A Journal of the Deacon Brodie Summer:

The Diary of George Sandy 1788

about the diary and transcription

about george sandy

George Sandy WS (1772-1853) was a teenager when he wrote the diary between the months of March and August 1788. In adult life he would serve briefly as librarian to the Society of Writers to the Signet but spent the bulk of his career as the Secretary to the Bank of Scotland. He was the son of the Clerk to the Writers of the Signet, also George Sandy, who had died some three years before the opening of the diary. Although it is not mentioned in the Diary, his elder brother Gilbert Sandy died only weeks before the beginning of George’s narrative. Other than Sandy’s correspondence in the service of the Bank of Scotland, no further diaries, drawings or other personal materials are known to have survived.

dramatis personae

Marion Alison. Mother of George Sandy, died February 1790.

Anthony Barclay, Writer to the Signet (d.1811) A friend of George Sandy’s father with whom George would serve his legal apprenticeship

Alexander Alison, Assistant Clerk and Extractor to the Signet. George Sandy’s father’s former assistant and co-overseer of the WS Society’s library. George Sandy’s principal point of contact with the WS Society.

Charles Cunningham WS (?1774-1852). George Sandy’s friend, later Town Clerk of Edinburgh. Became a Writer to the Signet in 1808.

Hugh Watson WS (?1778-1834). George Sandy’s friend. Became a Writer to the Signet in 1797.

John Patison WS (1773-1843). George Sandy’s friend, and became a Writer to the Signet on the same day as George, 10th July 1798.

Thomas Scott WS (1774-1823). George Sandy’s friend. Became a Writer to the Signet in 1797. Younger brother to the advocate and author Sir Walter Scott.

James Milligan. George Sandy’s friend. Nothing is known of him beyond the pages of George Sandy’s diary, which therefore becomes his memorial.

george sandy’s diary at the signet library

George Sandy’s diary survived into modern times by sheer good fortune. It was discovered by random chance in an abandoned lumber room in 1890 by Haddington’s historian Dr. J. G. Wallace-James (1861-1922). The diary was badly damaged and and in dreadful condition, with many early pages missing. The diary remained with the Wallace-James family for the next fifty years, before his widow presented it to the Signet Library in 1943. The Librarian of the day was Dr. Charles Malcolm, a well-known local historian under whose leadership the Signet Library became a centre for regional studies and a favourite repository for donations of local material.

The 1943 transcription by dr charles Malcolm

Malcolm recognised the importance and potential of George Sandy’s diary right away, and made a transcription of the core text before having the pages carefully restored and rebound. Parts of the diary’s surviving early pages were damaged beyond repair and Malcolm’s transcription is now our only record of what he saw in 1943. His transcription was published with an introduction initially in the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club and was released separately shortly afterwards by T. and A. Constable.

the revised transcription

The transcription here presented is a revision of Charles Malcolm’s wartime transcription, with the addition of certain surviving parts of the Diary that he either abbreviated or excluded. The Diary can be viewed in two forms, either as an online flipbook or as individual original pages with IIIF zoom capabilities to allow detailed study. The presentation of the new transcription attempts to convey the atmosphere of Sandy’s 1788 page arrangements without abiding with his page arrangement to the extent of making the text hard to read.  

George Sandy’s use of code

George Sandy deployed a secret code in the journal when discussing his (unexplained) exchanges about a watch and some books with his late father’s erstwhile deputy Alexander Alison, Assistant Clerk and Extractor to the Signet. The code uses an alphabet derived from but not identical to Greek. In the Constable edition of Dr. Charles Malcolm’s transcription of the diary Malcolm attempts a key and this is reproduced below.