William Scott A Family History

The author of this family history is Cardwell McClure, son of Mary McClure, née Scott, the younger sister of renowned artist William Scott CBE, RA. Cardwell remembers how his mother told him that William, when a teenager, would get his younger sister to sit for him lacking any other willing members of the family. Cardwell was named after the second husband of his grandmother Agnes Brown Scott (née) Murray whom she had married in 1941 many years after the tragic death of her first husband, William John Scott. His name was William Hobson Cardwell. Born in her first hotel, the ‘Scotts’ in East Bridge Street , Cardwell stayed regularly in her second hotel, the ‘Western’ in Darling Street, Enniskillen. Growing up in close proximity to his grandmother, he became familiar with her stories of the large family that he was a part of, a family with origins traced back to 1802. This book provides a firsthand experience of the family's trials through poverty, tragedy, war and fame. Five of Agnes’s children predeceased her: the youngest daughter Violet, her eleventh child died at just 2 years old in 1930. Hugh, the third boy, a Royal Marine, was killed in action in 1942 and Bertie, the fourth boy died in a construction accident in 1951. Catherine, her eldest child died in 1970, and Charlie, the second boy passed in 1974. Two years before the death of Violet, Agnes had also lost her first husband, William John Scott, who was killed in a tragic fire that broke out in the Hollow in Enniskillen. Agnes was five months pregnant with Violet at the time when her husband fell from a faulty ladder while trying to rescue a mother and child caught in the fire. He died of concussion on 4 November 1927. Sadly, in 1959 Agnes was also to lose her second husband, William Cardwell, after a heart attack. There are twelve chapters in the book, eleven of which are devoted to each child, while the first chapter outlines the family beginnings in Glasgow, Scotland. Fourteen years after her marriage to William John Scott, Agnes with her firstnine children caught the steamship from Greenock in June 1924 to rejoin her husband in Enniskillen, the town where he had grown up. The family stayed at first on Forthill Road with William John’s father, John Scott, a cabinetmaker. William found work through many of his old school friends painting and decorating their shops and houses. Chapters two to five tell the stories of the four eldest children, Cathie, Nancy, William and Greta as they grew up and left home in search of work. After the fire, a fund had been set up in the town to pay for William to go to art school in Belfast. Catherine went to London and Nancy to Dublin, where she obtained employment in a children’s home. Sometime later Greta followed her sister to Dublin obtaining employment in the service sector. She did not like it and the two girls decided to leave Ireland and seek their fortunes in England. In 1931 William obtained a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in London. Chapters six to twelve follow the seven younger children, Charlie, Mary (Cardwell’s mother), Hugh, Bertie, Alec, Walter and Violet, the baby. William Scott: A Family History which has taken many years in research, writing and editing partly due to the ill health of the author, Cardwell McClure, is lavishly illustrated with paintings by William Scott CBE RA.