My great-grandmother, Georgina Gregory Galloway (Pender), was born at 42 High Street, Edinburgh, on 18 May 1862. Today, that address is home to the National Museum of Childhood, recognised as the world’s first museum dedicated to the history of childhood. The building now has a grand entrance, but in the mid-19th century, it was just another High Street tenement. The tenement was opposite the Carrubbers Close Mission (now Carrubbers Christian Centre), an ornate, columned building founded to serve the impoverished population of Edinburgh’s Old Town and just up the hill from John Knox’s House.
Her family moved to Baylie Fyffe’s Close in the High Street when she was nine, and later to 2b Queen’s Terrace, not to be confused with the more salubrious Queen’s Street. She married my great-grandfather, Robert, and had seven children. There is no official record of her marriage, which may have been considered ‘irregular.’ In Scotland, marriage was based on mutual consent and did not require a religious ceremony. It was viewed as a civil contract, but there was no established way to prove it. During her life, she lived in many different houses on East Arthur Street, Carnegie Street, Dumbiedykes, and Salisbury Street,
Only a few photographs of her remain, and in them, she appears serious and a bit intimidating.
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