Reverend David Malloch - 1860s Carte de Visite

Image credit: Ron Cosens    (www.cartedevisite.co.uk)

A previous post has covered in some detail the life of Reverend David Malloch, the long-serving minister of Largo St David's Church. The only photograph of this man that I had ever seen was the one of him as an older, white-haired, experienced clergyman. However, the above image of a younger Rev. Malloch has emerged from an unlikely source. Showing David as an eager-looking, new minister, this 'carte de visite' or CDV recently turned up from Canada. The image was captured by photographer John Patrick - the rear of the CDV bears his name and original Leven address of 71 High Street.

We know that Patrick moved from 71 High Street in 1866, so the image certainly predates that. Patrick was already active in photography in the late 1850s but I would imagine that this photograph was captured soon after Malloch first took up his position in Lower Largo in 1860. That would place him in his mid-late 30s in the photograph. Perhaps the CDV (of which multiple copies would have been made) was produced both to send to those that knew him from his past in Lanarkshire and Glasgow, as well as to give to new contacts that he would be making as he established himself in Fife.

​In fact, it is via his roots in New Lanark that this particular CDV came to be in Canada. It was part of a collection of around eighty cards in an album belonging to a family who had lived alongside the Mallochs in Caithness Row, New Lanark, in the 1840s, when David worked as a cotton carder in the mill. These neighbours' descendants emigrated to Canada in 1927, as did many other Lanarkshire families around this time, and the album went with them. It is extremely fortunate that this CDV had its subject written on it, otherwise, I would not have been alerted to its existence. 

Below is a comparison of the young and the older David Malloch photographs. His facial features are unchanged and he clearly retained his thick wavy hair into older age. The St Andrews Citizen on 4 July 1896 commented that he was "conspicuous throughout the parish by his locks and shaven face, which seemed to savour more of art than the pulpit". 

​The Largo community would have seen this man evolve from the youthful, dark-haired incomer in 1860 into the mature and seasoned minister, over the 36 years that he "went out and in among them, speaking words in season to the weary, and comforting the afflicted". He would have officiated at many a wedding and funeral, delivered hundreds of sermons and given both sympathy and encouragement to people of all ages. The memorial to him within St David's Church, placed in 1900, reflects the esteem in which he was held by his congregation and beyond.

With many thanks to both Ron Cosens and Linda Moore