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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Edinburgh Printing Industry
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19 2021
The
late eighteenth century witnessed the arrival of a new printer on
the Edinburgh scene. Peter Williamson had been born near Aberdeen
around 1740, kidnapped as a child and sold as a slave in America.
On regaining his freedom he had settled down and married. He was
then attacked, captured, tortured and enslaved by Indians; he escaped
and made his way back to civilisation. On his return he discovered
that his wife had died in his absence. He next joined a force which
was being raised to fight the French and their Indian allies. Wounded
and captured at the siege of Otago, he was deported to Plymouth
as a prisoner of war. On account of his wound he was discharged
from the army and given six shillings to return to Aberdeen. This
money allowed him to reach York, where he raised some more by writing
an account of his adventures. This enabled him to complete his journey
to Aberdeen.
Upon his arrival in Aberdeen he was arrested on the basis of the
account he had given of his kidnap, which incriminated members of
the council. His book was burned by the public hangman: he was imprisoned,
forced to recant, fined ten shillings and banishe from Aberdeen.
He made his way to Edinburgh where ‘at the lug of the law’,
he successfully prosecuted Aberdeen Town Council, using his awarded
damages to establish himself in a coffee shop at the rear of the
courts.
Williamson’s career as a self-publicist reached a high point
when, in 1769, he obtained a printing press from London, taught
himself to print in the backroom of his coffee shop and produced
his first book — William Meston’s Mob Contra Mob. As a
preface to this, Williamson included an open letter to the printers
of Edinburgh which casts some light on the closeness with which
trade secrets were guarded at the time. In a cynical, ironic ‘tribute’
to his ‘brethren printers’ he noted the complete unwillingness
of any of the printers to instruct him in the art. ‘I was born
near Aberdeen’, he added, ‘where it is thought a crime
to be honest; and I think such precepts the best lessons a Printer
can get’.
However, in the end, Williamson resolved that he would ‘always
stand up for my Brethren Printers, and for the liberty of the press;
and shall be watch-ful to check every scoundrel who may have the
impudence to pry into our secrets without our permission’.
Having thus embarked on the course of printing Williamson pursued
it vigorously. As well as further editions of his Indian adventures,
he went on to print his Directory for Edinburgh, Canongate, Leith
and Suburbs (the first), an alphabetical account of the whole world,
the publicity for his Edinburgh Penny Post service and, finally,
an account of his own Trial of Divorce.
Such colourful characters as Peter Williamson, however, were the
exception rather than the rule. The general trend in the latter
part of the eighteenth century was towards the amalgamation of smaller
firms into bigger ones and it is in this period that we first come
across names which were to last into the twentieth century.
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Volume 1, published 1990
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