Now our subject for today is Allan Ramsay, poet, playwright, and also owner of a library. He was born on the 15th of October 1686. His oldest son was also called Allan Ramsay but he was a portrait painter. Sadly he did not paint our image, which was done by William Aikman. Ramsay started out as a wig maker, but also wrote poetry, self-publishing his works and then selling them in his wig maker`s shop. This simple act led to him publishing an entire volume of his poetical works in 1721, which sold very well indeed, enough to allow him to move to another, larger, shop which he ran as a bookseller. The most important thing about this was that he rented the books out, and that technically made him the owner of the first ever library in the British Isles!
A view of the outside of this library appears on another Mitchell set, "Famous Scots" 21/50" and it features the same portrait as ours in the inset. That card also tells us that he built a theatre in Edinburgh. it did not do well, and only remained open for a year.
He also appears on the Scott Monument in Edinburgh, with fifteen other poets and writers. I am not sure if his section appears on a cigarette card, but will find out
Now there are two sets of Clan Tartans - this first set comprises fifty cards, whilst the second is only twenty-five. And there is a very curious fact about this first series, for it was used to promote a Police Sports Day. This information appears in our latest World Tobacco Issues Index, where it says that the cards are known overprinted with "Remember Police Sports - Ibrox Park - Sat 21 June, 1930 2 p.m." There is no mention of this in our original 1956 World Tobacco Issues Index, so it must have been discovered after that. So does anyone out there have a card so overprinted that they would like to scan and share with us, and also lets see if we can make a list of the cards so affected, and see if every one was used or just a selection of certain numbers.