Hamish Sinclair and Margaret Swanney (left), before they were married, on a visit to Margaret's cousin Willie Swanney and family at Deshar school house, Boat of Garten, Inverness-shire, 1940s.  Photographer unknown.  From personal archives of Eleanor Swanney or Symon, cousin of Margaret Sinclair. 

 

Hamish was from a family with strong Orkney connections.  His father, also called James, was a fish curer.  His mother Catherine's maiden name was Budge.  James and Catherine were married on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, in 1886. 

 

Hamish and Margaret married on 2 September 1950, a few months after Willie and Meg Swanney  moved  south with their own family to St. Madoes in the school summer holidays, where Willie was taking up the post of head master at St. Madoes school.  Hamish and Margaret lived at 2 Union Street, Wick, then Aberdeen.

 

For the first few years of her life, Calum and Isobel Swanney's first child, Margaret, was brought up (possibly an informal fostering or adoption arrangement) in the household of auctioneer's son David Penman, who had been a commercial traveller, and his wife, Annie Penman, who lived at 72 Brunstane Road, Portobello.  David Penman suffered from cirrhosis of the liver.  When Margaret was aged 4 years and 4 months, David Penman died of a heart attack on 22 May 1931, aged 68 years.  Two and a half years later, Annie Penman also died, on 2 November 1933, aged 63.  She had been suffering from ovarian cancer. 

 

Margaret was 6 years 9 months old when Mrs Penman died.  Isabel and Calum sent Margaret to Croy, still known as Margaret Penman, not Margaret Swanney, to live with Granny Croy, her grandfather, and Auntie Ella.  Grandpa and Granny Swanney continued to perform the duties of Registrar for the parish of Croy, for many years, keeping the Register.  Apparently some people in the village had their suspicions but it was not for a number of years that Willie and Kate Swanney publicly acknowledged Margaret as their granddaughter. 

 

Margaret's great-grandmother on Tiree, Isabella McDougall, née McLean, mother of Catherine McDougall or Swanney, and grandmother of Calum Swanney, knew about the circumstances of Margaret's "adoption" by the Penmans almost from the outset.  One of the McPhail sisters, I think it was Kate, who was a teacher, and who was Isabella's grand-daughter by Catherine's sister Lizzie, and so was a first cousin of Calum Swanney, had overheard student teachers from Glasgow University spreading the gossip ("You'll never guess what's happened to Bel Heron...").  Her ears were burning as she heard what the students were saying.  Kate straightaway told her granny (who was in her eighties) what she'd heard.  Isabella accepted the news, and approved or, or at least acceded to, the arrangement, saying "She has a home and a name."  This anecdote was recounted to me in 2009 by Elma McArthur, who is a niece of the McPhail sisters [see here], great-granddaughter of Isabella McLean, and second cousin of Margaret Swanney. 

 

Margaret had meningitis when she was about 12 which caused the loss of feeling at the ends of the fingers.  She had a tendency to drop things as a result.  She went to Inverness Royal Academy and then trained at Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh (the "Dough School") as a sewing teacher, and she then worked as a domestic science teacher.  She married Hamish Sinclair in a very large church in Palmerston Place, Edinburgh.  Even then, her aunt Bessie was horrified that it would be announced that she was Calum and Isabel Swanney's daughter: "What would people think?"

 

Hamish was a dentist from Wick, where the couple lived.  They had a son, Calum, and a daughter, Patricia, both chemists.  The family moved to Aberdeen when Hamish got a job in the schools dental service.  In Aberdeen, with her friend Anne, Margaret opened what her daughter Pat remembers as a posh wool shop, selling designer wool and embroidery items.  Hamish did not enjoy the best of health and tended to be somewhat poorly and physically weak.  He died in his early sixties.  Margaret survived him for sixteen years, living in the last few years of her life in in a home in Forres, the town where one of her children lived.  As was often the way in those days, she did not really discuss her history with her family.   Latterly, she was limited to a wheelchair for mobillity, and had fingers amputated.  She died from a condition called polyarteritis nodosa.  Margaret and Hamish Sinclair are survived by their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 

 

Below are some old family photographs showing Margaret and Sheena Swanney with their cousin Eleanor Swanney, from the late 1930s, two of them taken at the girls' grandparents' house, William and Kate Swanney, at Croy, Inverness-shire, another possibly there or at the Deshar School house where Eleanor's mother Meg Swanney lived, at Boat of Garten, Inverness-shire.

 

Amended by Peter Symon, 14 January 2020 & 24 & 26 February 2020. Thanks to Pat Cruickshank for generously providing  information in an email to Peter Symon, sent 12 January 2020. 

Left to right: Margaret Sinclair, née Swanney; her cousin, Freda Scott, née Swanney; Derek Scott; her mother, Isabel Swanney, née Heron. Photo taken in 1985 at Shalla-ree, Errol, Perthshire, home of Eleanor Symon, née Swanney, sister of Freda, and Scot Symon, on the occasion of the celebration of the 50th wedding anniversary of Margaret and Willie Swanney, Freda's parents.