The Athens of the North
James Hector’s early life in Edinburgh
1834 - 1857
Alexander Hector’s first wife, Agnes McKay, died two weeks after giving birth to their sixth child. Four years later, the Edinburgh lawyer married Margaret Macrostie who lived at 10 Inverleith Place, a few blocks away from his home at 11 Danube St. Just before dawn on Sunday, March the sixteenth 1834 James Hector was born. He was the first of their six children. His schooling, which lasted until he was fourteen, appears to have been uneventful and unspectacular. There seem to be no records of his early education and there are no records of any significant academic achievements at either the Edinburgh Academy or the Royal High School. He spent a brief time working in his father’s office before taking up a three-year apprenticeship with a well-known actuary, Mr Watson. During this time he studied part time at the University and the School of Arts.
In 1852 he entered Edinburgh University as a full-time medical student – the only avenue available for someone interested in scientific study. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time. Unlike most universities (which specialised in the classical subjects) the Scottish universities had a reputation for providing very good courses in science and medicine. Edinburgh in particular was well known for the high calibre of people taking the courses. It was in this environment that Hector started to show his potential. Among the professors who made a significant impact on his education and got special mention in his autobiographical notes were Edward Forbes, professor of natural history (which included the study of geology), John Goodsir, professor of Anatomy, and William Gregory, professor of Chemistry. The fourth person named by Hector was the botany Professor John Hutton Balfour. Professor Balfour, known as “Woody Fibre” by some of his students, held his classes in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden and was noted for his long excursions along the Firth of Forth as well as to a number of sites around the Edinburgh countryside and beyond. Up to seventy students would go on these jaunts, each with his vasculum (a botanist’s collecting case – often made of tin) on his back. According to one student, John Henry Menzies, these were often filled with the samples provided by the game-keepers who were conveniently following behind, rather than with the botanical specimens they were meant to be collecting.
Like students everywhere, Hector was not above practical jokes. On one occasion he and a fellow student had acquired the body of a baby – presumably for part of their medical studies. They took it home, covered it in phosphorus and propped it up in the bed upstairs. When the housekeeper arrived and heard that there was a baby in the house she hastened upstairs to have a look. The sight of the glowing corpse was, not surprisingly, too much. There was a loud scream, the housekeeper dashed downstairs and out of the house, never to return.
From the time he was a young teenager, Hector had spent his summer holidays rambling in the Highlands of Scotland as well as making trips to England and Ireland. To use his own words (he did not use the first person in his autobiographical notes)
…he very early acquired the spirit and endurance of an explorer and the habits of quick accurate observation and careful collection.
Balfour rewarded the young man by calling on him to make regular presentations to the Botanical Society, giving an account of the geological and physical features of the ground covered in the Saturday excursions.
In 1856, around the time Hector was graduating as a Medical Doctor and working briefly as assistant to Sir James Simpson, moves were afoot for a major exploration of Canada from Lake Superior to the mountains in the west and then on to the Pacific.
Captain John Palliser, the son of a wealthy Irish nobleman, had approached the Royal Geographic Society with a proposal to explore British North America. An enthusiastic sportsman, keen hunter and skilled horseman, Palliser had already spent two years in the late forties hunting among the Indians of the western and north-western districts of the United States. He put his suggestion to Sir Roderick Murchison, a friend of the Palliser family, president of the Royal Geographic Society and Director General of the Geological Survey and the Museum of Practical Geology. Murchison was keen and put it to the Geographic Society who in turn presented the idea to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. The Government, too, saw the importance of such an expedition and laid down the aims of the expedition and provided the funding.
Murchison was called on to recommend a suitable person to serve as the geologist for the expedition and he went to his friends at Edinburgh University for suggestions. Professor Balfour, among others, recommended James Hector, an exceptional young man with a very sound knowledge of natural history, the attributes and skills mentioned earlier and, as an added bonus, a qualified doctor.
So it was that Hector became one of a party of five. John Palliser, the forty year-old leader; Eugene Bourgeau, a highly respected and amiable French botanist – the old man of the party at forty-four; Thomas Blakiston, a 25 year old Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery Regiment who was to do the magnetic observations; Hector, the geologist and party doctor; and the youngest member of the group, John Sullivan, who was to be the astronomer and secretary.