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Monument Inscription
ERECTED
BY
ARCHIBALD WILKIE
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
HIS ONLY CHILD
ARCHIE,
WHO DIED AT HAZELDEN,
29TH DECR 1893
AGED 7 YEARS & 9 MONTHS.
Family History
Archibald Wilkie, the little boy who is commemorated on this monument, was the son of Archibald Wilkie and his wife Mary Gibson. The couple were not native to the district, but incomers employed at the silk printing mill at Hazelden. Mr Wilkie held the position of manager at the works and so would have been held in some esteem within the community. Unfortunately for the Wilkie family, disease is no respecter of position or rank and poor young Archie was to die before his eight birthday from scarlet fever. Archibald’s death on the 29th December, 1893 which was recorded by Dr Mackinlay, the local medical practitioner, was the last recorded in Mearns parish in that year.
Scarlet fever, sometimes called scarlatina, was a persistent infectious disease which spread over communities in waves. Such an outbreak took place in Mearns around the time of this young boy’s death and caused the death of many children and vulnerable persons before burning out.
Silk printing was carried out at Hazelden in the latter part of the 19th century and lasted until the 1930’s.The Hazelden cloth processing works which opened in the 1820’s operated as a bleachfield at various times and as a calico printing works from 1838. The works at Hazelden was a very large concern, at their peak employing some three hundred workers some of whom were housed in rows of cottages nearby. The manager’s house alone survives today.