Walter Lawrie

Across the records, including the births of his children, Walter is variously Lawrie, Laurie, Lourie and Lowrie.  It's difficult to know how it was pronounced although there's a tendency for the earlier spellings including those of his ancestors to be the Lowrie variations and the later versions to be of the Lawrie type so maybe the pronunciation changed with time as well.  He was born the son of a weaver who was the son of a weaver and became one himself although there was a transitional census where he was both weaver and fisherman before dropping the weaver by the next census.  It was hardly going up in the world and Kinghorn didn't have much of a fishing fleet by that time.

He wasn't well-educated as the x mark he signed his wife's death certificate indicates.  Worse than that he ended up as a pauper in the Poorhouse at Thornton, dying there at only 52.  It was particularly poignant as the family either didn't know he was there or weren't bothered as the death was only recorded by the Governor of the Poorhouse and no family details were known.  What could have caused this situation we can only speculate on as there are no records to give us clues.  There was a Poorhouse just outside Kinghorn available so why he went "back home" to the Wemyss parish option is a mystery.