Robert Bowes

Client

The Robert Bowes who commissioned a memorial seat for Lochranza from Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh was probably the Cambridge bookseller and publisher Robert Bowes (1835–1919). His grandfather was Duncan Macmillan (1770–1823), who had moved his family from Arran to Ayrshire around 1816. In 1846, aged only 11, Bowes left Scotland to join his uncles Daniel (1813–57) and Alexander (1818–96) Macmillan in their Cambridge bookselling and publishing business. From 1858 to 1863 he ran Macmillan's newly-established London branch, before returning to Cambridge to take charge of their bookshop. In 1868 he married Fanny Brimley, the daughter of a Cambridge grocer. Following Alexander Macmillan's death in 1896, Bowes formed a partnership with his son, George Brimley Bowes, the business becoming Bowes & Bowes from 1907. 1

Bowes's mother Margaret, sister of Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, emigrated to America with her husband Robert Bowes Senior, and lived at Waltham, Illinois. After Robert Senior's death, she returned to live with her son at Cambridge, where she died in 1890. 2

Notes:

1: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

2: Charles L. Graves, Life and Letters of Alexander Macmillan, London: Macmillan & Co., 1910, pp. 272–3.

'Mackintosh Architecture' led by The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; with additional support from The Monument Trust, The Pilgrim Trust, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; and collaborative input from Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.