KEIR HARDIE Was the first (Independent) Labour MP elected in 1892 and leader of the Labour Party from 1906-1908, gave the first recorded speech of his political career in Irvine in 1887, as Secretary of the Ayrshire Miners’ Union. In a biography by William Stewart, published in 1921, he mentions that Hardie gave his first […]

Steedman (the spelling on his gravestone) or Steadman, a carpenter and cabinetmaker, had an interest in natural history, and his study of fish gave him the idea of rear propulsion; watching a spinning wheel in 1816 suggested the method. He and gunsmith McCririck made models, one of which was taken by an Irvine leading light […]