Scottish shale Scottish shale

James Struthers & Co.

Company number:
Not known
Share capital:
£?
Started:
1866 or prior
Finished:
1875 or later
Registered office:

Galbraith Reid & Co., 116 St. Vincent St.

Oil works:

James Struthers & Co were coalmasters operating Rochsoles pit and associated ironstone workings. The firm were also proprietors of Stand Oil Works, which seems to have been in production between 1866 and 1872.

James Struthers and James Reid were directors of the Monkland Oil Refinery Company, a firm said to be based at Drumshangie (an area adjacent to Rochsoles pit), which had been established with the intent of developing oil interests in Burma as well as refining locally producted crude oil.

It appears that James Galbriath and James Reid, partners in the firm of James Struthers & Co., were copartners in the firms of Galbraith, Reid & Co. of Glasgow, and Galbraith & Co. of Rangoon, and presumably had interest in importing petroleum from Burma. All three companies appear to have failed in 1875. The firm of Galbraith, Reid & Co., merchants, are listed in editions of the Glasgow Post Office directory between 1864 and 1876, for most of that period based at 116 St. Vincent St. The 1866 edition carries a listing for: "Struthers, James, colliery proprietors and oil distillers; office: Galbraith Reid & Co., 116 St. Vincent St."

Following the collapse of the businesses James Struthers appears to have opened a public house in Blantyre, while Galbraith and Reid became involved in further sculduggery associated with the Burmese trade.

Partners

  • James Struthers
  • John MacReath (until October 1873)
  • James Galbraith
  • James Reid

  • Newspaper references
    • Struthers Burma.jpg

      Glasgow Herald, 23rd January 1864

      .......

      THE Subscriber John Macreath retired from the Firms of GALBRAITH, REID, & COMPANY, Merchants, Glasgow, GALBRAITH, DALZIEL, & COMPANY, Rangoon, and JAMES STRUTHERS & COMPANY, Rochsoles Colliery, on 31st December 1870.

      JOHN MACREATH.
      GALBRAITH, REID, & COy.
      GALBRAITH, DALZIEL, & COy.
      JAMES STRUTHERS & COy.

      ANDERSON LINDSAY, Witness, JAMES BROWN, Witness.

      Edinburgh Gazette, 14th October 1873

      .......

      NOTICE is hereby given that GALBRAITH, REID, & COMPANY, Merchants in Glasgow, GALBRAITH & COMPANY, Merchants in Rangoon, and James Galbraith, Merchant in Rangoon, presently in Glasgow, and James Reid, Merchant in Glasgow, the Individual Partners thereof ; JAMES STRUTHERS & COMPANY, Coalmasters at Stand, near Airdrie, and the said James Galbraith, James Reid, and James Struthers, residing at Stand aforesaid, the Individual Partners thereof, have granted a Trust Deed in favour of William Brown, Accountant in Glasgow, for behoof of their Creditors, dated 25th and 26th April 1876. All parties indebted to the said Companies, and the Partners thereof, as such, or as Individuals, are hereby required to pay to the Subscriber all sums due by them. All parties having claims against the said Companies or Partners are required to lodge the same with the Subscriber, within one month from this date. - WM. BROWN.

      Edinburgh Gazette, 3rd December 1875

      .......

      CARSLAW & HENDERSON v. BELL'S TRUSTEES

      Towards the end of the year 1876, the house of Innes Wright & Co. of Glasgow, of which John Innes Wright and William Scott were sole partners, was in deep waters; it was only upheld by the City of Glasgow Bank, lest its fall might recoil on the latter establishment. In September 1876, they started, for financial purposes, a London house of the same name, composed of the same partners. In the following spring it happened that Wright & Co., and a Mr. John Bell, the head of a large pottery in Glasgow, became interested in property in Rangoon, and partly from this and partly from the advice of Mr. Findlay, sole partners of the firm of Carslaw & Henderson, the appeliants, muslin manufacturers and merchants in Glasgow who had been in the habit of consigning goods to Rangoon and other foreign markets, a Rangoon house of Scott & Co. was started, the partners being Wright, Scott & Bell; and Bell was taken into the London house in March, 1877, under a contract of copartnery. Findlay, being intimate with Scott, saw and read over the contract of copartnery, which provided that the business of the London and Rangoon houses was the business of commission merchants, with the additional management and work of the property in Rangoon above referred to, and that Innes Wright & Co., Glasgow, was to exist as a separate and independent firm, the copartnership then established having no concern therewith; and the partners are restricted from using the company's funds for any purpose whatever not connected with the business hereby undertaken.

      Findlay also introduced to Scott, as useful men for his new firms, a Mr. Galbraith and a Mr. Reid, who had been partners of a firm of Galbraith, Reid & Co., which had formerly been in the Rangoon trade but had come to an untimely end. Reid was sent to Rangoon to manage the business there, with the assistance of a Mr. Binning, and while there, according to Mr. Findlay, Reid gave private intimations to Mr. Findlay as to the state of markets behind his employer's backs. Galbraith remained in an anomalous position as manager of the London business, yet resident in Glasgow, and was generally to be found about the office of the Glasgow firm, where he had a room. In London there was nobody but a head clerk......................... In October 1878, the City Bank failed, and Innes Write & Co., of Glasgow, came down with it. After consultations between Wright, Scott, Bell and Findlay, under the advice of Mr. Galloway, the old London and Rangoon firms were dissolved.........

      Glasgow Herald, 16th March 1882

      .......

      List of applications for certificates for the sale of excisable liquors for the Hamilton district in the County of Lanarkshire James Struthers, Stand, Airdrie, of public house in Stonefield, Blantyre.

      Glasgow Herald, 1876

      .......

      At Stonefield, Blantyre, on the 12th inst., Mary McFarlane Reid, wife of James Struthers, late of Rochsoles Colliery, Airdrie.

      Glasgow Herald, 14th March 1883