KAY, Christian Janet, DLitt, born Edinburgh 4 April 1940, died Glasgow 4 June 2016. Linguist, lexicographer, academic. Daughter of Dorothy Margaret Mack, and William Dewar Kay, both schoolteachers.

Christian Kay was educated at the Mary Erskine School, followed by study at the University of Edinburgh and Mount Holyoke College, USA. Although she never intended to become an academic, after various language-related posts, she arrived at Glasgow in 1969 as a research assistant, later moving to a lectureship and then a Chair in English Language (1996). Her field was the linguistics of English, specialising in the history of the language. A lifetime of research culminated in the widely acclaimed publication of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (2009): the world's largest thesaurus, and the most complete in English. This was a team effort, initiated by Michael Samuels. Having taken on leadership of the programme, Christian Kay found herself managing a large team of linguists, lexicographers and programmers. A pioneer in the study of ‘big data’, she harnessed information technology to handle the complex materials involved. In this role, she secured funding and employment for over 200 researchers and production staff for 40 years. The project's considerable royalties were assigned to postgraduate studentships.

Christian Kay's contribution to Scottish linguistic projects included being the first ever Convener of the Board of Scottish Language Dictionaries, and as such responsible for coordinating the Dictionary of the Scots Language, now the principal repository for the study of Scots words and their history. She was also the founder of the Scottish Corpus of Text and Speech and worked after retirement on the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing. Regarded as an ‘awesomely effective’ academic leader, she was equally respected for her wit and humanity. Glasgow University awarded her a DLitt in 2013. JJSM

• Kay, C. (2009) (participation in Works as above); (2014) ‘English lexicographers and their achievements’, Historiographica Linguistica 41 (2—3), pp. 355—368. Caie, G. D. et al. (eds) (2006) The Power of Words: essays in lexicography, lexicology and semantics. In honour of Christian J. Kay; The Herald, 20 June 2016 (obit.).

JACOB, Violet Augusta Mary Frederica, n. Kennedy-Erskine, born Dun, near Montrose, 1 Sept. 1863, died Kirriemuir 9 Sept. 1946. Writer and painter. Daughter of Catherine Jones, and William Henry Kennedy-Erskine, 18th Laird of Dun.

Violet Kennedy-Erskine was the eldest of three surviving children. Her father died when she was a child, in 1870, and her 16-year-old sister died suddenly and traumatically in 1883. She was raised by her Welsh mother and educated at home, the House of Dun (now NTS), ‘Balnillo House’ in her novel Flemington. Her writing often draws on the history of her ancient, landed family, which she recorded in The Lairds of Dun (1931), and on the landscapes and people of Angus. In 1894, she married Arthur Otway Jacob (1867—1936), an Irishman serving in the British Army. After their son Harry was born in 1895, they spent several years in India with Arthur Jacob's regiment, a happy period recorded in Violet's diaries and letters to her mother from Indore State. She nursed in Mhow military hospital but also enjoyed considerable freedom, meeting rulers of the Central Indian States and riding on the plains. Five volumes of her Indian flower paintings are held at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.

Returning to Britain in 1901, she lived mainly in English garrison towns, apart from a spell in Egypt (1903—4). However, on leave and after retirement, the Jacobs frequently stayed near Llanigon in the Welsh borders. Her first, well-received novel, The Sheepstealers (1902), depicts social unrest in 1840s Wales (the ‘Rebecca riots’). Her Scottish fiction with its vivid Scots dialogue is especially outstanding. The Interloper (1904), set in early 19thcentury Angus, found contemporary success, and John Buchan described the powerful Flemington (1911) as ‘the best Scots romance since The Master of Ballantrae’ (NLS, MS 27416). Flemington depicts personal and political turmoil in ‘this tormented country’ during and after the 1745 Jacobite Rising, when, as one character remarks: ‘Whiles, it's no sae easy tellin’ havers frae truth’ (1998 edn., pp. 335, 361).

Violet Jacob nursed during the First World War. Her son, Harry, died at the Somme in 1916, aged 20, and after this tragedy she wrote only short prose and poetry. Her poetry was mainly in Scots at this time, drawing on ballad and folksong traditions.

MACADAM, Elizabeth, born Chryston, near Glasgow, 10 Oct. 1871, died Edinburgh 25 Oct. 1948. Social worker. Daughter of Elizabeth Whyte, and Thomas Macadam, Presbyterian minister.

Elizabeth Macadam's childhood was spent partly in Montreal, Canada. She and her sister returned to Scotland as young women and lived for some years in Edinburgh. In 1898, she was awarded a Pfeiffer scholarship to train in social work at the Women's University Settlement in Southwark, London, and in 1902 became the first salaried warden of the Victoria Women's Settlement in Liverpool, a position she held until 1910. She proved an imaginative and capable head. She pioneered many Liverpool medical and educational services for women and children at the settlement and inspired local well-off young women and female students to staff them. Yet she believed firmly that social work should be a profession and not simply a pastime and in 1904 launched a visionary training programme, combining lectures on poverty and politics with supervised practical work. In 1910, the University of Liverpool absorbed this programme and hired Elizabeth Macadam, as lecturer, to run it.

Elizabeth Macadam's success caught the attention of Seebohm Rowntree, who brought her to London early in the First World War to train welfare workers for factories run by the Ministry of Munitions. In 1919 she left Liverpool permanently to become secretary to a new, London-based Joint Universities Council for Social Science, which was to co-ordinate training programmes. The move caused a personal crisis, for she had developed a close friendship with Eleanor Rathbone, by then a Liverpool city councillor. Rathbone was determined not to hamper Macadam's career and in 1919 the two women bought a house in Westminster. But in the end it was Eleanor Rathbone who profited more from the move: the Westminster house became the base for her blossoming political career and Macadam's organising skills were an asset to many Rathbone campaigns. In the 1920s, when Rathbone served as President of NUSEC, Macadam became an officer and the editor of its paper; after Rathbone's election as MP in 1929, Macadam helped to manage her complex parliamentary career. Practical where Rathbone was abstracted, straightforward where Rathbone was diffident, Elizabeth Macadam struck some observers as an ideal ‘political wife’.

The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, the first of its kind, was published in 2006 (paperback 2007). In 2015, Edinburgh University Press commissioned this New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, a revised and enlarged version. Three of the editors remain the same. Our colleague Sue Innes died in 2005, and Jane Rendall, previously an associate editor, and a specialist on Scottish cultural life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has joined us as a full editor.

What is different about the new version of the Dictionary? This preface explains the policy of revision, enlargement and other changes. For a full description of the thinking behind the volume and the criteria for selection, see the Introduction to the 2006 volume, reproduced below (pp. xxxviii ff.).

On the last point, we would remind readers that no living persons are included.

Illustrations

The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women includes sixty black-and-white plates, of which forty are new to this volume.

Revision and updating

All the original entries from 2006 have been retained and checked by their authors and/or the editors, correcting errors and adding new information. This includes the findings of recent research and, in the sections on sources attached to each entry, recently published works such as biographies. We now know a great deal more, for instance, about the life and interests of Helen MacFarlane (1818–1860), the first translator of The Communist Manifesto. These references acknowledge the many titles published on Scottish history and culture in the last ten years or so. Furthermore, the general-reference landscape has completely changed in the last decade: more resources are now available online than in 2006, and we have assumed that readers looking further will refer to commonly used search engines. We include some specialised website addresses, with the proviso that they were active at the time of going to press, but do not list general-reference websites (for example, Scotland's People, Wikipedia) in our sources sections, unless there is a special reason: when for instance information is not easily available elsewhere, or for useful cross-references.

There is one exception: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), originally published in sixty-four volumes in 2004, and now regularly updated online. We referenced the original ODNB in 2006, and we share some contributors.

URE, Joan see CLARK, Elizabeth Thomson (Betty)(1918—78)

URE, Mary, born Kelvinside, Glasgow, 18 Feb. 1933, died London 3 April 1975. Actor. Daughter of Edith Swinburne, and Colin McGregor Ure, engineer.

Educated in Glasgow and at the Mount School, York, Mary Ure was an actor of skill, range and beauty, frequently cast in vulnerable roles. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, making her debut at the Manchester Opera House in 1953 in Alan Melville's Simon and Laura. Her potential was swiftly recognised, and she made a dazzling West End debut at the London Arts Theatre in 1954 in Anouilh's Time Remembered. In 1955 she played Ophelia to Paul Scofield's Hamlet, appearing in this production in Moscow on stage and television. Her most memorable roles came at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in the spring of 1956 — Abigail in the first British production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller, and Alison in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. She also played Alison in the film version (opposite Richard Burton) and on the New York stage. Mary Ure married John Osborne (1929—94) in 1957; a tempestuous union, it ended in divorce five years later, when their son was one year old. By this time, she had fallen in love with Robert Shaw (1927—78), appearing with him in the Elizabethan comedy The Changeling at the Royal Court in 1961. They married in 1963 and had four children.

Mary Ure played leading roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford. Her films included Storm Over the Nile (1955), Sons and Lovers (for which she received an Academy Award Nomination in i960), Custer of the West (1967) and Where Eagles Dare (1968). She claimed, however, that her preference was for the theatre and that she appeared in films to please her husbands. She returned to the stage in i975, giving a powerful performance in Don Taylor's The Exorcism at the Comedy Theatre, London. On the evening of the first night of this production, a cocktail of whisky and tranquillisers led to her untimely death. DC

• Heilpern. J. (2006) John Osborne: a patriot for us; ODNB (2004); The Scotsman, 6 April 1975 (obit.).

TAIT, Margaret,‡ m. Pirie, born Kirkwall, Orkney, 11 Nov. 1918, died Kirkwall 16 April 1999. Film-maker. Daughter of Mary Ibister, and Charles Tait, agricultural merchant.

Margaret Tait studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1941 and serving in the RAMC (1943-6). In the late 1940s she developed a passion for film and went to study in Rome (1950—2). Returning to Scotland, she could not find a place in the British film industry, where there were few opportunities for women to direct. Between 1951 and 1998 she made 32 films, of which all but three were self-financed, initially by locum work. In addition to raising the money, Margaret Tait worked as a one-woman crew. Occasionally she had the help of her lifelong partner, Alex Pirie, whom she married in 1968 and who is credited as producer on Where I am is here (1964). Margaret Tait described herself as a ‘film poet’ (Curtis 1999) rather than a documentarian. Her films sometimes seem like a picture of the past (e.g. Land Makar 1981) but her intention was not so much to document as to create visual poems from sound and image. She developed a very singular style, which is being increasingly recognised as a unique voice within European avant-garde film. In 1992, she had the opportunity, aged 74, to direct her first feature film, Blue Black Permanent, based on a script she first started to write in the 1940s. Filmed in Edinburgh and Orkney, ‘it is beautiful, ingenious, and extraordinarily sad, all at once’ (EIFF Catalogue 2004). She made her last film, Garden Pieces, in 1998, the year before her death. In addition to film-making she published stories and poetry and painted. mjg

• Orkney Archives: the Tait Papers; Moving Image Archive, NLS.

Tait, M. (1959) Origins & Elements, (i960) Subjects & Sequences, (i960) The Hen & The Bees: legends & lyrics; (2012) Margaret Tait: poems, stories and writings, S. Neely (ed.).

Select Filmography (not mentioned above): (1955) A Portrait of Ga, (1956) Calypso, (1958) Happy Bees, (1966) Hugh MacDiarmid—A Portrait, (1966) The Big Sheep.

VAKIL, Merbai Ardesir,‡ born Bombay (Mumbai), 25 May 1868, died Bombay 9 April 1941. Physician. Daughter of Ardesir Framji Vakil, Parsi solicitor.

Merbai Ardesir Vakil attended Wilson High School and Wilson College, Bombay, becoming the first woman to graduate from there, in 1888. After studying at Grant Medical College, Bombay, she left to attend first the London School of Medicine for Women, and then, from 1893, Queen Margaret College, Glasgow. She graduated with the degree of MBCM on 22 July 1897, the first Asian woman to graduate from a Scottish university. After postgraduate work in Glasgow, she worked in the Cama Hospital for Women and Children in Bombay and in other hospitals and dispensaries. In March 1927 she left for Aden, first in the employment of the British government, and then in private practice. She returned to Bombay in poor health in March 1941.

She was not, however, the first woman from India to achieve medical qualifications in Scotland. In 1888, Annie Wardlaw Jagannadham (1864—94), born to Indian parents in Chicacole (Srikakulam), Andhra Pradesh, and Annie Catharine Wells (b. 1868), also born in India, having spent some years studying medicine at Madras University, joined Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women, run by *Sophia Jex-Blake. Among fellow students were *Margaret Balfour, *Margaret Todd and *Elsie Inglis. In 1890 both women secured the ‘triple qualification’ from RCPE, RCSE and the Glasgow Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons. Annie Jagannadham, described by Sophia Jex-Blake as of ‘fine and finished character’ (Todd, p. 504) was appointed house-physician at Leith Hospital. Returning to India in 1892, she became the housesurgeon at Cama Hospital, where she died two years later of tuberculosis. JR

• Glasgow University Archives, Matriculation Records R8/5/14—17/10, Medical Examiners Schedule, MED 5/2/5, correspondence, DC233/2/10/6/1; RCSEd, Medical Schedules for the Triple Qualification, 904 and 955. Balfour, M. I. and Young, R. (1929) Medical Women in India; (1890) Second Report of the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women, 1888—1890; ‘The Late Dr Annie Wardlaw Jagannadham’, Chronicle of the London Missionary Society (1894) 34, pp. 232-33 (obit.); Ramanna, M. (2002) Western Medicine and Public Health in Colonial Bombay, 1845—1895; Somerville, J. M. (2005), ‘Dr Sophia Jex-Blake and the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women’, Proc. Roy. Coll. Phys. Edin. 35, pp. 261—7; Todd, M. (1918) Life of Sophia Jex-Blake.

FAIRFIELD, Cecily (or Cicily) Isabel (aka Cissie, Panther) [Rebecca West, Rachel East, Conway Power], DBE, m. Andrews, born London 21 Dec. 1892, died London 15 March 1983. Journalist, novelist, critic, travel-writer, feminist and political commentator. Daughter of Isabella Campbell Mackenzie, governess, pianist and copy-typist, and Charles Fairfield, Irish-born soldier, journalist and entrepreneur.

After Charles Fairfield abandoned the family in 1901 (dying in 1906), their mother took the three children from London to her native Edinburgh, where they lived in Hope Park Square (represented in Rebecca West's novel, The Judge) and Buccleuch Place. Cecily Fairfield was educated as a scholarship student at George Watson's Ladies’ College, winning ‘Best Essay’ prize, 1906—7. She campaigned for women's suffrage and at 14 published a letter in The Scotsman (16 October 1907) on ‘Women's Electoral Claims’, writing later: ‘Scotland has come out of the militant suffrage agitation very well indeed. There is something magnificently dramatic about the way the Scottish woman … has quietly gone about her warfare’ (West [1911] 1982, p.192). Her first, unpublished, novel, ‘The Sentinel’, written in her late teens, portrays its heroine's sexual and political awakening during suffrage unrest. The Judge (1922), featuring a young Edinburgh suffragette, was described by Hugh MacDiarmid as ‘unfortunately — the best Scottish novel of recent years’ (MacDiarmid, [1926], 1995, p. 346).

Cecily was the youngest of three siblings. Her sister Josephine Letitia (Lettie) Denny Fairfield (1885-1978) qualified in medicine, Edinburgh 1907, then studied law and became a medical administrator; she supervised women doctors in the First World War and was made CBE in 1919. Winifred (Winnie) Fairfield (1887-1960), to whom Cecily was close, trained as a teacher. All three sisters, young socialists and suffragists, joined the Fabian Society. The family moved back to London in 1910, where 17-year-old Cecily studied for a year at the Academy of Dramatic Art in London and worked briefly as an actor. She soon turned to journalism, publishing her first theatre review in the Evening Standard and writing for a new feminist journal, The Freewoman. Taking the pseudonym ‘Rebecca West’ from a strong-willed character in Ibsen's play Rosmersholm, she swiftly established a reputation with her often iconoclastic writing; other pieces appeared in the Daily News and socialist Clarion.

O'DONNELL, Finola (Inion Dubh, ‘the dark daughter’), born western Highlands c. 1552, died c. 1610. Daughter of *Lady Agnes Campbell, and James MacDonnell of Dunyvaig and the Glens.

Finola O'Donnell is credited, along with her mother, with establishing a Scottish—Irish network central to mid-16th century revolt against the English. In August 1569 she went to Ireland to marry the Ulster chief Hugh O'Donnell (d. 1593). This act, together with the marriage of her mother to Turlough Luineach O'Neill, brought together the O'Neills and the O'Donnells, previously rivals, and united the Ulster clans against the English colonisers. Finola O'Donnell possessed a dowry of 1,200 Scottish mercenary troops whose presence, swelling the ranks of Irish rebels, the English viewed with alarm. Although ultimately these alliances were not strong enough to repel the colonial forces, the two women were at the centre of the Scottish-Irish network, working to keep Ulster independent from English rule in Dublin.

Finola O'Donnell's activities were monitored throughout the late 16th century. Her own testimonies provide evidence of female agency in networks and rebellion. In 1588, she stated that she would hire the Spaniards to stir up wars against the English. The threat of Spanish invasion was rightly feared by the English in this period. In 1590, she had plans to overthrow the English sheriff of Donegal. However, by 1600, Irish rebellion was weakening, and despite mercenary support, the Irish and Scottish forces were outnumbered by the English. Nevertheless, she and her supporters waged an aggressive campaign against English governors, assassinating several English officials. After the Flight of the Earls from Ireland in 1606, the O'Donnell clan left Ireland for Spain. The eventual defeat of the Irish rebels also marked the end of a period when Ireland could call upon Scottish military aid. AEK

• NA: Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, vols 29 (1569), 30 (1570), 3 (1588-92).

Knox, A. (2002) ‘ “Barbarous and Pestiferous Women”: female criminality, violence and aggression in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Scotland and Ireland’, in Y. G. Brown and R. Ferguson (eds) Twisted Sisters; ODNB (2004) (Campbell, Agnes).

OGILVY, Marion, lady of Melgund, born probably Airlie before 1503, died Melgund June 1575. Mistress of Cardinal David Beaton. Daughter of Janet Lyle, and James, ist Lord Ogilvy of Airlie.

GALLOWAY, Dervorgilla of, (Dervorgilla Balliol), born Galloway c. 1213, died Barnard Castle 28 January 1290. Heiress, religious patron. Daughter of Margaret, daughter of David, Earl of Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion, and Alan, Lord of Galloway.

Dervorgilla was the younger daughter of Alan of Galloway's second marriage and his third surviving legitimate child. The death of their legitimate brother made Dervorgilla and her two sisters heiresses to a landed inheritance centred on Galloway but scattered from Lothian to Northamptonshire. That prospect, and their royal blood, secured Dervorgilla and her sister, Christiana, important marriages. In 1233, Dervorgilla married John Balliol (before 1208—68), lord of Barnard Castle in Teesdale. Following her father's death in 1234, Dervorgilla and John received one third of the Galloway inheritance, despite a rebellion in favour of her illegitimate brother. After 1237, she and her sister fell heirs to the earldoms of Chester and Huntingdon on the death of their uncle, and after 1246, Dervorgilla acquired most of the inheritance of the childless Christiana. By c. 1260, she possessed properties from Aberdeenshire to Middlesex, making her one of the greatest landholders of the day.

Deeply pious, Dervorgilla expressed her faith through conspicuous religious patronage. In the 1260s, she founded convents in Dundee and Dumfries (Franciscan) and Wigtown (Dominican). Following John's death in 1268, she founded in 1273 the Cistercian abbey of Sweetheart, where she was later buried, and in 1282 she issued statutes that formally instituted Balliol College, Oxford. Several devotional books from her own collection, which she gave to Sweetheart, survive.

Dervorgilla and John Balliol had several children. Their youngest son, John, succeeded to the Balliol lands in 1278. Following the death of Alexander III in 1286 and of *Margaret, Maid of Norway, and his mother in 1290, John Balliol emerged as a competitor for the Scottish throne by virtue of Dervorgilla's descent from David, Earl of Huntingdon, and in 1292 was awarded the kingdom. RO

• Salter, H. E. (ed.) (1913) The Oxford Deeds of Balliol College. Brooke, D. (1994) Wild Men and Holy Places, pp. 140—9; Huyshe, W (1913) Dervorgilla, Lady of Galloway. . .; ODNB (2004); Oram, R. (1993) ‘A family business? …’ Scot. Hist. Rev., 72, (1999) ‘Dervorgilla, the Balliols and Buittle’, Trans. Dumf and Gal. Nat. Hist. and Antiqu. Soc, 73.