Heavy hoar frost followed by a really fine day. At Viewfield David had 2 cases of tuberculous cervical glands + I also got him to examine Robert Ballantyne, Eastfield, but he didn’t find anything. Went to morning service when the Church was re-opened after being cleaned + decorated + anniversary services held. Mr Dawson, Edinburgh, preached. Collection in forenoon £101. I didn’t like the painting [?]. Lunched at Philiphaugh with Sam + Mrs S. Made out an itinerary for him for Paxton [?]. Wrote Helen.
1 Viewfield, the Muir and Graham medical partnership’s nursing home at the top of Viewfield Park and immediately behind the Victoria Halls.
2 David Charteris ‘Dav.’ Graham (1889-1963), M.B., Ch.B., medical practitioner and Dr Muir’s business partner.
3 Robert Ballantyne (1905-), born Ashkirk, son of Arthur Ballantyne and Violet Ballantyne née Wilson. The family lived at Eastfield, Bowden, just south of the Selkirk – St Boswells road [1921 Census] and on 13 August 1923 Mrs Ballantyne and Robert had presented themselves at evening consultation in some sort of difficulty.
4 The Lawson Memorial Church, Selkirk, had just been redecorated.
5 The Reverend Edwin Collas Dawson (1849-1925), Episcopal clergyman, M.A. (Oxon), (1849-1925), who was Curate of Hale, 1873-5, and thereafter at St Thomas Episcopal Church, Edinburgh, and was the author of many books including ‘James Hannington, D.D., F.L.S., F.R.G.S., first bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa : a history of his life and work, 1847-1885’, London, 1889 [Bertie, David, Ed., Scottish Episcopal Clergy, 1689-2000]. Married 1875 at Sandgate, Kent, to Lucy Mackinlay Munro Dawson née Wyllie (1855-1917), they had two children Robert Dawson (1877-1940), later a Church of England minister, and Mabel Dawson (1878-1965).
6 Samuel Strang ‘Sam’ Steel (1882-1961), of Philiphaugh, M.P. for Ashford, Kent, 1918-1929, and Vere Mabel Steel née Cornwallis.
7 As noted before, Dr Muir’s handwriting has deteriorated. If Paxton is the correct reading it is not at all clear why Dr Muir would have to give a member of the local gentry a route to Paxton but perhaps he was offering more than that, a journey around the byways of Berwickshire in his own idiom. One can only hope they fed themselves better.
8 Helen Frances ‘Mousey’ Muir (1880-1963), Dr Muir’s third daughter and sometime housekeeper, who had been away from Selkirk for a long time since she and Dr Muir travelled south to stay with Muir relations in Surrey on 16 July 1923.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/26, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1923]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 