Author: Stewart, Andrew
Biography:
STEWART, Andrew (b c. 1783: ancestry.co.uk)
Details about Stewart are known from letters that he wrote in 1809 to Walter Scott (q.v.) and to Alexander Callender, depute town clerk in Edinburgh. In these he identified his father as Andrew Stewart, a bookbinder; from his approximate age in 1809, it is likely that his mother was Elizabeth (Scotland) Stewart and he was born at Edinburgh in Nov. 1783. Stewart wrote to Scott when he was imprisoned in the Edinburgh Tollbooth, charged with theft of calico cloth from a warehouse in Skinner’s Close. On 16 Jan. he and his associates—Robert Stewart, his brother and a bookbinder, and John MacIntyre--were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. His first letter to Scott, dated 20 Jan., included his verse and beseeched Scott to plead for him with the Lord Justice. It also explained his background: he was apprenticed to a tailor who ill-used him; when Stewart’s complaint led to a discharge from his indentures, he began working as a law clerk. His interest in poetry grew from access to books through his father’s occupation. He married (the name of his wife is unknown); became unemployed and, in desperation, associated with men “of very loose manners.” Scott replied, likely on 23 Jan., to say that he had written on Stewart’s behalf to the Lord Justice Clerk but without great hope of success. In fact, both Stewart and MacIntyre had their sentence commuted to transportation to Australia for life but Robert Stewart was hanged on 22 Feb. 1809. While he was in the Tollbooth, Stewart supplied Callender with information about other criminals. On 2 May Stewart and MacIntyre departed from Leith for Botany Bay on a convict ship, the Indian. Scott likely had a hand in the publication of Stewart’s verse; printed for the benefit of his father, one of the publishers, Archibald Constable, was Scott’s own. Stewart received an absolute pardon on 5 Apr. 1820 although this seems not to have come into effect until 1825 when he (as “John Smith”) wrote to thank Scott for having again interested himself in the case. Nothing is known of Stewart’s fate after 1825 but presumably he remained in New South Wales and died there. (NLS, Walter Scott letters; Edinburgh City Archives, McLeod Bundles; West Register House, Court Records; New South Wales, State Archives and Records; “High Court of Justiciary,” Caledonian Mercury 19 Jan. 1809, 4 May 1809)