George Brodrick Robertson

George Brodrick Robertson 1882 (my great great grandfather) was a restless man. He felt most at home away from home and over the course of his life he had several jobs which caused (or enabled) him to leave Leith. He always returned and spent his later years surrounded by family.

Or should I say families - George had TWO families, one with his wife Matilda and one with his girlfriend Catherine Marshall.

My mum knew about the second family - it was said that they were in Fife (across the Firth of Forth from Leith) but in fact they lived around the corner.

Somehow George pulled this off for several years by working away from home for long stretches.

I never met George but maybe he met me? He died in 1959, two years after I was born. I didn’t hear much about him from my granda other than he was “tough”. Amazingly I met his granddaughter from the “other” family through the FB site Spirit of Leithers. She and I have talked on the phone and we’re going to meet up the next time I”m in Scotland. Margaret's memory of him is as a loving, fun grandad she knew as George Marshall.

George was born in Brickwork Close in the Yardheads. He was named after a local celebrity - the civil engineer George Broadrick who was Superintendent of the Port of Leith.

He would have gone to school until the age of 13 and then started work. George had a lot of fresh starts beginning with joining the Carpenters Union in 1897, the Railway Workers Union in 1912, and the Merchant Navy in 1919.

He signed up for the military three times, the first time shortly after he met Matilda and nine months before she had their first child Mary Ann. The second time was after he found out she was expecting their second child, and the third time was when he was drafted for WWI in 1915.

George and Matilda married on New Years Eve 1902 and started married life at Bowling Green Lane. They moved frequently and it’s hard to track their addresses between censuses other than by the children’s birth records.

By 1908 George and Matilda have 3 children: Mary Ann, George, and William (they lost a son, John, to croup).

In June 1909 Matilda gives birth to a baby girl at 72 Pitt Street and they name her Catherine Marshall Robertson after their babysitter Catherine Marshall. George is 27 and Catherine Marshall is 18.

Did George and Matilda live at 72 Pitt Street?

How close were Matilda and Catherine?

72 Pitt Street, Leith, home of the Marshalls

George and Matilda never lived more than 10 minutes walk away from here. Over the next few years Matilda would have have three more children and Catherine would have five - all fathered by George.

In 1915 George and Matilda and their kids were living out in Polton, south of Edinburgh, when he was called up for WWI. Polton was in the countryside and had a paper mill and nice housing for workers and a school for their children.

George served with the Royal Engineers in France and when he returned he joined the Merchant Navy as a fireman or stoker.

Matilda died in 1932 and in 1934 he married Catherine Marshall. Their marriage certificate shows that they switched names - George Marshall and Catherine Robertson, probably to protect the children, who had grown up on Pitt Street as Marshalls.

GBR with Catherine and daughters Margaret and Georgina c 1934

I think George loved both women - he put a funeral notice in the newspaper after Matilda died, inviting family and friends to celebrate her life.

None of the children were orphaned and he was able to maintain two families because Catherine’s brother and sister were unmarried and helped her raise the children in their family home as well as financially supporting her.

We’ll never know how much Matilda and the two families knew about all this at the time or even now. One of Catherines’ daughters is still alive and some of her grandchildren don’t know the story.

To be continued…

The Moffats of Airdrie

Mum and Dad