Margaret Rettie Shirran, born 1883

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Margaret Rettie Shirran, born 1883

Margaret was born Margaret Rettie on 23^rd January 1883, the illegitimate daughter of Eliza Rettie, domestic servant, and George Shirran, farm servant and later soldier. Her paternity was established in a paternity suite on 9^th May 1883 (see section on Eliza Rettie) and thereafter she was known as Margaret Shirran. [GROS Statutory Births 1883 223/00 0010; GROS Statutory Births 1883 223/00 0010 RCE]

We see her aged eight in April 1891, a scholar living with her mother and grandfather in Cuminestown where her mother was a housekeeper (but probably not a live-in one, unless she worked for her parents or just happened to be visiting them that night). [Census 1891 223/00 001/00 006]

On 9^th October 1908, in Edinburgh, she married James John Johnston, a grocer's assistant aged twenty-seven; she herself was working as a domestic servant. James was the son of Thomas Edmondston Johnston, mason, and Eliza or Elizabeth B? Johnston née Smith, and was born on 9^th November 1881 in Unst, Shetland. Prior to the marriage James was living at 42 London Street, Edinburgh and Margaret at 16 London Street. The couple married by declaration, in front of witnesses, at 16 Broughton Place, a couple of hundred yards from London Street. Margaret's parents are given as George Shirran, soldier, and Eliza Shirran née Rettie: it's not clear whether Margaret was trying to conceal her illegitimate status or whether the registrar just made a mistake. [GROS Statutory Marriages 1908 685/02 0398; GROS Statutory Births 1881 011/00 0030]

The couple had at least three children: Ellen or Helen Margaret Johnston (1909), Violet Rettie Johnston (1915) and Thomas Johnston. Ellen was born on 16^th April 1909 in the Royal Maternity Hospital, Edinburgh; at this point the couple were living at 124 Lauriston Place, James was still a grocer's assistant and Margaret was going by the nickname Maggie. [GROS Statutory Births 1909 685/04 0646] Violet's birth is registered in the St Andrew district of Edinburgh. [GROS Statutory Births 1915 685/02 0471]

Margaret died in the East Pilton Hospital on 28^th October 1922, aged only thirty-eight, of mitral valve failure from which she had suffered for nine months. This would have been the Leith Hospital for Infectious Diseases at East Pilton, a collection of long, low, widely-spaced single-storey huts later renamed the Northern General Hospital and used as a satellite Rheumatology wing by the neighbouring Western General Hospital. It was still in use when I started working at the Western General in 1991, but has since been pulled down to make way for a supermarket. [GROS Statutory Deaths 1922 685/10 0383]

Either Margaret or her husband (the layout of the form is unclear) was working as a "mica moulder" at the time of her death: this might be someone who made mica lenses, but mica is split and cut rather than moulded, and I suspect the job was actually "formica moulder" and the registrar misunderstood it. Again, her parents are given as George Shirran, army sergeant, and Eliza Shirran "MS" (maiden surname) Rettie, as if they had been married.

Margaret's husband James was present when she died. The couple's usual residence was 21 Deanhaugh Street in Stockbridge, now one of the most expensive and bohemian areas in Edinburgh, but at that time rather rough and filled - according to an elderly lady my mother once met who had lived there many years ago - with drunken screams. It's difficult to see where Margaret and James's house was since the odd-numbered houses in Deanhaugh Street jump from n° 15 to 29, with the entrance to an old cul-de-sac side-street called Haugh Street in between them: possibly n° 21 was actually in Haugh Street.

The fact that Margaret and/or James knew George Shirran to be a sergeant shows she had had at least some contact with or news of him. At this point he was back to being a Chief Inspector with the RSSPCC: the fact that James (presumably James) nevertheless described him to the registrar as a sergeant could mean the couple had had no recent contact with him, or it could just be that he thought that that was George's most characteristic rôle.

Margaret and James's daughter Ellen or Helen Margaret Johnston married Thomas McQuaters Roxburgh, a soldier, in 1935 and had two children: Alastair, born in 1936 (making George Shirran a great grandfather, if he wasn't one already), and Irene in 1944. Helen died in 1953, Thomas in 1979. Their son Alastair Roxburgh married Lily Cochrane Roberts in 1965 and had two children: Stuart, born in 1967 (my cousin and co-researcher on this history), and Anne, born in 1969.