90 Recent Fire in Town Hall, Dumfries. 



"of glorious memory," after Sir Godfrey Kneller, presented by 

 Lord John Johnstone, in token of his conversion from Jacobit- 

 ism; a portrait of Charles, Duke of Queensberry and Dover, 

 styled "The Good Duke;" and two landscape paintings, pre- 

 sented by the late Lord Young, one by Thomson of Duddingston 

 and the other by Noel Paton. The old oak table is much 

 injured, and of the Provost's chair only the upper part of the back 

 remains uninjured. This is quaintly carved, and it is hoped 

 that it will be preserved and be applied to form part of a new 

 chair, similar in design to the one destroyed. 



Fortunately, the "Siller Gun " was rescued; and the town's 

 papers, many of them of historical value, remain intact and unin- 

 jured. 



The building has served the purpose of a Town Hall more 

 than forty years, and again a stage has been reached when a pause 

 is requisite to inquire the way. 



I pass to recall a long-forgotten incident that occurred more 

 than a hundred and fifty years ago, which seriously endangered 

 the charters of the town. I give the story from memory with 

 the assistance of a few notes taken from the Council minutes 

 several years ago. 



At that time shops in High Street were not as they are now, 

 fronted with plate-glass. The windows were small bow-shaped 

 lights, filled with numerous squares of glass, and ill-adapted to 

 their purpose of admitting light, and especially for the display of 

 the merchants' wares within. Usually, on this account, on 

 market and fair days articles were exhibited on the footpath, 

 outside the shop door. 



On 15th September, 1742, being the Saturday of the Rood 

 Fair, Provost Bell, when walking down the High Street, detected 

 a gipsy woman abstract a pair of stockings from one of the 

 parcels of goods placed outside the door of a shop and conceal 

 them under her cloak. Putting his hand on the gipsy's shoulder, 

 he promptly took her down to the Council Chamber, and there 

 and then sent her to prison — a proceeding which Robert Edgar, 

 of Elsieshields, writer, in his MS. notes of Dumfries, declares 

 was illegal ; and probably so it was. But as one of themselves 

 put it: "The bailies of Dumfries, considering the powers they 

 possessed and the powers they took, had powers enough." 



