Robert Broom 1866-1951

Robert Broom was born on 30 November 1866 at 66 Back Sneddon Street, Paisley. He was the third child of John Broom and his wife, Agnes Hunter Shearer. The family of Broom is supposed to have originated from a John Broom who came to Scotland in Cromwell’s army in 1650 and settled near Linlithgow, the family remaining in East Stirlingshire until, in about 1820, Broom’s grandfathei settled in Glasgow, and married Ann Hunter of Highland ancestry. They .lad two sons, James, an engraver and lithographer who died young of consumption, and John, who was a designer for calico prints and Paisley shawls. When fashion changed and such work became impossible John went into commerce, eventually settling at Burnbridge near Linlithgow, half-way between Edinburgh and Glasgow. John Broom was a cultured man with a wide knowledge of English literature and of painting. Robert Broom was a sickly child, with adenoids and much bronchitis, and was, when six years old, sent to Millport (where the Marine Station now is) to live with his grandmother. There he met an army officer, John Leavach, aged eighty-three, who had fought in the Peninsular and American wars, but was a keen naturalist, who introduced Broom to marine life and to a microscope. Indeed, Broom used this original instrument for more than sixty years. At Burnbridge, Broom was reunited with his father, then an enthusiastic botanist, and constantly met as a family friend Peter Cameron, who became the great authority on Hymenoptera. To his influence Broom attributed his devotion to natural history. Broom had little schooling until at ten years old he entered Hutcheson’s Grammar School at Glasgow, and in 1883, at seventeen years of age, became a laboratory assistant to Professor J. Ferguson. In this position Broom became much interested in chemistry, and eventually ‘did most of the public analyses sent to the laboratory’.