Old Edinburgh Worthies No 1: Soldier turned street preacher Daddy Flockhart

Georgian and Victorian Edinburgh​ boasted a considerable population of street characters. The Victorian artist Ned Holt made it his business to record the doings of these ‘street worthies’, shedding much-needed light on the dark underbelly of the Capital of the time.

Edinburgh worthy, Daddy Flockhart

The doyen of Edinburgh’s worthies was Robert ‘Daddy’ Flockhart, a street preacher often perched on a chair at the west end of St Giles’s.​ ​Flockhart was born on February 4​,​ 1778​,​ near Glasgow. His birth was not​ ​registered but his father may well have been James Flockhart, a nail maker by trade, and his​ ​mother’s maiden name had been Elizabeth Ferguson.Not long after, there was an opening for his father in the Edinburgh nail making trade. They lived​ ​there for 10 years and sent Robert to school and after five years of rudimentary schooling, the young Flockhart was apprenticed to a nail-maker, following in his father’s footsteps.

He toiled away at this gloomy occupation for seven years, before​ ​wandering the country and plying his trade for a few years. One day, he met a recruiting party from​ ​the 81st Regiment and enlisted as a private soldier. He had been turned down by another regiment in the past, for his short stature, but the 81st badly needed recruits.​ ​As a young soldier, he led an immoral life, drinking, cursing and fighting.

In 1803, Robert transferred to the 22nd Regiment and proceeded​ ​to the garrison of Fort William, Calcutta. When the regiment helped capture a robber chief named​ ​Holkar, Robert was promoted to Corporal, but he was soon reduced to the ranks due to his​ ​drunkenness and disobedience. In hospital with an attack of what may well have been delirium​ ​tremens, he began to read a bible he had taken from a young officer gunned down in a duel.

This​ ​reading affected him very much and in his 29th year, he became a Christian convert, praying​ ​incessantly and preaching to the other patients. The hospital authorities thought he had gone insane​ ​and it was not until 1810 that he was allowed to rejoin his regiment.

A few years later, when Flockhart joined the battalion at Edinburgh Castle, he was struck by​ ​the drunkenness and sinful living of the soldiers; clearly it was his duty to convert them to lead​ ​wholesome Christian lives. But whereas the enfeebled Calcutta hospital patients had lacked the means​ ​to obturate Flockhart’s endless sermons, the angry Scottish soldiers beat and kicked him mercilessly,​ ​infuriated with his constant preaching, and the officers more than once made him a​ ​prisoner for disobedience.

In 1813, when he was confined to Morningside Asylum as being mentally​ ​disordered, he compared himself to Samson when they shaved his head and put a blister on the scalp.​ ​It was thought a good stratagem to take his bible away from him, to see if this helped cure his​ ​religious mania, but the frantic Flockhart twice escaped from the asylum, in search of a replacement​ ​​scripture to read. ​​He eventually befriended the asylum doctors and clerics, being reunited with his​ ​bible and even allowed to preach to the other patients.

In 1814, when he was released from the​ ​asylum, he settled down with a woman whose name we do not know, and who he was supposed to​ ​have married the previous year, for married life outside the castle grounds. Shortly thereafter, the​ ​army had enough of him, for good, and he was allowed a pension of one shilling and threepence daily.

These events started off Flockhart’s main career as an Edinburgh worthy: a manic street​ ​preacher haranguing the crowds in the Grassmarket or in the High Street, being jeered at by drunks​ ​and mocked by the godless populace. The cruel police moved him along and he more than once had to spend the night in the cells.

A true fanatic, he withstood every insult in his service of the Lord. Once,​ ​when singing a hymn inside a canteen, he was knocked out cold by a blow from a stick. He was urged​ ​to report this cowardly assault to the police, but merely said, “I will pray for him”. Hopefully, these​ ​prayers had the desired effect, since the canteen keeper drowned at Newhaven not long after.

Strange​ ​to say, Flockhart founded a small school in Lauriston, presumably for very young children; after​ ​spending most of his life in the army, he would be able to teach little more than infantry drill, but his​ ​biographer Mr Guthrie assures us that by some stratagem or other, the preacher turned schoolmaster​ ​had acquired some general knowledge.‘Daddy Flockhart’, as the preacher soon became known, used to say that Mons Meg should be loaded​ ​with bibles, to fire salvation down the Royal Mile towards the Canongate. Once, when he was​ ​planning a sermon outdoors in the pouring rain, a woman said “Why, Mr Flockhart, you’ll never attempt to preach in sic’ a night as this?”

The preacher replied “Whisht, woman, be thankful that the​ ​Lord is not raining down fire and brimstone on you and me out o’ heaven!”

As time went by, Flockhart became respected for his sincere Christian faith; several clergymen befriended him, and his​ ​house at 7 Richmond Place was often visited by students of theology.

The 1851 Census finds​ ​Flockhart hale and hearty at home, now aged 73 but still active as a street preacher. He​ ​befriended the Rev Mr Guthrie who would one day edit his autobiography. In 1855, his health broke​ ​down and he became housebound. Flockhart died from paralysis on September 8​,​ 1857, aged​ ​80 years and survived by his brother James, who had been present at the death.

Jan Bondeson is author of Phillimore's Edinburgh, published by Amberley Books and Murder Houses of Edinburgh

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