page_title: James Smith (draper)
section_title: Life and character
hierarchical_section_title: James Smith (draper) / Life and character
caption_attribution_description: English: The Revd. William Auld's grave, Mauchline, East Ayrshire, Scotland. Robert Burns's 'Daddy Auld'.
context_page_description: James Smith of Mauchline was one of Robert Burns's closest friends and confidants. He was born in 1765, son of a Mauchline merchant, Ayrshire, Scotland. In 1775, when he was only ten years, old his father, Robert Smith, a prosperous local merchant, was killed in a riding accident, falling from his horse whilst returning from Ayr. His mother, Jean Smith, remarried James Lamie.
context_section_description: After his father's death his mother married on 11 March 1777 a man with a reputation for pious and austere behaviour, a strict 'Auld Licht' Mauchline Kirk elder, named Mr. James Lamie or Lammie who attempted to provide a strict upbringing for his stepson. James Lammie is said to not have approved of James or his associates. Jean bore James Lamie a son, James, on 6 August 1780. 
  It was James Lamie who had accompanied Willie Fisher on a visit to Jean Armour's parents regarding her rumoured pregnancy out of wedlock. He was also directly involved in the Kirk Session's disputes with Gavin Hamilton. Lamie was buried in Mauchline kirkyard next to the Rev. William Auld.
  Smith's sister was Jean Smith (b.1768 d.1854), one of the Mauchline Belles who married Dr James Candlish circa 1794, originally McCandlish, childhood school friend of Burns from Purclewan Mill near Mount Oliphant. Jean was buried in Edinburgh at the Old Calton Burial Ground. Burns referred to her in the poem "The Belles of Mauchline" as "Miss Smith she has wit".
  He ran a drapery shop in his old home that lay opposite Nanse Tunnock's. Boyle states that his home and workshop stood at the north side of Mauchline Cross but was demolished in 1820 when the new Kilmarnock Road was built. James Lamie's house stood adjacent to his shop. 
  Smith is described as "..a wild young rake of a fellow; who was never out of mischief. Kind and good-natured the young lad certainly was; but then he was so perversly fond of fun and frolic, that the good old man declared there was no living with him". Janes kept irregular hours and a story is recounted by a servant, Helen Miller, that when found cleaning James's shoes Lamie tore them from her hands and threw them across the room with considerable force, saying that the young vagabond couls clean them himself. 
  Smith left Mauchline by the end of 1785 and became a partner in a calico-printing company in Avon near Linlithgow however this enterprise failed.
  In 1788 Smith took ship to Jamaica, although De Lancey Ferguson gives St Lucia as his destination,and he eventually died on the island, however the date and place of his death are not formally recorded, but in Cromek's Reliques of Robert Burns he is said in 1808 to already be deceased whilst another source gives 1823. 
  Smith, as recorded by the Kirk Session, had an illegitimate son with Christina Wilson, one of his mother's servants, fifteen years his senior. Ironically she had been employed specifically to help mend his waywood behaviour. Smith always denied being the father of the boy although locally it was taken for granted.
caption: William Auld's memorial and James Lamie's grave to the left
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