Skirving is not a very common name in Scotland, but it is well known in our family: the name of my wife Joan’s father was William Skirving Telfer ( also his father, grandfather and on through several generations). The only other occasion on which I have come across the name is in a Glasgow street name: Skirving Street in South Glasgow, Our Glasgow flat is nearby, and this evening Joan and ate a fine meal in a restaurant in that street (Oscar Bar and Kitchen)
The name ‘Skirving’ is not common at all… in fact I have never come across it other than in Joan’s family and in Scottish history books, so, following our conversation this evening in the convivial atmosphere of Oscars, I agreed to write a post in honour of Joan’s famous ancestor… William Skirving … not her Dad, whose name was William Skirving Telfer and was himself a very fine man, but the man in whose honour the name Skirving was passed down through generations of the family to her father, and who is honoured in Edinburgh on the Calton memorial to Thomas Muir and the ‘Friends of the People’. That ancestor is William Skirving: campaigner for greater political freedoms in late 18th Century Britain.
Following the French Revolution of 1789, and in the light of the political ideas which had given rise to that movement, a number of British, including many Scottish, people believed that Britain also could benefit from political reform. In fact, it wasn’t until 1928 that all adults in the UK obtained the right to vote, but these early advocates of a wider franchise, stimulated by the hopes of a ‘new dawn’ which the free thinking of the 18th Century gave rise to, met and campaigned in the late 1700s for a wider distribution of the vote. Though deemed ‘radical’ at the time, we might not think them too radical – they did not, for example, advocate ‘votes for all women’ – but they did want all male citizens (at least) to have the right to vote in order that government should respond to the needs and wishes of a much wider cross section of the population than had been the case before.
In Scotland, following the liberating ideas of the French Enlightenment and subsequent political revolution, a group of politically interested citizens, mainly lawyers (of whom the most famous is Thomas Muir) met as ‘Friends of the People’ and campaigned for an extension of the franchise and the introduction of a number of other civil liberties in the UK. Although Muir is the most famous of these political reformers, others of the group suffered a similar fate, being tried and sentenced to transportation to Australia along with Muir in the infamous treason trials of 1794. Among them was one William Skirving, 1745-1796 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Skirving). Skirving was Secretary to the ‘Friends of the People’ and, having been found guilty of publishing the seditious material that others of the group had written, was sent to Australia on a convict transport ship. Though Skirving died in Australia in 1796, his wife Rachel Abercrombie and their two children remained in Edinburgh … and his name lived on in the family and on the ‘Martyrs Monument’ in Old Calton Cemetery.
Following our enjoyable meal in Skirving Street, and a glass or two of red wine, it seemed appropriate to acknowledge this ancestor and the work he did to extend the franchise (albeit not immediately successful!!) and thus to try to move Scotland one of two steps closer to the democratic nation we are today.
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