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The first sick children's hospital on site of former Naval Surgeon's Dr Blaikie surgery on 6-8 Castle Terrace in 1877 extended to take in Castle Brae Chapel. An unsung heroine that worked on this site is Dr Agnes Thomson (nee Baxter) a graduate from Aberdeen University who served as an anaesthetist at the Sick Children's and Maternity Hospitals during the First World War. Agnes Thomson was instrumental in founding the Aberdeen Mother and Baby Home and volunteered her services to the Mother and Child Welfare Association, which was established to address the shockingly high death rate of babies and toddlers in the east end of Aberdeen. Throughout her life, Clementina Esslemont OBE was a champion of liberal ideas and good causes and well known for her no-nonsense approach to social service provision. One of her principal achievements was the foundation of the Aberdeen Mother and Child Welfare Association in 1909, which played an important role in social service and public health provision in the City of Aberdeen until the creation of the Public Health Department in 1949. She was also involved in the establishment of a model block of tenements on the Spital, Aberdeen, in the formation of Aberdeen Lads' Club, St Katherine's Club, and the nursery school movement. Dr Mary Esslemont, one of Clementina Esslemont's daughters, worked as a Gynaecologist at the hospital. Mary did much to improve the care and wellbeing for mothers and babies with her determination and hard work. As well as being the Gynaecologist she also ran prenatal and family planning clinics. Mary was an advocate of women's rights, health education and family planning. She was the first female president of the Student University Council and the first woman to be president of Aberdeen Liberal Association in 1954. Awarded the CBE in 1955, Aberdeen City Council bestowed the Freedom of the City of Aberdeen in 1981. Aberdeen has also led the way in family planning with a remarkable woman at the forefront of fertility control. Pioneer Fenella Paton opened Aberdeen's first family planning clinic in 1926 at Gerrard street. The clinic, the first of its kind in Scotland, moved to new premises in Castle Street in 1948. But prior to these clinics and innovations in family planning there were large families and mothers that needed to go out to work and at our next stop an initiative was put in place to help these working women. Memories: Norma Michie speaking about Mary Esslemont Audrey's memories of the Family Planning Clinic Denise's memory of the Family Planning Clinic Heather's memories of Ina Lawrence and the Children's Hospital Alma Duncan's memories of Cocky Hunters

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A group portrait showing the management council of Bonnymuir Bowling Club in 1924. The photograph was taken by Alexander Ledingham, who ran a studio at 101a Rosemount Place for many years. This print is attached to a larger board which identifies all the figures present: Standing: W. H. Davidson, G. Cooper, C. B. Garrioch, J. S. Taylor, A. Craig, W. Allan, C. D. Davidson, A. Milne, J. Reid, W. Tocher, J. M. McFarlane, J. Rigg, J. M. Ross. Sittings: J. Gordon, A. G. R. Weir, R. Cameron (Treasurer), J. M. Begg (Vice-President), G. H. Simpson (President), P. Scott, E. Swan (Secretary), H. Reid, A. Matthews. The green is located to the west of Bonnymuir Place and was previously a garden area. The land was given to the community to serve as a bowling green in the early 1920s. This image was used in Old Rosemount (2015) by Patricia Newman and this book gives a short account of the formation of Bonnymuir Bowling Green Ltd. and its initial fundraising. The bowling club closed down in 2015. A group of local residents have subsequently formed the Bonnymuir Green Community Trust with the aim to develop and use the site of the former green as an asset owned by, and operated for, the benefit of the community.

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In 1960 the education committee of Aberdeen Town Council proposed the conversion of the empty North and Trinity Parish Church into an adult education and civic arts centre. The plan was given final approval in February 1961, much to the delight of Aberdeen's art enthusiasts. The Evening Express detailed the need for such a venue at the time by describing the difficulties faced by the William Gavin Players, a local drama group, in staging a play earlier that week in the ballroom of the Music Hall. They had to overcome the roar of a nearby wrestling audience, the incessant ringing of an unanswered telephone, a cramped stage and poor acoustics. A temporary restriction on capital expenditure and a particularly severe winter caused delays for the conversion. Work began in late 1961 and was concluded by the autumn of 1963. The work cost around £33,000 and saw the reconstruction of the interior and a thorough re-vamp for the building's exterior. At one point the new centre was going to be called Longacre, but this idea was scrapped in favour of Aberdeen Arts Centre. The completed venue was opened on 18th October 1963 by Sir Herbert Read (1893-1968), an art critic, poet and anarchist philosopher. In his speech Read criticised the main political parties of the day for neglecting the development of the arts and the human imagination in favour of a blind drive for scientific and technological efficiency. In addition to the 385-seat auditorium, the venue had an exhibition space, a lounge, and a tea bar. The Arts Centre has remained the focal point for local arts groups and arts education to this day. It has also served as a meeting place and provided a useful stage for theatrical productions of all types. In 1998, facing the need to cut £17.5 million from their budget, Aberdeen City Council withdrew their funding from the Arts Centre. This left the future of the venue in danger. A popular campaign to avoid its closure was led by Annie Inglis MBE (1922-2010), Aberdeen's first lady of theatre. This led to the Aberdeen Arts Centre Association taking over the venue on a voluntary basis and the eventual formation of the Castlegate Arts Limited, a company with charitable status who continue to run the venue today. Over the years the Arts Centre has played host to many noted local theatre groups like the Attic Theatre Co., The Revue Group, the aforementioned William Gavin Players, Phoenix Theatre, the Gilbert & Sullivan Society, Aberdeen Opera Company, Confederate Theatre, Dragongate Theatre, and no doubt many more. It remains a much-loved venue for performers and audiences of all ages.

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An Aberdeen Journals Archive image of the Belmont Cinema in 1952. The building that now houses the Belmont Filmhouse was originally built in 1896 as a Trades Hall to a design by architects Alexander Ellis and Robert Gordon Wilson. The grey granite ashlar entrance at 49-51 Belmont Street leads to the main building, best seen from Union Terrace and Rosemount Viaduct. With multiple floors, the building makes full use of the different levels of the Denburn valley. Historic Environmental Scotland's statement of special interest for the building notes its tall and narrow design and bartizan towers at its far end, describing it as "a distinctive piece of architecture." Michael Thomson explains that the Trades Hall provided much needed accommodation for meetings, social events and lectures. The main hall originally featured ceiling paintings by Robert Douglas Strachan (1875-1950), who went on to become an acclaimed stained-glass artist. The construction of the hall was an ambitious and costly undertaking for Aberdeen's labour movement. This led to the hall being increasingly rented out for commercial performances, including cinematographic showings. William Walker, a local cinematographic pioneer who was also a successful bookseller, leased out the building's main hall as a picture house. The Coliseum was opened on 22 August 1910 by Messrs Walker and Company and so began the building's long life as a cinema. In July 1911 Glasgow's J. J. Bennell took over control of the Coliseum. Popular features of the venue during Walker and Bennell's time included short "topicals" that documented local life and live variety acts. Thomson explains that Bennell was also a pioneer of Saturday morning matinees for children. In August 1913 Dove Paterson, another local pioneer who had opened Aberdeen's first permanent cinema on Shiprow, took over at the Coliseum. Paterson died unexpectedly in May 1916 and this brought a temporary halt to the Coliseum cinema. It briefly reopened in December of that year under the management of the Trades Hall, but this only lasted a couple of months before the cinema closed again. The cinema was then managed by veteran singer D. Brown McGill, who made use of his established contacts in variety circles. His tenure saw the venue complementing its programme of film showings with a range of other entertainments including roller skating, boxing and dancing. On 11th April 1921 the cinema reopened as the New Kinema, under the management of Henry Philips, who had previously run the Picturedrome on Skene Terrace. One interesting performer at the venue in 1929 noted by Michael Thomson was an illusionist called Carletta who conjured up rabbits to give away to patrons as pets. In 1935 the then proprietors of the New Kinema, James Brebner and George Walker, were involved in the formation of the Caledonian Theatre public company. It was formed to purchase the site of the La Scala cinema and nearby buildings on Union Street with the intention of building a new super-cinema. In time this would become the Majestic. June 1935 saw the renovation of the New Kinema and renewal of its heating plant, lighting and sound equipment. It reopened as The Belmont on the 24th of that month. [Information primarily sourced from Silver Screen in the Silver City (1988) by Michael Thomson] Image © Aberdeen Journals Ltd.

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There were a number of initiatives in 19th Century Scotland aiming to improve education for women including university local examination schemes, courses of lectures by university professors, and the formation of Ladies' Educational Associations. Aberdeen Local Studies holds a Minute Book recording the relatively short-lived Aberdeen Association founded in 1877 to provide higher education for women. The volume also contains documents including the initial prospectus, six printed annual reports and a selection of newspaper advertisements for the lectures offered by the Association. The Association ran courses for seven years which included 13 different subjects - physiology and the laws of health appeared in the 1881-82 session while German language and literature, along with physical geography and geology, were offered in the 1882-3 session. However, the number of women attending the courses dropped during the 1882-83 session. Classes were discontinued in Spring 1884, and the Association was wound up in July 1886. In 1892 the University of Aberdeen began to admit women to its degree courses.

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This is the front page of a two-sided broadside style pamphlet. The back page can be seen here. This broadside refers to a meeting on 21st February 1817 of Aberdeen's bureaucrats. Attending the meeting were creditors - individuals and organisations providing loans - and their debtors, the treasurers of Aberdeen. The meeting had been called by a letter dated to the 8th February. The Lord Provost, Alexander Fraser (1775-1840), chaired the meeting. The Lord Provost reiterated the contents of the letter, that the treasurers felt bound to provide a detailed statement of their accounts to the creditors. They also iterated their desire to establish an independent committee to assist in the auditing of their accounts. The treasurers felt it necessary to reassure the attending creditors. The treasurers had previously borrowed money from the creditors to fund the formation of Union Street and King Street. For some years in the run up to this meeting, the treasurers had been unable to pay the creditors the required five-per-cent interest on the money borrowed for this project. (Alexander Munro, Memorials of the Alderman, Provosts, and Lord Provosts of Aberdeen, 1272-1893 (1897), 265-267). Thus, presumably, the creditors were nervous over the security of their debts. A lack of trust between the creditors and debtors exists. The Lord Provost, speaking on behalf of the debtors, sought to rectify this through making the treasurers scrutable. A motion was moved by a Mr Crombie to give the independent committee (of trustees) the power to sell property belonging to the treasurers in order to pay the treasurers' debts. This motion was unanimously approved by the meeting. The broadside concludes by listing the trustees as treasurers in order to pay the treasurers' debts.

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This is the back page of a two-sided broadside style pamphlet. The front page can be seen here. This broadside refers to a meeting on 21st February 1817 of Aberdeen's bureaucrats. Attending the meeting were creditors - individuals and organisations providing loans - and their debtors, the treasurers of Aberdeen. The meeting had been called by a letter dated to the 8th February. The Lord Provost, Alexander Fraser (1775-1840), chaired the meeting. The Lord Provost reiterated the contents of the letter, that the treasurers felt bound to provide a detailed statement of their accounts to the creditors. They also iterated their desire to establish an independent committee to assist in the auditing of their accounts. The treasurers felt it necessary to reassure the attending creditors. The treasurers had previously borrowed money from the creditors to fund the formation of Union Street and King Street. For some years in the run up to this meeting, the treasurers had been unable to pay the creditors the required five-per-cent interest on the money borrowed for this project. (Alexander Munro, Memorials of the Alderman, Provosts, and Lord Provosts of Aberdeen, 1272-1893 (1897), 265-267). Thus, presumably, the creditors were nervous over the security of their debts. A lack of trust between the creditors and debtors exists. The Lord Provost, speaking on behalf of the debtors, sought to rectify this through making the treasurers scrutable. A motion was moved by a Mr Crombie to give the independent committee (of trustees) the power to sell property belonging to the treasurers in order to pay the treasurers' debts. This motion was unanimously approved by the meeting. The broadside concludes by listing the trustees as treasurers in order to pay the treasurers' debts.

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