John Baillie (c.1650-c.1720)
ED.CS.2010.26
John Baillie (c.1650-c.1720), Fellow 1681, Deacon 1687-1689
Oil on canvas, c.1700, by John Baptiste de Medina (1659-1710)
Alexander Simpson was apprenticed to John Baillie. His name appears in the Records of the Town Council in 1712, when ‘upon representation by Alexander Simpson, surgeon apothecary, as to his services in the interests of the town while he was in London in 1709, and thereafter, concerning the proposed dock at Leith, the Council as a reward for his services, and his loss of time on these affairs, grant him forty pounds sterling’.
At the time, Simpson was not deacon of the Incorporation which carried automatic representation on the Town Council but he was ‘Trades Councillor’ from 1710 to 1712. This recompense contrasts with the fifty pounds given to Baillie Graham together with expenses of almost £110 stg for conveying a ‘humble address’ to London on the occasion of the accession of King William in 1689.
In 1711, it was he, not the Deacon, who presented the Act of the Incorporation regarding grave robbing to the Town Council. This stated that anyone associated with or accessory to such an act would be expelled from the Society
18th century
