ANNUAL DINNER 2024

A rousing send-off for the Deputy Keeper

An emotional evening on 10 November when retiring Deputy Keeper of the Signet, Mandy Laurie WS, received a rousing send off from over 200 guests at her last Annual Dinner in office. A sea of pink roses and foliage greeted guests entering an Upper Library bathed in pink light. Even the Garnkirk Florence Vase had dressed for the occasion in a fetching pyramid of dried flowers.

“ “All that is good about Scotland’s legal community”.  ”

To match the grandeur of the surroundings, guest speaker Lord Jonathan Sumption KC held the intense attention of the audience to make the case for lawyers to have broad minds rooted in broad education. Studying history and literature, he argued, multiplies and enriches experience and improves the quality of advice and judgement in lawyers and judges. It was truly an awe-inspiring speech: eloquent, elegant, analytical, and, above all, profound. You could have heard a pin drop.

““Stunning”.”
““Mind-blowingly beautiful”.”

NEW DEPUTY KEEPER OF THE SIGNET

The WS Society has announced that Mandy Laurie WS (Burness Paull) is standing down as Deputy Keeper of the Signet at the end of this year, and current Treasurer Jim Cormack KC WS (Pinsent Masons) will succeed her in office from 1 January 2025.

A reshuffle of appointments sees current trustees Tony Jones KC TD WS (Brodies) and Jennifer Skeoch WS (Burness Paull) nominated as Treasurer and Fiscal respectively, and personal injury specialist Kim Leslie WS (Irwin Mitchell) and urban and rural property specialist Robert Macduff-Duncan WS (Kippen Campbell) nominated as trustees.

Commenting on her decision to stand down, Mandy Laurie said:

I am in my 14th year as a trustee, having been Fiscal from 2011 and Deputy Keeper from 2019. Now feels the right time to pass on the mantle. It has been a terrific experience and hugely satisfying to have seen the Society through the Covid pandemic and presided when the historic step was taken to become a charity in 2021. Our appointments committee were unanimous in recommending to the Keeper of the Signet, Lady Elish Angiolini LT KC, that Jim Cormack succeed me as Deputy Keeper.

Jim Cormack said:

​I will be honoured to receive my commission as Deputy Keeper from Lady Angiolini, Keeper of the Signet. I will be building on the work of my predecessors in office to continue the renaissance of the Society and the Signet Library. Mandy Laurie has been an inspiration as Deputy Keeper, always injecting a lightness of touch, humour, and congeniality into the affairs of the Society. That the Society achieved charitable status during her tenure speaks volumes for Mandy’s qualities as a bold yet collegiate leader.

NOVEMBER DIET OF ADMISSION

We are looking forward to our November Diet of Admission where we will welcome 20 new members of different categories, and their families and friends.

Lady Eilish will preside over the ceremony and provide inspiring remarks on our member’s place is history. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet Lady Eilish and new members of the Society. We welcome all members who wish to attend.  

The Diet of Admission will take place on Friday 29 November at the Signet Library. The evening starts at 5.30 pm with the swearing in ceremony followed by a drinks reception.

We are still welcoming new applications for the Diet and if you know anyone who would be interested in becoming a member, please contact our membership team at membership@wssociety.co.uk with any enquires. 

SIGNET LIBRARY’S 2024 ONLINE EXHIBITION

Unveiling the Signet Library's 2024 Online Exhibition:

"The Signet Library's Long Eighteenth Century 1722 - 1837" tells the story of that Golden Age, during which the WS Society’s began to build its legal library burgeoned into the creation of one of the aesthetic and intellectual wonders of the late Scottish Enlightenment.

The Exhibition features our new transcription of the Charles Cockburn Letters 1714-1715, written by a new Deputy Keeper to the Signet to the Keeper in the shadow of the advancing 1715 Jacobite Rebellion and the digitization of a very early pamphlet published by the advocate John Cuninghame in 1705 illustrating legal education in Scotland in the years immediately before the foundation of the first Scottish university chairs in law.

Please direct any exhibition enquiries to James Hamilton.

Please also take some time to explore our Heritage Portal but note that owing to the DDOS attack on the internet archive certain of our digitised manuscripts and texts are temporarily offline.

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT

Barry Hutchison

This month’s Employee Spotlight features Barry Hutchison, the WS Society’s Operation Manager. If you have participated in a WS event, visited our library, or attended an education conference, Barry will have likely been the first face you see, and the last when you leave.

Barry is an integral part of our team, and our Director of Membership, Sarah Leask, spoke with him about his career with the WS Society and how he has seen the organisation grow over the past 12 years.

STEUART’S INQUIRY OF 1767: AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF LOST AND FOUND

October 2024 will be remembered at the WS Society for an extraordinary story of lost and found. It centres on the first book on economics owned by the Signet Library, Sir James Steuart’s two volume Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy, printed in London in 1767. At the time, the work was a real pioneer, and it’s now considered to be the first full treatise on economics to be published. Steuart himself was the grandson of Lord Advocate Sir James Steuart of Goodtrees, Thomas Aitkenhead’s executioner. He was a Jacobite who’d spent time with the exiled Scottish court at Rome, and he’d rejoin the diaspora for a further decade in the aftermath of the 1745.

Because Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations followed so soon after Steuart’s opus – and argued against it so strongly - the work has been undervalued in the world of Anglophone scholarship. However it was admired by the German philosopher Hegel, and the first Dictionary of National Biography relented sufficiently as to describe it as the most complete and systematic survey of the science from the point of view of moderate mercantilism which had appeared in England. The Signet Library is believed to have acquired our fine copy of it during the late 1780s under the great Deputy Keeper of the Scottish Enlightenment John Davidson, two full bound volumes with gold tooling and decorative endpapers. It is present in the first printed catalogue of 1792.

The two volumes came over to the new Signet Library with the rest of the collection in 1815, and from 1833 their home would be Upper Library Gallery case PP, northwest of the Cupola. And there they remained until, on the afternoon of 12th April 1978, volume 2 of the set - erroneously included in Lot 386 of the Sotheby’s Sale - was alienated from its partner and sent into exile. Volume 1 found itself alone on a new shelf under the north side Cupola with the loss of its partner memorialised in a mournful label gummed onto its endpaper.

Forty-six years later, the missing volume of the set was placed in auctioneer Dominic Winter’s October Printed Books, Maps and Playing Cards sale as Lot 261. Alyssa Popiel, curator and author of A Capital View: The Art of Edinburgh (2014), spotted the sale and alerted the Society.  With Chief Executive Robert Pirrie leading the bidding, we succeeded in reacquiring the volume and completing our set once more of this vital early work.

The story of the book won’t end there: the return of the second volume has thrown up more that demands investigation. Although the two volumes share the same Georgian binding and endpapers, the WS Society book stamp on the boards of the first volume is the “short lions” stamp of 1800-1815, whereas the second volume carries the earlier “fleur de lys” stamp of 1722-1800. It is not clear why this should be so, nor why the leather spine title labels were altered from reading “Stuart’s Inquiry” to the longer “Stuart’s Political Oeconomy” which again happened at an early stage in the life of the book. Research continues.

CHRISTMAS CONCERT

We are delighted to once again celebrate Christmas at the Signet Library with the Choir of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral. This year's concert will take place on Wednesday 11 December at 6.00 pm. 

With much loved music from across the centuries and different parts of the world, this concert is a wonderful occasion to entertain family, friends, and colleagues in the run up to the festivities. Put the date in your diary and look out for the booking details which will be circulated soon.

WS SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

The modern WS Society supports legal careers and well-being. We aim to enrich life both inside the legal world and in outside interests, such as history, literature, arts, and culture. This is what it means to belong to a lawyers’ institution where law, history and culture converge.

We therefore encourage all members — from student to employment to retired — to join our Special Interest Group (SIG) initiative.

Each SIG takes the form of a regular meeting covering a specific interest, whether a legal or industry specialism, or a subject outside the law. Simply register via the links below for any meeting you would like to attend. An enthusiastic member will take responsibility for organising discussion and meeting dates. Most meetings will be by Zoom. 

For more information, see here. You can register via the links below.

CHARITY AND THIRD SECTOR

Lead: Sarah Brown WS

First meeting: Thursday 14 November, 12.30 – 13.30

Location: Zoom (click here to register).

 

BOOK CLUB

Lead: Caroline Docherty WS

First meeting: Tuesday 19 November, 17.30 – 19.00

First book: Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris

Location: Zoom (click here to register).

  

HISTORY

 Lead: James Hamilton

First meeting: Wednesday 27 November, 17.30 – 18.30

Topic:  The initial discussion will focus on shaping the Group’s initial direction and activities, but to get the historic ball rolling there will also be a short presentation of items from the Society‘s collection of Jacobite material and memorabilia. Some of this will be familiar to some members – the officer’s commission signed by Bonnie Prince Charlie, for instance – but much of it has never been shown in public before, including ballads, proclamations, prints, pamphlets, letters, engravings and unique manuscript material.

Location: Zoom (click here to register).

ART

Lead: Valerie Paterson WS

First meeting: Tuesday 3 December, 17.30 – 18.15

Location: Zoom (click here to register).

If you have any questions about the SIGs, please email Sarah Leask.

WATT TRUST SEEKING NEW TRUSTEE

The Watt Trust (charity number SC016856) was set up in 1983, in memory of Rob Watt and his wife, Barbara. Rob Watt, a distinguished Fettesian, was Rector of the Edinburgh Academy between 1951 and 1962.

The purpose of the Trust is to give financial help to past and present members of both the Edinburgh Academy and Fettes, to enable them to advance their education or professional training beyond the point at which public funds or university scholarships are available, or when private or family sources alone are not quite adequate for the purpose.

For more information on the Trust, please visit its website here.

If you are interested in becoming a trustee, please contact Sophie Mills WS (smills@wssociety.co.uk).