Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

This section focuses on three of my father’s jobs in Scotland from 1938-1939: Lockhart & MacMab, John Carroll & Sons, and Burgess & Speedie.

Lockhart & MacNab, Stirling, Scotland, 11^th July, 1938

My father worked in Stirling for a short while (not specified). Stirling is about 40 miles from Edinburgh. This testimonial is similar to his other interwar testimonials in that it states, “We had to dispense with his services owing to a lack of work.” In other words, jobs in the interwar period were precarious. The 1930s saw the worst economic downturn in industrialized history, lasting from 1929 to 1939.⁷

 John Carroll & Sons Ltd, Cumbernauld, 14^th January 1939 

I thought the typewritten CV would be of help, but I discovered errors straightaway. The explanation is perhaps a little amusing. As mentioned, my father had written his CV with his scrawly left hand and perhaps given it to a secretary at work to type. It is somewhat ironic that as of the year 2022, we are all ‘typists’ on our laptop keyboards.

The female secretary (most probably female, as this job was mainly reserved for women throughout the twentieth century) couldn’t read my father’s left-handed scrawl. So my father had illegibly written ‘John Carroll’ and she had typed ‘John Canall’. To further complicate matters, John Carroll & Sons were based in ‘Cumbernauld’, Scotland. The secretary has written, ‘Cumberland, England’. This perhaps made sense to her as he later worked in Cumberland, England (where I was born)! The double irony is that I am perhaps the first person to notice this little ‘joke’ after more than eighty years (with the possible exception of my father)!

Perhaps I shouldn’t focus too much on the details. More to the point, my father seems to have had a variety of jobs before the outbreak of the war. And although his employers seem to be pleased with his work, they write, “Owing to the slackness of trade, we regret having to dispense with his services.” I believe this was also the case with his father in the early twentieth century, without going into specifics.

Burgess & Speedie, Stirling, 4 April 1939

This is another job that my father had in Stirling for a few months before the war. So it is not unthinkable that he spent some time in Stirling, possibly with relatives. Electrical work. This job is not mentioned on his resume.

⁷ The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from 1929 to 1939. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history Read: 12 August 2022.