Newspaper obituary columns hold a surprising fascination: for the reader wanting to know more about the life of the person who has just died; and for the living wondering whether they are famous, or infamous enough, to make the obituary columns and what might be said about them. It is reported that Bette Davis on being told that her death was rumoured, said “With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn’t consider dying”. Famous Last Words is a selection of obituaries published in The Scotsman since its launch in 1817.
The editors have selected 35 obituaries for inclusion in this volume ‐ 30 men, four women and Greyfriars’ Bobby. There are many famous and legendary Scots. However, the editors were also at the mercy of the journalists with The Scotsman as to who merited an obituary in the paper. This, they have found very frustrating as people such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Henry Raeburn and William McGonagall were not seen as meriting an obituary. Women, too, make few appearances in the obituary pages. The principal selection criterion, therefore, was based on the intrinsic interest of the articles rather than the importance of the personality. In addition, they have attempted to cover as broad a spread of backgrounds, occupations and generations as possible. James Watt, Walter Scott, Andrew Carnegie, Mary Slessor and David Livingstone are all included, plus the more colourful characters of John Brown, the faithful servant of Queen Victoria, and Harry Lauder. Bill Shankly, Nicholas Fairbairn and George Mackay Brown are the more recent subjects.
Some of the obituaries are relatively short and factual, such as those on John Dunlop and Alexander Graham Bell. In others, the writers wax lyrical for many pages about the virtues of the deceased. There are some strange entries ‐ a phrenological correspondent is the author of phrenological observations on the head of William Burke and in this he tries to explain that it was the structure of Burke’s brain which made him a murderer; the entry for Robert Louis Stevenson consists of correspondence casting doubt on the news of his death. Most obituarists give excellent insights into their subject although occasionally they have gone over the top: Walter Scott is described “with the single exception of Shakespeare, as the greatest writer that ever existed”.
The usefulness of this volume lies in the fact that we can learn how these men and women were thought about by their contemporaries, and not from our own modern perspective. We can therefore come to our own conclusions on their impact on society. The insights offered here provide far more detail and freshness than conventional biographies, making this a useful reference source.
