Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/161

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in the celebrated trial of William Burke and Helen McDougal for the murder of Margery Campbell or Docherty, before the high court of justiciary at Edinburgh in December 1828.

Rae married, on 9 Sept. 1793, Mary (d. 1839), daughter of Lieutenant-colonel Charles Stuart of the 63rd foot, by whom he had no issue. The baronetcy became extinct on his death. He was one of the original members of ‘The Club,’ founded in 1788 (Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, i. 207–8 n.), and was captain of the corps of volunteer cavalry which was raised in Edinburgh in 1797 (ib. i. 355–6). Several of Rae's despatches while lord advocate are preserved in the Record Office.

[Omond's Lord Advocates of Scotland, 1883, ii. 256–98; Journal of Sir Walter Scott, 1890, i. 14, 84, 204, 355, ii. 30, 64, 229, 314, 328; Anderson's Scottish Nation, 1863, iii. 732–3; Gent. Mag. 1843, pt. i. pp. 313–14; Annual Register, 1842, App. to Chron. pp. 295–6; Scots Mag. 1769 p. 223, 1793 p. 466, 1810 p. 476, 1812 p. 235; Debrett's Baronetage, 1835, p. 315; Foster's Members of Parliament, Scotland, 1882, p. 291; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. vi. 188, 231, 333; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament pt. ii. pp. 281, 295, 303, 324, 339, 348, 360, 374, 392.]

G. F. R. B.


RAE, Sir WILLIAM (1786–1873), naval surgeon, born in 1786, was the son of Matthew Rae of Park-end, Dumfries. He was educated at Lochmaben and Dumfries, and afterwards graduated M.D. at Edinburgh University. In 1804 he entered the medical service of the East India Company, but in the following year was transferred as surgeon to the royal navy. He served first in the Culloden under Sir Edward Pellew (afterwards Lord Exmouth) [q. v.] In 1807, when in the Fox, he took part in the destruction of the Dutch ships at Gressic in Java. Subsequently, when the squadron was becalmed in the Bay of Bengal, he contrived an apparatus for distilling water. When attached to the Leyden in 1812–13 he was very successful in his treatment of the troops suffering from yellow fever at Cartagena and Gibraltar, and received the thanks of the commander-in-chief and the medical board.

In 1824 he was appointed to the Bermuda station. He became M.R.C.S. in 1811, extra-licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1839, and F.R.C.S. in 1843. He ultimately attained the rank of inspector-general of hospitals and fleets, and retired on a pension to a country practice near Barnstaple. He was created C.B. in 1855, and knighted in 1858. He died at Hornby Lodge, Newton Abbot, Devonshire, on 8 April 1873, and was buried at Wolborough. Rae married, in 1814, Mary, daughter of Robert Bell; and secondly, in 1831, Maria, daughter of Assistant-commissary-general R. Lee.

[Medical Registers; Debrett's Baronetage and Knightage, 1872; Times, 10 April 1873; Illustr. London News, 26 April 1873; East and South Devon Advertiser, 19 April, &c.; Ward's Men of the Reign.]

G. Le G. N.


RAEBURN, Sir HENRY (1756–1823), portrait-painter, was born on 4 March 1756 at Stockbridge, then a suburb of Edinburgh. 'The Scottish Reynolds,' as he has been called, was the son of Robert Raeburn, a successful Edinburgh manufacturer, and of his wife, Ann Elder. The Raeburns were of border origin. A hill farm in Annandale, the property of Sir Walter Scott's family, still bears their name, and is said to have once been the home of the race. The painter himself claimed to be 'Raeburn of that ilk,' and asserted that his forbears held the land before the Scotts. In the peaceful times which succeeded the union of the two kingdoms, the Raeburns, like other border lairds, settled down quietly to a pastoral life and agriculture. Some larger ambition, however, moved the painter's father to try his fortune in trade in the capital. His venture proved successful. He became a citizen of repute and a millowner, and on his death left a considerable business to be carried on by the elder of his two children, William. The latter was twelve years older than the artist, and when Henry was left an orphan at the age of six, his elder brother took the place of both parents. He was educated at Heriot's Hospital, which he left at the age of fifteen. He seems to have given no signs of precocity, save in the superiority of his illicit caricatures to those of his classmates. Immediately on leaving the hospital he was apprenticed to one Gilliland, a goldsmith and jeweller in Edinburgh. An interesting relic of this early training still exists in a jewel executed for Professor Duncan in memory of Charles Darwin (uncle of the famous Charles Darwin), who died in 1778, aged 20, while an Edinburgh student. Before he was sixteen Raeburn began to paint water-colour miniatures of his friends. It has been commonly said that he had never even seen a picture when his miniatures first began to attract attention. This, however, is hardly credible. An intelligent boy of his class could not have grown up in Edinburgh without seeing a certain number of works of art. His achievements were in any case remarkable enough to excite his master Gilliland's warm interest and admiration, and the good-natured goldsmith introduced his apprentice