Robert James Rowat
Shipowner and insurance-broker Robert James Rowat (1858–1930) and his wife Janet ('Jenny') Smith Robin (1860–1932) were members of a Paisley textile-manufacturing family, several of whose members commissioned work from Charles Rennie Mackintosh: see Prospecthill House and Warriston, both in Paisley, and 14 Kingsborough Gardens, Glasgow. 1 The Rowats were also linked to the founders of the famous Glasgow department store, Wylie & Lochhead (now House of Fraser).
Robert Wylie and William Lochhead had married two sisters, Margaret and Jane Downie respectively, in the 1820s and had set up an undertaking and upholstery business in 1829. 2 Wylie's son-in-law, Archibald Hill joined the partnership briefly in 1843, but left in December 1844 due to family disagreements. Hill's son, Robert Wylie Hill, opened his own retail warehouse, Wylie, Hill Robert, in 1880 in direct competition with his cousins at Wylie & Lochhead. 3
In October 1888, Wylie Hill's premises at 16–22 Buchanan Street, facing Wylie & Lochhead, suffered a disastrous fire. 4 Wylie Hill commissioned a new department store from architect John Hutchison (c. 1841–1908). This was to be one of the earliest projects with which Mackintosh was involved; he was then serving his apprenticeship with Hutchison. 5
There were two marriages between the Hill family and the Rowats. Wylie Hill married Robert James Rowat's sister, Isabella Muir Rowat (d. 1940) in 1886. 6 The second marriage, in 1863, was between Margaret Downie Hill, sister of Robert Wylie Hill, and William Rowat, who was Robert James Rowat's uncle. 7 Their daughter Jessie Wylie Rowat (1864–1948) married Francis H. ('Fra') Newbery in 1889, the Headmaster (subsequently Director) of the Glasgow School of Art. 8
The Rowats had another more obscure family connection to the practice of Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh. Mary Margaret Hill Rowat, sister of Jessie Newbery and cousin of R. J. Rowat, married Alexander Wylie Sclanders ('New Zealand Merchant') in 1899. In 1919 Sclanders's cousin, Agnes Garret Sclanders, married the New Zealand-born architect Andrew Graham Henderson, who had recently replaced Mackintosh as John Keppie's business partner. 9
R. J. Rowat and Jenny S. Robin married in June 1886. 10 By May 1891 the couple were living in rented accommodation at 4 Belhaven Terrace in Glasgow's West End. 11 Their only child, registered as 'Maud Isabelle Rowat' (elsewhere and usually 'Maud Isobel') was born on 13 December 1889. 12
R. J. Rowat was co-partner with Robert Crawford, Kilmacolm, in 'Crawford & Rowat', advertising in 1895 as 'ship and insurance brokers, ship owners and coal exporters, Port Line of sailing ships'. 13 By the 1890s, old-fashioned sail was increasingly replaced by steam power. Russell & Co.'s yards at Greenock and Port Glasgow launched the iron sailing ship Port Chalmers (1884, 250 feet long), the three-masted, steel Port Stanley (1890), S.V. Port Elgin (1893, 2,780 tons capacity), and the steam vessel Inveran (1906), the last for Rowat alone. 14
The Port Line suffered a series of tragic accidents. The Port Gordon (carrying coal and iron) was wrecked off Oregon, en route to San Francisco and Washington State in 1889. 15 The Port Yarrock was lost with all hands off Co. Kerry in 1894, and a well-publicised official enquiry blamed Rowat, for 'allowing the vessel to go to sea short-handed', and not instructing the captain to seek safety during the storm. The Glasgow Herald said: 'He will know better in future ... in devolving upon his captain the responsibility that should attach to himself'. 16 The Port Errol burned to her steel skeleton off Lamlash, Arran, while fully-loaded during her maiden voyage in 1895. 17 The coal-carrying Port Crawford was unable to trade when detained for a year in Brazil during a revolution (1893–4) and Rowat subsequently lost his lawsuit for compensation. 18 The Port Douglas ran ashore near a lighthouse in South Africa (1897), and the guano-transporting Port Elgin was lost off Peru in 1911. 19
By May 1901, the Rowats were living in rented accommodation at 14 Kingsborough Gardens, Glasgow. 20 William Robertson, an Edinburgh builder, had started construction of Kingsborough Gardens around 1881 – the feu contracts were signed in June 1882, and the first houses were already occupied by May the same year. No. 14 first appears in the local directories in 1884. 21 The Rowats purchased 14 Kingsborough Gardens in May 1909, and it was 'Janet Smith Robin or Rowat', in her own name, with her husband's formal consent as required by law, who financed the purchase. 22
R. J. Rowat's father, Thomas Rowat, of Warriston, Paisley, died in January 1916, leaving a gross moveable or personal estate of £72,929, to be shared among his large family. 23 In February 1917, R. J. Rowat wound up the Inverkip Steamship Company and the Port Line Ltd, which coincided with paying off his wife's mortgage on 14 Kingsborough Gardens. The Inveran Steamship Co. was also liquidated. All this was completed by 1921, which probably marks Rowat's retirement from active commercial life (he was now in his early sixties). 24
The numbering of Kingsborough Gardens was changed in 1929–30 to accommodate new building, and no. 14 became no. 34. 25 R. J. Rowat died on 25 July 1930 at 34 Kingsborough Gardens. He left an enormous personal estate worth £236,549 (gross, before tax), a huge sum at the time. 26 His widow survived him by two years. 27
Notes:
1: Statutory Births, Deaths, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 22 May 2014].
2: 'Wylie & Lochhead: Company History', The House of Fraser Archive, www.housefraserarchive.ac.uk [accessed 22 May 2014].
3: London Gazette, 20 June 1845, p. 1849; Glasgow Post Office Directory, 1879–80, p. 256; 1880–1, p. 266; 'Wylie & Lochhead: Company History', and 'Wylie & Lochhead Ltd: Management of Company', The House of Fraser Archive, www.housefraserarchive.ac.uk [accessed 22 May 2014].
4: Scotsman, 15 October 1888, p. 7; 16 October 1888, p. 5; North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 15 October 1888, p. 4; Glasgow Herald, 15 October 1888, p. 9.
5: 'R. Wylie Hill's warehouse', and 'John Hutchison', Dictionary of Scottish Architects, www.scottisharchitects.org.uk [accessed 22 May 2014].
6: Glasgow Herald, 8 January 1886, p. 1; Scotsman; Statutory Births, Marriages, Deaths, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 22 May 2014].
7: Glasgow Herald, 9 July 1863, p. 3; Statutory Marriages, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 22 May 2014].
8: Glasgow Herald, 30 May 1864, p. 5; Morning Post, 2 October 1889, p. 1; Census information, www.ancestry.co.uk; Statutory Births, Marriages, Deaths, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 22 May 2014]; ‘Glasgow Girls (act. 1880–1920)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: University Press, online edition, 2010, www.oxforddnb.com [accessed 22 May 2014].
9: Statutory Marriages, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 22 May 2014]; The Times, 6 April 1899, p. 1; Glasgow Herald, 7 April 1899, p. 1; 4 June 1919, p. 1.
10: Census information, www.ancestry.co.uk; Statutory Marriages, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 22 May 2014]; Glasgow Herald, 3 June 1886, p. 1; Stephen Jackson, '14 Kingsborough Gardens and the Patronage of the Rowat Family', Journal of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, 98, Spring 2014, p. 18, fig. 3.
11: Glasgow Post Office Directory, 1889–90, [published May], p. 523; 1890–1, p. 525; 1891–2, p. 526; Census information, Valuation Rolls 1895–6, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 22 May 2014].
12: Statutory Births, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 22 May 2014].
13: Glasgow Post Office Directory, 1895–6, p. 143.
14: Scotsman, 22 November 1884, p. 6; 18 November 1890, p. 4; 12 September 1893, p. 7; 30 September 1893, p. 4; 26 September 1906, p. 5; Glasgow Herald, 29 November 1890, p. 9; 31 May 1893, p. 9; 12 September 1893, p. 7; 17 November 1906, p. 10; Dundee Courier, 17 November 1906, p. 2.
15: Scotsman, 7 March 1889, p. 4; Glasgow Herald, 7 March 1889, p. 7.
16: Glasgow Herald, 22 March 1894, p. 4; 23 March 1894, p. 10; 28 March 1894, p. 6; Scotsman, 22 March 1894, p. 3; 'Board of Trade Wreck Report No. 4890, for Port Yarrock', Sheriff Court, Glasgow 20–27 March 1894, before Sheriff J. B. L. Birnie, Unique I.D.: 16390, PortCities Southampton, Southampton City Council [digital maritime archive], www.plimsoll.org [accessed 24 May 2014].
17: Glasgow Herald, 22 January 1895, p. 4; 23 February 1895 (misnamed 'Port Ellen'); John Ward~McQuaid, Stuart Cameron, 'S.V. Port Errol', Clydebuilt Database, Clydesite, www.clydesite.co.uk [accessed 24 May 2014].
18: Glasgow Herald, 29 October 1895, pp. 4, 9; 5 November 1895, pp. 3, 6.
19: Standard, 21 June 1897, p. 8; Hampshire Advertiser, 17 July 1897, p. 5; Scotsman, 1 September 1897, p. 9; 4 May 1911, p. 9; Glasgow Herald, 28 August 1897, p. 4; Bruce Allan, Stuart Cameron, 'S.V. Port Elgin', Clydebuilt Database, Clydesite, www.clydesite.co.uk [accessed 24 May 2014].
20: Census information, www.ancestry.co.uk, [accessed 25 May 2014]; Glasgow Post Office Directory, 1901–2 [published May 1901], pp. iv, 534, 824.
21: '8 contiguous steadings ... 14 June 1882', Feu contract by Messrs Bruce to W. Robertson, Search Sheet No. 13372, pp. 32–8, First Series, General Register of Sasines, Glasgow, supplied by Registers of Scotland, 5 May 2014; Glasgow Post Office Directory, 1882–3 [published May], p. 709; 1884–5, p. 723.
22: 17 May 1909, Disposition of 14 (later 34) Kingsborough Gardens, by Trustees of C. Aitchison to J. S. Robin; 17 May 1909, Bond and disposition in security to J. and E. Waddell (of £500) and J. Y. Renfrew or Johnston (of £150), by J. S. Robin, Search Sheet Image 9870, Second Series, Glasgow (Barony), Vol. 56, p. 705, Registers Direct, supplied by Registers of Scotland, 5 May 2014. The Scottish Married Women's Property Acts, 1880 and 1881, allowed wives to buy property and make contracts in their own rights. Jocelynne Scutt (administrator), 25 July 2010, 'Married Women’s Property and Divorce in the 19th Century', Women's History Network Blog, http://womenshistorynetwork.org [accessed 21 May 2014]
23: Thomas Rowat, Warrison, Paisley, Inventory, registered 27 March 1916, Paisley Sheriff Court SC58/42/84, p. 400, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 26 May 2014].
24: Edinburgh Gazette, 16 February 1917, p. 373; London Gazette, 8 November 1921, p. 1925.
25: Glasgow Post Office Directory, 1929–30, pp. 603, 984; 1930–1, p. 592, 989.
26: Scotsman, 26 July 1930, p. 20; Evening Telegraph, 12 September 1930, p. 11; R. J. Rowat, Inventory, registered 9 September 1930, Glasgow Sheriff Court Inventories, SC36/48/425 pp. 477, 479, National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh.
27: Scotsman, 4 October 1932, p. 16; Glasgow Herald, 4 October 1932, p. 1; Statutory Deaths, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk [accessed 26 May 2014].
