George Aitkinson Duncan was born on 8 April 1901 at 42 East High Street in Forfar, the illegitimate son of George Duncan, a local baker, and Davina Peebles Aitkinson, who was a jute weaver from Pittenweem. When George was aged two, his mother married a tailor and clothier named Charles Ramsay Wishart, and subsequently took on his stepfather’s surname. He had one stepbrother and two stepsisters and by 1911 was living with his family nextdoor to his birthplace at 44 East High Street.

At the outbreak of the Great War, the Wisharts were living in a stone-terraced cottage at 16 Yeaman Street, and after leaving school, young George got a job in the jute mill as a tenter which meant he took off the finished webs and put on fresh warps. Keen to ‘do his bit’ in the war, at the age of 17 George travelled to Glasgow and enlisted with the Royal Marines Artillery; however, being under-age he was not called up for duty and eventually discharged on 7 March 1919.

After the war, George worked as an engine fitter, and then a coal merchant. On 22 March 1928, he married Margaret Sanderson Stratton in Glasgow with two sons and a daughter eventually forming his family.

George died of lung cancer at the Royal Beaton Memorial Hospital in Glasgow on 25 November 1966. At the time he had been living at 103 Stirling Drive in Bishopbriggs.

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