Article Title
Publication Date
April 2005
Abstract
John Menzies Baillie (hereafter, JMB) was born in 1826 near Culter Allers in the Scottish county of Lanarkshire. He also died there in 1886. In the intervening 60 years, he had an unexceptional career as a public accountant in Edinburgh before retiring to Culter Allers. His place in history rests exclusively on his membership in the group of 61 Edinburgh accountants who formed the first modern institution of public accountancy in 1853 - the Institute of Accountants in Edinburgh, renamed the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh (hereafter, SAE) in 1854. JMB was a relatively young and inexperienced practitioner when he signed the SAE charter petition in 1853. He was the first and only public accountant in his family - although three distant ancestors held the highest governmental accounting office of Chamberlain of Scotland more than six centuries before. His historical importance has nothing to do with his career as a public accountant. Instead, it relates to his family's association with landownership over nine centuries and the connection of landownership to the formation of the SAE.
Recommended Citation
Lee, Tom
(2005)
"John Menzies Baillie, chartered accountant: Nine hundred years of landownership in France, England, Scotland, and America,"
Accounting Historians Notebook: Vol. 28
:
No.
1
, Article 6.
Available at:
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_notebook/vol28/iss1/6