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The Rotary Club of Edinburgh
History
The
first ‘Rotary Club’ was founded by an American lawyer
Paul
P. Harris, in Chicago in February 1905. A newcomer to Chicago
he wanted two things very badly - more friends and more business,
and he hit on an idea which gave him both. He formed a small circle
of similarly minded men, but took care to ensure that they all had
different businesses so that there was no conflict of interest.
This was the origin of the classification system. They met over
the lunch hour one day a week rotating around each others offices,
but soon the circle became too large for office meetings and regular
lunches were substituted, but retaining the name ‘Rotary
Club’.
How do we know all this? Well, the foregoing account was given to us by Paul Harris himself on one of his visits to our club, for he had a special interest in Edinburgh as his wife whom he called ‘Scotch Lassie Jean’ was born and brought up here.
The San Franciso Club followed the Chicago one and a member of that club, Stuart Morrow, returned to Ireland and founded clubs in Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Birmingham. The Rotary Club of Edinburgh first met on the 23rd of September 1912. Stuart Morrow was our first secretary, and his successor was to have a profound effect on the Rotary movement.
Thomas Stephenson, known as Doctor Tom, took stock of Rotary and considered that the commercial advantages offered by being a Rotarian were not only a poor objective in themselves, but could well alienate new Rotarians. He, along with other office bearers in the club, took every opportunity to stress this to other clubs and he was instrumental in evolving the idea of ‘service not self’. Soon, the commercial aspect of fellowship was abolished and replaced with the philosophy of service to the community. Dr Tom was also responsible for starting our Club bulletin in 1914 and the predecessor to the Rotary magazine in 1915.
Since then, Edinburgh has played an important part in Rotary in the UK, setting up in 1913 the British Association of Rotary Clubs and administering this until 1920. In 1921 the Edinburgh Club hosted a World Convention of Rotarians which included 1100 Americans.
During the First World War, The club had the inspiration to raise and equip a Battalion of 1000 men in the Royal Scots, known as the ‘Bantams’ because they were all under the normally accepted height for the Army. In the Second World War, Edinburgh Rotary Club organised a Serviceman’s Rest Club in Waterloo Place, which in six years served over 12 million cooked meals and provided over 8 hundred thousand bed nights!
Between the wars, the Club initiated the building of the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital for Children, revived the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, and since 1945 has organised two major Exhibitions on Hobbies and Leisure Activities for young people and helped to start no fewer than 24 new clubs in Scotland and England. In 1991 the club voted to accept women members and is active in their recruitment to balance the numbers.
In recent years the club has twinned with the rotary clubs of Tampa Bay, Nice, Florida, Metropolitan Honolulu and helped to found the Rotary Club of Kiev, Ukraine.
The Edinburgh club is among the biggest in Britain with over 150
members broadly from business, the professions, civil service, the
clergy and the police.