The Old Family
and how we got here
Robert Alexander Anderson was usually referred to as Bob. He was born in a tiny wynd right in the heart of old Bo'ness and by the age of five had moved slightly west to Corbiehall where the mines, coke ovens, iron works, quarry, distillery and chemical manure works were. Of course this meant employment and as his father John was noted in the next census as a labourer in a chemical work there is every chance he did work in the fertiliser factory. By the 1911 census Robert was a farm labourer living in Linlithgow Bridge.
He had many occupations over his lifetime but many were dictated by his inability to undertake heavy manual labourer after being poisoned by gas in the Great War. He was lucky to have survived but his lungs were permanently damaged by this weapon.
I have been told that he was a security guard at Nobel's chemical works at Westquarter, that he cleaned buses at the SMT depot at Linlithgow Cross and that he he was one of the maltmen who turned over the fermenting barley at the St Magdalene's Distillery in Linlithgow. I found the birth record for his first son, John, in 1919 and it gave his occupation as a miner and in the valuation roll the next year at the same address he was recorded as an engine driver.
When he died in 1962, aged 66, his damaged lungs were a contributary factor.
