Alexander Archibald Hagart Speirs 1869 - 1958
April 19, 2009
Alexander Archibald Hagart
Speirs
1869 - 1958 MD 1888, MB CM Glasgow (Hons)
1885,
was an orthodox physician who converted to
homeopathy,
to become
President
of the British Homeopathic
Society.
In 1893, Spiers was a surgeon at the Homeopathic Dispensary & Cottage Hospital, Union Street, Plymouth. He also practiced at 6 Sussex Terrace, Plymouth.
Speirs was a contributer to The Anglo French American Hospital during WWI, and he was a Captain in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
Speirs was a colleague of John Galley Blackley, David Dyce Brown, George Henry Burford, Alfred Midgley Cash, John Henry Clarke, Arthur Crowden Clifton, Robert Thomas Cooper, Spencer Cox, Edward Cronin, Alex Richard Croucher, John Roberson Day, Deck, Ethelbert Petrie Hoyle, James John Garth Wilkinson, and many others.
Speirs practiced at 6 Sussex Terrace, Plymouth, and he later lived at 4 Hill Street, Berkley Square and in Renfrewshire.
Speirs was also Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland 1929 – 1931.
Speirs was also Lord Lieutenant of Renfrewshire, 1943 - 1950.
Alexander Spiers’s second son,
Archibald Speirs 1758 - 1832, was one of the nine original partners in the Renfrewshire Bank.
He was succeeded by his son, Alexander Speirs who became Lord Lieutenant for Renfrewshire and was MP for Richmond in Surrey. He died in 1844 and was succeeded by his son, Captain Archibald Alexander Speirs.
He served in the Scots Fusilir Guards and was MP for Renfrew from 1865-8. He married Anne, daughter of the 4th Earl of Radnor, and died of typhoid contracted from the Clyde in December 1868 leaving a posthumous son, Alexander Archibald Speirs…
Following the death of her husband, Lady Anne moved with the infant Archie to Houston, close to the Barony of Fulwood. They settled in the remains of one of the wings of the old castle at Houston that had been converted into a hunting lodge. Lady Anne gradually enlarged the house in the Scottish baronial style. Traces of the corbelling of the old castle battlements can still be seen today.
Archie died without issue in about 1959 and the estates passed to David Crichton Maitland… (…by a deed of 29 May 1916 Alexander Archibald Speirs adopted the Hagart name, as notified in the Edinburgh Gazette of 19 May 1911. By the Settled Land Act, 1925, the trustees declared the estate vested in Hagart Speirs on 31 May 1926…) (The Speirs family had a long history in India) (The Speirs family had a long history in America) (The family money came from tobacco during the lifetime of Alexander Speirs who died in 1782).
A few months before he had married Lady Anne Bouverie, a daughter of Lord Radnor, and a few months after his young widow gave birth to a son: this little boy, who is called after his father, is the present proprietor of
Elderslie, which, by a second long minority and by the great rise in land near Glasgow, bids fair to be one of the most considerable fortunes in the country.
Alexander Speirs was a prodigeous writer, and he submitted many cases and articles to various homeopathic publications, including several translations from European homeopaths. He also contributed to Knaves or fools? by Charles Edwin Wheeler, and The Principles and Practice of Homeopathy by Richard Hughes.
Of interest:
James Speirs 1824 - 1912 *(also misspelt as Spiers) was the publishing agent for the Swedenborg Society for 40 years, Spiers acted as publishing agent for the General Conference, and he was also a Secretary of the Swedenborg Society. His greatest service to the New Church was the weekly magazine *Morning Light which he published from its inception in 1878 and edited until early 1904. He was Treasurer of the New-Church College from 1901 until his death. James Speirs **was a member of the British Homeopathic Association.