Anyone out there ever heard of Lieutenant Colonel Francis James Scott?
We don't know where he was born (he appears to be settled much later at Mount Lodge, Portobello), but in a codicil to his will of 1820, the year before his death, he had sufficient local ties to leave £2,000 in trust for ‘the maintenance of an Episcopal [boys' and girls'] school or schools in inseparable connexion with the Episcopalian Chapel commonly called St James Chapel Broughton Place Edinburgh'.
That school's new premises were built on Broughton Street in 1869, and are now occupied by the Stafford Centre at No. 103.
It is Scott's coat of arms ('shield with bend [diagonal band] on which is a mullet [six-pointed star] between two crescent moons; the shield is surmounted by a lion's head facing left') and motto ('Pro patria' - for country) which appear within the gable's recessed panel.
We don't know his place of birth or much at all about his career, but think he may have been promoted to Major in 1780, and served in the Dumbartonshire Fencible Infantry in 1795. We believe that in that year he may also have become Lieutenant Colonel of the Royal Leith Volunteers, and that some five years later he was the subject of a handsome portrait by Henry Raeburn of York Place (poorly reproduced below).
But apart from these glimmerings, we're struggling to build a coherent biography of the man. Can any reader help?
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