Emily Ann Drummond was initiated into the GD at its Amon-Ra temple in Edinburgh on 11 February 1895.  She chose the Latin motto ‘In deo confido’.  One other person was initiated during the same ritual - Margaret Jane Dalziel Grant - and I think it’s likely the two women knew each other beforehand. 

 

Several months later, on 11 November 1895, Emily’s elder daughter Edith Drummond was initiated, also at the Amon-Ra temple, and took the Latin motto ‘Fideliter’.  Emily MacLaren was initiated the same evening and was probably an acquaintance of both the Drummonds.

 

 

 

Despite attempting to give information on the lives of two GD members, this is still one of my short biographies.  As I’m based in London, I’m handicapped in researching the lives of people living in Scotland, and the information below shows it.  In particular, it’s biased towards Emily’s blood relations rather than her husband’s family, as it was easier to spot them using London-based sources and the web.  I’m sure there’s far more information on William Drummond out there, but it will be in Edinburgh...I’d need to be on the spot to look at it, and I’ve had to admit that life’s too short! 

Sally Davis

April 2016

 

A note on sources: there’s a main sources section at the end of the file.  Supplementary sources are listed at the end of each section.

 

 

This is what I have found on EMILY ANN DRUMMOND née MASON and her daughter EDITH DRUMMOND.

 

 

 

IN THE GD

Emily and Edith were very keen students, particularly of those aspects of the occult that leaned towards freemasonry.  Study work and even passing exams were necessary to reach the GD’s inner 2nd Order, where you were allowed to do practical magic.  The Drummonds both reached that level, Emily being initiated in June 1896 and Edith in February 1897. 

 

It’s not clear how long Emily and Edith remained active members of Amon-Ra as its records have been lost.  However, some sources that have survived indicate that Amon-Ra seems to have been riven with factionalism, which drove people away.  The infighting often had a social-class-based edge to it.  The creation of the Cromlech Temple - as a temple within the temple, with members hand-picked by Amon-Ra founder John William Brodie-Innes - was particularly divisive.  Emily and Edith might well have been two of those hand-picked members, however: Emily’s husband William Drummond was a legal colleague of John William Brodie-Innes and the two families may have been friends. 

 

After the collapse of the original GD in London during 1903, several daughter orders were founded.  Membership records of the two best-known - Stella Matutina and the Independent and Rectified Rite - still exist.  The Drummonds didn’t join either of them, probably because they met in London.  In December 1910, John William Brodie-Innes founded another GD temple in Edinburgh, which lasted for a few years.  Emily was dead by that time.  Edith may have joined it but probably not: during the 1900s both the Drummonds had become involved in co-masonry.

 

 

Sources:

See the main Sources section below.  And:

For strife in the Amon-Ra temple: Letters to Frederick Leigh Gardner from William Sutherland Hunter, who lived in Glasgow and worked in his family’s flour-importing firm: 1 June 1897; 28 September 1897 by which time Hunter was keeping away from Amon-Ra’s meetings so as to avoid having to take sides; and 17 January 1898.  Warburg Institute; Gerald Yorke Collection catalogue reference NS73.

 

For John William Brodie-Innes’ temples in Edinburgh: R A Gilbert’s The Golden Dawn Companion p38; for full publication details see the main Sources section.

 

ANY OTHER ESOTERIC INTERESTS?

Definitely.

 

THEOSOPHY

The week before her GD initiation, Emily became a member of the Theosophical Society.  The sponsors of Emily’s application were the founders of the TS lodge in Edinburgh and its GD temple, Amon-Ra - John William Brodie-Innes and his wife Frances.  TS lodge meetings were held in their house.  In Bradford and Edinburgh nearly everyone who was in the TS was initiated into the GD as well: in both cities there was a small group of people with esoteric interests, many of whom knew each other in their daily lives as well as their leisure time.  Not all of those who accepted the offer of initiation into the GD ever followed it up, but Emily was an active member of both societies in the late 1890s.

 

Usually it was TS members who joined the GD but Edith Drummond did it the other way round: she had been in the GD for three years when she joined the TS’s Edinburgh lodge in April 1898.  Her sponsors were not her mother, nor the Brodie-Inneses; they were Mary and George Simpson. 

Emily and Edith sponsored a few membership applications in 1900: Emily sponsored Robert Forrest Sibbald, his other sponsor being Andrew Petrie Cattanach, who ran the TS library in Edinburgh and was a GD member.  Emily and Edith together sponsored the application of Florence Laing.  I assume that both Sibbald and Laing were friends of the Drummonds in Edinburgh.

 

The TS membership records show both Emily and Edith continuing to pay their yearly subscriptions until 1908.  Then they both resigned on the same day, 11 March 1909.

 

CO-MASONRY

By the early 1900s both Emily and Edith Drummond became aware of the existence of co-masonry.  Orthodox freemasonry - as represented for example by the grand lodges of England and Scotland - is a male preserve.  However, at the end of the 19th century some lodges had been founded in France specifically to allow women to be initiated: this is co-masonry, which still exists, but which is still barely recognised by male freemasonry. 

 

The first co-masonry lodge in the UK was founded by Annie Besant and Ursula Bright in September 1902.  It was the Lodge of Human Duty, number 6, and seems to have met at Mrs Bright’s home, 31 St James’s Place in London.  Emily Drummond was initiated into Human Duty lodge number 6 in April 1904.  Even at the time Emily saw this initiation as the first step towards the founding of a co-masonry lodge in Scotland, and co-masonry lodge Christian Rosenkreuz number 18 was consecrated in Edinburgh in July 1905.  The name will have been carefully chosen and has a GD connection, as in its early days, the GD’s rituals were strongly influenced by Rosicrucian ideas and symbolism.  Annie Besant led the consecration, as Inspector-General of Co-masonry in the UK, and Emily Drummond was one of the main celebrants.  Emily served as Christian Rosenkreuz number 18's Worshipful Master in 1907. 

 

Emily’s freemasonry interests were very much influenced by Scottish freemasonry, which had always had a rather different focus to that of England.  In 1908 a Mark Masons co-masonry lodge was founded in Edinburgh, largely as a result of her efforts; and she was prevented from founding a Rose-Croix chapter only by illness.  She researched the history of the subject and wrote papers for lodge meetings, some of which were published in the magazine The Co-Mason.  The first of these was on the Mark Master Mason ritual and was published when Christian Rosenkreuz number 18 added a 4th degree (a Mark degree) to its workings - a ritual used widely in Scottish lodges. 

 

Emily’s second article - The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and Co-Masonry - looked at the history of the Rite from its first use in 18th-century France to its journey to Scotland via the USA.  She had read articles by Robert Freke Gould and A E Waite’s Studies in Mysticism and other works in the library of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.  Her article accepted without question the continuous descent of the basics of freemasonry from medieval stone masons’ rituals; but that was a belief widely held at the time.

 

Emily’s last paper was on The Symbolism of the Lodge and the Pillars.  I couldn’t find the full article in The Co-Mason, only a summary of it, and as I’m no occultist myself I’m not sure what exactly what Emily’s argument was.

 

Edith Drummond shared Emily’s interest in freemasonry.  She and her mother worked together to help found Christian Rosenkreutz lodge number 18.  Edith acted as the lodge’s warden for its first three years before being installed as its Worshipful Master in 1908 or 1909 (my sources weren’t quite clear which year).  The installation of the lodge’s warden took place on 27 December each year, a date chosen by Edith, who wrote up the reasons for her choice in her article St John’s Day in Freemasonry.  Edith had read widely on the importance of St John the Evangelist’s day to Scottish freemasonry lodges in the 18th century.  And she had exercised her powers of persuasion on the archivists of some Scottish lodges to let her see the lodge Minutes - documents not usually available to non-members.  Her article argued that the decision to focus on St John’s day was restoring to prominence a celebration that had fallen out of favour in the last century.

All the articles by Emily and Edith were very anxious to portray co-masonry as a serious, well-informed, legitimate inheritor and practitioner of freemasonry’s traditions.  Emily’s article on the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite argued that co-masonry was an offshoot of the Rite’s original form - a form which in addition to apparently not being hostile to women in freemasonry was also more overtly Christian in its tone than later revisions.  She ended her article with a plea to male freemasonry to let women in.  Women are still waiting, of course!

 

 

Such was Emily Drummond’s importance to co-masonry in Scotland that her death in January 1910 left it reeling.  Emily’s paper on the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was read out at the meeting of Christian Rosenkreuz lodge number 18 on 22 February 1910 - the first since news of the death had been made public - amidst general shock and concern about the lodge’s future.  There was much debate over the next few months about how co-masonry could honour Emily’s contribution to it in Scotland.  In the end, the decision was made to form a chapter of the Knights of the Rose Croix in Edinburgh and to call it St Ann, after Emily Ann Drummond.  Rose Croix Chapter St Ann number 3 was inaugurated in January 1912.  During the ceremony Edith Drummond was installed as its first MWS and she then installed its other officers for the coming year. 

 

Edith Drummond took on her mother’s mantle in Scottish co-masonry.  However, sources are lacking for the contributions she made to it after 1912.

 

Emily and Edith Drummond were unusual amongst GD members in being drawn to co-masonry, but they were not quite the only co-masons the GD produced.  Francis Drake Harrison, and Oliver Firth, both of whom were in the GD in Bradford for a short time, became co-masons.  In 1911 Harrison was Grand Secretary of Co-Masonry in Britain.  As such, he went to Edinburgh to preside over the inauguration of Rose Croix Chapter St Ann number 3.  A E Waite mentions that at least before the first World War, there was a co-masonry lodge in Bradford.

 

 

Sources:

THEOSOPHY

Theosophical Society Membership Register June 1893 to March 1895 p248 entry for Mrs Emily Drummond.  Theosophical Society Membership Register June 1898-February 1901 p203, p205.

Theosophical Society Membership Register April 1895 to May 1898 p241 entry for Miss Edith Drummond.  Theosophical Society Membership Register June 1898-February 1901 p205.

Lucifer: A Theosophical Magazine Volume VII September 1890 to February 1891, editors Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Annie Besant.  London: Theosophical Publishing Society of 7 Duke Street Adelphi.  Volume VII issue of 15 December 1890 p344 for Edinburgh’s library, which was in Andrew Cattanach’s house at 67 Brunswick Street.

 

CO-MASONRY

The International Order of Freemasonry for Men and Women has a website at

www.freemasonryformenandwomen.co.uk.

Its headquarters are in Surbiton.  The website has a list of the current co-masonry lodges.  The only lodge still working the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is the Scottish Lodge number 884, founded in 1927 and despite its title holding its meetings in Surbiton.  Human Duty lodge number 6 still exists - see the website.  I couldn’t see any reference to Christian Rosenkreux number 18 at this website or anywhere else on the web.  The omens are not good for its survival after - say - the first World War when so many things came to an end.

For the tangled and dubious history of Rosicrucianism its wikipedia page seems like a good place to start. 

 

Women’s Agency and Rituals in Mixed and Female Masonic Orders editors Alexandra Heidle and Jan A M Snoek.  Boston and Leiden: Brill; in their Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism series.  2008: pp344-346, p354, p359.

 

The Co-Mason’s issue of January 1909 was its volume 1 number 1.  Published by Wadsworth and Co and the Rydal press of Keighley for its editor, A Bothwell Gosse of 13 Blomfield Road Paddington.  On pp26-27 St John’s Day in Freemasonry by Edith Drummond.  On p28 news of Christian Rosenkreutz Lodge number 18 based in Edinburgh

The Co-Mason volume 1 number 2 April 1909: pp14-16 short article on Christian Rosenkreuz number 18 and Mark Master Masonry, by Emily Drummond.

The Co-Mason volume 2 issue of April 1910 was dominated by the death of Emily Ann Drummond: p61 obituary with a photograph of her on the opposite page.  On pp84-87 was the Part 1 of Emily’s article The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite; p100 about Edith’s reading of it at the next Christian Rosenkreuz number 18 meeting.

The Co-Mason volume 2 issue of July 1910 pp123–127 Part 2 of Emily Drummond’s The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

The Co-Mason volume 3 issue of April 1911 p84: news of the recent meeting of Christian Rosenkreuz lodge number 18, Edinburgh; and a short resumé of Emily Drummond’s paper: The Symbolism of the Lodge and the Pillars, read at that meeting by Edith Drummond.

The Co-Mason volume 4 issue of April 1912 p100 St Ann chapter number 3 Edinburgh; and p101 its inauguration by F D Harrison.

Volume 4 was the last one I looked at.  Volumes 3 and 4 had concentrated more and more on events in London, as if since Emily Drummond’s death links between the English co-masonry lodges and the Scottish ones had been weakened.  The Scottish lodges weren’t sending so much information to the magazine for publication.  By Volume 4 there had been a change of editor, too - another break with past sources of information.

 

Both Emily and Edith Drummond had read the works of Robert Freke Gould (1836-1915) on the history of freemasonry in Britain.

The History of Freemasonry... by Robert Freke Gould is one they are likely to have studied.  It had originally been published in  Edinburgh by T C and E C Jack.  3 volumes undated but British Library catalogue says probably 1886.  There was a later edition published London: Blackwood Le Bas and Co circa 1903.

Ars Quatuor Coronati 2076 Volume 1 1886-88 p1 names R F Gould as one of the men who made the formal request to the United Grand Lodge of England to allow the lodge Quatuor Coronati 2076 to be set up.  QC2076 was a forum for the study of the history and symbolism of freemasonry.  Ars Quatuor Coronati was its Transactions... magazine, available to a large number of corresponding members as well as the elected members.  It was not, I think, available to non-freemasons but I expect that the Drummonds could have got hold of copies in Edinburgh if they had wanted to.

 

Emily mentioned two specific works she had read while preparing her ‘Scottish Rite’ article:

Studies in Mysticism and Certain Aspects of the Secret Tradition by A E Waite.  London: Hodder and Stoughton 1906.

And a work Emily referred to as “the Philaletheans”.  I think she meant Long Livers..., a speculation on why some people live to over 100; with a dedication to the freemasons of Great Britain.   Credited to Eugenius Philalethes, published originally London: 1722.  Reissued as Bain’s Reprints number 2 1892 with a long introduction by R F Gould in which he attempted to identify the original author.

 

 

EMILY DRUMMOND - BIRTH/YOUTH/FAMILY BACKGROUND

Emily came from a ‘railway family’: one that took full advantage of the mid-19th century’s railway boom; and whose members continued to work for railway companies into the second and perhaps the third generation.  As railways were laid throughout the UK, work of every kind became available from navvying to engineering to management.  The Mason brothers - John, Emily’s father Charles, and Samuel Lack - were educated enough to make their careers in railway administration. 

 

Charles Mason’s working life did not follow the more typical 19th-century pattern of one man/one employer/one town.  He changed employers and moved to new cities several times.  He began in the late 1840s in Brighton, in the goods office of the Brighton Railway.  In 1855 he left Brighton for Yorkshire, to work for the North Eastern Railway as superintendent of its York district.  He moved to the Wirral only two years later to become general manager of the Birkenhead Railway.  In 1861 he changed employers for the last time when he was appointed goods manager of the London and North West Railway, based at Euston Square.  He had been promoted to assistant general manager by the time of his death in 1869.

 

Charles’ brothers do seem to have stayed with one railway company, John in Birmingham, and Samuel Lack Mason in Edinburgh as an employee of the North British Railway.  Samuel Lack Mason was the NBR’s general manager from 1867 to 1874.

 

Emily Mason’s mother was called Ann.  I haven’t been able to identify the marriage of Emily’s parents for certain, but a good candidate is the marriage of a Charles Mason to an Ann Sykes, at Holy Trinity Church Hull in 1848.  On the day of the 1851 census, Charles and Ann Mason were living in the Mickelgate district of York, with one general servant.  Their first child, Emily’s elder brother Charles Henry Mason, was born a month or two later.  Emily Anne Mason, the future GD member, was born early in 1854, in York; but the Masons had moved to Birkenhead by the time the youngest of the family - Arthur John - was born in mid-1855. 

 

By 1861 Charles Mason had changed job again and the family had moved to north London.  On census day 1861, Charles and Ann Mason were at 16 Queen’s Road Marylebone, living in comfortable style as they were able to afford a cook, a housemaid and a nursery maid.  They had moved yet again by the end of the decade - probably when Charles Mason was promoted - to 22 Albert Road Regent’s Park.  That was where Charles Mason died, on the morning of Tuesday 14 September 1869; at the age of 46.  Emily was 15.

 

The early death of the breadwinner in mid-Victorian Britain could plunge his widow and children into poverty.  However, Ann Mason’s later census entries say she had income from an annuity; and there was money enough for Emily’s older brother Charles Henry to be trained as a solicitor.   Charles Henry then went to work in the LNWR’s legal offices in Liverpool; and in due course Arthur John also joined the LNWR’s managerial staff, becoming superintendent of the important junction at Melton Mowbray.  A railway family.

 

Emily’s mother was an executor of her husband’s Will; with her two brothers-in-law John and Samuel Mason.  Though she had a pension, Ann Mason thought it best to scale down her household, now that she was a widow.  She remained in London where Charles Henry was already doing his solicitor’s training, but by census day 1871 she had left Regent’s Park for 11 Oseney Crescent, between Kentish Town and Holloway.  All three of her children were still living at home but Ann was managing with just the one general servant and the help of Emily who had left school by this time.  Arthur John was still at school.

 

It must have been through her uncle Samuel Lack Mason that Emily met Scottish lawyer William

Drummond.  She married him on 16 December 1872, at St Luke’s church Oseney Crescent.

 

Sources: freebmd; censuses 1861-1901; probate registry 1869.

Railway Times 1869 p921 issue of 18 September 1869: announcement of the death of Charles Mason of the LNWR.  In his leisure time was very interested in art; and he was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Railway News 1869 p323 issue of 25 September 1869: obituary of Charles Mason and a report on his funeral.  He was very well liked by his colleagues: so many people from so many railway companies wanted to attend the funeral that the GWR laid on a special train to take mourners from London to Stoke Poges, where he had been born, and was buried.

 

At www.nbrstudygroup.co.uk are the web pages of the North British Railway Study Group.  Samuel Lack Mason is in a list of its general managers.

 

Familysearch England-EASy GS film number 1702265: marriage of Charles Mason to Ann Sykes 6 March 1848 at Holy Trinity Hull.  His father is John Mason; her father is Isaac Sykes.

 

The Railway News volume 110 1918 p302 I’m not sure of the context, but Emily’s father and both her brothers are mentioned.  Charles Henry is described as “chief solicitor” of the LNWR.

The Railway Gazette volume 84 1946 p627 issue of 7 June 1946 has a reference to a man who worked as assistant solicitor to Charles Mason at the LNWR.

 

EMILY’S HUSBAND/EDITH’S FATHER

I’ve found curiously little information on the career of Emily’s husband William Drummond; despite the fact that it seems to have been a very successful one, ending with him as solicitor to the Edinburgh supreme court.  I’ve also found it difficult to identify him amongst the many William Drummonds mentioned on the web and elsewhere; so I’m not sure whether his father worked; whether William had any siblings or who they were; or where he was educated.

I am able to say that William Drummond was born in 1831, at Crieff in Perthshire - a stronghold of the Drummond family - the son of James Drummond and his wife Helen, née Clements.  I’m also able to say that he trained as a lawyer and was later a ‘writer to the Signet’ - a phrase which seems now to mean that the person so described is the Scottish equivalent to an English solicitor, but which possibly in the 19th century implied a more privileged position in the legal hierarchy.

 

Wondering whether Emily’s interest in freemasonry had come from her husband, I tried to discover whether William Drummond was involved in Scottish freemasonry.  Evidence was lacking, so I’ve no idea whether or not he was a freemason.  He and his younger daughter Florence don’t seem to have shared Emily and Edith’s interest in theosophy. 

 

Just noting here that William Drummond was over 20 years Emily’s senior.  Such an age gap between husband and wife was nothing unusual in the 19th-century and despite being so much older, William outlived Emily by several years.

 

Sources:

Familysearch Scotland-ODM GS film number 1040076 for the baptism of William Drummond on 27 March 1831. 

Website www.thewss.co.uk, Society of Writers to Her/His Majesty’s Signet, with some information on how the Society got its name.  GD member William McNair Wallace was another Writer to the Signet by 1901.

The Society’s modern website seems to be at www.powerbase.info:.

Sources for Scottish freemasonry.

Scotland’s grand lodge is at www.grandlodgescotland.com. 

At www.scotsman.com there’s an article from 23 November 2003 which mentioned that the Grand Lodge was considering putting its membership records online.  I couldn’t see any evidence on the web that that excellent idea had been carried out; there’s certainly no way to access individual membership data on the Grand Lodge’s own website.

The only source I came across on the web for names of Scottish freemasons has its limitations because it only includes famous ones: www.lodge76.wanadoo.co.uk/famous_scottish_freemasons.htm compiled by freemason J S Donaldson.

 

 

EMILY’S FAMILY including EDITH DRUMMOND

GD member Edith Drummond was the eldest of Emily and William’s three children: born 14 November 1873, in Edinburgh.  Her sister Florence was born a year later; and her brother Charles in 1877 or 1878.  

 

It seems likely from the evidence I have been able to find that William and Emily lived in the same house throughout their married life - 4 Learmonth Terrace in the St Cuthbert district of Edinburgh.  Emily kept house at that address with a staff of four, at least as far as 1901, the last census data I can get at.  On census day 1881 there was a cook, a housemaid, a parlourmaid and a nursemaid.  By 1891 Emily’s children were all at school and the nurse had been dispensed with, to be replaced by a man-servant who probably worked for William. 

 

On census day 1891 Emily’s mother was paying her daughter and grandchildren a visit.  By now Ann Mason had left London and gone to live with Emily’s brother Charles Henry and his wife Hannah, in Birkenhead.  Ann Mason died, in Birkenhead, in March 1899.

 

Edith Drummond was described as still in education on census day 1891, at the age of 18.  She had a longer, and most likely more thorough, education than her mother, though both women were capable of tackling the often impenetrable texts of western theosophy; and of studying the history and symbolism of freemasonry and writing articles about it.  Edith’s formal education does seem to have ended when she left school, however - she never went to university as far as I can discover.  Like any woman of her social class in that era, she would not have been expected to work for her living (and didn’t do so, as far as I know) so there was no need for her to train for a career.  

 

On census day 1901, Emily and Edith were both at home, with William and Charles.  Charles had followed his father into the law and was a Writer to the Signet by this time.  Florence was visiting Scottish-born Janet Steel and her children, in Belsize Square in London. 

 

 

Sources: census 1881-1901 but not 1911; Scottish Probate Registry 1899 - property held in Scotland by Ann Mason of Birkenhead.

Familysearch Scotland-ODM GS film number 6035516 for the births of Edith and Florence.  I couldn’t find details on Charles’ birth at Familysearch. 

 

DEATH OF EMILY

Emily Drummond died on 2 January 1910.  Her obituaries give me the impression that the death was sudden, although one report did mention an illness that had begun some months before.  I think she had expected to outlive her husband, for when she wrote her Will in June 1903, she bi-passed him to make her daughters Edith and Florence her executors.

 

William Drummond died in August 1915.  He too had bi-passed the obvious executor (his son Charles) to put his estate in the hands of Edith and Florence.  However, he had named a legal colleague, James Avon Clyde KC as a third executor.  His estate was valued at about £25000.  Assuming that he left it to his children, Edith and Florence’s share of it might have provided them with a reasonable income in 1915 terms.  Neither of Emily’s daughters had married.  Edith and Florence were in their forties in 1915 and probably didn’t ever marry (though I haven’t actually checked that out).

 

Source: Scottish census records for 1911 are not available on Ancestry, of course.

Scottish Probate Records 1910, 1915.

 

DESCENDANTS?  AND WHAT (IF ANYTHING) HAPPENED NEXT.

Lacking secure identifications of Charles Drummond, and information on the lives of Edith and Florence Drummond after 1915, I don’t know what happened next.  Did Charles Drummond marry?  Does Emily Drummond have descendants?  Perhaps a reader will let me know!

 

When their father died, Edith and Florence Drummond were still living at 4 Learmonth Terrace.  I would suppose that unless their financial situation became desperate, they continued to live there until they died. 

 

Sources aren’t good for this section:

Scottish Probate Records held by Ancestry didn’t have entries for any of Emily and William Drummond’s children.  However, the records only go as far as 1936 and it’s likely that all three children died later than that.

 

 

BASIC SOURCES I USED for all Golden Dawn members.

 

Membership of the Golden Dawn: The Golden Dawn Companion by R A Gilbert.  Northampton: The Aquarian Press 1986.  Between pages 125 and 175, Gilbert lists the names, initiation dates and addresses of all those people who became members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or its many daughter Orders between 1888 and 1914.  The list is based on the Golden Dawn’s administrative records and its Members’ Roll - the large piece of parchment on which all new members signed their name at their initiation.  All this information had been inherited by Gilbert but it’s now in the Freemasons’ Library at the United Grand Lodge of England building on Great Queen Street Covent Garden.  Please note, though, that the records of the Amen-Ra Temple in Edinburgh were destroyed in 1900/01.  I have recently (July 2014) discovered that some records of the Horus Temple at Bradford have survived, though most have not; however those that have survived are not yet accessible to the public.

 

For the history of the GD during the 1890s I usually use Ellic Howe’s The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923.  Published Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972.  Foreword by Gerald Yorke.  Howe is a historian of printing rather than of magic; he also makes no claims to be a magician himself, or even an occultist.  He has no axe to grind.

 

Family history: freebmd; ancestry.co.uk (census and probate); findmypast.co.uk; familysearch; Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage; Burke’s Landed Gentry; Armorial Families; thepeerage.com; and a wide variety of family trees on the web.

 

Famous-people sources: mostly about men, of course, but very useful even for the female members of GD.  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  Who Was Who. Times Digital Archive.

 

Useful source for business and legal information: London Gazette and its Scottish counterpart Edinburgh Gazette.  Now easy to find (with the right search information) on the web.

 

Catalogues: British Library; Freemasons’ Library.

 

Wikipedia; Google; Google Books - my three best resources.  I also used other web pages, but with some caution, as - from the historian’s point of view - they vary in quality a great deal.

 

 

Copyright SALLY DAVIS

16 April 2016

 

Email me at

 

Find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:

www.wrightanddavis.co.uk

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