160 Years Ago Today.

[The Moonlighter 387]

On the 7th May 1856 Founder William McBeath was born.

 

 

William McBeath was born in the village of Callander. His dad Peter owned a general store on Callander’s Main Street , the family home was above the store which is now as you can see The Waverley Hotel.

 

 

William had an older sister, Jane, and an older brother, Peter. Another boy was born after William but he, like so many other children of the time, died in infancy.

 

Tragically, his dad Peter McBeath died in November, 1864. Shortly afterwards, his wife took William and his sister Jane to Glasgow to start a new life.

 

By the time of the 1871 census, the McBeaths were living at 17 Cleveland Street…………the same address as five members of the McNeil family, including brothers Peter and William.

 

It was at the beginning of 1872 the four boys had the idea to form a football team.

 

A few weeks later William was to play in that first ever match v Callander.

 

Rangers player William Dunlop wrote in 1881:

 

“Their first game was a terrible spectacle with the ball suffering an incredible amount of abuse” William McBeath was given man of the match and then spent a week in bed recovering due to his exertions’’.

 

William McBeath was Rangers first ever President from 1874-75.

 

In 1884 at the Club’s ‘Annual Hop’ his friends and fellow Founders honoured William for the role he played in its conception and presented him with a gold badge. This was at an event held in the St.Andrews Hall which is at the rear of today’s Mitchell Library in Glasgow.

 

A report on the presentation in the Scottish Athletic Journal in 1884 also stated that William McBeath enjoyed dabbling with paint and canvas! It read:

 

” Mr. McBeath, many of his old friends will be happy to learn, is doing well, and still cultivating these tastes for high art which made his company so pleasant to the more scholarly of his companions”

 

By 1878, William was a commercial traveller. He had moved to the Crosshill area of Glasgow after marrying a Jeannie Harris. Within a year, the family had moved to Bristol in what was almost certainly the most settled and happiest period of William’s life.

 

Sadly, the remaining period of William McBeath’s life is clouded in mist. What happened to cause a breakdown in the happy family life of the McBeaths is uncertain. William’s son Norman was sent to Glasgow to live with his grandmother. Norman McBeath died in Glasgow, aged eighty-three, in 1973. He unfortunately had not married.

 

William last year’s make for unpleasant reading. He moved from town to town, found himself in court on charges of fraud (of which he was acquitted) and married for a second time.

 

The deterioration in William McBeath’s life continued until his death in a workhouse at Lincoln in 1917. He was certified ‘’imbecile”. The evidence of his state of health suggests he had actually suffered from Alzheimer’s. Medical terminology back then was brutal to say the least.

 

William was buried in an unmarked, pauper’s grave in Lincoln Cemetery but there is a happy ending to his story.

 

During his research for his book, “The Gallant Pioneers”, Gary Ralston found William’s final resting place. The grave is now marked with a fitting stone which was paid for by the worldwide Rangers support and placed there by a group of fellow supporters.

 

 

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A sad ending to a great life blighted in the end by a condition that deteriorates and destroys all too cruely and quickly, even to this day.

[The Moonlighter 387]

http://rangers.co.uk/news/features/founders-trail-blog-2/

[The Moonlighter 387]

34 Vernon Street and 57 Cranwell Street.

 

William McBeath lived at both of these address's during his time in Lincoln.

 

 

 

Edited May 7, 2016 by The Moonlighter