THE ROYAL BURGH OF AYR Seven Hundred and Fifty Years of History Edited by ANNIE I. DUNLOP 1 O.B.E., LL.D., \ 278 THE ROYAL BURGH OF AYR family apart', and by the fervour of his address aroused his congregation to a high pitch of repentance, which was followed be a general confession of sins throughout the whole town during the course of the ensuing week. First the kirk-session confessed and thereafter the various trades and crafts. The confessions CHAPTER 17 were read from the pulpit the following Sunday and were sub• sequently entered in the session book 'for the use of posteritie'. NEWSPAPERS This proved to be the final appearance of plague in Ayr, JOHN FERGUSON MAGNAIR although it raged in various places in Scotland until 1648. The references to plague in Ayr in the old records are YR, like most small towns, had to await the issue of the sufficiently numerous and informative to provide a picture of Along-drawn struggle for freedom to publish, which was the enormous problems with which the community was beset, taking place in more populous centres, before it could see the and of the inadequacy of their resources. To meet such dangers successful establishment of a newspaper of its own. would have taxed the efforts of a modern society equipped The earliest efforts to institute regular publications in Britain with the knowledge, the administrative machinery and the were attended with so many risks and were hedged about with means which have evolved through the centuries. It is obvious so many restraints amounting even to repression, that it is not that the social evolution of Scotland, among other nations, was surprising that few of the pioneer ventures survived beyond a constantly affected by the presence of plague either as an actual short period. or a potential danger. The development of the public health Various official devices were employed to curb newspapers service, among other social services, owes its inception to the in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rulers and crude and elementary precautions brought into being by small governments viewed the Press with as much disfavour as some separate municipalities fighting for their lives in circumstances of their successors do to-day and displayed it still more actively. darkened by ignorance and superstition. One example may Even after the expiry of the Licensing Act in 1693 it required be mentioned of the impact of plague on Scotland's poHtical considerable hardihood to pubhsh, since a publisher might find history. It is interesting to speculate on the course of events himself suffering the rigours of imprisonment for the too frank had Montrose, fresh from his victory at Kilsyth, not been expression of opinions which were not regarded with favour in prevented from occupying Edinburgh by the presence of plague high quarters, and might even pay the penalty with his life, in the capital. The most lasting impression of all is the as when Thomas Ruddiman, jun., the Edinburgh publisher, fortitude with which the citizens met these recurring perils, died in gaol in 1745. and by standing to their duty, even in the shadow of death, Curtailment of the freedom of pubhcation had also been finally vanquished them. effected by the imposition of the newspaper stamp, which from the original ^d. per sheet in 1712 was successively raised REFERENCES to id., 2^A. (1798), 3|d. (1804) and finally 4d. in 1815, and it John H. Pagan, Annals of Ayr (1560-1692), 1897 was not until 1855 that this restrictive burden was removed. D. Murray Lyon, Ayr in Olden Times, 1928 Before the seventeenth century there had been various types John Ritchie, M.B., CH.B., M.R.G.P.E., D.P.H., The Plague in Dumfries of printed news and comment, but it was only in the early part John Ritchie, M.B., CH.B., M.R.G.P.E., D.P.H.. Quarantine for Plague in of that century that there appeared a periodical in London Scotl'md during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries with a regular title. Some of these publications doubtless found G. S. R,de, Ayr Burgh Accounts (1534-1624), 1937 their way north, but not until May 1678 do we learn of the Thomas Ferguson, Dawn of Scottish Social Welfare, 1948 magistrates of Ayr arranging to receive the weekly Gazette for 279 28o THE ROYAL BURGH OF AYR NEWSPAPERS one year. This would be the semi-official London Gazette, which Wilson's relatives, but it was laid down by the Court in favour had been started as the Oxford Gazette in 1665, when the Court of the latter that 'the goodwill of a newspaper is a right trans• had been driven there on account of the plague in London. missible to heirs'. The Edinburgh Gazette did not appear until 1699. The monopoly of the Advertiser had been challenged in 1818 Newsletters of one kind and another appear to have reached by the Ayr and Wigtownshire Courier, founded by Maxwell Dick the town subsequently, but it is not until the beginning of the and the Rev. Alexander Cuthill, minister of the second charge nineteenth century that the first newspaper was published in of Ayr, but it does not seem to have been successful. Mr. Ayr. John Wilson, who in 1786 had published Poems chiefly in Cuthill had to make a composition with his creditors, and the Scottish Dialect by Robert Burns from his press in Kilmarnock, although a company was formed to continue the Courier it was removed his cases and press to Ayr four years later, retaining compelled to cease pubKcation about 1825. his shop in Kilmarnock and looking after it himself while his The Advertiser was again in undisputed command of the field, brother Peter took charge of the printing shop in Ayr. It was and one of its early editors was the Rev. Hamilton Paul, whose under the latter's supervision that on 5th August 1803, there versified appeal was the means of saving the Auld Brig o' Doon appeared the initial number of the Air Advertiser, printed and from demolition. pubHshed by John and Peter Wilson at 23 High Street. In 1832 T. M. Gemmell, who was a brother-in-law of It was the first newspaper to be published in Ayrshire, and McCormick and had been trained for the Bar, entered the only the Aberdeen Journal, the Glasgow Herald and the Kelso Mail business as editor, the firm becoming McCormick and Gemmell. have precedence of it in all Scotland. The early numbers are The latter became sole proprietor in 1850, and when his son unfortunately missing, but No. 17, bearing the date of Thurs• joined him in it the firm name was changed to that of T. M. day, 24th November 1803, was a crown sheet of four pages, Gemmell & Son, the imprint which the paper still carries. bearing a red i ^d. stamp. When the elder Gemmell died in 1889 his son, A. B. Gemmell, The times were propitious for the new venture, for while and later his grandson. Col. T. C. Dunlop, carried on the family the National Debt had more than doubled as a result of the connexion, the present manager director being Mr. W. H. war with France, there was everywhere an awakened spirit of Dunlop, son of Col. Dunlop. enterprise, of invention and of resource that heralded an era The first real challenge to the supremacy of the Advertiser, of expanding prosperity, if not yet of peace. The short-lived which published on Thursdays, came with the appearance of Peace of Amiens—'a peace which everybody is glad of and the Observer, which was started in 1832, as a weekly, appearing nobody is proud of—had given way to a new war against the on Tuesdays, to give expression to Conservative opinion in imperial ambitions of Napoleon. The pubHc were avid for opposition to the Whig views of the older paper. The newcomer news of the war and of Parliament, and the Advertiser gave it. was hailed in McCarter's Directory: With prudent management the venture succeeded, and for It has been a matter of astonishment that a county such as Ayrshire, almost thirty years it had the field largely to itself. William rising in wealth and commercial consequence, has not been able success• McCarter, in his Directory of 1832, says the Advertiser 'passed fully to maintain two newspapers. This desideratum is now likely to be through various hands into the present proprietors, McCormick supplied and if properly encouraged, the county, if saddled with double advertisements, will have the satisfaction of at least hearing two sides of a and Carnie', but this is incorrect. From the Court of Session story. Papers 1822 (McGormick and Carnie v McCubbin) it is learned that in 1816 Peter Wilson's share had been acquired A footnote to this announcement makes mention of the by McCormick and Carnie, but John Wilson had retained his existence of a Kilmarnock Chronicle, which had been 'like a holding, and when he died in 1821 his co-proprietors, McCor• steamer stopping at a port for repair' but was now proceeding mick and Carnie, claimed full ownership to the exclusion of 'on her voyage with renewed energy'. Reference was also made 283 THE ROYAL BURGH OF AYR NEWSPAPERS 283 to a 'new' monthly periodical entitled The Western Journal, but his style, and the give-and-take between him and the editor of these no further information has been obtained. of the Observer, William Buchanan, certainly added to the The Advertiser gradually moved from its Whig position and gaiety of the town.