Volunteering at GRI is perfect medicine for former Chief Nurse John

Mabel Mason was born on the 2nd of August 1876 in Cranston’s Waverley Temperance Hotel in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, opposite Copland and Lye, where Marks & Spencer is now. The hotel belonged to and was managed by her mother Mary Mason. Mary was married to George Mason, a pioneer in photography, who sold photographical materials in Buchanan Street.

Mary’s father, Robert Cranston, built and opened Cranston’s Old Waverley Hotel in 1848 in Princes Street in Edinburgh facing Walter Scott’s monument and on the opposite corner to Jenners. He was a remarkable man. He had a Waverley Hotel in Buchanan Street opposite the subway, and he also had a hotel in King Street Cheapside in London. The feature of all these hotels was that they were teetotal. No alcohol of any description was sold in them, and single ladies and families were safe and comfortable there. Robert Cranston was a Chartist and a passionate supporter of temperance, and this was approved of by many people. When Mary got married her father gave her the hotel in Sauchiehall Street as a wedding present and the hotel in Buchanan Street was sold. Mary Cranston became Mary Mason. She had three daughters and one son. The Cranston’s in Edinburgh flourished and had several high-class temperance hotels in London. Mary’s brother Robert became the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and he had a large family.

Mary and her family moved out to Dowanhill in the West End of Glasgow which became popular for large families. Towards the end of the 19th Century Mary sent her two elder daughters, Elizabeth and Mabel to school in Paris for a year and then to Weimar in Germany which was a brilliant place at that time with shades of Goethe and Schiller watching the opera music and the arts. The result was that these two girls could speak French and German reasonably well. Mabel kept in touch with an Austrian girl at school with her in Weimar during both wars and took her daughter Elizabeth to Vienna to learn to sing in 1935. She was supposed to go for six months but stayed for four years under the watchful eye of Mabel’s friend Eda.

At the turn of the Century Mabel went to Julien’s studio in Paris and learned how to paint but was not able to get much painting done because she was about to be married. In 1902 Mabel married Charles Mackinlay, the youngest of a large Glasgow family. They were both interested in music, the arts, and the theatre.
Mabel joined the Royal Infirmary Dorcas Society in the early 1920s and she made a weekly visit to the Surgical Units on a Thursday with a pile of weekly magazines.

The Mackinlay family got its first motor car in 1925, a flat fronted Armstrong Siddeley, and Mabel learned to drive. She was an enthusiastic driver. She insisted that the car should have a flexible hood which could be opened because “these saloon cars are very stuffy!” She continued to drive well into her 80s and once a week and every week she would come up Cathedral Street in her open Austin 12 at 2.30 pm and the porters would stop the traffic to let her get in under the archway into the hospital. She never had a serious accident.

During the Second World War she took up her painting again and her great friend Dr Tom Honeyman, the Glasgow Art Director, encouraged her and organised two “one man” shows in a room in the McLellan Galleries. There would be about 40 pictures and they were sold like hot cakes, and they are scattered in houses all over Glasgow and its environs.

Quite early in the last war the Glasgow council asked people with accommodation available to take in a number of Polish refugees and Mabel said she would. A Polish girl of about 18 arrived at the front door and Mabel took her in. Her name was Maria. She had started a Science Degree in Poland and had fled to Paris with all her papers when the war began. She got to this country when France was overrun and was sent to Glasgow. Maria stayed for about 10 years during which time she went to Glasgow University and took an Honours Degree in Science, BSc (Hons) and went on to take a Doctorate PhD in Crystallography. She got a scholarship to go to Canada and she has been there ever since. She has now retired, married with two brilliant sons. She came to Europe frequently to lecture and always went to see Mabel – “her Scottish mother” – and take her out for dinner at the Malmaison or some other suitable restaurant! When Mabel died at the age of 94 and Maria retired, Maria instituted the “Mabel Mackinlay Prize” at the annual exhibition of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. This Prize is awarded every year and at present is £1,000.

If it is a nice warm day and you would like to go for a stroll, why not go into the Necropolis and up to Quartus on your right-hand when you go through the gate. In the middle of the tombstones, you will see the iconic granite cross on a broad granite base (lairs 531 and 532) that Mabel commissioned when her husband Charlie died. Nearly all her family and their consorts are remembered there. She is content, she has her children round her and, she is near her Royal Infirmary.

Mabel had six children, four boys and two girls between 1904 to 1917. Willie was the eldest and had too busy a life to have time to get married. He was an accomplished pianist and singer, an outstanding and much sought for “after dinner speaker”, a director of companies, a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron and a good sailor and yachtsman and – most important – he was the Chairman of the Board of Management of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary after his friend Sir William Denholm. The rest of the family were spread out over India, London, Glasgow, Vienna, Hatfield, and South Africa.

Charlie, Mabel’s husband, died of cancer in 1934 at the age of 67. This was a great loss as they got on very well together. Most of the children had left home or were about to do so but Willie stayed with his mother most of his life. She was good company.

Thank you to Dr C J Mackinlay for providing this story.