| Administrative History | James Thain (? - 1794), an Aberdeen merchant, mortified £400 in 1788 to pay for a teacher to instruct poor children in Aberdeen in reading, writing, arithmetic and book-keeping, as well as religion. He appointed four ministers of the established church and five elder members of the Aberdeen Kirk Session as trustees. Thain left a further £700 to the school in his will, which was supplemented by legacies from Robert Moir, John Smith, John Nicol, James Farquhar and John Cushnie, totalling £500.
The trustees first met on the 26 May 1788, and appointed John Downie as the Thain's Charity School's first teacher. Regulations at the next meeting of the trustees on the 2nd June 1788 stipulated that scholars, recommended by trustees or by two other respectable people, would be admitted at quarterly meetings of the trustees. The school took in boys and girls.
Dyer's Hall near the Hardgate was initially leased as the site for the school, but a house in the Shiprow was purchased by the Trustees in 1803 (close to the location of the Aberdeen Maritime Museum - see the ordnance survey's large scale Town Plan of Aberdeen 1866-7 for its exact location).
The school closed in 1877: the minutes suggest that damage to the west wall of the building by the construction of the Trinity Congregational Church may have made this necessary, but an inspector's report in 1875 was also unfavourable and may have contributed to the decision. At a meeting on the 14 February 1877 the trustees resolved that the charity would move to paying the school fees of children selected by the Trustees rather than providing schooling directly. The children at the school were transferred to other local schools, with the Trustees paying their fees: the majority were transferred to Commerce Street School.
In 1881 a Provisional Order for the Government and Administration of the Trust was made under the Endowed Institutions (Scotland) Act, 1878. Seven years later the charity was amalgamated into the Aberdeen Educational Trust. |