A PROSPEROUS SNUFFMAKER

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1587, 29 April 1887, Page 4

A PROSPEROUS SNUFFMAKER

In 1800 the demolition of Wriabt's Houses was achieved, but not without a spirited remonstrance in the Edinburgh Magazine for that year; and Gillespie's Hospital, a tasteless edifice, designed, by Mr Burn a builder, in that ridiculous castellated style called " Carpenter's Gothic," took its place. The founder, James Gillespie, was the elder of two brothers who occupied a shop as tobacconists east side of Market Cross. Here John, the ycunger, attends to the business, while the former resides at Spylaw, near Collintor, and superintends a mill which thfy had erected there for grinding snuff; and there snuff was ground years aft°r for the Messrs Richardson, 105, West Bow. Neither of the brothers married, and though frueal an<* indutrious, were far from being miserly. Tney lived among their workmen and domestics, in quite a homely and patriarchal manner. " Waste not, want not" being ever their favourite maxim, and money increased in their hands quickly. Even m extreme age, we are told, James Gillespie, with an old blanket round him and a night-cap on—both covered with snuff—regularly attended the mill, superintending the operations of his man, Andrew Frazer, who was a hale old man, living in the hospital, when the first edition of " Kay " was published in IS3S. .Tatries kept a carriage, however; for which the Hon. Henry Erskine suggested asamotto: — " Wba wad hae thocht it. That nozes had bocht it ? " —From Cassell's Old and New Edinburgh.