One hundred years ago, a Doune man took part in one of the most famous raids of the First World War.
   James Morrison fought in an Australian uniform and is lauded as one of the ‘Black Anzacs’, yet he spent most of his life at Mains Farm in Doune, near Stirling, where he was born and died.
   As a young man, James worked on his father Peter’s farm and was also a talented footballer with his local amateur side Vale of Teith. They were good enough to give St Johnstone a hard fight in the Perthshire Cup final of 1907, which went to three replays before Saints won, and again in 1908.
   He played a few games for Dunblane, who were at that time a senior team, then returned to captain newly-formed Doune Castle to victory in the Perthshire Consolation Cup. The photo of the winning team from 1909 (above) has Morrison sitting proudly in the middle of the front row.
   With limited employment opportunities at home, he emigrated in 1913 in search of adventure, heading to Perth, Western Australia, where his uncle lived, and found work building the new Trans-Australia railway.
   When war broke out the call went out throughout the Empire for men to fight and he enlisted in March 1915.  Serving with the 28th Battalion of the AIF (Australian Imperial Force), he arrived at Gallipoli in September 1915 and was immediately pitched into action.
   The death toll of the Anzacs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) at Gallipoli was appalling, but Morrison’s life was saved by illness after a few weeks of heavy conflict. His army medical record shows that he was admitted to hospital on 13 November suffering from enteritis and dysentery, and was shipped out to Malta to recover. It took three long months before he was deemed fit again for active service, and as the conflict in Turkey was coming to an end he spent a further month in Egypt before embarking for a different front line, this time in France.

It was there that he took part in the first serious action by Anzac forces on the Western Front. On 6 June 1916, 73 Australian soldiers volunteered for a night raid at Armentieres. Crawling on hands and knees through no man’s land in the pitch dark, cutting their way through 40 yards of barbed wire, they waited for a pre-arranged covering barrage before jumping into the German lines. Rushing along the trenches, throwing bombs into each dugout, they killed a number of men and took several prisoners, before withdrawing. It was all over in minutes.
   Although two of the raiders were killed in a retaliatory barrage (including another Scot, Duncan MacLeod, born near Nairn), the raid was heralded as a success and gave a much needed boost to morale after the horrors of Gallipoli. The press seized the opportunity, dubbing the solders the ‘Black Anzacs’ as they had blackened their faces with burnt cork for camouflage. The authorities were equally keen to celebrate some good news, and as a reward, the soldiers who took part were invited to the AIF headquarters in Westminster, where they were served strawberries and cream.
   While most of his battalion had to satisfy themselves with a short leave in London, Morrison took the opportunity to head north to Doune, where he was given a rapturous reception. He brought with him an Australian comrade, John McHugh (who would die of wounds the following year).
   Morrison travelled home on leave again before the end of the conflict but spent most of his three years living on the front line. The places where he fought read like a catalogue of the First World War: Poizieres, Ypres, Ancre, Bapaume, Passchendale, Amiens, Somme and many others, yet when the conflict ended, astonishingly, he was virtually unscathed.  Promoted to Corporal, he suffered his only wound at Morlancourt in the summer of 1918 but remained at his post.
   Demobilised in 1919, James decided not to return to Australia and came back to Doune where he assisted his elder brother William on the family farm. When William died suddenly two years later, James took over the tenancy and settled back into peacetime life as a member of the kirk session at Bridge of Teith Church, and was president of the town’s bowling club.
   Doune’s quiet war hero died in 1941, having gone full circle, in the very farmhouse where he was born.

James Morrison
Born 1 May 1887
Died 7 December 1941
 
The story of the ‘Black Anzacs’ is told by Australian historian Doug Walsh on his website, http://blackanzacs.org.au/ and he has also recently written a book on the raid.

You can read about football in Doune on the Doune Castle AFC website.

When researching the lives of footballers, I have come across some fascinating tales but few can match RW Neill, who captained Scotland to victory over England in 1880 (above) and won the Scottish Cup four times with Queen's Park.
   Late in life he vanished from his Glasgow home and covered his tracks so successfully that his wife declared herself a widow and remarried. Yet Neill was not dead, he was in Australia and so much alive that he tried to fight for the Anzacs.
   For much of his life, Robert Walker Neill was a fairly typical Queen's Park player: born in 1853, son of a head teacher in the southside of Glasgow, he pursued a career as a commercial agent for an engineering company. In the 1880s he spent a couple of years in South America, and married Janet Johnston on his return.
   His football career was exemplary and he was described in the Scottish Football Annual as 'one of the finest backs Scotland ever produced'. That was in 1880, the year in which a knee injury in the Glasgow Charity Cup final - when he captained QP to victory over Rangers - ended his playing days. 

   He and his wife had four children, although only two survived to adulthood, and they lived in Shawlands. In the 1911 census the family are at 106 Kilmarnock Road in Shawlands, and he is described as a 58-year-old machine maker and employer.
   Then something happened. There is nothing in the press about his sudden departure, but indications are that he simply walked out. A year later he arrived on the SS Monaro in Fremantle, Western Australia, where he found work as a 'station hand', in other words a general labourer. He had no financial resources and lived in the Salvation Army 'Palace'.
   When the War broke out, there was of course a major recruitment drive for the Anzac forces. Neill was in his sixties, far too old: the normal upper age limit was 45, although for those with mining and engineering experience an exception was made for those up to 50. However, on 17 May 1917 he walked into the recruiting office at Blackboy Hill camp, near Perth, declared himself to be 48 years old with no next of kin, and signed on the dotted line. His attestation papers are available online.
   Private Neill passed the physical examination (despite needing extensive dental work) and was taken into the Mining Corps. He underwent his initial training before being appointed as a sapper on 31 July. Then a week later he was found out, and summarily discharged as over age. It was a brave attempt to join the war, and in fact he was not the only old man to try: several other Australians in their 60s actually kept up the deception and saw active service in Europe. For him, however, the war was over.

He went back to the Salvation Army hostel, and latterly worked as its caretaker. Meanwhile, back in Scotland, his wife Janet remarried in 1922 and declared herself a widow on the marriage certificate. Robert Neill, however, did not die until 1928.
   He was apparently well regarded in Perth, as his funeral at Karrakatta Cemetery drew a good crowd: 'The respect and esteem in which the deceased was held was demonstrated by the number of friends who attended at the graveside and the beautiful wreaths and floral tributes received' (Daily News). There also seems to have been no knowledge of his family back home, as a series of probate notices appeared in the local press.
   Unanswered questions remain about Robert Neill.Why did he leave? Did his family ever find out what happened to him? Only now, with the digitisation of records, has it been possible to track down the man who disappeared.


The younger brother

As a postscript to RW Neill's story, it is also worth highlighting his brother Quintin, another prominent footballer.
   There were actually seven brothers in the family, and Quintin was 13 years younger than Robert. However, he started on the same path and joined Queen's Park in 1886, becoming a first team regular two years later. Then in December 1888 something unprecedented happened: 'for the first time in their existence, the QP have had to submit to the English agent'. To general shock, he turned professional with Lincoln City.
   In Lincoln, Quintin Neill worked as an accountant while captaining the football team and was considered as one of its finest early players. In 1894 he was awarded a benefit match against Burnley, but at the end of the year he went to South Africa to set up in business. He joined the Durban Light Infantry as a volunteer, then when the Boer War broke out he became a Trooper with Driscoll's Scouts. Sadly, he died of fever in a Durban hospital and is buried there.

Curiously, he has been wrongly identified in some reference books which call him Quentin Durward Neill - Quentin Durward was the name of a Walter Scott novel. However, he was actually Quintin Dick Neill, named after his father's lawyer in Glasgow, called Quintin Dick.

Robert Walker Neill: born Glasgow, 4 August 1853; died Perth, Western Australia, 19 August 1928.
Quintin Dick Neill: born Glasgow, 16 April 1866; died Durban, South Africa, 9 August 1901.

A tale of heroism by one of Scottish football’s pioneers, James Weir, has come to light thanks to an anecdote by one of his contemporaries.
   Archie Hunter, a star with Aston Villa in the 1880s, wrote a series of reminiscences in which he described a drunken episode which ended with Weir being hailed as the hero of a major fire in Glasgow’s south side.
   Weir was capped four times by Scotland, including the first ever international in 1872, and won the Scottish Cup three times with Queen’s Park. He was known as the ‘Prince of Dribblers’, an accolade which Hunter said was fully deserved: “I think he was the best forward in Scotland, and when he once got possession of the ball no one could take it from him. If you could have seen him play you would have remembered it. He was a merry fellow, always ready for fun and when the game was over no one liked a frolic better than he did.”
   Hunter recalled a night out in Glasgow which would not be out of place among today’s footballers: “A few of us were going home together and Jimmy Weir was in a fine rollicking mood. He had been – well, celebrating a victory that day – and he was amusing us with his little pranks and his livery chatter. We were all in the best of spirits and made a merry little party.
   “All at once we were startled by a loud alarm in the street and a cry of Fire! Fire! The people, excited as they always are on such occasions, began to run in the direction indicated by a red glare in the distance and we followed them. Sure enough a house was on fire and the flames were getting a firm hold on the building. Worse than that, there were people in the house and already there was such a blaze that they found it hard to make their way to the doors.
   “Presently, amid all the smoke and flame we saw a face at one of the topmost windows – a face that looked ghastly in the glare and was full of horror and despair. There were no ladders at hand and the lower part of the building was ablaze. It looked as if the poor creature – whether man or woman we could not distinguish – must be burnt to death in that furnace.
   “Well, Jimmy was a carpenter by trade and I suppose he knew something about climbing up and down houses. What did he do but coolly commence to climb up a high wall, from which he could throw a rope to the poor creature who was in such terrible danger. We watched him go up and before very long – though it seemed a long time then – he managed to bring the poor thing down; and how he was cheered by the people to be sure! His heroism wasn’t soon forgotten.”
   It is a fascinating story, and what is more it is entirely true. I recently stumbled across a report of the incident in the Glasgow Herald of 26 February 1877.

Shortly after 12 on Saturday night, a serious fire occurred at No Man’s Land, whereby a fine tenement of shops and dwelling houses was burned, the furniture and fittings destroyed, and the lives of the occupants placed in imminent danger. The tenement was situated at the corner of Winton Terrace (Victoria Road) and Allison Street, with a frontage to each thoroughfare of about 90 feet, and was four storeys in height. The ground flat was occupied as shops – a general store, conducted on the American principle and carried on by Mr James Graham, and a fruiterer’s and two drapers’ premises. The flats above, which were divided into dwellings of four rooms and kitchen, and five rooms and kitchen, were fully occupied by five families. The fire originated in Mr Graham’s store, whence it spread with great rapidity.

The report explained how residents were alerted by the local police sergeant, Mr Taylor, who climbed the tenement stairs to the top level, shouting ‘Fire’ as he went. But he was not alone:

Mr Weir, well known in football circles, also lent admirable assistance in making the inmates aware of the alarming position in which they were placed – a task which was not accomplished without considerable difficulty. When there were still a number of persons within the building, the flames had burst into the lobby, but Taylor and Mr Weir succeeded in penetrating through them and a second time reaching the upper flats, where were found a number of people in a terror-stricken state. It was impossible to reach the street through the lobby.
   Fortunately, a balcony ran along the front of the second storey, and the sergeant at once stepped on to the balcony, and passing along to the south end he saw that if the parties could be landed on the window sill of a house in the adjoining tenement they would be safe. By a loud knocking on the window he attracted the attention of a young man who was within, and by his aid got the window opened.

Nobody was killed but the tenement was destroyed which is why the building now on that site in Victoria Road is a different style to the rest of the street. The paper praised the efforts of the rescuers: “There seemed throughout a generous resignation of self”.
   On the day of the rescue, Weir and Hunter had both played for the ‘Improbables’ in the Scotland international trial, which their team won 3-0; the match report in the Herald was on the opposite page to the story of the fire.
   Weir’s life was certainly not lacking in drama. In 1881 he emigrated to Australia, a course that would eventually lead to his death in the outback eight years later, a story I outlined in my book First Elevens. The death notice was in the Adelaide Advertiser:

WEIR.—On the 23rd April, at Warrina Hospital, Great Northern Extension Railway, after an illness of 3 weeks and 3 days, James Biger Weir, of typhoid fever and congestion of the lungs. Deeply regretted by his wife.

When the book came out, I did not know the identity of his wife but have since discovered her name - and that leads to another tale. They married in Adelaide on 3 November 1886, and the reason I know is that they celebrated rather too much:

His wife’s story is quite incredible, too. Born Emma Jane Tampion in 1858, she crops up regularly in newspaper reports. Her parents divorced in 1869, three years later she absconded from Adelaide Industrial School, and she married no less than five times. 
   James Weir was her third husband, and she wasted no time in finding a fourth as she married a Thomas Neylon less than two months after Weir’s death. There are reports through the 1890s of Emma Neylon being fined for drunkenness but she must have sobered up eventually as in 1907 she married her fifth husband and lived until 1937.

James Biggar Weir
Born 21 October 1851 in Gorbals, Glasgow.
Died 23 April 1889 at Warrina, South Australia.

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog about the footballer Eadie Fraser; this was spotted by a distant relative of the player who contacted me with some extraordinary information: he had the player's diary, letters and photos. Consequently, I have pieced together this tragic story of the player's life and early death.


Early in 1886, Reverend Alex Miller hurried to a Sydney hospital where he had heard a family friend from Scotland lay dying. He was too late. The young man called Eadie Fraser had already passed away, and the minister could only undertake the sad task of conducting the 25-year-old’s funeral, before writing to his family - news which took six weeks to arrive.
   With this death in Australia, Scotland lost one of her most gifted footballers. The precocious talent known as ‘Graceful Eadie’ had broken into an exceptional Queen’s Park team as a teenager and won five Scotland caps along with two Scottish Cup medals. “His movements were perfect,” wrote the club historian. “His popularity was extraordinary. On the field and off it he was a thorough gentleman, and never descended to those tricks which tend to bring the game into disrepute.”
   The recent rediscovery of Fraser’s personal diaries has shed new light on a short but extraordinary life that spanned four continents: born in Canada, he grew up in Scotland, went to work in Nigeria and died in Australia.
   Born in 1860 to a deeply religious family in Ontario, where his father John (originally from Grantown-on-Spey) was a Presbyterian minister, he was named after Dr John Eadie, a professor of biblical literature. Two years later he came to Scotland when his father took charge of a congregation in the Gorbals.
   Young Eadie started out in football with Kerland, a team in Crosshill, and at 18 was invited to join Queen’s Park. After making the Glasgow select team he won his first cap for Scotland against Wales in 1880 and further international honours followed as he enthralled spectators with his effortless dribbling down the left.

   He even served as club secretary for Queen’s Park, but in the amateur age he also had to make a living and was offered a lucrative job in Africa with Miller Brothers, Glasgow-based traders in palm oil. He played his last match for the club in February 1884, a Scottish Cup semi-final victory over Hibs, and a few days later set sail for the Niger Delta (now in Nigeria), keeping a diary of his progress during the five week journey.
   There was almost a party atmosphere on board the SS Benguela as a group of 18 young men headed for postings in the colonies, putting on light entertainments and playing deck games. Fraser was the only non-drinker which gave him at least one advantage on the voyage: “The chaps are all up and many of them are wishing they had been like me last night and they would have no headaches this morning.”
   Stopping over on Madeira, he had a surprise encounter: “We were sitting on the roadside when two gentlemen on a bullock car passed us. I noticed one of them looked very hard at me. About a dozen yards further on the car stopped and the gentleman got out. He came back to us, and looking at me he asked “Is your name Fraser?” I felt astonished but said “It is”. “Is it Eadie Fraser?” he asked again. “Man, man, the last time I saw you was when your club the QP were playing against the Dumbarton at Boghead in the cup-tie last year”.”

  As the ship reached the west African coast, his fellow passengers were dropped off one by one at their posts, before it was his turn, greeted at the New Calabar river by the Miller Bros agent.
   Fraser’s first impressions were positive: “Opobo is a very nice place, indeed it is the prettiest and healthiest of all the rivers on the West Coast. There are five factories on the one side of the river, and ours is the only one on this side. I make the third white man in the employment. We have a splendid dwelling house – it is very airy and has a splendid veranda all around it. The food is very good. I have a black boy to wait on me alone. He works from 6 in the morning until 6 o’clock in the evening and we rest on Sunday.”
   The first year went well, his father sent him copies of Scottish Umpire to keep him up to date with football news, and in a lively letter home early in 1885 he talked of hosting a successful visit from the firm’s agent, Captain Hooper, who was “awfully well pleased with us and the way the business has been carried out”.
   Ominously, he also mentioned the oppressive heat reaching 130 degrees F (54C) and he soon fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, returning to Scotland to convalesce in a nursing home, before being advised to try the dry climate of Australia to effect a cure. Queen’s Park and Rangers played a benefit match to send him on his way and in September 1885 he bade a tearful farewell at Greenock, seen off by his brother Bob (who, although not so talented, would later win the Glasgow Cup with Queen’s Park).
   In stark contrast to his African trip, the three month voyage to Australia was a desperate trial as his health went downhill. The sole paying passenger on the cargo ship Ardmore, Fraser was utterly miserable and after catching a chill he collapsed, coughing up blood, and spent much of the trip in delirium, confined to his bunk, getting bedsores as he could only lie on one side.
   He was taken straight to hospital on arrival where, reviving briefly, he wrote what turned out to be his last letter home: “I hope to be all right in a couple of months. I am in the finest hospital in Sydney, best attention medical and nursing,” he said, but made it clear he was worried about finance: “I am paying £1 a week and I have only £8 altogether so I badly require money.” 
   Even on the other side of the world, Fraser was well known and was visited in hospital by David Walker, chairman of the Sydney YMCA and a keen footballer, who then summoned a Presbyterian minister, Alex Miller, who had studied divinity with one of Fraser’s Queen’s Park colleagues, WW Beveridge. He came too late, and Miller had the sad task of returning the young man’s belongings to his family.
   Miller also set up an Eadie Fraser Memorial Fund in Sydney to pay for a headstone at his grave, but the appeal failed to gather sufficient funds from local footballers; even a request for a contribution from Queen’s Park fell on deaf ears. Sadly, his final resting place in the city’s vast Rookwood Cemetery remains unmarked.
   Fraser’s African adventure and the struggles of the final voyage might have remained unknown had it not been for the rediscovery of his diaries and letters by his great great nephew Alex Cochrane. While some of the originals are too fragile to handle, they have been transcribed: “They were copied to my mother from a North American member of the extended Fraser clan,” he said. “The final letter is the most poignant with a description of the awful time he had.”  Mr Cochrane, who lives in Glasgow, also has photos of Eadie alongside some of the Queen’s Park greats.
   The diaries bring home the tragedy of a brief but much celebrated life, which one contemporary sports writer summed up: “I question very much if any forward of that time exercised such a potent influence over the spectators, and no style of play was more followed by the younger dribblers than that of Fraser.”

Malcolm John Eadie Fraser
Born 4 March 1860 at Goderich, Ontario
Died 8 January 1886 at Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

A regular challenge in researching the early footballers is that published information can be wrong: a name might be spelled wrongly in an old book, and that is how it remains for ever more, without being subject to further scrutiny. One such example which I stumbled across recently was that of MJ Eadie Fraser, who won five caps for Scotland between 1880 and 1883, scoring four goals in the process. At Queen's Park (pictured above) he won two Scottish Cup medals and was club secretary in 1882/83. According to the Queen's Park history (1920): Scotland never had a better forward than Eadie Fraser, known to everybody as the  "Graceful Eadie". His movements were perfect. His popularity was extraordinary. On the field and off it he was a thorough gentleman, and never descended to those tricks which tend to bring the game into disrepute. 
    He is generally named as Malcolm James Eadie Fraser, but a bit of digging found that the J actually stood for John. A bit more digging turned up the fact that he was born in Canada and died in Australia, quite an unusual journey for a Scottish footballer.  Here, for the first time, is a summary of his life:
    Malcolm John Eadie Fraser was born in Goderich, Ontario, on 4 March 1860, the third and youngest son of Rev John Fraser and Sarah Ann Lawrie, who also had three daughters. His father, a native of Grantown-on-Spey, trained for the ministry in Canada with the Presbyterian Church, and the boy was probably named after Dr John Eadie, professor of biblical literature, who was a leading Presbyterian. The family returned to Scotland in 1862 when his father was admitted as a probationer by the church, and in time was appointed as the first minister of the new Cumberland Street UP church in Glasgow's Gorbals.
    Young Eadie became a good footballer and was just the right kind of player for the pre-eminent club in Scotland, Queen's Park, talented and gentlemanly. However, at the peak of his powers, just before his 24th birthday he left Scotland to take up a job in West Africa (I have yet to ascertain what and where). The following year, in 1885, he became ill and to escape the climate became the sole passenger on the cargo ship Ardmore travelling to Australia. Within days of docking at Sydney, however, Eadie Fraser died in the city's Prince Alfred Hospital on 8 January 1886.
    He was buried in the vast Rookwood Cemetery, but the story does not quite end there. Later in 1886, some Australian friends launched a memorial fund [link] to erect a suitable headstone to a great footballer. Unfortunately, it seems not enough money was raised, as in May 1887 a meeting of the Southern British Football Association reported "The Chairman, Rev A Miller,  referred to the proposal to erect a headstone at the grave of Eadie Fraser, the Queen’s Park club to defray the cost of the railing. No action was, however, taken in the matter."
    A final quirk to the story is that one of Eadie Fraser's Scotland team-mates in 1880 was Andrew Watson, famously the first black international player. It has been reported (but I have not found confirmation) that Watson also died in Sydney in 1902. Could it be that Watson and Fraser are both buried in the same cemetery - reunited on the other side of the world?