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BACSA's first residential visit was to Douneside, a large
comfortable house in Aberdeenshire. It was chosen not only as a
convenient base from which to visit nearby Scottish houses with Indian
connections, but also because of its own links to the industrial city of
Cawnpore. How these links were forged is the subject of this engaging
book by the author who lives in the village of Tarland, adjacent to the
Douneside estate. Sir Alexander MacRobert, as he was to become,
started life in 1854 in very humble surroundings, in an Aberdeen
tenement, the son of working-class parents. Aberdeen was at that time
a city of mills, particularly textiles and paper. Alexander began work
as a sweeper at the Stoneywood Paper Mill, but took advantage of the
city's night-schools, including the Mechanics' Institute.
Extra-ordindarily gifted and hard-working, by 1883 he is travelling to
Cawnpore to take up a job at the Muir Cotton Mills.
The one weakness of this book is that we never find out what
Alexander actually does. He studies science at the South Kensington
Museum, London, but is also an auditor, a chemist, a contractor, a
manager and a businessman - rather hard to pin down. He finds that the
Muir Cotton Mills job has already been filled, but joins the Cawnpore
Woollen Mill and within a few years has been able to turn this ailing
company around. One of his first tasks was to create a brand name, and
he adopted the red tamarind flower, the lal imli, that grew outside the
mill compound. Soon the Lal imli logo became a symbol of quality and
business flourished by supplying the Army with warm clothing during
its constant forays on the Afghan border. Expansion took place with
the purchase of the New Egerton Mill in the Punjab, and from then on
every venture he undertook was a success. By the end of his Indian
career, the Viceroy, Lord Minto, was requesting Mac, as he was
affectionately called, to visit Afghanistan and advise the Amir how to
modernise his country and develop a woollen mill in Kabul.
Sadly, his personal life was less happy. His first wife, Georgina, died
from cancer in 1905 after a long decline. The couple had been married
for twenty-two years, but were childless. Four years after Georgina's
death, Mac met and married Rachel Workman, a young American
woman of good family, who was returning home from a visit to India
with her parents. Thirty years younger than Mac, the marriage was
soon blessed with three sons, Alasdair, Roderic and Ian. They were
still young boys when Mac died at Douneside with his wife beside him.
His achievements were listed in his many obituaries in India and
Britain. He had been a governor of Roorkee Engineering College, and
of the Agricultural College, Cawnpore. He was President of the Indian
branch of St John's Ambulance Brigade and a member of the
Legislative Council of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. From
an unpropitious background, he had risen to the top of British Indian
society. The latter half of this books relates the heart-breaking loss of
his three boys, now grown men, all killed in war accidents within three
years of each other. Their mother, the indomitable Rachel, funded a
bomber aircraft for the RAF, aptly named MacRoberts Reply. She lies
buried in the garden of her beloved Douneside, where the MacRobert
Trust provides holiday accommodation for service personnel at a very
reasonable rate. A readable and informative biography of the
MacRoberts family.
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