James Stuart

James Stuart PC (2 January 1843 – 12 October 1913) was a British educator and politician.

Early life and background

He was born on 2 January 1843, in Fifeshire at Markinch, the eldest son of the textile industrialist Joseph Gordon Stuart with a flax mill—Balgonie Works at Milton of Balgonie—and his wife Catharine Booth, daughter of David Booth. He was the uncle of Josephine Gordon Stuart.

Balgonie Mill

The Balgonie Mill on the River Leven was founded c.1800, and extended in 1807. It produced yarn that was sent to Dundee, the main products being canvas and sacking.

Joseph Gordon Stuart (1815–1866) was the son of Alexander Stuart WS, and his wife Mary McKnight, and elder brother of Alexander Stuart and Edward Craig Stuart. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, took an arts degree at the University of Aberdeen and a law degree at the University of Edinburgh. After a time as barrister he became a flax spinner. The original mill owner William Drummond took into partnership his son-in-law Robert Baxter, and when Drummond retired, Stuart, related to him, became a partner.

Stuart took over the mill when Baxter emigrated to France, in the early 1840s. He innovated by installing a water turbine. He was in some business difficulties during the early 1860s. A partnership Staig & Stuart with Thomas Michael Staig as merchants in Kirkcaldy went into sequestration (a bankruptcy process under Scots law) in 1861. The sequestration was lifted in 1863, but money owed to the Liverpool soap merchant Edward Steele had been directed to support Staig & Stuart, via the London bank Stuart Brothers run by Joseph Gordon Stuart and his brother James Stuart the elder (born 1820), an East India merchant. A chancery case of 1866 followed.