Walter Beaton 1822

I've written 1822 above but I really don't know as neither did he, seemingly.  It's easy enough to trace back to Walter as being the father of young Walter and wife of Jean Rodger and we do know that he was born in Dunbar but seldom have I seen so much variation in reported age.  There is no birth record to be found but even trying to estimate when this would have been is incredibly difficult given the data available.  For example, in the 1841 census he is noted as age 15.  Only in this census, ages over 20 were rounded down to the nearest 5 so the best we can say is that he was between 15 and 19 giving a birth year of 1821 (he might not have had his birthday yet!) and 1826.  Getting married two years later suggests we're looking at the earlier end of that and being noted as 31 in the next census suggests that his birth year is in fact 1820 or even 1819.  However, ten years later he is only five years older(!) pointing to 1825.

The next censuses don't confirm anything as he is 49 then 52 suggesting 1822 and then 1829.  Finally his death in 1890 at the age of 60 tells us he should have been born in 1830.  So we are left with an eleven year window for his birth, from 1819 to 1830.  There are other examples in this website of people who either lied about their age or just didn't know but there is a feeling here that he just didn't care, giving wildly fluctuating estimates.  One rule of thumb I use here is to believe any estimates earlier in life when things are more likely to be remembered clearly.  My guestimate then is that Walter Beaton was born around 1822.

Finding Walter's parents was difficult as his marriage record didn't mention them and his young life was prior to censuses.  In a case like this, looking at the names of the children can help.  First son and second daughter gives William and Janet.  However, I did some searching of the census records and noticed that there was another Beaton in Prestonpans in 1841 who was born in Dunbar, a fisherman called John Beaton.  Our Walter married in Prestonpans in 1843 so it looked very likely that we had found a brother.  Checking John's parentage gave us William and Janet!  The only snag with this is that Walter's death record gives his father as Peter.  There is no trace of this Peter anywhere but given that his father-in-law was Peter maybe it's just a faulty memory on the part of his son.  I believed the William and Janet option and subsequent finds confirmed this.

Walter was sometimes described as a labourer but just as often as an engine man or railway engine driver.  That is the job than many a young man would have aspired to in those days when railway engines were still relatively new and steam trains were seen as exciting.  Walter would have taken advantage of the opportunity for young men with a technical background and aptitude around 1850 when the railways were expanding exponentially, tripling the number of miles of rail in the previous five years.

Maybe the rail was what took him to Ayrshire but he was back in the east by 1871, in Queen Street in Leith.  This sounds grand but it wasn't like Queen Street in Edinburgh.  It was a lane linking Tollbooth Wynd with the Shore (really the riverbank) in Leith as this map shows.

The more general position is shown below with the Commercial Street bridge at the top and the Sandport bridge at the bottom, close to Queen Street.

Now this is very interesting because we know that he run a greengrocer's shop here from 1878 to 1890.  The Post Office Directories tell us this and the Valuation Rolls tell us that the shop was at number 8 from 1878 to 1882 then number 6 from 1884 until 1890 although this could just have been a renumbering rather than a move next door.  Strangely, although he was living at number 7 he was also the tenant of number 9.  The Valuation Roll linked the shop at number 6 with number 9 so maybe it came with the shop although odd and even numbers suggest they were on opposite sides of the street.  Walter was described as a retired grocer in his death registration and he died in young Walter's house a year after the last Post Office Directory entry, which suggests that he had maybe given up due to ill-health.

Now here is something special.  I have a photo of the shop!  Someone saved a bundle of old photographs of Old Leith from being destroyed and posted them on the Internet here at Oldleither, a shambling but invaluable treasure trove of a website which is no longer with us.  The links therefore will not work unless the site comes back up again.  To start with, look at page 2, bottom image, Queen Street.  Comparing this with the map this must be looking up from the Shore.

Walking up towards Tolbooth Wynd we have this view of the top of the street with the strange widening then narrowing clearly identifiable on the map (fifth image on page 6).

On page 3 we have a view the opposite direction, towards the Shore.

Zooming in allows us to see that there were boys with bare feet.

Now for the best one, from page 8, the shop itself.  This, and therefore presumably the whole set, is dated as 1924 on the Capital Collections website.

Notice the figures on the roof!  Chimney sweeps?  Also notice the number 6 on the shop door, which clearly identifies it as the correct one, although it isn't Walter Beaton's shop when this was taken.  Notice also the outside stairs which can be clearly seen on the map. 

Finally, there is a photo of the backlands of the street from page 3.  This is between Queen Street and the Shore so the right-hand side would be close to the back of the shop and the little outbuilding could possibly be a store-room.

 

We also have some newspaper entries relating to the shop.

Edinburgh Evening News - Saturday 22 December 1877

Edinburgh Evening News - Tuesday 12 February 1884 - a wonderfully trivial entry.

Edinburgh Evening News - Friday 17 October 1884

Edinburgh Evening News - Tuesday 23 June 1885

Edinburgh Evening News - Wednesday 08 July 1885

From the above it seems that he wasn't just a greengrocer but a draper and a furniture shop and so on.