For many students coming to St Andrews from working-class communities, a university education offered access to a wider range of occupations. Several students from Fife coal-mining communities who matriculated in the…
Thomas 'Tammas Broon' Brown of Kelty, Fife was a promising scholar and keen boxer. When he matriculated at United College in 1920-21, he entered an environment vastly different to the coal-mining community he had grown…
Thomas Brown was born on 22 June 1903, in Naismyth Place, Kelty, Fife. He was the son of wagon repairman, James Brown, and housewife, Isabella Kinley. There is no clear record of where Thomas went to primary school;…
James Mailer was born on 20 January 1905, in Stenhouse Street, Cowdenbeath, Fife, to his coal miner father, Thomas Mailer, and housewife mother, Mary Chalmers. He was the older brother to two twin sisters, Nellie and…
Today, the humanities – including subjects like Classics – are sometimes criticised for their apparently low employability prospects. Yet the career pathways of Classics graduates at the start of the twentieth century…
James Christie Ross [1914-UCD-027] may have been born in Nigg, in 1895, though he was later living in Arbroath. He matriculated at University College Dundee in 1914 at the age of 19, to study under the Provincial…
Madge Turnbull was educated at the High School of Dundee. She matriculated at University College Dundee in 1913, studying under the committee for the training of teachers; but later transferred to St Andrews and…
Margaret Martin Wilson Owler [1914-UCD-025] was born 13 September, 1895 in Dysart, near Kirkcaldy, Fife, and educated at the local high school until 1912. She attended University College Dundee from 1914 to 1918,…
Agnes Marion Hogg [1914-UC1-033] was born in Montrose, Forfarshire, in 1896, and entered the United College in 1914. She studied under the Provincial Committee for the Training of Teachers. Although she had not placed…
John Donald Steward Menzies [1913-UC1-047] was born in Dundee, in 1894. He studied at St Andrews under the provincial committee for the training of teachers for at least two years, before joining the 5th (provincial…