John Malcolm McLaren and Jane McDougall

Introduction

Elizabeth Helen McLaren's parents were John Malcolm McLaren and Jane (Jeanie) McDougall. They were both the children of families from the emerging professional classes. However being at the right place and the right time, they saw their fortunes transformed to live wealthy and prosperous lives. This page tells their story.

John Malcolm McLaren (1830 – 1920) and Jane McDougall (1830 – 1906)

John Malcolm McLaren was born in Falkirk, Stirlingshire in Scotland on 29th March 1830.  He was the second child of his parents, born about 3 years after their marriage. He moved with his family to Manchester by 1841. Being the son of a school master it can be inferred that  he would have been well educated. It’s impossible to know why he didn’t accompany the rest of the family to Canada, but he made the decision at the age of 19 to stay behind in England. 

John Malcolm McLaren and Jane McDougall lived on Gerrard St, Halifax from at least 1852 to 1858  and had two daughters, Margaret (1853)  and Elizabeth Helen (1856)  whilst living in the town. They also had a son, John Graham, named for John Malcolm McLaren’s father, who was born in 1854  but lived only about 1 year. 

In the 1861 census, after the family had moved to Bradford, it describes John Malcolm McLaren as a workman in a stuff or textile factory.  It’s likely that John Malcolm McLaren was learning his trade in the textile factories of Halifax and in one record in 1855 he’s described as a Designer.  In his time in Halifax, John Malcom McLaren entered a partnership with Lot Gardiner, a prominent Merchant in Halifax, and his son Alfred Lot Gardiner. 

In 1857 the family moved 10 miles north from Halifax to Bradford. Where Halifax was originally the boom town for textile production in Yorkshire, but by the late 1860s Bradford had become the centre of the industry. Part of this was due to it being a bigger town, but also the landscape around Bradford made it easier for textile mills to expand. In the 1861 census, John Malcolm, Jane, and their family were in residence in 33 Southfield Square in Bradford.   

John Malcolm McLaren continued to work with the Lot Gardiners in their business as textile merchants. While he and Jane were living in Bradford the family increased with the birth of Jennie in 1858, William in 1863  and James in 1865.  The decade between 1861 and 1871 seems to have been very prosperous for John Malcolm McLaren. He became more prominent in the town and moved into a new house in a more select area of town at 8 Oak Mount, Manningham.  

After breaking his partnership with the Gardiner’s in 1869,  John Malcolm created his own company, John M McLaren and Company. This appears to have been a very successful venture with the company occupying a very large warehouse on Canal Street.  This was the headquarters of a global company brokering the import of new cloths from Asia and the great mills in Indian and China and sending cloth to be used for manufacture across England, Europe and the US. 

At the same time he became a member, and then President, of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce and a founding member of the committee that established the Bradford Technical College, that later became the University of Bradford.  He was also named a local Magistrate in 1894. 

There was report of the family at the wedding of Jennie McLaren to Hugh Buchanan in 1887

John M McLaren & Co continued gaining wealth and power and employed a large number of people in Bradford.  John Malcolm’s sons had been involved in the business but mostly responsibility went to his son William Malcolm. By 1894 John Malcolm and Jane decided to retire to the spa town of Leamington Spa, about 100 miles south of Bradford. They would have been around 64 years old. John Malcolm’s friends gave him a farewell dinner at the Midland Hotel, one of the grand hotels in Bradford

John Malcolm and Jane lived at Lorne House in Lillington by Leamington Spa in Warwickshire with their granddaughter Jeannie Riley and a couple of servants.  John Malcolm seemed to gain a wide social circle in Leamington as he had in Bradford and was noted as the President of the local Burns Society that celebrated Scottish culture and held various dinners and dances. 

By 1900, things were not going well with the business. A notice in the London Gazette in January 1901 announced the closure of the partnership between John Malcolm and his two sons, James and William Malcolm.  A news report in July 1901 told of the closure of an old Bradford firm.  The news report says that John Malcolm was made to come out of retirement in 1900 as William Malcolm was not well and was forced to ‘winter overseas for his health’ and James had joined the Army at the Boer War in South Africa. The firm was sold to another old Bradford firm, Messrs Brigg Neumann & Co

1902 saw the deaths of the two sons of John Malcolm and Jane died. James McLaren was a Lieutenant in the Imperial Yeomanry – a reserve cavalry regiment. He seems to have been in South Africa for 18 months of that point. He died in the hospital at Deelfontein on 12th March 1902.   William Malcolm McLaren was living with his family in a county house in Bedfordshire, just north of London. He died, after being ill for many years 3 months after his brother in July 1902.

Jane and John Malcolm McLaren returned to Leamington after their son’s death and continued to take part in local society. Jane died on the 11th April 1906 at Lorne House in Leamington. 

After his wife’s death, John Malcolm McLaren moved away from Leamington to Windemere in the Lake District of Westmoreland. Here he lived in the manner of a gentleman. He died on Christmas Day, 1920. He was aged 90. His death was marked by several obituaries in national and local papers.

The will left by John Malcolm McLaren provides an insight into how he lived. There are a few named paintings and other artworks that he bequeathed to his children.   He also left an amount of trustee stocks for his grandchildren and the estate was worth around £11,000 in 1920, this is around £365,000 today or $550,000 (CAD). Interestingly the will also relates that his daughters could choose one of two large iron safes. It’s not sure what was in the safe, but they must have been valuable to have been named in the will.

What’s not clear from any of the correspondence we have available, or his bequests in the will, is whether he had any communication with his Canadian or Scottish families. He named his first-born son, John Graham, after his father, but that has been the only discovered link after most of the family had left for Canada in 1849.

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