George Dempster of Dunnichen, MP; also of Skibo.
(1732-1818) - "Honest George"
George Dempster, was in his time, the most popular man in Scotland, but now Dempster has sadly all but disappeared from modern view. This disappearing act was partly engineered by Dempster himself in burning his private papers, as he wished to be only remembered for his achievements and personality.
George Dempster was the third laird of Dunnichen, inheriting unexpectedly at 22 years, while starting his 'Grand Tour' of Europe, with [Sir] Adam Ferguson. As Ferguson remained a lifelong friend and confidant of Dempster, his recently republished part of Dempster's correspondence provides us with a great deal of Dempster's surviving thoughts and feelings.
At first George seemed destined, like so many Dempsters, to be destined for the law, becoming an Advocate in 1755, and spending his time in Edinburgh in Scottish Enlightenment circles as a member of the "Poker Club", with David Hume, William Robertson and Alexander Carlyle. Dempster was a friend of James Boswell - another Scots lawyer - now famed as the biographer and traveling companion of Dr Johnson. He practiced law only for a short time before going into politics, being elected member for the Fife & Forfar Burghs in 1762. George's re-election in 1768 was a hotly contested, and winning the seat, and an associated legal case, cost him at least £10,000. This was an enormous election sum even for those days when electors expected to be well "persuaded" by the largesse of the candidates and their sponsors. However, his electorate, when bought, stayed bought, and he loyally represented them for 28 years. Unfortunately, Dempster was the first MP to be caught by a new Act against buying of voters, as part of an ongoing political feud, so he naturally almost immediately acquired the ironic nickname "Honest George"! This all brought Dempster further money troubles. The where withal for the fine came from the sale of what is now Letham Grange and other Dempster properties, except Dunnichen.
In 1763, Dempster had set up what became the long-lived 'Dundee Bank' with 35 partners as 'Dempster and Co', with unlimited liability. The Dundee Bank was involved in funding of roads and other commercial improvements in and around Dundee. After his death the successful Dundee Bank merged with The Royal Bank of Scotland However, Dempster had been earlier spurred to an active financial life through having to look after his large family of siblings. As a part of supporting his family, Dempster was forced, partly through necessity, and partly from an inquisitive, active 'enlightened' mindset, to raise money from improving his estates. Dempster spurned the traditional easy route of 'rack renting' of his tenants. The first and very profitable land improving action was to drain Loch Dunnichen and sell the lake bed lime sediments [marl] as a much needed field dressing. The setting up of the new village of Letham on a newly enclosed farm raised the farm income from £5 to £125 per year. Another innovative act was to resign the feudal rights on his estates, setting up 'feuars' committees of his tenants as at Letham and at Skibo, through the 'Constitution of Creich'. This gave Dempter's tenants and their families long term security and incentives for the management and improvement of their grounds, thereby improve their living standards. This act was very far advanced for his time.
While at Westminster, Dempster was nominally a Rockinghamite Whig, [or Liberal] and he soon lived up to the "Honest George" label, for he was an independently minded, incorruptible and moderately radical Scottish MP, as noted by Robert Burns. He sided with Fox in opposing the American Stamp Act. He also opposed the East India Company's policy of taking political control of India, resigning his profitable directorship on the board over the issue, and as an MP supported Fox's opposition to the India Bill.
In 1776[?], while traveling to London in his capacity as an MP, Dempster's natural curiosity took him to Sir Richard Arkwright's cotton spinning mills at Matlock in Derbyshire. Dempster was so struck by Arkwright's mill projects that he became personally and financially involved with three Scottish cotton mills. Initially, there was the New Lanark mills [1784], then at Stanley in Perthshire [1786], both with Arkwright and Dale, and then at Spinningdale [1794, with Dale as an ordinary partner] on the Skibo estates. All the mills were provided with 'model' villages for their workers. These show piece projects seem to have been intended by Dempster and his partners to make visible the 'invisible guiding hand' of Adam Smith's new 'Capitalism' to show that it was possible to raise the living, educational, moral and aspirational standards of the poor, while this style of active capitalism would benefit its sponsors financially. In the long term their nation would benefit through taxation on the goods produced and consumed by the owners and staff of these enterprises, and generally by increasing the economic power of the whole country. Unfortunately, the French Revolutionary Wars interrupted the cotton and trade routes leading to the Stanley Mills being put up for sale in 1799, and doomed the new Spinningdale Mill, it eventually being sold in 1804.
The village of Letham and the weaving of flax successfully continued after his other cotton mills had failed.
When Dempster at last retired from parliament in 1790, he devoted his efforts even more to his great cause, the economic improvement of the Scots. He was actively involved with the Fishery Society to promote the Scottish fishing trade, and he was instrumental in the setting up of roads and lighthouses round Scotland. A spin-off of Dempster's East India company links was his first introduction to Britain in 1785 of transporting fresh salmon in ice rather than salting, smoking, or drying them. Subsequently, every coastal village in the highlands with a salmon fishing seems to have had an ice house. Locally, both the villages of Bonar Bridge and Ardgay on the opposite banks of the Dornoch Firth still have their ice houses.
Throughout his long life of politics and improvement, George Dempster continued the literary and social life of an educated Enlightenment period Scot, maintaining his lifelong friendship with Adam Ferguson the philosopher and historian and being a " firm friend " of Alexander Carlyle. In London, he was also a constant " companion " to the young James Boswell, who makes frequent mention of dempster in his 'London Journal of 1762-1763' and subsequently. Initially, Dempster's sense of humour was sometimes too mischievous and his " Scotch tones and rough and roaring freedom of manner " too unpolished for Boswell's pompous and insecure social climbing ambitions, as he was then cultivating the English gentry's manners and speech to hide his 'Scotch' origins. Johnson, too appears to have been no admirer. This was due to Dempster, [then 31, to Johnson's 54], modern and for then radical, notions of a meritocratic society were dead against the good Doctor's Tory notions of his God?s pre-ordered society. Indeed, the whole 'ungodly' tone of the Scottish Enlightenment did not impress the pious Doctor Johnson at all, perhaps prompting Johnson's well publicized dislike of the rather too successful 'Scotch' in his city of London. Boswell, [true to form], seems to have been rather too smitten with Dempster's sisters to labor the philosophical aspect of such things, as noted in his 'Life of Dr Johnson'.
Someone who, however, does appear to have been a fan, was Robert Burns, for Dempster gets a pleasant mention in one of Bard's lesser poems, a piece of rather dubious doggerel which appears to be addressed to one of Burns' drinking and carousing companions, one James Smith. The couplet -
A title Dempster merits it,
A Garter gie tae Willie Pitt
is hardly one of Burns' best, and given the tone of the poem, may well be ironic. But again,
'Dempster, a true blue Scot I'se warran';
taken from 'The The Author's Earnest Cry And Prayer' of 1786, a heartfelt plea to the Scottish Members of the Westminster Parliament to oppose proposed oppressive duties on Scotch whisky. Dempster's friends get mentioned by name in this piece, as in the next line,
Thee, aith-detesting, chaste Kilkerran; [Sir Adam Ferguson]
and,
[to] 'gab like Boswell'
Dempster also merited a mention in another of Burn's works, 'The Vision', 1784-85, where Burn's muse, 'Scotia', in [naturally] the form of a flimsly attired young maiden, lifts and refires the dispirited ploughman's spirits, with
'Dempster's truth prevailing tongue'
being a rousing example of contemporary Scottish genius.
Whether the two ever met, we have no idea. Burns was 27 years Dempster's junior, but Dempster outlived the poet by another 22. They are likely to have had mutual acquaintances in Edinburgh society. Dempster's character as described by Boswell make him the sort of man that Burns would have liked. Although Burns worked on Boswell's family estate, seemingly they never met either. Fergusson did invite Burns to perform at a dinner party when he was provost of St Andrew's, where Dempster had his retirement house.
Dempster as able to generate huge crowds merely by his presence as happened in Glasgow, through his support of protectionism for weavers. Other lasting honors Dempster accrued were street names in Glasgow, Dundee, and Wick. Dempster's Skibo estate road provided the link between Dornoch and Telford's elegant iron Bonar Bridge of 1812 with its associated new quays, latterly forming part of Scottish great north road. George Dempster left us a marble tablet, raised in 1815, which formerly adorned the old Bonar Bridge toll house. One of George Dempster's few current public acknowledgements is his annual 'appearance' as a character in the annual Kate Kennedy parade at his 'alma mater', St Andrews University.
To everyone's loss, Dempster burned his vast correspondence in a pique of temper, a response to the misguided zeal of one Rev Roger, a biographing minister of the church. 'Honest George' didn't see why someone else should gain an easy vicarious fame through his life and works, perhaps mindful of Boswell. Also, it should be remembered that the concept of biographies of living persons was still a very new concept for the time. Boswell's monumental 'Life of Dr Johnson' was published posthumously to the Doctor, although Boswell did actively solicit material from his subject in life. Unfortunately, Dempster's literary self-immolation left us no central corpus upon which to build a personal biography. However recently (July 2005) a well researched biography has been produced, The Gentleman Usher, The Life and Times of George Dempster 1732 -1818 by John Evans, making use of the numerous communications which George Dempster had with his numerous important and influential friends during his long life.
This summary of the Life and Times of George Dempster prepared with thanks to Charles Miller, Spinningdale Mills