We are often rather negative about Bankers, thinking of them as unproductive fat cats who get wealthy on the backs of others. But that caricature is not applicable to Sir William Forbes. Brought up in rather humble circumstances after his father died when William was just 4, William worked his way up from a being a lowly bank clerk at Coutts to becoming one of Scotland’s greatest bankers and philanthropists of the 18th century.
Brought up by his mother in a small 2 roomed house in Forrester’s Wynd in Edinburgh, his banking apprenticeship lasted four years. William impressed everyone he worked with, becoming head of Coutts Edinburgh Office in 1761. In 1763 William set up a new Banking Partnership called Forbes, Blair & Herries, Bankers which within a decade became one of the most trusted and successful banks in Scotland.
In 1770 William married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Hay of Hayston, M.D., with whom he had nine sons and seven daughters.
William was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was involved in many philanthropic projects in Edinburgh including the new High School, the Merchant Company, the Morningside Lunatic Asylum, and the Blind Asylum.
Elizabeth died in 1802 and William died in 1806 at 39 George Street in Edinburgh. William had acquired a burial vault at Greyfriars Kirkyard along the South Wall (near Mackenzie’s Mausoleum), where he and many generations of his family were buried during the 19th century.
