Pollok1 has resigned Town Clerkship
Very showery all day + about 3 there were two peals of thunder + very heavy rain. I saw some half dozen cases, Currie + son2, Forest Mill + Hospital. Mrs Ballard3 was buried privately today. There was a service at 12.30 to which Dav.4 went. I found that the little Baxter de’ils5 had taken most of the cherries.
1 John Pollok (1858-1938), Town Clerk, Procurator Fiscal and sometime Clerk to the Property & Income Tax Commissioners, wrote a letter of resignation published in Southern Reporter in which Pollok noted that he had taken over the role after Peter Rodger’s death in June 1888 (having shared the role of Town Clerk with Rodger since January 1887) but that poor health and a growing workload made it impossible for him to continue; John Pollok was the tenant of a house and garden ‘Heatherlie Hill’ which is visible with extensive gardens off Heatherlie Terrace and sits next door to Woodburn (which by this time was the home of T Craig Brown’s widow Jane) [1922 Valuation Roll, VR007900012-/346, Selkirk Burgh, page 346 of 644; Ordnance Survey 25 inch Selkirkshire Sheet XII.5, published 1899].
2 By this date (Robert Currie senior had died June 1922) presumably Robert Currie junior (about 1857-1923), woollen hosiery manufacturer and his son Robert Currie (1874-1934), hosiery manufacturer, collectively the third, fourth and fifth generations of Curries at Selkirk with the given name Robert.
3 Julia Mary Ballard née Anderson (about 1838-1922), died 11 July 1922, at Philipburn, Selkirk, aged 84, death certified by D Charteris Graham M.B., Ch.B., and she was interred at Caddonfoot; Julia was the daughter of David Murray Anderson, gentleman, and Eleanor Anderson née Naysmyth, and the widow of George Alexander Ballard formerly of the Madras Civil Service.
4 David Charteris ‘Dav.’ Graham (1889-1963), M.B., Ch.B., medical practitioner and Dr Muir’s business partner.
5 The ‘little devils’ were Cyril Ross Baxter (1915-1997) and Erik Sandeman Baxter (1919–1999), sons of Lily Birgitta Baxter formerly Lindback and Harold Ross Baxter, manager, of 47 Södra Vägen 50, 412 54 Göteborg, Sweden [Consular Returns 1915, 164/CL 161 and 1919, 164/CL 407]; they are the brothers of Enid Gordon Baxter, later Thorn (1917-2013) who appears in Dr Muir’s diary on a number of occasions in May 1922.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/25, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1922]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 