On this day in 1844

George Meikle Kemp was born in Lanarkshire but moved around in his childhood as his father’s work as a shepherd took the family from place to place. He followed in his father’s footsteps before becoming a teenager, but he later proved himself to be a competent amateur engineer. On the strength of this, he returned to education, and was later apprenticed before travelling in both France and the UK where he developed his love of Gothic architecture.

Returning to Scotland, he submitted designs for several buildings, but his lack of formal training meant his work was often passed over. However, his break came in 1836 with a competition to design a memorial for Edinburgh to author Walter Scott, who had died four years earlier.

Monument commissioned

He submitted an entry under a pseudonym, and came third. However, the committee invited revisions and another round of entries and, on this second attempt, Kemp’s design was placed first. Kemp oversaw much of the construction work himself, but would never live to see it completed.

The foundation stone was laid in 1840 and, by 1844, it was nearing the point of completion when Kemp was drowned in the Union canal. His body wasn’t discovered until 18 March, still in the water. On 20 March, Edinburgh publication The Witness reported that Kemp “was last seen at the house of Mr Lind, contractor for the monument, on whom he had called to arrange about the progress of the works. It is supposed that, on his return home to Morningside, he had taken the way by the banks of the Canal, and that the night being dark, he had stumbled into the water at the place where he was found – an open and dangerous point beside Lochrin Distillery.”

Death mystery

Nobody knows how he ended up in the water, but his death was a cause of great public upset, with more than 400 officials and locals forming a procession in his honour on the day of his funeral.

The Kelso Chronicle of 29 March reported that the committee that had commissioned the Scott Monument had considered interring Kemp’s body in the vault below the monument itself, which had been intended to be Scott’s resting place, but were unable to pass such a decree. Thus, he was buried in St Cuthbert’s Churchyard, facing his then incomplete monument.

 

...and on this day in 1989

Two trains crashed just outside Bellgrove station when one of them passed through a signal at which it should have stopped. One passenger and one of the train drivers were killed in the incident, and more than 50 others were injured. It was Britain’s third serious train crash in three months. The official report into the crash declared that the train had passed a signal at danger.

“Desperate” signalman

The Daily Mirror of 7 March, which described the location of the crash as a “cost-cutting bottle-neck of single track”, reported that “a desperate signalman tried to warn one of the drivers by setting off two detonators. But he was seconds too late. The 12.20 Milngavie to Springburn, which was on the wrong track, smashed into the second train.”

Two days earlier, five passengers had died in a crash at Purley, which itself came a little less than three months after a crash at Clapham Junction killed 35 and injured almost 500.

 

...and on this day in 1923

The BBC made its first broadcasts in Scotland on 6 March 1923. The station, known as 5SC, was set up in a small attic in Rex House at 202 Bath Street, Glasgow, around two miles by road from the Corporation’s present headquarters at the city’s Pacific Quay. There is now a plaque on the outside of the building noting its former use. The transmitter was sited at a nearby electricity power station and broadcast on the 415m wavelength.

Another station was later set up in Aberdeen (2BD), and the two were supplemented by smaller relay stations in Edinburgh (2EH) and Dundee (2DE).

BBC’s Glasgow launch

The station went live at 7pm, with the BBC’s first director general, Stonehaven-born Lord Reith, announcing “5SC, the Glasgow station of the BBC, is calling.” Like all other programmes on the schedule, this had to be done live, as it was not possible to pre-record and play out programmes to air.

The first night’s transmission had a particularly Scottish flavour, with local music dominating the schedule.

Station 5SC remained on air for around five years, to be replaced in the late 1920s with a regional service that could more effectively cover the country.

The BBC’s Scottish television service was launched in 1952, from a transmitter at Kirk O’Shotts, and went live on 15 February that year with coverage of the state funeral of King George VI.

The BBC’s Scottish team

By the time 5SC went live, the BBC had already been broadcasting to London for five months, already. However, the Scottish audience grew quickly and numbered in the tens of thousands by the end of its first calendar year on the air.

The station’s first controller was Herbert Carruthers, who was responsible not only for setting up the station in the weeks leading up to its launch, but securing any music that would be played on the air from a music shop. The station also had four programming staff.