Who's Who in Glasgow in 1909

E-F: Edgar to Fyfe

WILLIAM FINDLAY

UNDER the pen-name of "George Umber," the writings of Dr. Findlay have long been well known in Glasgow. Perhaps the best known of his works are "In my City Garden," "Ayrshire Idylls of Other Days," "Robert Burns and the Medical Profession," "Carmina Medici, the Poems of a Physician," and "Noah's Epistles," in which he first appeared as a satirist. His literary taste is hereditary, his maternal uncle, Archibald Mackay, having been the author of popular songs like "Be Kind to Auld Grannie," and "My First Bawbee," as well as of the "History of Kilmarnock," of which Dr. Findlay has edited the fifth edition.

Dr. Findlay himself was born in Kilmarnock in 1846 and received his education at Kilmarnock Academy and Glasgow University, and he was one of the last batch of graduates capped in the Old College in High Street in 1870. From that year till his retiral in 1907 he practised in Dennistoun, with the growth of which he was therefore associated almost from its first beginnings. He has taken considerable part in the public interests of his profession in his district, being one of the founders and an ex-president of the Glasgow Eastern Medical Society, and an ex-president of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Branch of the British Medical Association, as well as having been first president of the same association's Eastern Division. At present he is a member of the Business Committee of the Glasgow University General Council.

Hs is an enthusiastic admirer of Burns, a vice-president of the Burns Federation, and frequent proposer of the Immortal Memory on 25th January, while a number of his poems are included in the latest volume of the Glasgow Ballad Club. Of Dr. Findlay's family of six sons and two daughters, two sons follow their father's profession, and one is a rising Glasgow artist.