The Parish School in North-Eastern Scotland in the early Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In the early years of the nineteenth century many Scotsmen who had been forced to seek their fortune outside the British Isles bestowed the benefits of their wealth on their native land by legacies and endowments for educational purposes. The counties of North Eastern Scotland were particularly favoured in this respect perhaps because there were so few commercial opportunities to keep ambitious and enterprising young men at home. No charity, however, was as generous nor as influential as the Dick Bequest which was set up under the terms of James Dick's legacy to 'that neglected though useful class of men the parish schoolmasters of the counties of Aberdeen, Banff and Moray. No other legacy equalled the Dick Bequest in the scale of its application. The rural parishes in the three counties to which it was restricted contained about a tenth of the total population of Scotland in 1831. The money which was invested in heritable securities produced an annual revenue which in the first twenty years fluctuated between £3,500 and £5,500. Apart from one or two of the early years this income was in excess of the total salaries paid to the schoolmasters in the region. In terms of its financial generosity and the number of people likely to be indirectly affected by its work the Dick Bequest was the most significant educational development in North Eastern Scotland in the first half of the nineteenth century.