Blair Collection > Celtic monthly > Volume 4, 1896

THE CELTIC MONTHLY:
^ MAGAZINE FOR HIGHUNDEHS.
Edited by JOHN MACKAY, Glasgow.
OCTOBER, 1895.
No. 1. Vol. IV.]
[Price Threepence.
DR. F. A. MACPHERSON, LIVERPOOL.
^^J^ MONG the many members of the old Clau
,^J^^ Chattan, who have attained prominent
:^SSi positions on the other side of the border,
is Dr. Francis Alexander Macpherson of Liver-
pool, who is descended from the Pitmain branch
of the clan. Relentlessly persecuted after " the
day of dool " on " Scotland's last and saddest
field,'' and their dwellings sacked and burnt
down, by "the bloody Duke of Cumberland" —
whose inhuman cruelties are almost unexampled
in British history — Dr. Macpherson's ancestors,
who, with their chief at their head, had taken
an active part in the '45, were constrained to
escaije from the Macpherson country — those
heathered hills
" That heave and roll endlessly north away
By Corryarrick and the Springs of Spey."
Finding refuge in Ireland, the family ultimately
settled down in Londonderry, where, fully a
century later, the subject of our sketch was
born, namely, on 1st June, 1850. Ilis great-
grandfather, and also his grandfather were bred
to the sea. The former after retiring from the
service became the most famous instructor of
navigation in his day — pupils being sent to him
from all parts of the three kingdoms. While
cruising in the North Sea in the beginning of
this century Dr. Macpherson's grandfather was
captured by eleven French men-of-war and
carried prisoner to Dunkirk, but after two-and-a-
half years detention he was liberated Ijy
exchange. He married Elizabeth M'Caine, or
MTan, of Londonderry — a great-grand-daughter
of Captain Francis Wilson, an officer who was
engaged in the defence of Derry at its siege in
1688-9. Francis Alexander Mac[)herson — the
father of Dr. Macpherson — married, in 18i4,
Mary Kilgour Whyte, of Fingask, in Perthshire,
thereby renewing the Scotch blood in his
descendants. Although he has now attained
his eighty-fifth year, he is still hale and hearty.
Dr. Macpherson is one of a family of three
sons and two daughters, of whom only he and a
younger sister now survive. His elder brother,
William John, died in January, 1867, in the
course of a brilliant career at the University of
Dublin, where he had taken a Hebrew prize, a
second class in Classics, and a first in Catechetics
— thus following in the footsteps of his uncle, the
Rev. Samuel M'Caine Macpherson, A.B.,T.C.D.,
of Leckpatrick Church, Co. Tyrone. His
younger brother, James Bruce Macpherson,
studied Physic, and having, in 1878, obtained
the degrees of the Royal Colleges of Physicians
and Surgeons of Edinburgh, became one of the
House Surgeons of the Liverpool Dispensaries.
He afterwards successfully practiced in Prescot,
Lancashire, where he died in 1889.
Educated at Foyle College, Dr. Macpherson
prosecuted his medical studies at Dublin, and,
in 1876, took the diplomas of the Royal Colleges
of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh. In
the same yeai' he was appointed Junior House
Surgeon to the Liverpool Dispensaries, the oldest
medical charity in that city. In the following
3'ear he became Senior House Surgeon to the
Noith Disjiensary, an office which he held for
six-and-a-half years. On resigning that office
lie was elected Honorary Medical Officer of the
same Institution. During his University curri-
culum of four-and-a-half years in Dublin hs
studied music under highly qualified masters and
became a member of the amateur choir of St.
Patrick's Cathedral.
In 1878 Dr. Macpherson composed and set to
music a song entitled "The last good night,"
which subsequently became so popular and well
known at Liverpool, Manchester, and Dublin
Concerts. He also composed a Cathedral Service
for five voices and some chants still in manuscript
and unpublished. A meritorious singer himself
he has taken a sjiecial interest in the throat and
its diseases. To extend his experience in this
direction he visited, in 1878, the Hospitals of
Pari.s, and in 1880 those of Berlin. He was the
first who advocated (through the columns of the