“There were Brass and Iron Guns, Carronades, Small Arms, Anchors, Cables, Sails, Standing and Running Rigging, Shot, Shells, Iron Ballast, Sheet Copper, Lead, Water and Spirit Casks, Iron Hoops etc. The sale would take place in a Yard behind the Leith Assembly Rooms and would commence at eleven o clock of the forenoon on Friday the thirty-first of July inst. David required twenty-five percent of the purchase price to be paid by buyers immediately, and the rest within six days”

10 Scotland Street…The author Leslie Hills tells us more

Who was David?

Many years ago, I paid off the mortgage on 10 Scotland Street at the eastern edge of Edinburgh’s New Town and was handed a bundle of vellum deeds, dating back to 1823. I spread them over the floor and read them. It took a long time. The ornate script of the record of the first sale revealed that, in 1824, when the house was brand new, it was bought by David Kedie Whytt, a bookseller in Edinburgh. Who was he? I was intrigued, but busy. Years passed. Then one day in the National Archives at Kew, with an hour to spare, I asked an archivist if she had anything on a man called David Kedie Whytt. What happened next set me on decades of research and travel.

A grey document box was laid before me. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, was a letter, dated 26 May 1836, and headed 10 Scotland Street. In a fine hand, David Kedie Whytt was writing, from my home, to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, to apply for the increase in his pension to which he was entitled, due to thirty years’ service as a Royal Navy Purser. He stated his willingness to serve if called upon. I was hooked. I started looking for him.

David Kedie Whytt, born 1776, was brought up in the busy port of Kirkcaldy, the third child of James Whytt, a bookbinder, and Janet Davidson, his wife. Their families were long-established. Most were merchants, with maritime links with the Port of Leith and the far south of England. In wartime the men were mustered to the Navy. In the dying days of the 1778-1783 Anglo-French war, James Whytt was a Mariner on the sloop of war, Belle Poule. On board this unlikely maternity facility, Janet Davidson gave birth to their fourth and last child.

By 1790 James had moved his business and his family across the Forth to the West Bow, Edinburgh, where several bookbinders, the neighbours complained to the Council, made ‘dreadful clattering and banging’. The first of the family to leave, in late 1790s, was David’s elder brother, William, who apprenticed himself to the music impresario, Domenico Corri, and made his home in the new New Town.

In February 1799, David’s elder sister, Grace, married Admiral John Gourley of Leith. David and Gourley would soon have many dealings with each other. Just after the turn of the century, David and James set themselves up as wine and spirit merchants in Leith, at the foot of Willie Water’s close, and established their home on Sheriff Brae.

By 1804 James Whytt and Son had moved to larger premises on Lang Gate Side, south of Giles Street and next to the Vaults, the oldest building associated with wines and spirits in Leith – the earliest title reference I found is 1586. Their home was now on Constitution Street, overlooking South Leith Church with the Reverend Robert Dickson presiding, and its graveyard, in which they bought a large plot, for future use. On Constitution Street was the Victualling Board, which was handy as David had joined the Royal Navy as a purser, responsible for provisioning ships with everything from sails to wooden bowls. In 1809 he was promoted paymaster.

In time of war, imports from enemy countries, in this case, the wine of France, become problematic. Business must have suffered. David added the role of Naval Agent to his portfolio, auctioning off captured ships and their cargoes in Leith with his father, and in London based in Essex Street, a catspring from the Thames.

At the turn of the century, James purchased a newly-built first floor flat on the south-west corner of Morton Street, now Academy Street, with open land on two sides. James’ will informs us that the house had four rooms and kitchen closets, with landings and cellars, stairway and pump-well with a cistern – from where the maid would carry all water supplies up the stairs. There was no water closet i.e. no toilet. James had ‘rights to the whole parts, pendicles and pertinents thereof and free ish and entry’. He would live there for over forty years.

On 13 September 1807, David married Ann Henderson, of Falkirk, and moved to a rented home in Moray Street, now Spey Street. Thomas Carlyle, living there a few years later, was most complimentary about the landlady and the convenience of the spot, just off Leith Walk.

In the spring of 1808, at Mr Grinly’s Saleroom, David and James auctioned the fast Danish Sailing Gallias, Christina, presently becalmed in Leith Dry Dock. She had been cut out of a Norwegian harbour by his Majesty’s sloop Childers, and was the sloop’s prize. The cargo of fish, nails, iron, stores etc. were also on sale. In the summer the Whytts dealt with the beautiful coppered Danish Privateer, Torden Dkjol, with all her guns, shot, rigging, apparelling. She had been causing much grief to British ships in the Mediterranean and had been captured, after a long chase, by HM sloop Ringdove, one of the fastest sloops on the Northern Station.

Through the autumn of 1808 James and David advertised prize ships and goods, Norwegian yachts and sloops, barley meal, rough barley, sails, anchors, cables, and ropes. In December there were more prizes, including a Danish ship captured by his Majesty’s gun brig, Basilisk. In 1809 their sales include 840 bags of coffee, eleven ships with contents of wines, fox skins, sugar. hand spokes, otter skins and a quantity of cordage, sails and small arms belonging to a Russian brig destroyed by HMS.

In 1810, there were captures made by HM ships Clio and Erebus – six Danish prize vessels and cargoes, five prize vessels and a Russian Galliot. Somewhere in all this, David and Ann moved their growing family to a spacious flat at 2 George Place, now 374 Leith Walk. And somehow David found time to be Secretary Clerk, ashore and afloat, to three Admirals commanding Leith, in succession, over ten years.

The first was Gardner with whom he sailed to Ireland. In April 1804 Rear Admiral Vashon replaced Gardner. Vashon stayed for over four years, charged with protecting the trade of Leith merchants. He instituted a convoy system to protect Leith’s vital shipping route. When Vashon retired, the Leith merchants gave him a public dinner and two commemorative plates, and made him a Freeman of Edinburgh and of Trinity House. Admiral Nelson, who had saved David’s brother-in-law, John Gourley from a Court Martial, said he was happy to call Vashon his friend.

David’s last Admiral was William Otway, who is reported to have been frank and affable with a record of indefatigable service which impaired his health. He joined the Navy aged ten and was immediately pitched into a lifetime of battles, sinking, fevers at sea and captures. In 1813 he had David write to the Lord Provost that two French frigates had been seen and, from their course, he feared they were going north to intercept the Gothenburg convoy. He dealt with them. He too received the Freedom of the City and David wrote his letter of thanks. In the archives there are many letters written by David in his fine handwriting - and signed by the Admirals in their crabbed hands. They went to sea as boys.

When the Treaty of Paris ended the war, the provost was informed that from 16 March 1816 no more convoys would sail out of Leith. On 27 April 1816, in the Caledonian Mercury, James Whytt and son announced a sale of wine and spirit articles, as they have given up the business and will sell, in their warehouses at 61 Giles Street, “Casks, Bottles, Gauntrees, Weighing Beams, Stoups, a Hand Cart etc, all in excellent order and worthy of attention.”

For several years David continued to work as a naval agent from George Place and Essex Street. However, both he and his father were increasingly involved in brother William’s business which morphed from selling music and pianos into a very prosperous bookshop and circulating library. David was a bookseller till the end of his days, but seems to have concentrated on family – while brother William became a power in the land.

That, however, is another story. ■

10 Scotland Street £14.99

Info: 10scotlandstreet.com