Scott Wishart was born in the early evening of 7 June 1897 at 24 Melville Lane in Montrose, Forfarshire. He was the eldest of four sons born to John Wishart, a local shoemaker and his wife, Elizabeth Millar Scott.

In the 1901 census, the family were enumerated in Montrose living at 24 Melville Lane but moved to 4 Murray Street in Perth shortly afterwards.

During the Great War, Scott served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Africa. At some point, he was stationed in Durban and by the summer of 1917 was attached to No.37 Stationary Hospital in Morogoro, Tanzania, which had been established earlier that year. Although his service papers have not survived, Scott’s grandson tells of two stories relating to his grandfather’s experiences during his time in Africa:

My Grandfather described going hunting in the hills with his officer and having to carry the rifle. He also told me of when he tended a large local man who was dying in the hospital (I think of smallpox.) When the man died Scott had to carry him out to a truck on his own, the driver would not help him as he did not want to touch the body.

The German resistance fought a guerrilla campaign in East Africa during the final two years of the war, however, by far the biggest threat to the British soldier came in the form of disease. Scott was among the many thousands who fell sick with malaria and was admitted to No.15 Stationary Hospital (also in Morogoro) on 9 June 1917 for nine days. The remainder of Scott’s war is unknown, however, at some point, he was appointed the rank of Acting Corporal.

After the war Scott trained as a pharmacist in Aberdeen and subsequently worked in the pharmacy department of St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London, where he met a nurse from Lincoln called Ethel Wakelin. Scott opened a chemist shop near Croydon at 321 Lower Addiscombe Road, Addiscombe during 1926 and married Ethel later that year on 27 December in Lincoln.

Following their marriage Scott and Ethel had two children – a son and a daughter; however, the eldest, Allan Wakelin Wishart, died in 1935 from meningitis aged only six. After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Scott joined the ARP (Air Raid Patrol) and narrowly escaped being blown up in 1940 when a German bomb landed on his shop moments after he had taken cover in the household Anderson shelter. Fearing for her safety, Scott’s daughter was subsequently sent away to live with her grandmother in Lincoln for the duration of the war.

By 1946 Scott and Ethel were living at 9 Annandale Road in Addiscombe where they remained until the late 1960’s when they moved to 33 Finches Gardens in Lindfield near Hayward Heath, Sussex. Scott died six days after Ethel on 23 April 1979.

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