John Rattray (1707-1771)

It’s often said the best opportunities for business and professional advancement can be found on a golf course. For John Rattray, an eighteenth-century Edinburgh surgeon, the game went even further. It saved his life.

After seven years of learning his trade with surgeon, John Semple, Rattray finally started his own Edinburgh practice in 1735, becoming a fellow of the Incorporation of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

But all work and no play does, indeed, make Jack a dull boy and, taking time out from the saws, hooks and scoops of the surgery, the 1730’s saw Rattray making a name for himself as an archer and a golfer. Having joined the Royal Company of Archers, he won their annual silver punch bowl competition no less than four times and also collected the prestigious Edinburgh Arrow in 1735 and 1744.

And that year, 1744, was the big year.

Having given the archers their chunk of silver, the Edinburgh Arrow, Edinburgh Town Council had been under no little pressure from the local golfers to foot the bill for a similarly valuable artefact for their burgeoning golfing world. In due course, on 7th March, 1744, the Council obliged and on 2nd April, the five holes of Leith Links hosted the first ever competition for the newly minted silver club.

But there was a caveat to the Town Council’s generosity. Not only did they ask that the competition be “Open” to golfers from all corners of Great Britain and Ireland. They also insisted the golfers abide by their own ‘Articles and Laws’ when playing this, the first-ever competition, for the Club.

Rattray won the day, earning the title ‘Captain of the Goff.’ An honour, indeed, but in signing the Leith club’s minutes of the day and its proscribed ‘articles and laws in playing at golf,’ Rattray also signed off the very first recorded and verifiable rules of golf.

However, after the big year, 1745 wasn’t too clever. A Jacobite rising, led by Bonnie Prince Charlie, against the Hanoverian crown. Unwisely, perhaps, Rattray joined the Jacobites, ministering to the dead, dying and wounded and finally ending up as Surgeon-General to Prince Charlie’s troops. It wasn’t a great career move, even if humanitarian, and, after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, Rattray found himself in a miserable Inverness prison.

“We know well what you are, sir, The Pretender’s surgeon. If anyone hangs, you shall.”

The Hanoverian officer’s solemn prognosis might well have found some traction had it not been for the timely intervention of Lord Duncan Forbes - Lord Culloden. A respected judge, his was a sufficiently loud voice to procure Rattray’s release from the scaffold. How he did so will forever remain a secret, since Forbes died shortly afterwards.

But why?

No secret at all. A long-standing friend and golfing partner of Rattray, Forbes stood by his friend.

Business and advancement? Forget it. The first Rules numbered thirteen. On reflection, a fourteenth might have surely been added by Rattray. And by Forbes.

Friends on the course, friends forever.