S.E. Cool: pleasant, dull towards evening + a few (literally) drops of rain. Small town list + no country work till a ‘Phone message at 3 to a man Trotter1, Sundhopeburn to which I cycled after a meeting of St Andrew Amb. Assoc.2 at which, besides Chalmers3, Sec[retary], Mrs Mack4 (a member of the Comttee), myself (Chairman), the public was represented by T Craig Brown5 + Robert Currie Senr!6 A nurse friend of Dora’s = Sarah Campbell7 came for the week end. Minnie Brown came at night about V.A.D. medals8.
1 Nathaniel Trotter, byreman, was Inhabitant Occupier not rated at Sundhopeburn, Yarrow [1921 Valuation Roll, VR011700009-/339, Selkirk County, page 339 of 611]
2 The St. Andrew’s Ambulance Association, which had been “resuscitated”, as Dr Muir put it, by Chalmers and others in 1920 in response to the presentation of a Motor Ambulance by T Craig Brown [see diary entry for Tuesday 27 January 1920]
3 Assume James George Chalmers (about 1860-1943), solicitor, bank agent and sometime Town Clerk Depute; at Selkirk between at least 1903-1942, at Hillside Terrace and later at The Floors, Russell Place
4 Agnes Mackintosh née Watson, formerly Harper (1859-1946), of Elm Park, Selkirk, whose home was known by Dr Muir as ‘the Magic Cave’
5 Thomas Craig Brown or T Craig Brown (1844-1922), woollen manufacturer, antiquary and local historian
6 Robert Currie “senior” is presumably Robert Currie (about 1847-1923), hosiery manufacturer, the fourth of five generations with the same name but the elder of the two alive at this time; for the avoidance of misunderstanding across the long span of Dr Muir’s diaries he has always been identified as Robert Currie junior and his son, rather unsatisfactorily, as Robert Currie V
7 Sarah Campbell is not identified
8 See also diary entry for 17 July 1921; Minnie Mackay Brown (1874-1966), teacher and V.A.D. nurse who served in Egypt and France 1916-1919; curiously the Editor’s list of the people who appear in Dr Muir’s diaries does not record her as one of those young women who received acknowledgment of their V.A.D. contribution, in contrast with Elizabeth Charlotte ‘Carlota’ Rodger, Marion Vassie ‘May’ Lindsay, Margaret Isabel Dunlop or Gertrude Isabella ‘Gerty’ Craig Brown for example [‘Selkirkshire V.A.D.s.’, the Southern Reporter, 6 April 1922]
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/24, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1921]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 