Rosalind Mary Mitchison 11 April 1919 – 20 September 2002 First published in The Independent 21 September 2002 Reproduced by permission of The Independent Rosalind Mitchison was a pioneering social historian who opened up a new world of social mores in the Scotland of the 18th and 19th centuries. She can be called the first historian of “sinners” and of the poor in Scotland. Most of her academic career was spent at Edinburgh University, where her last post was as Professor of Social History. One of her students, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, remembers her “not just as a great writer but as a great teacher too – full of energy, ideas, interesting information and challenging theories. History came alive in her presence.” She was born Rosalind Mary Wrong in Manchester in 1919, one of three talented daughters of Edwin Wrong, a historian at Oxford who died before Rosalind was 10. He had followed in his father’s footsteps: George Wrong was a distinguished Canadian historian. After Channing School at Highgate, London, Rosalind went to Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford to read History, and in 1943 became an assistant lecturer at Manchester University where the presiding genius was sir Lewis Namier. She was to emphasise her debt to Namier and those around him throughout her life – from him she learnt to concentrate on the details of history. In 1947 she married John Murdoch Mitchison – later Professor of Zoology at Edinburgh University – one of the enormously talented scientific sons of Naomi Mitchison and the Labour MP Dick Mitchison and a nephew of J B S Haldane. Their relationship was deeply close and, curiously, as much that of a brother and sister as man and wife. Rowy Mitchison not only created a secure and intellectually stimulating home, but raised four children, all of whom have become prominent. I remember vividly the Monopoly set of Edinburgh that they had devised, now something available commercially in the shops but back then in the Sixties it had been meticulously drawn out with all the right social implications of Morningside and Gorgie on the board. After Murdoch Mitchison was appointed to a lecturership at Edinburgh in 1953, and the family moved north of the border, Rowy developed an interest in Scottish history, starting part-time in the Department of Economic History under Professor A J Youngson. Once her children had grown up, Mitchison began to produce a remarkable stream of publications, beginning in 1952 with an original work called Agricultural Sir John: the life of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster. Eight years later she wrote A History of Scotland: it opens with the instruction “Go and stand on the Castle Rock of Stirling and look about you. That is the quickest way to comprehend the basic features that have dictated Scottish history”. The book remains one of the required text books for undergraduates serious about Scottish history: a third edition was published this year. According to Professor Christopher Smout, Historiographer to the Queen in Scotland, Mitchison’s contributions to Scottish history “were outstanding, and a breath of fresh air”. He says “They ranged from political and economic history to biography and very pioneering demographic and price history. But what became her real passion was the exploration of the lives of ordinary people, seen through the Kirk Session records, which led her into studies of marriage and her last, notable book on the Poor Law. Her much read History of Scotland showed her mastery of narrative in which everything came together. She will be long remembered for her common sense, humour and depth of scholarship”. Mitchison was always interested in demographic change and her study, British Population Change Since 1860 (1977), established her as an important scholar. In 1978 her Life in Scotland produced a new perspective on the history of the poor. It was followed in 1983 by Lordship to Patronage: Scotland 1603-1745. She had a passionate interest in the position of women, and particularly in their continued use of abilities and intellect within the family, combining independent thought with the old-fashioned values of nurturing the young. Her Sexuality and Social Control 1660-1780, co-authored with Leah Leneman, was a classic – a revised edition appeared in 1998 as Sin in the City. In 1991 she produced Coping with Destitution: poverty and relief in Western Europe. Her work The Old Poor Law in Scotland: the experience of poverty, 1574-1845 (2000) would have been remarkable scholarship of anybody, let alone an octogenarian. Mitchison’s strength was meticulous, Namier-like attention to detail; her achievement was much new important information on the social and economic life of Scotland. My wife Kathleen and I first met Rowy Mitchison in 1966, at the golden wedding of her mother- and father-in-law. This was a great clan gathering, one of several over the years where the Mitchisons turned up in force. Rowy’s home in Dovecote Road in Edinburgh was the perfect setting, with its lovely drawing room, windows at either end, looking out to a beautifully romantic garden. Rowy seemed a Mitchison as much by blood as by marriage. Our abiding memory of Rowy Mitchison is of walking the Scottish hills, and of being the recipients of her incredible powers of observation of both the built and the natural environment. Tam Dalyell Rosalind Mary Mitchison, MA(Oxon), HonDLitt. FRHistS, FRSE. Born 11 April 1919. Elected FRSE 1994. Died 20 September 2002,