3-065-857 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The house in which Livingstone was born, 1874. The birthplace of British missionary and explorer David Livingstone, [is] '...unpretending in aspect, his parentage and family connections being of humble rank, but which have a high degree of interest from the character and achievements of such a man. He was born, March 19, 1813, at Blantyre, in Lanarkshire, a village on the Clyde, eight miles south-east of Glasgow. The extensive factory of cotton-spinning, calico-weaving, and dyeing gave employment to many workpeople. Among these was Livingstone's father, as had been the case with his grandfather before; and the future great traveller himself, when a little boy, worked as a piecer in the same cotton-mills...The ruins of Blantyre Priory, the massive pile of Bothwell Castle, the ducal Palace of Hamilton, and Cadyow, with the remains of the primitive forest and its white wild bulls, are close to the home of Livingstone's childhood. He was certainly familiar with all their historic and romantic associations. They may have crossed his mind sometimes, with snatches of Sir Walter's poetry, as he kept his lonely vigils, by the bush fire in a South African jungle, listening to the distant roar of the lion, and the jackal's bark yet farther off'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.