Childhood and parents
Barrowsgate – real name James Hugh Smythe (“Jim”) – was born on 7 October 1882 at Aboyne Castle Gardens, where his father George Henderson Smythe (1854 – 1928), son of Francis Smyth from Tarves, was Head Gardener. Jim’s mother was Martha Lawrence McDonald (1849 – 1923) whose father was a shipwright from Dunnottar. George and Martha had met at Ardmiddle House, Turriff where George was a gardener and Martha was a table maid. Jim was the third of four children to be born (all at Aboyne Castle). Frank and Amy were five and three years older respectively and Jane (“Jean”) was four years younger than Jim.
When Jim was six, George became the proprietor of the Lemon Tree Hotel in Huntly, where they stayed for two years. There has been much colourful speculation as to how a gardener could have raised the cash (£1,200) to buy a hotel, but no definitive explanation has emerged.
After two years at the Lemon Tree, George then took over the Balcarres Arms Hotel in Echt, where Jim lived for the next ten years or so. This Hotel also came with the tenancy of a farm and a stable block (now the Echt public hall).
From contemporary newspaper reports, it is obvious that the Smythe family were hardworking and prominent members of the local community. Jim attended Echt Public School and then, from 1898 to 1900, Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen. The archivist at Robert Gordon’s said that Jim left partway through 1900 (when he was 17) and that “his name is not on the list of those who achieved the School Leaving Certificate”. He was a “day pupil” and probably stayed in town with his uncle John during the week (as his sister Jean certainly did when attending Albyn Place school), returning by horse bus at weekends. School fees ranged from around £5 to £10 per year which equates to between £500 and £1,000 in November 2022 .
A 1960 interview that Jim gave to the Aberdeen Evening Express reported that Jim “ran away from school at the age of fifteen only to be bought out of the Army by a fond mother”. It seems likely that this was actually referring to Jim’s premature exit from Robert Gordon’s College, two years later. If Jim did indeed sign up for the British Army, no records of this have yet come to light.
However, we can surmise that, after leaving school early, his parents would have wanted to give him something useful to do, where they could keep an eye on him. In addition to running the Hotel, George was a farmer and ran the express horse bus service from Tarland to Aberdeen via Tornaveen, Echt, and Garlogie. So, after leaving Robert Gordon’s, Jim became a driver for the horse bus service and helped out in the stables and on the farm.
Jim’s Siblings
Frank
As the eldest son of George and Martha, Frank (b. 1877) was the first to make himself useful around the farm and stables. In his early twenties he was already managing the horse bus service and helping to run the farm. At the time of the 1901 England Census, Frank was visiting his aunt Elizabeth Smyth Middleton in London and his occupation was listed as “Farm Manager”. According to his sister Jean, during the second Boer War (October 1899 – May 1902), Frank signed on as an assistant to the supervisor of the convoy of horses on board one of the ships carrying the animals from New Orleans to Cape Town in South Africa to mount the British cavalry on the Transvaal. This would have been the time that Jim left school and took over Frank’s duties.
After the Boer War ended, Frank, now about twenty-eight or nine, went to Australia to work for the first two years as a drover for Sydney Kidman “the Cattle King”. His first job for Kidman, for which he was paid 10/ a week, was droving 700 head of cattle from Brunette Downs to Farina, a trip of nearly 1,200 miles. He then became a commercial salesman for winemakers Auldana Ltd and W Reynell & Sons, travelling several hundred miles every week in his De Dion Bouton car. Frank married Isabel McArthur in 1911 in Adelaide, where they settled. John Duff (Jim’s nephew) recalled that, when Frank returned to Scotland in 1951 for a visit “he seemed to be well heeled, and he phoned his bookie every morning to lay bets on horses”. Frank died on 21 September 1958 in Adelaide and is buried in the West Terrace Cemetery.
Amy
Amy (b. 1879) was named after the Marchioness of Huntly, wife of Charles Gordon, the 11th Marquis, and owner of Aboyne Castle where George Smythe was head gardener. In 1896, aged 17, she graduated from the School of Domestic Economy in Aberdeen where the subjects taught were Dressmaking, Cookery and Laundry work. Her education would have prepared her well for helping her parents to run a busy Hotel. Amy did not marry and remained at the Balcarres Arms Hotel until her sudden death on Christmas Eve 1911 of a spinal haemorrhage aged 32. Jim was overseas at the time and may not have heard the news for some time.
Jean
After attending Echt Public School until the age of 13, Jean (b. 1886) then attended Albyn Place school in Aberdeen, a day and boarding school for young ladies. She travelled in every Monday on the horse bus, stayed with her uncle John at Osborne Terrace (a short walk from the school) during the week and returned to Echt on Friday afternoon. Jean graduated with the School Leaving Certificate in 1904 after which, like Amy, she returned to the family home. We know from various contemporaneous newspaper reports that Jean sang, and she and Amy both performed frequently at a variety of clubs and social events in the area. In 1911, an English engineer Harold Baxter was staying at the Hotel while he installed electric lighting at the nearby Dunecht House. Two years later, they married and moved to Wokingham in Berkshire where they had two sons (Ian, born 1918 and Malcolm, born 1921).
After moving to England, Jean became involved in the Scottish vernacular movement (part of the Scottish Renaissance) and, in 1928, published a book of poetry written in the Doric entitled A’ Ae ‘Oo’ (All one wool). It was through this that she met James Leslie Mitchell (whose nom de plume was Lewis Grassic Gibbon). Mitchell’s old headteacher at Arbuthnott had gone on to Echt School and his wife Ellen wrote to Jean in 1929 asking Jean whether she would be able to help her husband’s talented former pupil further his writing career as Mitchell had recently moved to London. Jean promptly invited Leslie to lunch and the two became good friends. Mitchell’s book Sunset Song, published in 1932, is dedicated to Jean Baxter. As well as being the dedicatee of the book, its main character (Chris Guthrie) was partly based on Jean, as Mitchell’s wife Ray later told Ian Munro (Mitchell’s biographer). In the book, Chris is torn between two opposing aspects of her character – the ‘English Chris’, who is intellectual and aspires to become a teacher – and the ‘Scottish Chris’ who is practical and loves the land.
Jean outlived her husband and her son Malcolm and died at Wokingham in 1968.
George
George Gordon Smyth was Jim’s half-brother. He had been born out of wedlock to George Henderson Smythe and Elspet Grassie in 1873, when George Henderson was an undergardener at Haddo House and Elspet was a domestic servant.
George may have lived initially with his mother but, in the 1881 Scotland census, he was living with his paternal Grandparents in Tarves. Meanwhile there is no trace of his mother, and his father was living and working at Aboyne Castle, fifty miles away.
In 1885, aged 12, he sailed unaccompanied for Canada, landing in Quebec. George eventually married and had one child, although his wife already had several children by a previous marriage
In 1911, George relocated with his wife and family to Winnipeg. George’s cousin Frank already lived in Winnipeg and another cousin, William, joined George and lived with George and his family. George remained in Canada until his death in 1949. Jim was only three when George left Scotland, and we have no record of their having met when Jim was in Canada. Apart from a small bequest in his grandmother Isabella’s will, there seems to have been no mention of George Gordon Smyth in his Scottish family and no photo of him survives.