Edinburgh accountants in public practice pre-collective organisation: 1757–1834

ABSTRACT

This study is intended to increase knowledge and improve understanding of early public accountancy professionalisation in Scotland by applying the prosopographical research method to a community of practitioners in the capital city of Edinburgh in the early-nineteenth century. Using archival data, the study identifies the collective professional and social characteristics of 124 Edinburgh practitioners in 1834 by means of career-related analyses of their origin, education, training, and service-related signals of movement to occupational ascendency prior to the community’s later collective organisation. The study makes visible a structured and mature community operating in several occupational jurisdictions involving multi-disciplinary knowledge; maintaining a subordinate but mutually-dependent relationship with the legal profession; having a primary role in emerging insurance services; and achieving individual practitioner status recognition in a class-conscious city. Evidence of signals of movement to occupational ascendency adds to existing knowledge and understanding of the pre-collective organisation phase of public accountancy professionalisation in Scotland.

KEYWORDS:

• Pre-collection organisation
• professionalisation
• prosopography
• public accountancy
• signals of movement to occupational ascendency

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank both anonymous referees and the editor for their advice and helpful suggestions to improve the focus and content of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term public accountant used in this study describes a professional accountant known to have been in public practice by the early-nineteenth century. Evidence of this condition can be found in city directories, court records, and other contemporary statements available in the public domain. Identifying a professional practitioner as an accountant in public practice is a research issue addressed by earlier historians of public accountancy in Scotland (e.g. Brown 1905, 182, 361; Mepham 1988, 30–31, 49).

2 Prosopography is a research method used to identify common characteristics of people whose individual biographies are largely untraceable and/or significantly incomplete (Stone 1971). Subjects for research are analysed by means of collective data of their individual lives and careers, thus revealing the principal characteristics of the group as a whole.

3 A minute of this meeting in 1834 (together with a copy of the proposed legislation) existed in a miscellaneous records file in the Antiquarian Collection of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was used by Walker (1988, 14; 1995, 292). The Collection was transferred shortly thereafter from ICAS to the National Library of Scotland (NLS) and the National Records of Scotland (NRS). The file and proposed legislation and minute cannot be found by staff at ICAS, NLS and NRS despite several searches. Professor Walker provided the author with the names of actual and proposed members of the committee in 2011.

4 In the review of Poullaos and Ramirez (2020) of research on public accountancy professionalisation, the history of each country reviewed starts with an associational formation. Such an approach is consistent with the professionalisation models of Larson (1977, 104) and Abbott (1988, 19–20).

5 Brown’s (1905, 181–202) text is replicated in McDougall (1954, 1–19).

6 Secondary sources used in this section include Chambers (1824), Heiton (1856), Youngson (1966), Birrell (1980), Mepham (1988), Devine (1995, 2000), McCaffrey (1998), Smout (1988), Broadie (2001), Lenman (2001), Buchan (2007), Fry (2010), Szatkowski (2017), Pittock (2019), and Perman (2020).

7 These distinctions are commented on in relation to Edinburgh by Heiton (1856, 40–64, 158–175, 176–190), and more generally in relation to all parts of Great Britain by Corfield (1995, 70–101).

8 Corfield (1995) examines this history in the traditional professions of church, law, and medicine.

9 Data for the following CAPBSC-related biographies, and for senior practitioners later in the study, are derived from the sources cited in footnote 12.

10 These were times when sons of wealthy families were content to attend university classes without graduating (Lenman 2001, 335–336).

11 Information regarding the post-1834 professional careers of Brown, Christie, Horne, Lindsay, Mansfield and Robertson can be found in biographical entries in Lee (2006). Similar information for Paul and Mackersy can be found in Lee (2011).

12 Primary sources used in this section include GROS (1570–1834), EHS (1767–1815), NLS (1773–1834), UOE (1774–1834), NRS (1775–1834), TI (1785–1834), EG (1793–1834), CM (1800–1834), GH (1800–1834), and SCO (1817–1834). Secondary sources include Paul (1875), Brown (1905), Maxwell (1914), Anderson (1925), Wilson (1929, 1930), Melville (1936), Grant (1944), Stewart (1977), Mepham (1988), Lee (2006), and Waterson and Shearer (2006).

13 These data reflect a tendency that lasted until at least 1856 when the Faculty of Actuaries of Scotland was founded (Davidson 1956). Of 15 Faculty founders and 11 founding council members, 13 and 11, respectively, were founders of the SAE in 1854.

14 Sources used in this section are listed in footnote 12.

15 An engraving by Sir Emery Walker (1851–1933) of an unattributed portrait of Patrick Cockburn can be found in Maxwell (1914, 35) and a marble bust of Charles Selkrig by portrait sculptor and Royal Academician Laurence Macdonald (1799–1878) can be found in Brown (1905, 194).