James Alfred Ewing, 1855 - 1935

Abstract

James Alfred Ewing was born in Dundee on March 27, 1855. In his Engineer's Outlook (1933), an “ olla-podrida of reminiscence and exposition and reflection,” he calls it, he has told in brief his life story of much interest and high achievement. His father, of sturdy farmer stock, was minister of the Free Church of Scotland in Dundee. He had “ come out ” in the Disruption of 1843 ; his mother was the daughter of a Glasgow solicitor. The ministerial household, he writes, “ was an entirely happy one . . . the phrase a refined home may sound banal ; it describes what to me was a potent reality and is still a beloved memory.” Alfred had two brothers, both a good deal older than himself. O f these, the senior, Robert, went from St. Andrews to Balliol, became a Fellow and Tutor of St. John’s, Oxford, and after holding various livings, died an Honorary Canon of Salisbury. The second brother, John, was ordained as a Presbyterian minister and went out to Australia in charge of a church at Melbourne. He was a keen mountaineer and had much influence on Alfred, his junior by six years. There was a much younger sister, still living, “ who counted for little to the growing boy, but much indeed later to the man and his progeny.” Such was his family ; his father was absorbed in the heavy calls of his ministerial work ; the care of the boys fell mostly on the mother, who “ made us associate a love of learning with our love of her.” They were at school at Dundee and when the British Association met there in 1867, she took Alfred, at the age of twelve years, to listen to the words of a great master. The interests of the home were chiefly clerical and literary, and he describes himself as somewhat of a sp o rt; his pocket money went in tools and chemicals ; an empty attic was his laboratory ; explosions not infrequently followed his experiments, in which occasionally the domestic cat assisted.