Stewart trained in accountancy before acquiring his father's iron and coal business at Cleland. Discovery of a seam of blackband ironstone led to considerable wealth.
He joined the Glasgow Town Council in 1842 and took up a series of posts: as river bailie in 1843, ordinary magistrate in 1845 and senior bailie or acting chief magistrate in 1847. He was active, on horseback and in his office, in suppressing civil disturbances in 1848.
He period as Lord Provost, which ended in 1854, coincided with the question of a water supply for Glasgow. He retired from the council at the end of 1855 and died on 12 September 1866. He had married Isabella King in 1852 and she, along with a daughter and two sons, survived him.
MR. STEWART, like several of his predecessors in the office of Lord Provost, was a native of Glasgow. He was born in 1810. His father was a native of Ayrshire, a circumstance which awakened in the breast of his son, while he was still a mere boy, a longing to connect himself with that county by the purchase of an estate as soon as fortune should enable him to do so - a desire, however, which, in as far as Ayrshire was concerned, was not destined to be fulfilled. At a very early age he was placed in the counting-house of Mr. Dixon of Govanhill, father of the late Mr. Dixon of Belleisle, and there he acquired a thorough knowledge of finance and accounts, and also a practical knowledge of the coal and iron businesses. On the death of his father, who for several years had carried on the business of an iron and coal master at Omoa on the estate of Cleland, belonging to the family of Stair, Mr. Stewart reconstructed the works, and having acquired in lease an extensive mineral field, which was found to contain an excellent seam of blackband ironstone, he in the course of a few years acquired a considerable fortune, to which after years of great success were to make great additions. Notwithstanding the claims which his business had upon him, he found that he had sufficient time to devote to municipal affairs, and accordingly he became a member of the Town Council in 1842 as one of the representatives of what was then known as the second ward, the ward in which his own Mansion House of Parson's Green was situated.
In 1843, and when he had been only one year in the Town Council, he was appointed to the office of River Bailie, in immediate succession to the late Mr. Alexander Baird, of Gartsherrie fame. In 1845 he was elected as one of the ordinary magistrates; and in 1847 he attained the office of senior bailie, or acting chief magistrate. In the autumn of that year Mr. Hastie, the then Lord Provost, was elected as one of the two representatives of the city in Parliament, one result of which was that he was resident chiefly in London, and another, that the duties which, had he been resident in Glasgow, he would have required to discharge personally, were devolved upon, and had to be performed by Mr. Stewart, as acting chief magistrate.
In the early part of 1848 trade was, in consequence of the mercantile depression which began in the course of the previous year, in a wretchedly bad condition, and vast numbers of the population were out of employment, and consequently in a state bordering upon starvation. Moreover, a few weeks previously another revolution had overthrown the Government of Louis Philippe; and the whole of Europe was in a state of excitement and discontent. It is not to be wondered at that in such circumstances there was in this populous district a strong tendency to disturbances, and, indeed, disturbances did ensue, not, it is to be added, without some loss of life and also some destruction of property. Of course Mr. Stewart had to play a prominent part as the actual head of the magistracy, and that he performed his part well was universally admitted.
When the Colonel of the regiment of cavalry which had been called out to assist in the suppression of the disturbances appeared on the scene with a squadron, Mr. Stewart, who by the way was an excellent horseman, mounted the horse of an orderly dragoon, rode with the Colonel and his men into the very thick of the fray, and acted with great decision and promptitude; and the disturbances were speedily suppressed. Indeed, under a man of less courage, less judgment, and less force of character the loss of life would have been very serious and the injury to property immense, to say nothing of the effect which a successful riot would have had on the working population of all the adjacent mining and manufacturing districts. In 1851, on the expiration of Sir James Anderson's term of office, Mr. Stewart was elected as his successor - many of his supporters thus seeking to recognize the very valuable services rendered by him in the trying scenes of 1848.
In 1852 Mr. Stewart was married to Miss Isabella King, one of the daughters of a well-known and highly-esteemed citizen, the late Mr. King of Levernholm Campsie.
Shortly after his elevation to the office of Lord Provost, Mr. Stewart applied himself to the important question of a water supply for Glasgow, a task in which he had the valuable support of his esteemed friend the late Bailie James Gourlay, in the memoir of whom will be found a very full and most interesting account of the violent opposition which the scheme encountered. Suffice it to say here that the opposition only tended to increase the perseverance and the energy of Mr. Stewart; and ultimately - and, as is well known, to a great extent through the influence which he had with the Prime Minister of the day, Lord Palmerston, of whom two or three years previously he had become a personal friend - the Water Bill was carried, the benefit which it conferred being beyond all question one of the greatest boons ever conferred upon the city. When we think of the obloquy which was heaped upon Mr. Stewart, on the virulence with which he was assailed, on the worry to which from first to last he was subjected, and on the weeks, nay the months of anxiety which he had to pass through, all in his endeavours to procure for his fellow-citizens a bountiful supply of pure water, we do not feel surprised that his health became affected and that the seeds were laid of the disease which was destined not many years afterwards to terminate a career of so much worth and so much usefulness to the community at large.(1)
In 1856 Mr. Stewart acquired from Mr. Baillie Cochrane, now Lord Lamington, at a cost of £55,000, the estate of Murdostoun, situated in the parish of Shotts, Lanarkshire, and immediately began to improve it upon an extensive scale and with great taste.(2)
We should mention that, although his Provostship terminated in 1854, Mr. Stewart remained in the Town Council until the end of 1855, in order that, as Chairman of the Water Scheme, he might give the town the benefit of his services in carrying through the Bill. On retiring from the Council he ceased to take any interest in municipal affairs; but as a county proprietor he took an active part in all county matters.
Mr. Stewart died suddenly, of heart disease, on 12th September, 1866, survived by his wife, by a daughter, and by two sons, the elder of whom, Mr. Robert King Stewart, B.A., is proprietor of Murdostoun and Langbyres, and the younger, Mr. William Lindsay Stewart, is proprietor of the lands of Stanmore, situate in the upper ward of Lanarkshire.
(1) To commemorate Provost Stewart's services to the community a Memorial Fountain has been erected in the West-End Park at the expense of the City.
(2) This property belonged down to the middle of the fifteenth century to the Scotts of Buccleuch, and was then exchanged by them for part of the lands of Branxholme in Roxburghshire, belonging to a family of the name of Inglis. In later times Murdostoun belonged to James Inglis Hamilton, who commanded the Scots Greys at Waterloo, and who was killed at the head of his regiment in the somewhat reckless charge which our heavy cavalry made on Marshal Ney's "grand battery." It then passed to Admiral the Hon. Sir Alexander Inglis Cochrane, captor of the Danish West India Islands, and next, in 1832, to his son the late Admiral Sir Thomas Inglis Cochrane, the father of Lord Lamington. This estate Mr. Stewart added to in 1865 by the purchase of the lands of Langbyres, situate in the vicinity of Murdostoun.
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