Positive activity

“The debate on the slavery background focusing on statues and street names in Dundee is likely to overlook the more positive activity of Dundee in actually fighting slavery,” writes Ron Scrimgeour of Forfar.

“In January 1846 the anti-slavery protester and former slave Frederick Douglass addressed at least four meetings in Dundee.

“The Rev George Gilfillan had arranged for him to speak in Dundee, at his School Wynd Church and the Bell Street Chapel. Dundonians will better know these buildings as Kidd’s Rooms and the Music Centre. He also spoke at McGavin’s Chapel, Tay Square and the Corn Exchange Hall, 6 Bank Street. Douglass had spoken in Perth before the Dundee meetings and proceeded to Arbroath and Montrose.

“In a recent Courier piece, Dr Norman Watson spoke of the linen slave cloth from Dundee mills. It is said that when walking to the Paradise Road Manse with George Gilfillan, mill workers were heading home. Frederick Douglass informed George Gilfillan that he had indeed been clad in Dundee Osnaburg.

“Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, also visited Dundee, again at the invitation of George Gilfillan. In April 1853 she spoke against slavery to a capacity crowd in the Steeple Church.

“Courier Country can boast of the presence and impact of both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe and a vocal condemnation of slavery in the city when the rest of the world was largely silent.

“There is a blue plaque on the wall of the Music Centre in Bell Street

“My father David Jamieson lived in Broughty Ferry and was 27 when he joined the Army in September 1939,” emails Valéry Jamieson. “He was newly married.

“He was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force and later to Belgium when the German advance began. Later, he was in The Black Watch, part of the 51st Highland Division, which retreated to St Valéry.

“My father could not bear to be a prisoner for five years. His only way to escape was to risk going down steep cliffs. French soldiers gave him ropes to help with the descent, but many of his friends were not so lucky, using knotted sheets which were not long enough and fell to their deaths.

“About 20 men, including my father, assembled on the shore. They saw a boat in the distance but only my father and one other had the courage to swim to it. It was 3am and dark and he never saw the other man again. My father was rescued by a Cornish fishing boat.

“Great joy was to follow. He made his way back to Dundee and on June 28 his first child was born and was christened Valéry. My father lived a full life and died when he was 89. Like many, he was reluctant to talk about his experiences, but I managed to glean some facts from my mother.

“My parents were married for 63 years and my mother died four years ago aged 102.”

Roon’ by the law

“My late mother Elsie Leadingham had the song Ian Cuthill mentions printed in the Craigie column many years ago,” says Nancy Robertson. “I found the clipping(quite brown with age) and it may help Ian:

When I was a bairnie,

I toddled oot Cairnie,

Doon by St Vigeans, an’ roon by the law,

The auld Abbey ruins,

The cliffs an’ the common,

The toon o’ Arbroath,

Oh I mind weel an’ braw.”