|
|
|
|
|
Alexander Cowan was an unusually public-spirited papermaker, who conducted his business to spread peace on earth and goodwill amongst men. He demanded that all his business transactions profit the buyer and seller alike, with no advantage taken of misfortune. At least as interesting a character as the more well-known Robert Owen, he was a generous man, reluctant to speak ill of any human being, and is said to have given away more than half his income in works of love and kindness. Walking down the Canongate, he was so struck by the poverty and cold of the houses with their cracked, broken and rag-stuffed windows that he gave a glazier instructions to repair every window from the Castle Hill to Holyrood at his own expense. He was the trustee who helped Walter Scott out of bankruptcy. In the Canongate cholera outbreak of 1832, when the sick were shunned by their neighbours, he did all he could to provide practical help and avoid panic. As soon as he heard of a case, he would visit the patient, and even lie down beside them to show their friends there was nothing to fear. As early as 1796, Alexander Cowan helped to set up a parish library in Penicuik. In 1809, he and his brother Duncan built the Old Town Well to provide a public water supply. In 1851 he started a Penicuik museum with the help of his friends. Shortly before his death, he gave instructions to his wife and family to use what was left of his fortune for the benefit of communities where his business had been carried on. Funds were used to improve Penicuik water supplies further: the 1864 plaque on the new Town Well commemorates the name of the Cowan's engineer who supervised the laying of a conduit carrying clean drinking water from the Pentlands. Alexander Cowan's bequest funded the building of the Cowan Institute. | ||||
