Should you have been on Edinburgh’s Princes Street, a little before noon on Monday 19 July 1784, you would have been greeted by an extraordinary sight. The elegant and imposing Register Office (now General Register House), the first purpose-built public records repository in Britain and Ireland and still the home of the National Records of Scotland (NRS) today, stood in a state of partial completion. Emerging from Robert Adam’s striking building were the light and sound of a fire being lit, and the expansion of Edinburgh’s ‘Fire Balloon’.
This early hot air balloon was constructed and piloted by James ‘Balloon’ Tytler (1745-1804), a compelling, if flawed, character, who along with building his own balloon and undertaking the first manned flight in the British Isles, worked as a surgeon, chemist, encyclopaedia editor, printer, poet, and essayist. While Tytler’s career was certainly varied, it was not successful and none of his many endeavours secured him lasting fame and fortune.
In honour of the 250th anniversary of GRH, and Tytler’s close connection to our iconic building on Princes Street, we trace his astonishing life through the records. We discover him taking sanctuary from his creditors in Holyrood Park, having a surprising impact on Robert Burns and possibly committing bigamy.
Early Years
Tytler was born on 17 December 1745 and like so many prominent Scots, he was a son of the Manse. Born to George Tytler, minister of Fern parish in Angus and his wife Janet Robertson. We find his father listed as one of the ministers of the parish in the front piece of the parish’s kirk session minutes, having ‘settled’ in Fern in 1745 after a spell at Premnay in Aberdeenshire.
Tytler had two brothers and two sisters, and all the Tytler children were given an extensive education in Latin and Greek by their father. As a teenager, Tytler became an apprentice to a surgeon in nearby Forfar, a process that gave him a grounding in the production of medicinal preparations and a working knowledge of chemistry. With this training under his belt, Tytler arrived in the Scottish capital and began to attend medical classes at the University of Edinburgh.
Tytler: ship surgeon, apothecary and debtor
Tytler arrived in Edinburgh at an auspicious time, the city was the centre of scientific and intellectual thought and with the Scottish Enlightenment in full flow, it would provide him with a ready stage for his many enterprises. Edinburgh had allowed Tytler to supplement his practical surgical knowledge with formal scientific and medical training. However, for a young man of slender means, there was a pressing need to combine his studies with earning a living. Like many of his fellow medical students, he signed up to become a surgeon on a whaling ship. Tytler’s biographer Robert Meeks states that Tytler made a number of voyages to Greenland during the University’s summer vacation, but upon returning to Edinburgh in 1765, he did not resume his studies. In the same year he married Elizabeth Rattray.
The couple went on to have five children, however, their births do not appear to be registered in Edinburgh. It is thought that between 1766 and 1772 Tytler had set up as an apothecary, moving his family around the north of England. However, by 1775 Tytler was back in Edinburgh and suffering, possibly the first, of his regular financial crises. By exploring the registers of Holyrood debtor’s sanctuary we find Tytler residing in the debtor’s sanctuary at Holyrood Park. He is described as ‘chymist, lately residing in Restalrig’ (NRS, RH2/8/17) and from this we can surmise that his career as city druggist was not prosperous. However, alongside his career in medicine, Tytler was developing a career as a prolific author. One of Tytler’s first attributed literary works was published in the same year he was resident in the debtor’s sanctuary. Pseudonymously published as ‘Ranger’s Impartial List of Ladies of Pleasure’. This guide was aimed at an exclusive and wealthy male readership and claimed to be an exhaustive review of the locations, names, abilities, and practices of the growing number of female sex workers operating in houses in the city’s Old Town. Of particular interest to Tytler, was the state of the sex workers’ teeth, as missing or badly maintained teeth was often held to be an indication of an untreated sexually transmitted infection.
Tytler’s next literary undertaking began the following year and was altogether seemlier. Between 1776 and 1784 Tytler held the position of editor on the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1777-1784). While eminently respectable, the position paid badly and was insufficient to support Tytler’s growing family. By this point, Tytler’s wife Elizabeth had left the matrimonial home and set herself up as a grocer in the Canongate area of the city. It would appear that the marriage had floundered and Tytler had moved in with a washer woman on the outskirts of the city in the Duddingston area (NRS, CC8/6/803). It was in Duddingston that Tytler built a printing press to self-publish his writings and supplement his earnings from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Tytler’s work on the encyclopaedia was extremely varied, covering topics as diverse as history, prose, medicine, and other scientific topics. One topic which generated a lengthy entry was ‘air’ and Tytler wrote in great detail about air balloon experiments in mainland Europe, stating that the balloons were capable of “transporting people through the atmosphere, formerly thought chimerical, are realised; and it is impossible to say how far the art of aerial navigation may be improved” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2nd Ed., page 9016). Tytler began to develop a practical interest on the topic, conducting experiments to understand and improve the air balloon.
To be continued with part 2 of Tytler’s story.
Jessica Evershed
Outreach ad Learning Archivist
