The Member for Scotland: a life of Duncan McLaren

Willis Pickard, MA 1963

Duncan McLaren was a leading politician in Victorian Scotland. Unfairly forgotten, his life casts light on the relationship between politics and religion as well as on the dominant Liberals' rivalry between Whigs and McLaren's radicals. McLaren, a prosperous Edinburgh draper of Highland stock, rescued Edinburgh from bankruptcy and led the Scottish campaign against the corn laws.

His friends John Bright and Richard Cobden persuaded him to enter Parliament where his assiduous pursuit of Scottish causes brought him the nickname, Member for Scotland. He married Bright's sister Priscilla, a pioneer in the struggle for women's rights. The large McLaren family included three Liberal MPs and one of Scotland's first female doctors. Indefatigable in pursuit of his many causes Duncan McLaren won a celebrated libel case against "The Scotsman", which called him "snake the draper."

ISBN: 978 1 906566 41 8