerly belonged to the Bishop of Dunkeld. It was also known as Back of Bell's Wynd, because of its proximity to Bell's Wynd - and probably because the same house might have its front door on Bell's Wynd and its back door on Snadoun's Close.

The original Edinburgh Assembly Room - which was a dance-hall and social club founded circa 1710, a place where people "assembled", not a parliament - was on the second floor of a property (demolished in 1836) on the west side of the first angle of the West Bow, the curve at the foot of Victoria Street, which was a very fashionable area in the Georgian period. In 1723 the Assembly moved to a "great hall" in what was then Patrick Steil's Close, now known as Old Assembly Close, at 172 the High Street on the south side of the Royal Mile. In either 1736 or 1766 (depending on which source you believe) it moved to custom-built premises in Snadoun's Close at 142 the High Street, about forty yards further down and still on the south side of the road, and Snadoun's or Murray's Close now became known as New Assembly Close. The lower end of the close leading to Cowgate, and now cut off from the upper end, became known as Fairlie's Entry

This "improved Assembly Room" proved to be somewhat inconvenient. A covered passage had to be thrown across Bell's Wynd, enabling a building there to be incorporated as a tea-room, and the rather cramped, hemmed-in courtyard in front of the Assembly Room was crowded with sedan chair bearers, the smoke from whose burning torches filled the nearby ballroom by halfway through the evening. In 1784 the Assembly decamped to larger and more luxurious premises on George Street in the New Town, where it remains. The Assembly Room at n° 142 then became the "old" Assembly Room, and confusingly the close it stood on, officially New Assembly Close, is still sometimes referred to as Old Assembly Close even though the real Old Assembly Close is at n° 172, forty yards further up.

The former Assembly Room at n° 142 then became a pub called the King's Arms. Lord Napier, the then Lord High Commissioner, often held social gatherings there and sometimes precessed thence to the High Kirk a little further up the High Street, on foot and "preceded by trumpeters and accompanied by many of the nobility and clergy" to be "received by the Magistrates in official robes—the Lochaber Fencibles and the City Guard lining the High Street".

In 1807 the building was acquired by the Highland Society, and then in 1813-14 the cod-Classical premises now known as the Lord Reid Building were constructed for the Commercial Bank by the well-known architect James Gillespie Graham, but still incorporating "with much modification" the old dance-hall at the rear of the new building. The bank occupied the premises from 1814 to 1847 and the close was briefly known as Commercial Bank Close, before reverting to either New Assembly Close or Back of Bell's Wynd.

After the bank moved out in 1847 the property was taken over by the Free Tron Church (Wee Frees, presumably), then became a Good Templars' Hall, then a Trades Hall. At some point probably after 1889 when the NSPCC (Scottish Branch) had been formally organised, and certainly prior to 1906 when The Tron Kirk of Edinburgh by The Rev. D. Butler M.A. was published, the Children's Shelter, which had formerly been located in a building in Bell's Wynd proper, moved into the former Commercial Bank/Trades Hall premises at n° 142 where it remained for many years. The Shelter provided emergency accommodation, food and clothing and a bath, and shared its premises with - and was in part supported and equipped by - the fund-raising efforts of the League of Pity, which promoted the parent Society's cause and also aimed to get Edinburgh's more-privileged children to take an interest in the fate of the less fortunate.

The Society didn't have the close all to itself, however. The Post Office Edinburgh & Leith Directory 1907-1908 shows that there were several other persons and businesses at 142 High Street, aside from the NSPCC (Scottish Branch) and the League of Pity, viz.:

146 Bell's Wynd
142 & 144 Stewart, Donald
142 National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (Scottish Branch); Ninian Hill, gen. sec.
142 Scottish Children's League of Pity; Miss Frances Hepburn, secy, and treas.
142 Turnbull, James
142 Children's Shelter
142 Shop Assistants' Union (National Amalgamation); H. M'Pheely, secretary
142 Edinburgh Operative and General Benefit Societies; David Hay, secretary
142 Sons of Temperance Friendly Society; John Parker, sec.
142 Smith, D., hallkeeper
142 Operative Tailors' Rooms; Wm. Mathison, secretary
140 M'Donald, Wm., restaurateur

Some of these will have been in other buildings opening onto the same courtyard, or in the tenements which faced outwards onto the Royal Mile above and to either side of the pend leading to New Assembly Close; but it's possible also that some of them shared the former Trades Hall with the Society. Elsewhere in the directory "Turnbull, Jas." is listed as "inspector, N.S.P.C.C., Children's Shelter, 142 High street".

An interview with a former RSSPCC inspector refers to mothers in 1970 still coming to see the Society's inspectors at a premises on the High Street, with a courtyard, "which had previously been a children's shelter" - so it sounds as if this must refer to n° 142 and it was the Society's offices by this point. On 2^nd April 1976 it became the Edinburgh Wax Museum, in which rôle it also doubled as a Dracula Theatre and the spiritual home and origin of the Bizarre Magick movement, and then at some point after the Wax Museum closed in 1989 it became the offices of the Faculty of Advocates.

There were several other children's homes in Edinburgh at the time. A page on the Scottish architect James Jerden speaks if his working on a children's home at 40 High Street in 1893. The Post Office Edinburgh & Leith Directory 1907-1908 shows a Crippled Children's Home at 22 Hill Street and the Children's Convalescent Home, New Toft Street, Gilmerton. During the early to mid part of the 20^th C - although apparently not yet in 1907 - there were children's homes at Malta House, Malta Terrace, Stockbridge; St Catherine's House, Howden Hall Road, Mortonhall; Challenger Lodge (for the physically disabled), 15 Boswall Road, Trinity and Lord and Lady Polwarth's Children's Home for the Under Fives (run by the Church of Scotland) at 22 Colinton Road, near Napier University. Children 1^st, the modern descendant of the SNSPCC, has an office at 41 Polwarth Terrace and the Melville House day nursery is at the same address, which may indicate that there was previously a children's home there. GA Mackenzie mentions a home for motherless children at Warrender Park at the west end of The Meadows (although this may refer to the conversion of Bruntsfield House - nowadays James Gillespie's High School - into a children's home in 1935, round about the time he retired) and a Dr Barnardo's Home on Castle Terrace: he complains that aggressive fund-raising by Barnardo's is taking donations which should have gone to the SNSPCC, and that Barnardo's are too cavalier about taking children into care, and even sending them away to London, without first establishing that their parents are unable to learn how to care for them adequately.

On 1^st August 1906 George Shirran became an Inspector with what was still called the NSPCC (Scottish Branch), at an increased salary of 25/- per week. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21] The SNSPCC Inspectors, known locally as "Cruelty Men", were the Society's active arm, counselling drunken parents and examining and rescuing children at risk. The British Medical Journal of 16^th April 1910 carried an article about the work of the Children's Shelter and its inspectors. The British Journal of Social Work Volume 39 Issue 6 more recently carried an article about the work of the RSSPCC inspectors as proto-Social Workers.

In 1922 the SNSPCC received a Royal Charter and became the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSSPCC). In 1968 the remit for most of its more pro-active functions was re-assigned to the local Social Work Departments, and the RSSPCC thereafter concentrated more on things such as counselling abuse survivors, providing social support for children and parents and lobbying for changes in the laws relating to children. In 1995 it changed its name to Children 1^st.

It appears likely that when George became an Inspector in 1906 the family moved out of the Murrayfield Children's Home and went to live-in at the Children's Shelter alongside James Turnbull, although I can't absolutely prove it. In 1910 George would fill in a form for the Society and give his address as 142 High Street: this could be an error but he would later be living in a house in Leith which seems to have been the result of his post being transferred there, and you have to ask where he lived before that. It's clear from the presence of "Turnbull, Jas." that there was at least some live-in accommodation at the Shelter. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/2/8 Application for Inspectorship with the SNSPCC] That the Post Office Edinburgh & Leith Directory 1907-1908 does not show George living at the Shelter is neither here nor there, because it doesn't show him living anywhere - either he wasn't important enough for a mention, or you had to pay to be listed, as with the Yellow Pages.

In each of November 1907 and February 1908, George received pay increases of 2/6 per week, taking his salary to 30/- per week. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21] From March 1908 onwards over the course of 1908 and 1909 The Scotsman reported several cases in which Inspector Shirran gave evidence in court. All these cases concerned parents who neglected their children owing to drink problems, leaving them unclothed, dirty and/or hungry and in some cases wandering the streets. One woman, a street singer, was found by him "lying helplessly drunk on the floor, with one of her children lying partly underneath her", and left her children partially clad until one developed pneumonia: when the Children's Shelter gave her children boots and clothes, she pawned them. [The Scotsman 10/03/1908 p.6; The Scotsman 30/06/1908 p.6; The Scotsman 25/02/1909 p6]

Another, a man who had gone off the rails following a bereavement, was in the habit of beating his working teenage daughter and taking her wages to buy drink. In court he claimed she was lying but he had to be pulled up by the sheriff for hectoring the girl in the witness stand, and "Mr Shirran ... stated that accused's eldest daughter complained bitterly of her father's habits. While leaving the house on one occasion witness heard screams, and on going back to the house he found the girl lying on the floor". [The Scotsman 02/12/1909 p.6]

Also in 1908, on 9^th October, George's illegitimate daughter Margaret married a Shetlander called James Johnston, a grocer's assistant. The couple were living in London Street, Edinburgh, and married by declaration at a nearby address in Broughton Place. The fact that Margaret was living and working (as a domestic servant) in Edinburgh by this point, more than a hundred miles from Cuminestown where her mother and grandparents lived, tends to suggest that she was in contact with her father. [GROS Statutory Marriages 1908 685/02 0398]

In February 1910 George's salary increased by 1/- per week to 31/-. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21] On 8^th August 1910 George filled in a formal job application form for the SNSPCC. However, the printed heading "Application for Inspectorship" has been crossed out wherever it occurs, and at the end of the form where are printed "Signature of Applicant" and "Date of Aplication" the words "of Applicant" and "of Aplication" are also crossed out. Nor did his job change around this time: he had already been an Inspector for just over four years and it would be another two and a quarter years before he became a Chief Inspector. It looks as though this was not a job application but a bit of administrative tidying up: he must have joined the Society straight from the army without filling in the proper forms, and they wanted to have his date of birth, previous employment etc. on file. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/2/8 Application for Inspectorship with the SNSPCC]

Form-filling doesn't seem to have been his metier nor indeed that of a person with different handwriting who has helped him at at least one point. On the front, the register numbers 17 and 311 have been written and crossed out - if this refers to his position in the Society's record of Inspectors, he was actually n° 21. His address on the front page has been given as "142 High Street, Edinburgh" - one can't tell whether the Society's address has been wrongly written down instead of his own, or whether he was actually living-in at the Children's Shelter, but in the absence of any evidence to the contrary I'm assuming the latter.

Inside, the entry for his current employer is even more confused. The form says "Present Situation" but "Present" has been crossed out and "when you joined the Society" written above it in someone else's handwriting, to follow on from "Situation". George has written "The army", then crossed it out and replaced it with "S.N.S.P.C.C.". Either way, the wrong thing has been crossed out: it should be either "Present Situation: S.N.S.P.C.C." or "Situation when you joined the Society: the army", and instead he's ended up with "Situation when you joined the Society: S.N.S.P.C.C." which makes no sense.

Nevertheless, the form is a mine of useful information. It is here that we learn that George was actually living-in at the Murrayfield home when he first joined the Society, his army pension and about his employers and salaries when he was a farm-hand, as well as various minor details. He has given his date and place of birth as 26^th August 1866 in Monquhitter - both of which are wrong according to his birth certificate. He was now 5'6¾" barefoot, with a chest measurement of 38", Presbyterian, not engaged in any church or philanthropic work, not a member of a Benefit Society and had never been in the Constabulary.

In February 1911 George received a further 1/- per week and then on 24^th February 1911 he was transferred to Leith. Evidently he moved house, even though the distance from Leith to the Children's Shelter on the High Street where he would otherwise have been based is only about one and a half miles. The census of 2^nd April 1911 shows the family living at a flat or house with five windowed rooms at 9 Morton Street in South Leith. [Census 1911 692/02 054/00 018]

We know that this must refer to the Morton Street which would later be re-named Academy Street (see Old Leith Street Names) and which is a side-turning off Duke Street in Leith, not to the Morton Street in Joppa. The census lists this Morton Street where the Shirrans are living as being in the parish of South Leith, and the previous entry to Morton Street is at Waterloo Place which is just along from Academy Street. The Post Office Edinburgh & Leith Directory 1907-1908 records a Morton Street with "Duke Street, Leith" in italics under the name. The Shirrans aren't listed at n° 9, but nobody is - it seems you had to pay to be in the directory, and they weren't vain or rich enough. But some of the names which the Post Office Directory lists at n° 7 - P Stalker; Margaret M Stalker; J Robertson - correspond with the names of people living in the n° 7 which is on the census, next to the Shirrans, so it is definitely what is now Academy Street which is meant.

George is described as "Inspector S.N.S.P.C.C." so he probably hadn't been promoted to Chief Inspector yet. His age is correctly given as forty-four and his place of birth Bogside, Auchterless. With him are his wife Florence Blanche, aged thirty-four, born in Gibraltar and listed as "Florence F." for Franklin, and their children Edith B, thirteen; William G., ten and Ethel M., seven. The three children are all at school: the younger ones probably went to Leith Primary School, which was just over the road from them.

The eldest daughter Jessie, meanwhile, now seventeen and entered as "Florence J. Sherran", was living and working as a domestic servant at a house at 20 Polwarth Crescent, Merchiston. Her employers were Robert W. Buchanan aged thirty-nine, a Doctor of Medicine, and his wife Jeane aged forty. [Census 1911 685/06 067/00 015] I have not found the other sister, Lillian Christina Edith, anywhere in the Scottish census.

George Shirran received another shilling pay-rise in February 1912 and then in November 1912 he was given another 7/- per week, taking his salary up to 40/- (£2) per week, and moved back to Edinburgh. This presumably was the point at which he was promoted to Chief Inspector. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21]

It is likely that it was at this point that the family moved to a flat on the communal stair at 2 Boroughloch Square, at the north-east corner of The Meadows, where they would remain until at least 1923. We know that they were living at Boroughloch by autumn 1913 because in November 1914 George would tell the Army that he had been at that address for at least a year. [GS attestation on re-enlisting in 1914]

Lisa JarvisGeograph

The fact that Children 1^st now have an office at 1 Boroughloch Square, next door to the Shirran family's old flat, is a coincidence: they only moved there circa 2007.

Boroughloch Square, which is actually a triangle, is a small split-level yard surrounded by high tenements and the buildings of what was then the Boroughloch Brewery. In George's time it would have been wholly cobbled, but now the upper level is tarmacced.

N°'s 1 & 2 Boroughloch Square together make up a very tall building with a double-peaked roof, but it is not - or at least was not at that time - the case that one side of the building is #1 and the other #2. The Valuation Roll for the area for 1915-1916 shows that the ground and first floors of n°s 1 & 3 were occupied by the office and warehouse of C Davidson & Sons, Ltd., Paper Makers and no higher floors are listed for those numbers, whilst n° 2 goes from the first to the third floor and contains nine private flats (called houses at that time), four each on the first and second floors and one on the third, but appears to have no ground floor.

It seems that n° 2 includes the upper floors of both sides of the double building, but nothing on the ground floor except an entrance and stair. [National Archives of Scotland VR010000323-00112, Valuation Roll for the Burgh of Edinburgh 1915-1916]

Looking at it from the outside the building appears to have at least five floors, not four, and the vertical columns of windows are staggered in a way which suggests that each floor may be split-level. Also the footprint of the building is only 45ft square some of which must be stairwell, so it's unlikely there are four flats in each apparent level, capable of holding eight people. The internal definition of what constitutes a floor must differ from what it looks like from the outside.

The Valuation Roll shows that the Shirrans were in the fourth flat on the first floor. Their flat had the lowest rent out of the nine, jointly with the top-floor flat, which suggests that it was small: they paid fifteen shillings a year for it. It seems to have belonged to an Andrew Melvin who had offices in the square.

Access is at two points off Boroughloch Lane, which itself is a side-turning off Buccleugh Street: a wide entrance at the northern point of the triangle, and a narrow entrance under an archway partway along the west(ish) side, leading into the lower-level, south-west corner of the yard: this is where the vans of the brewery came and went. On the Meadows side it is just on the other side of Boroughloch Lane from Archer's Hall, the home-base and practice-range of the Royal Company of Archers. The flats have no gardens, just the shared yard, but they back onto The Meadows, a vast open space of lawns, flowers and sport- and play-grounds. From George's point of view it had the great advantage of being only fifteen minutes' walk from the Children's Shelter where he was based.

On 16^th December 1912 a John Lindsay, aged thirty-nine, married with two children, a former Colour Sergeant with twenty-one years' service with G Company 1^st Bttn The Black Watch, applied for a job as Inspector with the Edinburgh SNSPCC and was accepted. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/2 Application for Inspectorship with the SNSPCC] George absolutely has to have known him from the army, at least in passing, so now he had a former colleague working with and under him.

In October 1913, in his new rôle as Chief Inspector, George gave evidence in a very complicated case concerning a private children's home at Dunesk House, Lasswade, run by an evangelical group called the Sheep Fold Mission. [The Scotsman 08/10/1913 p.12] There was no intentional cruelty involved: the staff seemed to have a kind and loving relationship with the children, but they also had no idea of the practicalities of looking after them and the home was barely furnished, understaffed, underequipped and badly overcrowded, with little organisation or medical care. As a result there were outbreaks of sickness and lice among the children, and a two-year-old boy with an untreated abscess on his neck died after succumbing progressively to septicaemia, diphtheria and heart failure, although he would probably have survived if he had received adequate and timely treatment.

George had visited the Sheep Fold home on the 17^th of July, when he saw that the sick child, Charles Campbell, looked likely to die and appeared to be receiving no medical care, but the staff assured him a doctor was in attendance. At that point there were thirty-six children plus staff living in a six-bedroom house plus a small cottage in the grounds. When he visited again two days later, Charles Campbell had died. He pointed out to the couple running the home that at six to a bedroom the children were overcrowded and many were verminous or ill-looking, but when he visited the home again on 14^th of August there were only two or three members of staff on duty, the others being off preaching the Gospel, and ten of the children were obviously ill. He visited again on the 19^th of September and found that there were still eight children ill, and the staff had taken in another fourteen children on top of the thirty-five they already didn't have enough room for - probably out of a sincere desire to help them, but with no understanding of the risk of contagion in such an overcrowded community.

One wonders why George didn't insist on removing Charles Campbell to hospital, since he thought the boy was dying, and he probably did have the power to enforce it. It seems like a literally fatal error, to have let the staff persuade him that a doctor was in attendance when he could see that whatever care the child was receiving was inadequate. But he was used to dealing with hapless drunks, not articulate, persuasive preachers, and the loss of his own brother and sister to diphtheria may have made him feel (probably correctly) that the boy's case was already hopeless, and there was nothing to be gained by taking him away from his friends.

In November 1913 George's pay went up by another shilling. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21]

On the 27^th of April 1914 George and Florence's only son, William John George, enlisted with 1^st Battalion The Black Watch, his father's old outfit. He was aged fourteen years and fifteen days. [Medals Index Card; In Memorium notice in The Scotsman 15^th July 1946 p.6]

Two months later, almost to the day, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, Serbia. A month later Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and Serbia's ally Russia mobilised its troops. Austro-Hungary's ally Germany then declared war on Russia and demanded that France, Russia's ally, should remain neutral. France responded by mobilising its troops. Germany then declared war on France, and invaded Belgium because it wished to attack France along a wide front, and Belgium was in the way.

The United Kingdom entered World War One on 4^th August 1914, in alliance with France and Russia, and began to blockade German supplies. On 9^th August the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), at that time a comparatively small but well-trained force of professional soldiers, embarked for France.

Over the following month there were several battles in which, on the whole, Germany defeated the Russian forces who were trying to invade Germany, but British and French troops blocked the German advance on France. In early to mid September German forces fell back, but from then until late October the German and Allied armies fought a running battle across Belgium as they raced each other towards the North Sea, and the first frontline trenches were dug.

In October Germany and Austro-Hungary invaded Russia, Canadian troops arrived to reinforce the BEF and the first battle of Ypres began. On 2^nd November Russia declared war on Turkey, and on 5^th November Turkey followed suit by allying with Germany and Austro-Hungary: Britain and France then declared war on Turkey.

In November 1914 George received another 1/- pay-rise. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21] On 3^rd November, George Shirran re-enlisted in Edinburgh. The Attestation form says "Army Reserve. (Special Reservists.)" but he must have been joining as one of the NCOs who organised the Special Reservists, rather than being one himself, because Special Reservists weren't supposed to be able to be called up any older than forty-two and he was forty-eight (and the army records people thought he was fifty). Even if he served five years as a Section B Reserve after being discharged, and then extended it to another four years as a Section D Reserve, his nine years as a Reserve would have expired in June 1914. Furthermore, the Reservists were called up in August 1914, and he didn't re-join until November (see The Long, Long Trail: Reserves and reservists) - and conscription didn't begin until 2^nd March 1916. So his re-enlisting must have been entirely voluntary.

As well as patriotism and his obvious love of army life, he may have hoped to keep a protective eye on his son. But in fact, since soldiers weren't meant to join the wartime army until the were eighteen, nor strictly speaking supposed to serve overseas until they turned nineteen, and William John George would still only be eighteen when the war ended, it's uncertain whether he ever saw action. If he did, it wouldn't have been until spring 1918: but his Medals Index Card does not show the award of any medals, not even the British War and Victory medals which were given to all who served in World War One. [The Long, Long Trail: Enlistment in the army; WJGS Medals Index Card]

This time, when he signed up, George was honest and told the army he was aged forty-eight years and seventy days (really, sixty-eight days). However, the army failed to register the alteration: a document shows that his pension continued to be calculated on the assumption that he would turn fifty-five on 19^th November 1919. His new army number was S/6910 and he was accepted initially as a Private, but on the understanding that his previous rank would be restored as soon as possible.

On 4^th November George was posted, still technically as a Private, to the 8^th (Service) Battalion, The Black Watch. On 10^th November he was reinstated as a Colour Sergeant, with a note saying "Ex n.c.o. retains rank". On the 12^th he was appointed to the job of Company Quartermaster Sergeant: his actual rank would still have been Colour Sergeant, and he would still have been addressed as "Colour Shirran" or "Colour Sergeant Shirran": Quartermaster Sergeant is a rôle rather than a rank.

At the outbreak of World War One The Black Watch comprised eight battalions: the two regular battalions, the 3^rd (Special Reserve) Battalion, which stayed at home processing drafts for the overseas units, and five Territorial units which had been incorporated into the regiment in 1908: the 4^th City of Dundee, 5^th Angus and Dundee, 6^th Perthshire and 7^th Fife Battalions, plus the 8^th (Cyclist) Battalion, a reconnaissance and communications unit mounted on bicycles. The 4^th Dundee was presumably the same 4^th Volunteer Battalion to which George had been posted as an Instructor 1903-1905. [The Black Watch: First World War; Wiki: Army Cyclist Corps]

During the war, each of the four Territorial infantry battalions would multiply into three, with designations like e.g. 1/6^th, 2/6^th, 3/6^th and so on, while the 8^th (Cyclist) Battalion was renamed the Highland Cyclist Battalion, and seems to have garnered agile men from all the other battalions. In addition, in August and September 1914 the 8^th, 9^th and 10^th Service Battalions were formed at Perth, and in October 1914 the 11^th (Reserve) Battalion was set up at Nigg to funnel drafts to the overseas units. The 12^th (Labour) Battalion was formed at Blairgowrie in May 1916 and went out to France the following month. Two further battalions, the 13^th (Scottish Horse Yoemanry) and 14^th (Fife and Forfar Yoemanry) - neither of which seem to have had actual horses - were formed abroad in October and December 1916. [The Regimental Warpath 1914 - 1918: Black Watch (Royal Highlanders)]

On 17^th December The Scotsman reported that the then queen (Mary of Teck) had recently sent the Edinburgh Children's Home a box of toys, as had been her annual custom since she had visited the Home as Duchess of York some years previously, and the Secretary in return had told her of the numerous staff from the Home who were currently on military service, including "Chief Inspector George Shirran, Quartermaster-Sergeant, C Company, 8^th Service Battalion Black Watch". The Queen expressed her interest. [The Scotsman 17/12/1914 p.4] According to Major-General AG Wauchope's A History of the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) in the Great War 1914-1918, by May 1915 George Shirran was definitely in B Company: it's not clear whether The Scotsman was mistaken to place him in C Company, or whether he was moved to B Company when he went out to France.

A biographical page about Corporal James Wilson, another member of the battalion, quotes John Ewing's The History of the Ninth (Scottish) Division, 1914-1919 as saying that prior to being sent overseas 8^th (Service) Battalion The Black Watch were trained at a base near Salisbury Plain - although if George Shirran was there he was presumably a trainer rather than a trainee. According to information on the Black Watch forum the 8^th Battalion were formed in Perth on 21^st August 1914 and then moved to Aldershot, which is presumably where George Shirran joined them. They moved from Aldershot to Alton in January 1915 - which is about twenty-five miles from the edge of Salisbury Plain - and to Bordon a few miles further east in March.

In May 1915 they were sent to join the British Expeditionary Force in France as part of the 26^th Brigade of the 9^th (Scottish) Division. [The Regimental Warpath 1914 - 1918: 9^th (Scottish) Division] Information relating to 8^th Battalion The Gordon Highlanders, who were also in the 26^th Brigade (see Farningham War Memorial) says that "the new force" - that is, Kitchener's New Armies - crossed the Channel by going from Southampton to Le Havre, reaching Boulogne on the 10^th of May: Le Havre and Boulogne being two French ports which are over a hundred miles apart. Information on Corporal James Wilson of 8^th Battalion The Black Watch, paraphrasing The History of the Ninth (Scottish) Division, 1914-1919 by John Ewing, says that "The 26^th Brigade deployed to France on May 10, 1915, landing in Boulogne with the honour of being the first brigade of the New Armies to reach France." which suggests that they went directly to Boulogne - but if they indeed trained at Salisbury it makes sense for them to have embarked at Southampton, and if they embarked at Southampton it makes sense for them to have landed at Le Havre. Possibly they caught a coastal boat at Le Havre and crossed the hundred miles north from Le Havre to Boulogne by sea.

They must have ended up somewhere nearer Boulogne than Le Havre, since both sources agree they proceeded to Bailleul which is in the north of France, bear the Belgian border. But the information on the 8^th Gordons says they reached Bailleul on the 17^th by route march through Flêtre and Méteren, and if they went by Flêtre that probably means that from Boulogne they went first to Calais - that or they followed a very winding route. Arriving at Bailleul as part of the 9^th Division they were assigned trench duties on the relatively quiet Armentières front for further training." [The Regimental Warpath 1914 - 1918: 9^th (Scottish) Division] Two days later, on the 19^th, George's NSSPCC salary went up by 3/- per week to 45/-. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21]

By the end of the war it was routine to call up older men but that early in the conflict, at forty-eight Colour Shirran must have been among the oldest front line soldiers on the Western Front. According to Black Jock of the Great War Forum, as Quartermaster Sergeant George Shirran "was responsible for looking after the quartering, clothing, feeding and watering of his company in and out of the Line. I would imagine his job was more than tough (particularly for a 50 year old’ish) getting supplies of food and ammunition to the front line. No more so than at the Battle of Loos which he took part in." He would also have been responsible for discipline.

It's difficult to find any concrete information on what the Service Battalions actually did that was different from regular battalions, but I did manage to find this with reference to the King's (Liverpool) Regiment: "The role of the Service Battalion was to support the front line troops; digging trenches, hauling up ammunition & stores etc.. They were often exposed to artillery and snipers and suffered accordingly."

However, the 8^th (Service) Battalion The Black Watch seem to have been used less as an ancillary service and more as martial locums, travelling around the area of Béthune in northern France, filling in for regular troops on the front line while they had a much-needed break.

On 26^th June, according to information on Corporal James Wilson, 9^th Division were ordered to relieve the 7^th division on the front line near Festubert, twelve miles sou'-sou'-west of Armentières, and they did so on 1^st July, remaining there until 1^st August at a point overlooked by Germans entrenched on high ground to the east. However, we know from Wauchope that on 29^th June 8^th Battalion The Black Watch, specifically, were in Brigade Reserve billets just south of Le Touret, four miles north-east of Béthune. On the 4^th of July, D Company relieved a reserve company of the 5^th Camerons at Festubert, four miles east of Béthune, and on the 5^th of July the remaining companies of the 8^th Black Watch relieved the other companies of the Camerons on the front line due east of Festubert. This was 8^th Battalion's first experience of actual trench warfare and they got off lightly, losing only three men killed and seven wounded.

Jamie Harrison and others, reporting on the life and death of Corporal James Wilson, and paraphrasing Ewing, recount an incident from this period when Sergeant J McHardy hung his kilt up in the trench to dry, only to have a blast from a shell blow it up and out into no-man's-land, leaving him presumably with nothing to preserve his modesty except his shirt-tails until the kilt could be retrieved at dusk.

Meanwhile, on 9^th July 1915 Donald (Donnie) Bruce Johnstone, a twenty-two-year-old Bandsman with 1^st Battalion the East Surrey Regiment (the same regiment George's father-in-law William Franklin had been in), died of wounds received in action. He had been a close friend, perhaps a sweetheart of George's seventeen-year-old daughter Blanche, who posted an In Memorium notice calling him "To memory ever dear". She asked for the same message to be repeated in Canadian and Jersey papers. [Article in The Scotsman 16^th July 1915 p.10]

The records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission show that his service number was 9275 and he was the son of Andrew and Louisa Johnstone of "Blair-Atholl," Havre-des-Pas, St. Heliers, Jersey. Possibly he was the son of one of Blanche's grandfather William's old army mates. His unit were with the 5^th Division: after near-constant fighting from late August 1914 until 5^th May 1915 the 5^th Division don’t seem to have been in battle again until July 1916, which suggests that Donnie had probably languished in hospital for nine or ten weeks before succumbing to infection. [The Regimental Warpath 1914 - 1918: 9^th (Scottish) Division]

On 14^th July, 8^th Battalion The Black Watch moved on to relieve the 11^th Royal Scots on the front line east of Le Plantin, about nine miles west-north-west of Béthune or twelve miles almost due west of Festubert, until 1^st August when the battalion were sent back to billets north-west of Locon, three miles nor'-nor'-east of Béthune, for a short rest.

From 6^th August to the 16^th, the Battalion occupied the front line about midway between Le Plantin and Festubert, relieving the 12^th Royal Scots. On the 17^th they moved back to billets at Robecq, six miles north-west of Béthune, for a couple of weeks.

On 2^nd September they relieved a battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment positioned between Annequin and Vermelles, about four and a half miles south-east of Béthune. By now 9^th Division are part of I Corps, which was part of the First Army (I Corps, IV Corps and the Indian Corps) under Lieutenant-General Haig On the 7^th of September they were moved to Béthune itself, and on the 11^th they were sent to billets in Sailly-Lebourse three miles south-east of Béthune.

On 15^th September 1915 the battalion were sent to the front line at Brigade Support Area Y4 north-east of Vermelles, returning to Béthune on the 18^th. On the 20^th they were sent back to Y4 sector, and on the 21^st began the four-day bombardment intended to soften up the German opposition prior to the planned advance on the town of Loos-en-Gehelle, nine miles south-east of Béthune. [References for the whereabouts of the battalion June-September 1915, and also immediately following the Battle of Loos (below): A History of the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) in the Great War 1914-1918 by Major-General AG Wauchope, summarised by dundeesown on the Great War Forum; location of Y4 from The Bedfordshire Regiment in the Great War: 1914 and 1915 War Diary]

The Battle of Loos formed part of the Third Battle of Artois, a push across a wide front by British and French forces in autumn 1915. The short explanation for what happened is as follows.

The intention was that German forces should be softened up by a preliminary bombardment, and then a wave of British troops would attack across a ten-mile range extending north from the village of Loos-en-Gohelle. Once this first assault had punched a hole in the German defences, a fresh wave of reserves would take over, pass through the gap and extend the British lines well into German-held territory.

In practice, however, the initial bombardment did much less damage than anticipated. General French delayed sending the reserves up to the front, saying that they wouldn't be needed until after the fighting had actually started, and although he was right about that the result was that they arrived as the roads behind the front line were choked with lorries carrying supplies to the front and wounded men away from it. Tangled in traffic the reserves arrived hours late and tired from their march, by which point the men in the first wave of the attack were running out of both ammunition and impetus and the Germans had had time to bring in their own reserves. The proposed lightning assault degenerated into three weeks of shoving each other back and forth across the same narrow strip of ground, ending up back where they'd started from at the cost of eighty-six thousand men on both sides killed or significantly injured.

The long explanation, the one which says what George and his unit were actually doing, goes like this. The British and allied forces had a considerable superiority in numbers but were low on shells and already tired, and the terrain they would have to cross was difficult, plus the Germans were fore-warned by an Indian deserter. The preliminary bombardment was a near-total failure. The British Army used gas for the first time, but the wind kept much of it hanging stationary in the air or even blowing back into the British lines. Poor visibility prevented the British forces from seeing how much damage they had done to the German troops and artillery - which in fact was far less than they had hoped and expected - and the barbed-wire barriers defending the German lines were incompletely cut. To complicate matters further, the day before the attack was due General French, the Commander in Chief of the BEF, along with his HQ unexpectedly withdrew to Chateau Philomel three miles south of Lillers, whence he could communicate with Lieutenant-General Haig, who was in direct command of the advance at Loos, only via the French telephone system or by car.

The attack was launched on 25^th of September. Between Loos and the La Bassée Canal about four and a half miles to the north of it, the British and German front lines lay close together, running broadly north-south, and the German second line was as little as six hundred yards behind their front line. I Corps (the 2^nd, 7^th, 9^th - including 8^th Bttn Black Watch - and 28^th Divisions) and IV Corps (the 1^st, 3^rd (Cavalry), 15^th (Scottish) and 47^th Divisions) were to attack the German front line along this stretch, and once they had made a breach in the German front-line defences, the reserves from XI Corps (the 21^st, 24^th and Guards Divisions), with cavalry, were to pass through the gap and attack the German second line.

Haig asked for XI Corps to be ready to act as soon as possible but General French insisted they wouldn't be needed until the following morning and delayed sending them, with the result that they didn't arrive until the wee small hours of the night of the 24^th/25^th, a few hours before the start of the attack. After a seven mile march, they were still six and a half miles from the front line where the attack was planned. Meanwhile, some of the German defences were relieved by fresh troops that night.

The abortive British gas attack was launched at 5:50am on the 25^th. At 6am part of 2^nd Division carried out a diversionary attack north of the La Bassée canal, only to find the German front trench evacuated: when they advanced towards the second line they were raked by machine-gun fire and attacked with grenades. By 9:40am they were back where they'd started from, minus nine hundred and fifty men.

Meanwhile, at 6:30am the main attack was launched, while at 7:05am the British artillery began bombarding German communication trenches. From north to south the position of the Corps and divisions was I Corps: 2^nd, 9^th (Scottish) and 7^th divisions; IV Corps: 1^st, 15^th (Scottish) and 47^th Divisions - in each case with the Scottish Division taking centre place in the Corps.

The 15^th (Scottish) Division took Loos itself, while the 9^th (Scottish) Division, including 8^th Bttn Black Watch, had to tackle the formidable Hohenzollern Redoubt, an ad hoc fortress just south of Auchy consisting of a web of heavily defended trenches in front of, and in a few cases also on the far side of,

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a giant conical slag heap called Fosse 8, which formed part of a pre-war mining complex. The lead units of 26^th Brigade (of which 8^th Bttn Black Watch was part) lost men as they passed through a band of gas and smoke but the wire in front of them had been cut by shell-fire and by the back of 7am the 7^th Seaforths were able to take the Redoubt and then press on towards Fosse 8 itself, arriving in the flooded Corons Trench where they were joined at 7:45am by the 5^th Camerons. 8^th Black Watch then came up from reserve to reinforce them but suffered serious casualties due to heavy fire from "Mad Point", a German position between them and Auchy: they were played into action by the pipes Meanwhile 8^th Gordon Highlanders took the Pekin Trench - part of the German second line - south of the slag heap at Fosse 8. [The Pipes of War by Brevet-Col Sir Bruce Seton and Pipe-Major John Grant]

George Shirran, however, probably stayed behind: as Quartermaster Sergeant his job was to keep the supplies of ammunition coming and protect whatever equipment had been left behind in the British trenches. When there was time to eat, his duties included seeing to it that enough food, water, tea and earthenware jars of rum for B Company were brought up the line from the rear where the Battalion cookhouse would be. Further up the chain of command, all these supplies would have been funnelled to him by the Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant.

The advancing troops of the 2^nd Division at the northern end of the advance had suffered heavy casualties and had had to fall back at 9am after a combination of drifting gas, uncut wire and cratered ground which could be crossed at only a few points had left them as sitting ducks. Most of 26^th Brigade therefore stayed where they were, consolidating their position in and around the Redoubt, although 8^th Gordon Highlanders to their right/south managed to get further ahead, as did some units of 27^th Brigade.

Further south, the 1^st Division had to pull up when they ran into uncut wire, and were pinned down by heavy fire in no-man's-land. The 15^th (Scottish) Division swarmed ahead and took the village of Loos, but drifted further to the right than planned, and chased a retreating German force over the top of a hill (Hill 70) and down a slope where they ran into heavy fire. At the southernmost end of the advance the 47^th (2^nd London) division also made considerable advances and occupied buildings in the southern area of Loos, but suffered heavy casualties and were unable to set up a planned flank defence.

After a request from Haig, General French finally ordered XI Corps to move into the field but their progress was hampered by trenches crammed with wounded, and busy roads under shellfire. It was 1:20pm before they were all in position and ready to place themselves under Haig's orders, and by that point the advance was in such a mess that instead of using them to punch through in a block, he had to break them up and send units here and there to shore up the existing positions.

Major-General Richard Hilton, a Forward Observation Officer, said that "A great deal of nonsense has been written about Loos. The real tragedy of that battle was its nearness to complete success. Most of us who reached the crest of Hill 70 and survived were firmly convinced that we had broken through on that Sunday, 25^th September 1915. There seemed to be nothing ahead of us but an unoccupied and incomplete trench system. The only two things that prevented our advancing into the suburbs of Lens were, firstly the exhaustion of the 'Jocks' themselves (for they had undergone a bellyfull of marching and fighting that day) and secondly the flanking fire of numerous German machine-guns, which swept that bare hill from some factory buildings in Cite St. Auguste to the south of us. All that we needed was more artillery ammunition to blast those clearly located machine-guns, and some fresh infantry to take over from the weary and depleted 'Jocks.' But, alas, neither ammunition nor reinforcements were immediately available, and the great opportunity passed." Lens was the town a mile and a half south-east of Loos-en-Gohelle.

During the afternoon the Germans attempted to recapture Loos, and 21^st Division were sent to reinforce and relieve the 15^th, finally arriving at 7:30pm after suffering heavy casualties on the way. By this time Hill 70 had been recaptured by a bold German charge. The 1^st Division units in the centre of the advance pushed on and captured some German prisoners, but after heavy casualties they ended up with a wide gap in their own ranks, and ground to a halt in the vicinity of Hulluch, in between Loos and the Hohenzollern Redoubt. 3^rd Cavalry Division and the rest of XI Corps pushed ahead in gathering dark and heavy rain towards the Haute Deule Canal, wrongly believing that the German opposition had been significantly weakened: an amended order telling them to halt at the Lens-Le Bassée road only reached them at 2am, by which time many of them were dead. 7^th Division meanwhile had to dig in where they were, since uncut wire and heavy German artillery fire prevented any further advance.

Meanwhile, elements of 24^th Division plus six field batteries were sent to reinforce the 9^th Division in Pekin Trench, but after heavy bombardment with superior German grenades the British lost control of half of the trench and those soldiers still at the far end of Pekin Trench were told to withdraw in the dark. The intention was that they should fall back to the end of Pekin Trench nearest to Fosse 8 but in the confusion some withdrew too far, back to the original German front line. After the failure of the advance by 2^nd Division earlier in the day, the 9^th now formed the northernmost end of the attacking forces. Nevertheless the 9^th (including 8^th Battalion The Black Watch) and 7^th Divisions between them had made good headway and were solidly settled in in a continuous line wrapped around the Redoubt and Fosse 8 and down to a point north of Hulluch, and they expected fresh reserves to come from behind the next morning and push through the German lines. But after days on the road the reserves from XI Corps were still struggling across rough ground and congested roads and trenches, trying to reach the units they were mean to replace, and the Guards had arrived at their billet to find it double-booked.

At 11:30pm First Army HQ, unaware of German reinforcements and believing 1^st Division to have broken through the German lines south of Hulluch, ordered the attack to resume at 11am the next day.

In the small hours of the 26^th of September, rain having stopped, 24^th Division's Brigadiers decided to push on ahead by moonlight, despite now knowing that Hulluch hadn't been taken. At 5am 15^th Division, plus reinforcements from 21^st Division, were ordered to move to recapture the Hill 70 German Redoubt at 9am, on a misty day with rain pending. But artillery support failed in confusion and lack of ammunition, and a German counter-attack re-took the Hill 70 Redoubt and drove the tired, hungry British troops back towards Loos. A confusion of orders caused some of the British forces to begin a retreat, but by 11:30pm that night dismounted cavalry reinforcements from had consolidated the British hold on Loos and the lower slopes of Hill 70, and 15^th Division had been fully relieved by 3^rd Cavalry.

Further north in the Hulluch area a German counter-attack in the very early morning of 26^th September targeted the gaps in the British lines and drove the British forces back, but at its northern limits the German attack was itself driven off by fire from 26^th Brigade and a unit of reserves from Corps XI based at Fosse 8. Some time after 7am 1^st Royal Berkshires arrived to reinforce the troops at Fosse 8. A German counter-attack at Bois Hugo was initially fought to a standstill after heavy losses, but eventually pushed the British back out of Chalk Pit Wood and Chalet Wood, and a heavy exchange of fire between British and German artillery favoured the Germans, who were still secure in their second-line trench.

Meanwhile the Guards Division XI Corps arrived at the original British front line, expecting to take advantage of a successful British attack, and those elements of XI who hadn't already been distributed elsewhere were given a generic order to advance although they were hungry, thirsty and tired. 72^nd Brigade advanced in good order but drifted off course and came under heavy fire, their attack petering out in the face of uncut wire, and most of XI Corps were forced to retreat and were sent to the original British and German front-line trenches, now somewhat behind the active combat zone, where they were eventually relieved by the guards. Those who did not retreat, were captured by a German advance.

The simultaneous advance by 1^st Division also fell into confusion, with some units advancing into heavy fire pursued by orders telling them to fall back. At 4pm a composite brigade from 2^nd division under Lt-Col Carter attacked an area called the Quarries, which they had been preparing for all day, but were forced to halt two hundred yards short of their target.

At the northern end of the line 9^th division were still holding the area around the Hohenzollern Redoubt but they were being heavily shelled, and the 73^rd Brigade in the trenches east of Fosse 8 had had no food, water or sleep for two days.

By the night of the 26^th the original troops in Loos and Hulluch had been relieved and their positions consolidated, although German troops were moving forwards from their second line, pushing to regain their original front line. Supplies of ammunition and food etc could hardly be provided, because the roads behind the British lines were so congested. The troops at Hohenzollern Redoubt and Fosse 8 (including 8^th Bttn Black Watch) were still the original mob from the first attack two days beforehand, but an attempt was made to relieve most of them too and convert 9^th and 15^th Divisions (both Scottish) into a general reserve.

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In the early morning of the 27^th a German advance forced the exhausted, still un-relieved British troops holding Fosse 8 and Pekin Trench back to the Hohenzollern Redoubt. It was at this point the Hon. Fergus Bowes-Lyon, the late Queen Mother's elder brother, was killed. He was a Captain in B Company of 8^th Bttn Black Watch, the same company as George Shirran, and the two men must have known each other quite well. Fergus was only twenty-six, so the forty-nine-year-old George was probably something of a father figure to him and to the other young men in the company.

ththRoyal Observer Corps Association (10 Group) Newsletter, July 2006

According to Wauchope, at dawn on the 27^th "it became clear that the 73^rd Brigade in front were in difficulties, and men were observed falling back. Very shortly German bombs were seen bursting in Hohenzollern Redoubt and close to Little Willie Trench, and it was obvious that Fosse No. 8 had been lost and that the enemy was rapidly regaining hold upon the Redoubt itself. Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron of Lochiel then ordered a force of 70 men of The Black Watch and 30 Cameron Highlanders under Captain Bowes-Lyon, commanding B company, 8^th Black Watch, to advance to the redoubt and to rally any men seen retiring."

According to Gerald Gliddon's The Aristocracy and the Great War, "A Sgt Robert Lindsay, a witness to Fergus' death, wrote a letter to the family in which he filled in the details. After two days and nights of fighting in the Loos area the Battalion returned to Brigade for a break (27 September). As they were getting their breakfasts organised Fergus appeared with a piece of paper which was an order for them to immediately return to the area around the Hohenzollern Redoubt. Some of the men were able to finish breakfast, but others weren't. The Sergeant Major was drunk. In going up to the German trench named Little Willie several bombs landed at Fergus' feet and shattered one of his legs. Then he was hit by bullets in the chest and shoulder. He collapsed into Sergeant Hill's arms and died soon after. Lindsay also sent a bullet home to his family which had been removed from Fergus' arm."

From the sound of it, Fergus's men must have been among those who had just been relieved and sent away from the front line - only to be sent straight back into battle. The fateful breakfast would have been organised by Quartermaster Sergeant Colour Shirran.

Later that day, 27^th September, 28^th Division was on its way to join battle, but their commander arrived to take over the Auchy sector in advance of his men, and at 3pm he was told to launch a counter-attack to regain Fosse 8 using the 26^th Brigade. The troops of 26^th Brigade, presumably including 8^th Bttn Black Watch, had been relieved from the Hohenzollern/Fosse 8 area not long beforehand and were down to only six hundred men, but they were told to move out again. They suffered further casualties but did manage to reinforce 73^rd Brigade in the Hohenzollern Redoubt, although a German attack forced the remnant of British troops who had clung on to the far-flung trench nicknamed Fosse Alley to fall back to the Big Willie and Quarry trenches, on the British side of the Redoubt.

Meanwhile, two attempts to take Hill 70 to the east of Loos failed with heavy casualties, but the British did manage to make slight gains in the Hulluch area north of Loos. The 2^nd Guards Brigade were involved in retaking Chalk Pit Wood and it was probably here that Second Lieutenant John Kipling of 2^nd Bttn Irish Guards, the only son of Rudyard Kipling, was killed. At only eighteen he shouldn't have been posted overseas, and his eyesight was so poor that he had initially been rejected by the army, but he had been so eager to serve King and Country that his father had used his influence to swing him a commission.

Five hundred and eleven members of 8^th Bttn Black Watch had been killed or significantly injured, but the unit took no further part at Loos. According to Wauchope, "At 5am on September 28^th the Battalion was withdrawn to the reserve."

Fighting around and north of Loos continued intermittently until mid October, with British and German forces shoving each other back and forth only to end up back where they'd originally started from, after sixty-one thousand British troops (disproportionately weighted towards the Scottish units.) and twenty-five thousand Germans had been either killed or injured severely enough to render them hors de combat. Nearly eight thousand of the British casualties were dead.

According to John Ewing's The History of the Ninth (Scottish) Division, 1914-1919 (according to the biographical page about Corporal James Wilson) 9^th Division as a whole were withdrawn from I Corps on 30^th September and sent to Bethune for rest and refitting, before being posted to a salient (a trench system projecting towards the enemy) south of Zillebeke (a mile or two south-east of Ypres), where they remained for three months in what was to become freezing-cold mud, facing German trenches as little as twenty-five yards away. Wauchope specifies that it was on the 4^th of October that the 8^th moved into the front line between the Ypres-Courtrai railway and the Ypres-Courtrai canal, taking over trenches 33, 34 and 35.

On 1^st November 1915, George Shirran was posted away from the trenches and back to the Black Watch depot in Perth, and on 26^th November he was posted as Company Quartermaster Sergeant to 3^rd Reserve Battalion The Black Watch - the unit who stayed home and trained the drafts ready to be sent overseas - at Nigg, on the southern side of Aberdeen. I imagine that in between these two dates he was probably on leave. In spring 1901 George's brother Charles Forbes Shirran had been working as a railway porter and living with his family a few hundred yards north of Nigg: he may still have been living there. Possibly George's son, William John George, was also at Nigg.

On 10^th December, George's second daughter Lillian Christina Edith Shirran married James Bragg Currie, aged twenty-three, a Private in the 3^rd Battalion, The King's Own Scottish Borderers. The couple married at St Mark's Episcopal Church in Portobello, Edinburgh. The 3^rd were a reserve unit who stayed in the UK, funnelling drafts to the regular battalions overseas: but if James Currie was sent overseas later he survived the experience, and at some point after the war George Shirran would swing him a job as an inspector with the RSSPCC in Kilmarnock. [GROS Statutory Marriages 1915 685/07 0093; The Regimental Warpath 1914-1918: King's Own Scottish Borderers]

On 29^th March 1916, George was promoted to Acting Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant. That means that he fulfilled the full rôle of RQMS but was not a substantive Warrant Officer Class II. Appointment to RQMS would normally be for two years. He would still have been addressed as "Colour Shirran" and other ranks would also address him as "Sir": officers would have called him either "Colour Shirran" or RQ. He was presumably still with 3^rd Reserve Battalion.

According to Black Jock the RQMS "is second only to the RSM in a battalion as far as senior NCO's are concerned. [cut] He will have academic skills as well as soldering ability. He is the Quartermaster's executive. [cut] in short the QM'S department are responsible for the provision of all the materials to fight the war for their battalion and getting them forward to the CQMS's up in the front." By this point, of course, George Shirran was dealing with a battalion in training rather than at the front, but it still shows that he had the brains for what was in effect a complex and demanding managerial position.

On the 19^th of July 1916 George's first grandchild Florence Blanche Currie, the daughter of his daughter Lillian was born (seven months after her parents' marriage) at the Royal Maternity Hospital. [GROS Statutory Births 1916 685/04 0918] Judging from her brith certificate her father was away at the war and mother and baby would live with grandmother Florence at 2 Boroughloch Square.

On 19^th February 1917, George was transferred, still as aRQMS, to the 10^th (Works) Battalion the Royal Scots Fusiliers, a home service unit formed in June 1916 and based initially at Ayr, and then in Dumbarton. [The Long, Long Trail: The Royal Scots Fusiliers ] An accompanying note on George's records says that he is being transferred "under the conditions of A.C. 143/17", i.e. under Army Council Instruction 143 of 1917.

On 28^th April 1917 George was transferred as aRQMS to 4^th Battalion Labour Corps, with a note saying "A.C.I 611 of 1917". This was the instruction under which various former Labour and Works Battalions were transferred to the newly-formed Labour Corps. 10^th (Works) Battalion The Royal Scots Fusiliers actually became 4^th Battalion The Labour Corps, so it wasn't that George was changing units here: he stayed with his unit and was re-designated along with it. The Labour Corps was normally staffed by men who were not quite A1 fit to fight, so perhaps George had been slightly wounded or his health (or an age-related problem such as failing eyesight) was otherwise giving cause for concern. [The Long, Long Trail: The Royal Scots Fusiliers; The Long, Long Trail: The Labour Corps of 1917-1918; Military Labour During The First World War]

On 8^th June 1917 George was posted as aRQMS to 467^th Home Service Employment Company, with a note saying "authy A.C.I. 837/17". This was the order under which the new Home Service companies were formed from the remains of the former Labour Corps, so once again he wasn't being posted away from a battalion, as such: the battalion he'd been in had been re-organised out of existence. His Statement of Services calls 467^th "HS.Employ" but strictly speaking they should be called an Agricultural Company. Based at Hamilton, they performed necessary agricultural work on farms whose farmers were overseas with the army, or dead, so George had come full circle back to the land-work he'd joined the army to escape: although this time his rôe;le would have been administrative, not hands-on. [Military Labour During The First World War - personal correspondence with the webmaster of this site]

On 12^th June 1917, George's NSSPCC salary went up by 10/- (against which "revised scale" is written) to 55/- per week. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21]

On the 13^th of June George's daughter Jessie Shirran (a.k.a. Florence Caroline Jessie Shirran) married Alexander Forsyth Caddell, aged thirty-three, at South Leith Parish Church, Edinburgh. He was a pharmacist and she a pharmacist's assistant, presumably his, but at her urging he would later become a doctor. The registry entry for the marriage wrongly describes her father George as a Regimental Sergeant Major. Since he was only over at Hamilton, thirty or so miles away, he was probably able to attend the wedding.

Nine days later, on 24^th June 1917, George's mother Jessie died of heart-failure in New Pitsligo aged eighty-eight, in the presence of her son William. She had lived just long enough to see the granddaughter who was her namesake married: Florence Caroline Jessie must have seemed to some extent to be a substitute for her own daughter Jessie, who had died of diphtheria at the age of eight.

On 13^th July he was posted to 466^th Home Service Employment Company, based at Dumbarton - and this one actually was an employment Company, not an Agricultural Company. [Military Labour During The First World War - personal correspondence with the webmaster of this site] According to Military Labour During The First World War, the men of the Employment Companies were employed in munitions, dock-work and "maintaining bases, working for the R.E. maintaining and building military facilities including roads, railways and airfields. The Labour Corps provided men at hospitals and convalescent homes for both maintenance and to move wounded soldiers. Men were also used to undertake regimental employments at army bases acting in a wide range of duties including clerks, batmen, telephone operators, storemen and shoe repairers." With his years of experience as a proto-social-worker, perhaps George was employed to oversee the care of the wounded.

On 14^th August 1917 George was transferred, still as aRQMS, back to the 3^rd Reserve Battalion Black Watch at Nigg. The accompanying note on his records says "authy C.R. 94522" (Dd.) d16.18.17" - or perhaps "d/6.18.17". It may be that "16.18.17" is the hand-written equivalent of a typo and it should have been "16/8/17".

On 5^th November 1917, 3^rd Reserve Battalion Black Watch were warned to be prepared to move at short notice to postings in Ireland, exchanging places with 4^th Battalion The Connaught Rangers who were coming to Nigg. The cause of the swap was that it was felt that too many members of the Irish regiments were in sympathy with - and in some cases actually members of - the IRA.

It is not clear whether George Shirran went to Ireland with the 3^rd Reserve Battalion or not. On 13^th February 1918 he was posted back to the Depot in Perth. Below this line on his records is a very faint, faded line which seems to comment in some way on what he'd been doing since 14^th August, but I haven't been able to decipher it.

It begins "attached" and then "Offic" and a few more letters - probably "Officers" - and ends "14/8/17". There are a few more words in between, one beginning with (probably) "T" or "C", and a definite "Q", and what looks like a place name beginning with "S" and ending with "es". My best guess is either "attached Officers' Comd at HQ in S???es 14/8/17" or "attached Officer Cadet HQ in S???es 14/8/17".

George and Florence's son William turned eighteen on 12^th April 1918, and may well have been sent overseas to join the war at that point, for the remaining seven months until the war's end. 1^st Battalion The Black Watch were in the 1^st Brigade of the 1^st Division, and during those seven months they were involved in the Battle of Bethune on 18^th April, including the second defence of Givenchy; the Battle of Drocourt-Queant on 2^nd-3^rd September; the Battle of Epehy on 18^th September; the Battle of Beaurevoir on 3^rd-5^th October; the Battle of the Selle on 17^th-25^th October and the Battle of the Sambre on 4^th November, including the passage of the Sambre-Oise canal and the capture of Le Quesnoy. [The Regimental Warpath 1914 - 1918: Black Watch (Royal Highlanders)] If William was indeed sent overseas to join the regiment once he turned eighteen, his parents must have spent a very hairy autumn worrying about him as his division lurched from combat to combat.

At the same time, on 14^th October 1918, George's old sweetheart (or perhaps drunken indiscretion), Eliza Rettie, the mother of his daughter Margaret, died at Garmond Village, a mile north of Cuminestown. She was only fifty-six but was already retired and was being monitored by the parish's "Inspector of Poor", who reported her death: so her health had perhaps not been good for a while. Death was ascribed to hemiplegia - that is, to one-sided paralysis. Obviously she lived long enough with this problem for the hemiplegia to be apparent - she didn't just drop dead in the street - so she presumably had either two or more strokes, or a brain tumour. [GROS Statutory Deaths 1918 223/00 0015]

Meanwhile, having been posted back to the Depot in Perth - or perhaps continuing at wherever the illegible note says he was, but having his chain of command switched to the Depot - George Shirran evidently remained there. On 1^st January 1919, George's NSSPCC salary went up by 10/- to 65/- per week. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21] A subsequent note on the side of his Statement of Services says "Perth 29.4.19." As with his previous Statement of Services in 1905, this free-standing date on his notes may have been the date on which he announced his intention to leave the army within three months' notice, for on 13^th May 1919 he was demobilised at Perth and transferred to Class "Z" Army Reserve, meaning that he could be recalled at any time if there was a need for him.

thKinnethmont town web-site

His Army Pension Identity n° was P/B/S/48. For his services, he was awarded:

The 1914-1915 Star

The British War Medal

The Victory Medal

The first of these was given to all soldiers and sailors who served in any theatre of war between 5^th August 1914 and 31^st December 1915, and the other two were given to all service personnel who served at any time during the war. They were given out so universally that they were known as "Pip, Squeak and Wilfred" after popular newspaper-cartoon characters of the day. [Kinnethmont town web-site]

He must have been a brave man, my great grandfather George, to have extended his service with the army over and over, and then to have voluntarily re-enlisted in wartime when he was forty-eight. Over his lifetime he spent twenty-six years in The Black Watch and saw service in three wars yet he seems never to have done anything particularly noteworthy, and his most serious war-wound was apparently a blister on his foot when he was seventeen and still in training. Being rather a small target must have helped, of course, but I picture him as simply getting on with being a soldier in the same unshowy way he would have tended the cattle at Sprottyneuk and Haremoss.

If he had died at Loos or at Kirbekan his name would have been remembered among the glorious dead: but there is no reward for survival except survival itself. A photograph shows him with the other NCOs of 8^th Battalion at a base in the south of England, preparing to go to war: dapper, grey-haired, moustached and kilted, sitting cross-legged and noticeably shorter, even seated, than the men on either side of him.

Archives concerning the SNSPCC and held by Glasgow Caledonian University show that "The onset of the First World War brought difficult times for the Society. It lost a substantial number of Inspectors to military service (as well as the General Secretary), while at the same time need for the Society’s services grew. Soldiers’ wives struggled to cope with sole responsibility for the home and children while their husbands were away; of course, many never returned and such problems persisted after the war. The subsequent economic depression intensified existing social problems, and generated some financial difficulty for the Society." Given this strained situation, George presumably resumed working for the SNSPCC not long after he left the army.

However, personal tragedy was soon to strike. Just as his parents had had a vast family of boys but only the one girl, who died, so George and Florence were to lose their only son.

William John George Shirran was discharged from The Black Watch on 3^rd December 1919, due to sickness. His Medals Index Card shows him as having been in 1^st Battalion, and an In Memorium notice placed by his mother says the same, but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission places him in A Company, 2^nd Battalion. According to British Armed Forces and National Service, 1^st Battalion were in Baluchistan in 1919, whilst 2^nd Battalion were transferred from Egypt back home to Glasgow, so it may well be that when William's health began to fail he was transferred to 2^nd Battalion so he could be closer to home. He died of rheumatic fever and heart disease aged nineteen at the family home at 2 Boroughloch Square at 6:30am on 30^th December 1919, in the presence of his father, who registered his death the next day in a faint, crazed hand. [Medals Index Card; CWGC records; The Scotsman 15^th July 1946 p.6; GROS Statutory Deaths 1919 685/04 1668]

On 12^th May 1920, George's NSSPCC salary went up by 10/- to 75/- per week. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21]

In 1921, The Scotsman reported two cases in which George Shirran, Chief Inspector for the SNSPCC, had successfully appealed to the court to remove the children of a war-widow into the care of the Ministry of Pensions, seeing that she had neglected her children due to a drink problem. [The Scotsman 8^th June 1921 p.8; The Scotsman 22^nd August 1921 p.4]

In the fourth quarter of 1921, George's daughter Edith Blanche, known as Blanche, married Stephen JM Houghton in West Ham, near London. [Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages for England and Wales: marriages in December quarter 1921, West Ham Vol. 4a Page 364]

On the 7^th of April 1922 George's grandson Anthony James Forsyth Currie, the son of his daughter Lillian, was born at 43 St Leonard's Hall, Edinburgh. [GROS Statutory Births 1922 685/05 0257] The child's father James Bragg Currie was now working as a butler and the couple were evidently still living at 2 Boroughloch Square: in May 1923 Lillian would give that as her address when serving as a witness at her sister Ethel Maud's wedding. [GROS Statutory Marriages 1923 685/04 0464]

On 1^st May 1922 a further 5/- pay-rise took George up to 80/- per week, and against it is written "+ 15/- = £4:15/-" It is not clear whether this means he was receiving an extra 15/- allowance in 1922 or whether it refers to a subsequent raise or raises: the last entry is for 1930 when he was (still) receiving £4:15/- a week. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21]

In that year, 1922, The Scotsman reported on three cases in which Chief Inspector George Shirran gave evidence, and which provide an interesting insight into his work. In the first case, a streetsinger was admonished for taking her two secondary-school-aged children out of school in order to help her with her singing, although she maintained that she had only done so while she was recovering from 'flu'. "On the motion of Chief Inspector Shirran" the eleven-year-old girl was sent to an Industrial School and the mother agreed that "she would make arrangements with Mr Shirran to have the boy placed in an industrial home". [The Scotsman 15^th February 1922 p.8]

Nowadays we would think that taking two children away from a mother who was not apparently abusing them, just because she kept them out of school for a few weeks, was heavy-handed in the extreme: but in the other two cases reported that year the need for drastic intervention was obvious. In one, a couple who had split up ignored their three children and abandoned them to the half-hearted care of near-strangers, with the result that one of their infant twins died of malnutrition. In the other case a couple were gaoled for repeatedly beating their three-year-old son and threatening to kill him, and it was reported that "Inspector Shirran said that when he examined the boy there were 18 bruises on his body and head, and the right eye was also discoloured." [The Scotsman 5^th April 1922 p.8; The Scotsman 26^th October 1922 p.5]

George gave evidence in this traumatic case of the battered toddler on 25^th October 1922. Three days later his own illegitimate daughter Margaret died in the Leith Hospital for Infectious Diseases at East Pilton, of mitral valve failure from which she had suffered for nine months. She was thirty-eight, and living in Stockbridge at the time of her death. The fact that she had moved to Edinburgh, and that the registry entry for her death refers to her father as an army sergeant, not just the bald "soldier" which was recorded with her birth, suggests she did have at least some contact with George, so he was probably aware of both her illness and her death. [GROS Statutory Deaths 1922 685/10 0383]

Around this time, in the fourth quarter of 1922, George's daughter (Edith) Blanche Houghton gave birth to a daughter, Edith LB Houghton, in West Ham. Almost certainly the baby's name was Edith Lillian Blanche. [GRO Statutory Births: December quarter 1922, West Ham Vol. 4a Page 123] Also at this time George and Florence's youngest girl Ethel Maud's boyfriend Bertram Denis Langford Rae moved into the flat at 2 Boroughloch Square.

On 13^th April 1923 George's uncle Adam Tawse, his mother's brother, died what must have been quite a horrible death, from an obstruction of the bowel lasting fifteen days. He was seventy-five, a retired crofter living in a cottage near Kintore.

On 31^st May 1923, Ethel Maud (my grandmother) married Bertram, a student aged nineteen and a member of the Indian Police, at Edinburgh Sheriff Court House. Her parents probably still had the Curries and their two children living at their flat in Boroughloch Square: the witnesses to the wedding are given as: "Florence Franklin or Shirran 2 Boroughloch Square Edinburgh and Lilian Shirran or Currie 2 Boroughloch Square Edinburgh". [GROS Statutory Marriages 1923 685/04 0464] Bertram went back to Burma later that year, and Ethel followed him in 1924.

On 18^th September 1923 George's son-in-law James Bragg Currie became an Inspector for the RSPCC in Edinburgh, presumably partly on George's recommendation. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 111] If the Curries were still staying at 2 Boroughloch Square the two men will have seen each other constantly both at home and at work. On Christmas Day that year, Chief Inspector George Shirran was among a group who welcome the Lord Provost and his wife on a brief visit to the Children's Shelter. "Lord Provost Sleigh briefly addressed the children, who sang a few carols and expressed their appreciation of the gifts presented to them through Dr Carmichael." [The Scotsman 26^th December 1923 p.8]

In August 1924, The Scotsman reported that Chief Inspector Shirran had successfully appealed to the court to have three children removed from their mother and housed at the Children's Shelter for a year; owing to their mother's drunkenness they had had to be taken to the shelter three times in the previous two months in any case. [The Scotsman 16^th August 1924 p.7]

Some time that year, George's daughter Ethel Maud and her husband Bertram Langford Rae moved out to Burma, and on 23^rd December 1924 the couple married again, in Mandalay. Army and Registry Office records show that the Shirrans were a Protestant family but my father, Ethel Maud's son, was a devout Catholic so I'm assuming that Bertram was a Catholic too, and the couple had a civil wedding in Edinburgh and a church wedding in Burma. A few days later Bertram was appointed as an Assistant District Superintendent of Police. By September 1925 the couple were living in Insein, a suburb of Rangoon, and Ethel Maud was close friends with another Assistant District Superintendent of Police, Eric Blair, the future George Orwell. By this time Ethel Maud was already calling herself Elisa Maria and claiming, possibly falsely, to be a journalist. She may well have begun calling herself Elisa Maria as soon as she arrived in Burma, away from people who knew her original name. [India Office Records; Wikipedia: George Orwell]

Meanwhile, on New Year's Day 1925 George's elder brother William died of what sounds like prostate cancer. [GROS Statutory Deaths 1925 227/0B 0001]

On 9^th March 1925 George's son-in-law James Bragg Currie, an Inspector for the RSPCC, was posted away from Edinburgh, initially to Peterhead and later-on to Kilmarnock. [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 111]

In the fourth quarter of 1925, George's daughter (Edith) Blanche Houghton had a second daughter, Ivy J Houghton, still in West Ham. [GRO Statutory Births: December quarter 1925, West Ham Vol. 4a Page 443]

On 28^th January 1927 Ethel Maud's only son, my father Roderick Denis Edward Langford Rae, was born in Rangoon. He would later be sent to Scotland to live with his aunt Lillian Currie in Kilmarnock. [India Office Records]

In August that year there occurred a death which throws an interesting light on everyday life at the Children's Shelter. Henry Harvey Littlejohn, a brilliant lecturer with a reputation for both fairness and wit, was an expert on Medical Jurisprudence who had been Professor of Forensic Medicine at Edinburgh University and Chief Police Surgeon in Edinburgh since 1906. A Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and President of the Royal Medical College, he had spent time as Resident Physician at Edinburgh's maternity hospital before specialising in jurisprudence, and some time after 1906 he became Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Edinburgh University. Something of a tartar in public, in private he was a generous man and had frequently slipped pennies to the children at the Children's Shelter (about seven minutes' walk away from the School of Medicine), or entertained them by getting his cocker spaniel Sam to perform tricks. It's not clear whether he actually visited the Shelter for this purpose or whether he was there as Police Surgeon to gather evidence of abuse, but either way he must have been very well known to George. [Obituary in The British Medical Journal, 27^th August 1927; Archives hub: The Littlejohn Collection]

In March 1928 and again in March 1929 we again see Chief Inspector Shirran giving evidence in court and asking for children to be taken into care. In the first instance this was due to serious neglect; a separated couple had passed their children back and forth between them but both parents had left them dirty, verminous and underfed, with little in the way of clothing or bedding. The second case refers only to the "unsatisfactory surroundings" in which a mother was raising her children and we are left to wonder whether she was a prostitute, a slovenly drunk or merely a poor woman who couldn't afford proper housing. [The Scotsman 6^th March 1928 p.7; The Scotsman 12^th March 1929 p.7]

On 27^th May 1929 HRH the then Duchess of York, later to be Queen and Queen Mother, visited the Children's Shelter and heard a presentation on the work of the RSSPCC. She then proceeded upstairs where "a little boy in blue, Peter Lindsay, presented a bouquet of red roses, and Margaret Andersen, a little girl in pink, presented an antique spelling alphabet for the Princess Elizabeth". She distributed toys and spent some time playing with the infants in the babies' nursery, and commented on "a picture by Margaret Tarrant of the Child Jesus among children and woodland creatures", saying she had the same painting for her own daughter. Downstairs again in the courtyard she was introduced to a line-up of inspectors and had a brief conversation with Chief Inspector Shirran, who told her how he had served with her brother the late Captain the Hon. Fergus Bowes-Lyon in France. [The Scotsman 28^th May 1929 p.9]

We glimpse him again in December 1929, giving evidence in a case of wilful neglect of a six-year-old girl [The Scotsman 10^th December 1929 p.7], but perhaps childcare issues were no longer seen as newsworthy: The Scotsman provides no further glimpse of him until his retirement at the age of sixty-eight. We know from other sources that his daughter Ethel Maud, now renamed Elise, returned to Scotland from Burma in summer 1930 and brought her three-year-old son Rory with her, leaving him in the care of her sister Lillian in Kilmarnock. This is near enough to Edinburgh that George and Florence probably had regular contact with their mixed-race grandson.

We know from his employment records with the RSSPCC that he retired on 5^th January 1935 [National Archives of Scotland GD409/32/1, RSSPCC staff records entry 21] and on 30^th January - presumably referring to events a few days beforehand - The Scotsman reported that: "Mr George Shirran, who has just retired from the position of Chief Inspector of the Edinburgh Branch of the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children after a period of thirty years' service, was presented with a wallet of Treasury notes from the members of the committee. The Very Rev. Dr Harry Miller, in making the presentation, spoke in appreciative terms of the long and faithful service rendered by Mr Shirran. The Rev. W. A. Guthrie, Sheriff Maconochie, and Mrs Andrew, the oldest member of committee, also spoke." [The Scotsman 30^th January 1935 p.7]

Strictly speaking, since he was in the army up until the end of June 1905 and again from November 1914 to May 1919, he had only actually served twenty-four years with the RSSPCC, but his army service was allowed to count as being an action bringing honour to the Society.

Of his private life in retirement we know little, but on 14^th May 1938 there was a family tragedy when George's son-on-law Dr Alexander Forsyth Caddell was found dead in the bath aged fifty-four at his house at 22 Windsor Street, just at the back of the world-famous Valvona & Crolla delicatessen. The Scotsman reported that police had forced their way into the house late on Saturday (the 14^th) after it was reported that the doctor had not been seen alive since Wednesday. [The Scotsman 16^th May 1938 p.16]

His death certificate, however, said that he was found dead at 11pm on the 14^th, having last been seen alive at ten to six in the evening on Friday 13^th. Death was ascribed to a combination of angina and drowning and it seems likely that this was true and that he had an angina attack in the bath, with fatal results: as a doctor, if he had wanted to commit suicide he had many tidier ways of doing it. His death was registered on the 18^th by an "intimate friend", John Richardson, who normally lived at Aviemore: I wondered if this friend had been down for a visit and the doctor had partaken of a celebratory drink or five, fallen asleep in his bath, slipped under the surface and then had a heart attack whilst trying to struggle out. [GROS Statutory Deaths 1938 685/03 0143]

A very interesting point is that The Scotsman said that he lived alone at 22 Windsor Street, yet we know Jessie Caddell née Shirran was very much alive. Were they separated, or had she gone away on some sort of long trip, perhaps to visit her sister Ethel Maud in Burma, and came home to find herself a widow? [The Scotsman 16^th May 1938 p.16]

Orders and Medals Society of AmericaARmy Rumour SErvice

On 10^th August 1939 George was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal (MSM) (under Army Order 217 of 1935) accompanied by a note on his Medals Index Card which I can't read. [GS supplement to Medals Index Card] During the World Wars the MSM was sometimes used as a gallantry medal, but in 1939 it was a souped-up version of the Long Service & Good Conduct Medal, awarded to senior NCOs often long after a soldier left the army. The delay was because the award at that time came with an annuity "not exceeding £20": the army could only afford to pay out a limited number of such annuities, so new awards had to wait until one of the previous medal-holders died.

On 1^st January 1944 the army awarded Colour Shirran an increase in his pension to £112-15/6 per annum, to run until 31^st December 1945, but he would not live to enjoy the full fruits of this windfall. [GS notes of amount of pension being paid] George Shirran died of senile cardiovascular sclerosis and myocardial degeneration at 17 Learmonth Avenue, Edinburgh at 3:10am on 14^th July 1945, six weeks short of his seventy-ninth birthday. Death was registered by his daughter Jessie, who was present when he died - 17 Learmonth Avenue was her home by this point (we know because she is listed at that address in the records at Cruft's, and she too died there) so he died while either visiting her or staying with her. A year later Florence would be living with her daughter Lillian in Kilmarnock: I do not know when they gave up the flat at Boroughloch Square, but it is possible that George and Florence were actually living with Jessie when George died.

George lived just long enough to see the end of another war in Europe and the liberation of the concentration camps, but not long enough to see the dropping of the atom bomb and the end of the war in the Far East. He died just over seventy yards from the shop on the corner of Learmonth Avenue where I used to do most of my Christmas shopping when I worked for the Western General Hospital, and never knew I was in the presence of my great grandfather's death. [GROS Statutory Deaths 1945 685/02 0421]

On the first anniversary of his death, his widow Florence posted the following notice in The Scotsman: "In loving memory of my husband, GEORGE SHIRRAN, who died 14^th July 1945; also my son, Lance-Corporal WILLIAM SHIRRAN, 1^st Batt. Black Watch, who died 30^th December 1919, aged 19 years.—Inserted by Mrs Florence Shirran, 11 Barbadoes Road, Kilmarnock." [The Scotsman 15^th July 1945 p.6]