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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Edinburgh Printing Industry
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Robert
Clark, of R. & R. Clark, claimed the distinc-tion of having
trained Fanny McPherson to be the first woman compositor in Britain.
She subsequently taught other women and remained with the firm for
sixty years. An earlier attempt at training female compositors had
been made at the Caledonian Press. This had been set up in 1861
by the Scottish National Institution for Promoting the Employment
of Women in the Art of Printing a philanthropic body whose representative
was quoted as saying ‘it woul4 be a very great advantage to
the public if wages were brought down’.6
The Caledonian Press was short-lived, lasting only until 1865; its
short duration reflected its charitable, rather than profitable,
nature. In 1869 it was estimated in the pages of the Scottish Typographical
Circular that ‘the probability is that not above 24 women in
the United Kingdom are at the present day earning a living as operative
printers’.
Relationships between masters and men were not always so antagonistic
and were often cordial. One particularly celebrated instance was
the occasion when, in March 1868, Nelson’s entertained ‘the
whole journeymen printers and stereotypers of Edinburgh’ (estimated
at 2000 people in all) beneath one roof. This entertainment took
the form of a lecture on the art of printing a lantern show of ‘pictures
from Punch shown by oxy-hydrogen light, and accompanied with critical
remarks by the Rev. Mr Simpson’, music and singing. 8
Employers would regularly contribute towards the costs of works’
outings such as Chambers’ trip to Perth where ‘the firm
defrayed the travelling expenses’ for 263 people, or Murray
& Gibb’s trip to the grounds of Hopetoun House for games
and tea for which the firm hired a steamer as well as providing
prizes for the games. William Fraser, of Neill & Co., played
a major role in the founding of the Edinburgh Compositors Benefit
Society in 1824.
Both masters and men subscribed to the fund raised for the relief
of the printer-poet Alexander Smart and his family when he was prevented
from working by illness. They also paid for the establishment of
a printers’ library in 1856.
Another aspect of the industrialisation of printing in the nineteenth
century was the toll which the new conditions took of the workers’
health. Men stood upright at a frame for as many as twelve or fourteen
hours a day in crowded, badly ventilated and damp rooms (perhaps
also plagued with noxious fumes). All these factors contributed
towards a high mortality rate, particularly from tuberculosis and
other respiratory complaints. In 1860, the same year in which Alexander
Smart wrote that ‘the best of all tonics is labour’s sweat,
for bracing the nerves of men’, the obituary columns of the
Scottish Typographical Circular listed the deaths of men aged 19,
28, 31 and so on. Out of 35 printers who died in 1866, 14 died of
pulmonary tuberculosis and it was generally accepted at the time
that the printer’s trade was one which made him particularly
susceptible to ailments of the lungs and chest.
In many respects these problems were due to the inadequate nature
of the workshops, buildings which were wholly unsuited for the mechanised
industry which printing had suddenly become. Neill & Co., for
example, were still using the same buildings in Old Fishmarket Close
in 1890 that they had first used in 1769, and Ballantyne’s
factory at Paul’s Work had been built long before they had
begun to use it in 1803. Morrison & Gibb also found it impossible
to carry on in their offices in Thistle Street Lane and, in 1887,
they moved to new premises at Tanfield.
Following the destruction by fire of their Hope park works in 1878,
Nelson & Sons set up a tem-porary printing works in the Meadows,
with the permission of the Town Council, while their new plant was
being built This took two years and when they did finally move into
the new Parkside Works at Park Road they erected the two pillars
bearing a lion and a unicorn (which can still be seen at the eastern
entrance to the Meadows) as a token of their appreciation to the
Town Council and especially the Lord Provost, Thomas Jamieson Boyd,
who was also a senior partner of Oliver & Boyd.
H. & J. Pillans moved from James’s Court to Thistle Street
Lane in 1877 and, in 1886, became H. & J. Pillans & Wilson
with the appointment of Mr W. Scott Wilson as a major partner. The
firm moved to another address in Thistle Street Lane in the next
year where they remained until 1919 when they moved to Newington.
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Volume 1, published 1990
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