The Founders in their Time
Glasgow in the seventeenth century was expanding fast as the main centre of trade and commerce in Scotland. However, with around 8000 inhabitants mid-century, the town's prosperity concealed much poverty. Glasgow's merchants and craftsmen, then the two premier groups in the city - and not always the best of friends - at the beginning of the century united to deal with the new social problems of large-scale settlement life. They founded two then unique insititutions, the Merchants House and the Trades House, to look after the poor, widowed and orphaned of merchants' and craftsmen's families.
George (to the left) and Thomas Hutcheson were members of the merchant community. Their impulse to establish a school and "hospital" (meaning then a home for destitute old men) was part of this movement. George, a Writer and Notary (lawyer) and a Procurator for the City and the University, as well as a Judge-Depute, had made his fortune by buying land in and around Glasgow, following in his father's footsteps, and by becoming Glasgow's first banker. He was known as "Maister George".
This was George's country house, built in rural P
artick, and known as the Bishop's Castle, perhaps because the land had formerly belonged to the Archbishop of Glasgow, or perhaps an example of distinctive Glasgow humour at the expense of George's grandeur.
In funding his Hospital and in writing a Draft Contract for a school, it is likely he was further motivated by the example of George Heriot in Edinburgh. Twenty years before, Heriot in his Will provided funds for a Hospital and the School which bears his name today. Also a moneylender, and even richer than George since he was banker to King James, Heriot, like Hutcheson and others of their type, sought to return to .their communities some of the wealth they had made from them, especially since charging interest on loans had then a dubious moral and legal standing. They also desired, and for the same reason, to ensure their good standing when called to account by their Maker. The wording of George's Will can further suggest an unfulfilled desire for a family but such a reading remain speculative.
George's Kist or Chest, famous in the City, where he kept the records of his money-lending. The Corporation, most of the councillors, the local aristocracy and the pioneers of Glasgow commerce all owed him money. The Kist was in George's bedroom, above the room in the "heich tenement" next the Tolbooth where he conducted his business.
Thomas, the younger brother by thirty years and a lawyer - like banking, a newly important occupation in this modernising world - provided in his Will for the funding of twelve poor and homeless orphans in the Hospital. His "Mortification for the Foundation and Endowment of a School" is in advance of its time, much more detailed and thought out than his brother's by then conventional Reformation generalisations on schooling. Where George saw learning to read as a way to save souls, Thomas saw a new society stemming from his school. There was to be writing, as well as reading. George had said the pupils should study "gramer", meaning then Latin. Thomas drops this idea. He seems aware of age and stage development, of the limits on learning imposed by the stages of maturation. So he defines progress by attainment not by the usual standard of attendance (as in the Grammar School). Those tested as able were to be funded to continue their education in the Grammar School, and then to the University through Town Bursaries. Pupils going on to University through this system would not reach there until around 16. University life then would often begin at 12 - Thomas evidently saw that as absurd. He also appreciated differentiation - the majority of Hutchesons' leavers (aged around 12) were to be apprenticed to a trade, showing - again ahead of his time - that he understood the importance of an educated workforce to the prosperity and cohesion of Glasgow life. .
The brothers died within two years of each other, and the building of the Hospital began in the year of Thomas's death, 1641. He laid the foundation stone himself on 19th March, and died on 1st September.
The monument to Thomas and his wife, Marion Stewart, in the Cathedral graveyard. She was known in the city as "Lady Hutcheson", a litigious, feisty soul, who had a Sedan Chair, rare in the city and the equivalent of a Ferrari now.
Glasgow in 1650
(Trongate is the road extending out to the left above the Clyde, with the Hospital on the northern side of the street near the end of the blocks of buildings moving out from Glasgow Cross where it meets with the High Street and Saltmarket.)
The city had developed around two crosses, the northern where Drygate and Rotten Row joined High Street. This was the area of the Cathedral. The southern cross was the area where settlement emerged firstly to service the Cathedral and then, as time went by, as the centre for trade and commerce. By the middle of the 18th century, the city centre has moved to this crossing of Trongate-Gallowgate with High Street-Saltmarket, and is extending out to the west. The choice of Trongate for the Hospital was part of this westward shift, and in due course the original Hospital building was sold off and the land behind feued to build Hutcheson Street, at the head of which was built the new Hospital, a memorial building to the Founders. The new building faced down the new street, in the manner of Glasgow city centre building.