George Craig of Galashiels

Abstract

One lawyer’s working life can tell us a great deal about the age in which he lived. George Craig (1783-1843), baron bailie of the town of Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, thought that he lived in ‘the age of adventure’—a time of industrial development and commercial opportunity. As a notary, law agent, banker and insurance agent, Craig’s correspondence reveals a network of lawyers across Selkirkshire, Roxburghshire and Berwickshire, through whom passed the affairs of the landed gentry, farmers, mill-owners, wealthy cloth merchants as well as weavers, tenants and the poor. Craig was factor to Sir John Scott of Gala, and agent of James Pringle of Torwoodlee, George Fairholme of Greenknowe and Professor Alexander Munro tertius. He knew and corresponded with Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg, but his correspondents extended well beyond the Borders, into the north of England, London, Jamaica, and the United States. His career reveals much about life and society in the Scottish Borders and what it meant to be a lawyer in early nineteenth-century Scotland. Based on the eight volumes of his recently-discovered letter-books, this research aims to provide the first in-depth study of a local law agent in nineteenth-century Scotland.