Roll of Honour
Private
George Alexander Cheyne Mackinlay
MA
George Alexander Cheyne Mackinlay was born on the 20th October 1890 at 12 Devonshire Avenue, Partick, Lanarkshire. He was the eldest son of George Mackinlay, a Fancy Goods Warehouseman, and Lizzie Jamieson Mackinlay (née McLelland), who had married on the 6th August 1889, also in Partick. The family later lived at 65 Bank Street, Hillhead, Glasgow, Lanarkshire. He attended Hillhead High School before proceeding to the University of Glasgow, where he graduated MA, with honours in English Literature, Language, and History in 1912.
In October of that year, George enrolled for a postgraduate teacher training course at the Glasgow Provincial Training College, forerunner of Jordanhill College of Education, now the University of Strathclyde. He was then lodging at 9 Burnbank Gardens in Glasgow. George completed the course successfully and was provisionally recognised as a teacher of English from the 1st July 1913. On the 1st September, he took up the post of assistant English master at Perth Academy, where he taught until he joined the Army in 1914. However, his old headmaster at Hillhead High School had hoped to establish him as an English master there. Always a keen sportsman, George had entered fully into the athletic and social life of his old school, both as a pupil and as a member of the Former Pupils' Club. He was well known as an enthusiastic player of rugby and as a leading member of the Literary Association, whose Magazine he founded and edited.
During the war George fought with 2nd Bn. The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) and was killed in action in Belgium on the 15th August 1917. Private George Mackinlay is commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Belgium.
An obituary in the Hillhead High School War Memorial Volume states:
"Clean-minded, generous-hearted as boy and man, he was never known to do a mean act or to take an ignoble view of life. A poet and dreamer at heart, he took the best out of life. As a memorial to this gallant soldier and scholar a small volume of his poems has been published. This for his friends but for himself."
Private George Alexander Cheyne Mackinlay is also remembered on the Roll of Honour of the Glasgow Provincial Committee for the Training of Teachers, and on the Glasgow Provincial Training College war memorial, located in the David Stow Building on the former Jordanhill Campus. A book of his poems - 'The Poems of George A C Mackinlay,' - was published posthumously in 1919 in Glasgow by Lyon Ltd.
Comments and Citations
University of Glasgow Faculty, General Council and Registry records.
Biographical information: Records of the Glasgow Provincial Training College, forerunner of Jordanhill College of Education - now the University of Strathclyde). In