The Prof: John Alexander MacWilliam (1857 - 1937)

Some blog entries back I referred briefly to Professor John Alexander MacWilliam (1857 – 1937), who was Professor of Physiology at Aberdeen University for all of 41 years from the age of 29 to the age of 70. Since then I have come across much information on this distinguished member of our family – in large part through a lady who got in touch with me as a result of the brief mention. This lady (TW) and her husband happen to be the current owners of a house in Cults of which the Prof and his new wife were the first owners back in 1892. These folks were owners of the local pharmacy for 30 years or so, and so they had many very old and interesting references to the Prof in the pharmacy archives. Amongst other coincidences was that TW herself was born and raised in the same part of Inverness-shire as the Prof.

I won’t try to go deeply into the Prof’s career here, but it is quite clear that he was someone special, whose research has led to a better understanding of the workings of the human heart and in the long term to important innovations such as the pacemaker and the defibrillator. One result of the status he achieved is that many aspects of his life are quite well documented, and I think it is worthwhile to try to summarise some of this here – at least from the aspect of interest in the family heritage.

John Alexander was one of three children born at Culmill Farm at Kiltarlity near Beauly to William McWilliam (originally from Inveravon) and his wife Isabella Cumming (originally from Knockando). The first son and the Prof’s older brother, William Lewis McWilliam, became farmer at Culmill. He married Mary Burns. He died in 1936 aged 81, and his wife died in 1919 at the age of 63. They did not have children and are buried in Kiltarlity churchyard along with the parents William and Isabella. The Prof also had a sister, Isabella Helen McWilliam, born in 1859, who sadly died aged just 16 months. It is maybe worth a brief note here that the spelling McW or MacW seems to have been entirely down to a matter of personal preference. The Prof's work until about 1889 is published under the name J.A. McWilliam, but after that he appears to prefer the MacWilliam spelling.

The Prof’s paternal grandparents were Alexander McWilliam (b. 1768?, Inveravon) and Elspet Gordon (b.1788,  Knockando), and maternal grandparents were John Cumming (b. 1774, Knockando) and Helen Cruickshank (b. 1777, Knockando). 

Our own Lewis McW was an older brother of the Prof’s grandfather Alexander, and so we can describe relationships such as that Lewis was the Prof’s great uncle. Interestingly, the material I have on the Prof seems to confirm most of the previous generation (i.e. 6 of his 8 great-grandparents), including that the parents of our Lewis and his brother Alexander were William McWilliam and his wife Anne Cruickshank.  This makes William and Anne my gggg-grandparents.

And as mentioned elsewhere the Prof was first cousin of Hugh Duff McWilliam – whose work dated 1903 has been a great help to me in looking back through the McWilliam generations.

I have more on the Prof’s various McW family connections – too much to include here. I know that the Prof married twice, but that he had no offspring. I would certainly be interested to hear from anyone who has a more direct family connection. The Prof’s mother’s family are well worth a mention though.  His maternal grandparents (John and Helen Cumming) were the founders of the Cardhu distillery, and the family owned the business until selling it to the Johnny Walker company in 1893! http://www.scotchwhisky.net/distilleries/cardhu.htm

In 1889 at the age of 32, the Prof married Edith Constance Wise, from a wealthy Irish family (and the sister of Berkeley Dean Wise – very much a leading civil engineer of the time). Sadly Edith died in November 1893 at the age of just 33 – having contracted malaria just two months earlier while on a trip with her husband. It is understood that she had stayed in the Canary Islands (and malaria was very much present there then) while The Prof travelled on to South Africa before returning - on a ship which was travelling from Bombay to Southampton. The Cults pharmacy records show how the Prof was prescribing medication for his sick wife, but they must both have recognised that her condition was incurable in those days. It goes without saying that this must have been a very sad period. In 1897 the Prof moved from their “Wayside” home in Cults to a new home albeit just a few hundred yards away at Inverdee. In 1898 he was married for a second time, to Florence Edith Thomas from Wrexham in North Wales.

The Prof died of heart failure in January 1937, in a nursing home at 35 Drumsheugh Gardens in Edinburgh. I had to do a double take when I first saw this information – because this is exactly the building where I was born just over 10 years later!

To reinforce the message that the Prof was a man of distinction, the National Portrait Gallery in London have two photographic portraits of him, and I am pleased to have managed to obtain copies. At the time of writing I don’t have exact dates for these, but I suspect that the overcoat picture shows him at maybe in his mid 50s (so approx 1912) and the studio picture is maybe in his later 60s (approx 1925).

Finally this entry would not be complete without a big word of thanks to T and A for their help!
And a postscript is that the Prof now has his own Wikipedia entry - here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Alexander_MacWilliam