The death, and life, of David 'Soldier' Wilson

What did Sarah Wilson think, how did she feel, when the motor car that was inching around the corner, through the crowded streets, inched its way to her? When the smartly dressed occupant, the manager of the Leeds City Football Club, picked her out, pointed his car towards her, shouted to her, told everyone to make way? It was nearly teatime, Saturday 27th October, 1906. The cold remains of daylight were leaving her as the sun sank in the west and withdrew its warmth from Beggar's Hill. Sarah was walking up the hill to Beeston, on her way home to 8 Catherine Grove, in the east.

Why had she left the game early? The match wasn't finished but wee Annie wasn't yet a year old and she was with the neighbours. Sarah could be getting Annie settled and getting the tea on and David would be home soon. And she couldn't stand to stay and watch him any longer. Not if he was suffering. It was one thing to imagine David 'Soldier' Wilson suffering in the army that had made him look so old, to fear that one day those days might have been the end of him, taken by war before they'd had chance to marry. It was one thing to remember his suffering when he moved down her street, a lonely schoolboy, in Leith.

But watching him being hurt was another thing. Hurt just by playing soccer, the sport he'd been bought out of the army to play, the game that was supposed to save his life, their life, give them a better one. Sarah had spent her childhood moving from tenement to tenement in the same few streets around Leith while her father went away to sea. And now in just a couple of years this game had moved David and Sarah far from Leith, to Yorkshire, to Leeds, to Catherine Grove. To a prosperous future. People said David would play better in a better team, and better teams kept paying large sums to hire him. As long as his knee held up, he might have a chance in the First Division.

Sarah and David had walked down to the game together that afternoon. Was watching his games for Leeds City Sarah's way of keeping an eye on her husband, of feeling close to him, of admiring his playing along with the crowd that adored him for his goals? Was it about getting a bit of time away from the little one, knowing what perhaps David and she hadn't let anyone know yet, that there was another little one on the way? Did she feel less homesick from seeing the other players' families in the new, ready-to-open grandstand on the Old Peacock Ground, a few hours of kinship in this home away from Scotland, a little field in Beeston bringing strangers together?

But today, blow by blow, Sarah Wilson had begun to feel separate, apart. David had gone off the field once already, clutching his chest. Sarah had seen the doctors going to the changing rooms, the inner sanctum. But surely if it had been serious they would have told her, told her to come. She heard someone saying he'd had a funny turn, he just needed to rest. He was a heavy smoker, she was always on at him for that. Perhaps Sarah felt relieved when, because his team needed him, David came back onto the field — perhaps she clapped and cheered along with the crowds, hailing a hero who was giving his all in the team's hour of need. But Sarah will have watched him more closely than the others, seen something wrong sooner than the others, sensed what was obvious before it was obvious to others, maybe before it was obvious to David himself. Everyone saw how David Wilson couldn't get close to the ball, could hardly stand, was staggering ineffectually. He plainly was not right.

Sarah saw more than just a footballer in a dark blue shirt with a gold collar. She saw her husband. She saw David. The one they all called 'Soldier'. The one she'd played with in the streets when they were kids. She saw him in pain. She saw him clutching his chest, saw his hand grasping near the city's embroidered coat of arms. She saw him leaving the pitch again, stumbling towards the changing rooms again, with doctors and police and officials following after him again.

And she left. David was strong and everyone had said he just needed to rest, so while he rested she would go home and wait for him there. She would fetch wee Annie from the neighbours and make her husband something good to eat to help get his strength back. She left the new stand and went walking quickly along Elland Road in the few minutes left before the end of the game, the few quiet minutes before spectators would come streaming out and overtake her. The footpath up Beggar's Hill was the fastest route, along the edge of the cemetery, then left on Beeston Road to where Cemetery Road meets Tempest Road. A right turn down the other side of the hill past red brick houses and gable ends. To Catherine Grove, their home. To wait for David.

Sarah didn't get there and neither did he. And maybe Sarah knew they wouldn't make it, knew as she reached the top of the hill, knew when with her hand on her stomach she paused for breath. Maybe she knew as soon as she saw the motor car inching around the corner of the cemetery walls, its lamps burning the better to spot her. Maybe she knew its occupant in his black greatcoat had come, from the Old Peacock Ground, to find her and take her back.

A romance in Leith, Sarah and David

Sarah Nimmo was born on 13th September 1884, the sixth member of Charles and Ann Nimmo's household at 14 East Cromwell Street in Leith. Her father was a merchant seaman, specifically a stoker, so only his wife Ann appears on the censuses taken while he was away at sea, but his absences didn't prevent their family growing. Alex was born in Leith in 1873, Eliza Ann and William born in 1876 and 1878 at their mother's home of Lerwick on the Shetland Islands. Then all the rest in were born in Leith: Melina in 1880, Charlotte in 1882, Sarah in 1884. She was followed by Ann in 1887 and Mary in 1891. The family kept moving from home to home around the tight streets of multi-storied tenements that crowded around the Water of Leith amid the warehouses and factories serving the docks. They went from Cobourg Street to East Cromwell Street, both just north of the river, and by 1891 they'd moved to 11 Bowling Green Street. It was a street of about twenty buildings behind a timber yard, over the bridge to the south, where the water bends and its high tides powered Leith Saw Mill.

This little bit of South Leith was like an island. Bangor Road was its border to the south. To the east was Great Junction Street, a large thoroughfare taking tramlines down to a bridge across to North Leith. The Water of Leith curved around the north and west. A little bridge took you across to West Bowling Green Street and more mills and warehouses, but the river was hidden to the north behind the Leith Saw Mill and timber yards. There were just a few streets here, where everyone knew each other and all the children played together. The bowling green itself was long gone, but there was plenty of waste ground and yards to explore.

Sometime between the 1891 and 1901 censuses, when Sarah was between six and sixteen, the Nimmos moved to the other side of the timber yard between Bowling Green Street and the mill. These were the last tenements before Junction Bridge, no.4 Ballantyne Road. And some time between 1891 and 1901 Sarah met a new neighbour in the tight-knit community around Bowling Green and Ballantyne when, diagonally opposite the Nimmos' house at 11 Bowling Green Street, a young boy named David Wilson moved into no.6.

Among the crowds of children playing and fighting around Bowling Green Street, David must have been a curiosity. His family had been living in North Leith in 1891, and sometime before the 1901 census the family had crossed to South Leith, to 6 Bowling Green Street.

The other children in the house were growing up and moving away. The youngest daughter, Agnes, had turned sixteen in 1892. She was eight years older than David, leaving him likely the nearest Bowling Green had to an only child. He was a schoolboy when he moved there, making him a target for interrogation by his peers. Sarah Nimmo was a year younger than David, and maybe she and her squadron of sisters had cornered the new kid for information. Where were his siblings? Why did he look like his mam, but not his dad? Why was his dad's name David Wood, but his name David Wilson? Who was he, anyway?

I wonder if David Wilson had the full story to tell them. It goes back fifty years and sixty miles to the neighbouring villages of Hawick and Wilton, in Roxburghshire on the route from Edinburgh to Carlisle in the Scottish borders. In a remote house, Dearly Burn, five miles out from the villages, George Cochrane Hardie lived with his wife, Elizabeth Riddell. Cochrane's profession was given as 'agricultural labourer' then later 'master gardener', and he was imposing enough that his name was passed down through his grandchildren. Elizabeth bore the name of Riddell House, an enormous mansion seven miles from Dearly Burn that was built around a 14th century tower house. Elizabeth had a sister, Janet, who was living with them at Dearly Burn in 1861, listed as a 'pauper'.

Among Cochrane and Elizabeth Hardie's children were two daughters, Agnes and Margaret, who both worked as domestic servants. In 1871 at Wilton, when Agnes was 25, she married David Wood, a 22-year-old ploughman from Bowdon. In 1875 at Hawick Margaret, now also 25, married David Wilson. That marriage was proudly announced in the Edinburgh Evening News: 'At Hawick, by Rev Dr McRae, David Wilson, Crailing, to Maggie, youngest daughter of Cochern Hardie Esq, Dearly Burn, Roxburghshire'. David and Maggie were David Wilson's mum and dad.

Maggie's husband had been born and raised at Crailing Orchard, a village of 600 people built around Crailing House and its grounds, where his father John Wilson worked as a market gardener. His mother, Elisabeth Kennedy, died four years before his marriage. David's occupation was listed as 'stoker at woollen factory' — probably Wilton Mill, which dominated the area around the railway station at Wilton and Hawick. That's where their first child was born, John Cochrane Wilson, in 1876.

By 1879 the family had left the Borders for the coast, and Musselburgh, the rapidly urbanising 'Honest Toun' east along the coast from Edinburgh and Leith. There, unlike most workers heading for the big towns, David swapped stoking boilers for gardening, like his father John. In 1879 another son, William James, was born at Lochend Cottage, near the docks but across the road from mansion houses at Olive Bank and Campie House, each with enormous landscaped gardens. The family moved again, down the street to a cottage attached to Mollendo House, next to Fisherrow Harbour, before Robert Hardie was born in 1881. They had moved again before their fourth and fifth children were born.

According to his birth certificate, David Wilson — the boy who would one day be called 'Solder' — was born at 11am on 23rd July 1883 at Hamilton Place, Musselburgh. This was a row of cottages in a yard behind the High Street, close to the large gardens at Pinkie House. The certificate says he was registered on 9th August at Musselburgh. His dad is named as 'David Wilson, jobbing gardener'. His mum is 'Margaret Wilson, (maiden surname) Hardie'. It says their marriage took place in Hawick on 5th August 1875.

Agnes Hardie Easton followed in 1884, also at Hamilton Place. Agnes was the last of the Wilson children: in June 1885 their mother Maggie died of pneumonia. David Wilson had been four years younger than his wife, and was suddenly a 31-year-old gardener widowed with five children. The eldest, John Cochrane, was nine years old; little Agnes was just seven months. Maggie's death meant sending at least some of the children to live away from their dad.

For two-year-old David Wilson that meant a new home with his mum's sister, Agnes Wood. After she married David Wood, they had three children in Roxburghshire, but by 1881 they had joined the urban crowds and were living at Annfield in North Leith, overlooking the West Pier and shipyards. Also by 1881 they had taken in Agnes' father, George Cochrane Hardie, after his wife's death. Dearly Burn, where Cochrane and Elisabeth had raised Agnes and Maggie, fades from maps as the century ends, but a patch of stones is still visible on aerial photographs now.

By 1891 the Woods were still living in North Leith, but had moved a few streets, to 8 Fort Place. George Hardie had died and their two eldest children had moved away, but they had a lodger and their youngest daughter Agnes, a fifteen year old working in an iced biscuit factory. This 1891 census entry also lists 'David Wilson — aged seven — nephew — scholar'.

The Woods were living at 6 Bowling Green Street by the time the census visited them again in 1901. Daughter Agnes had moved away. Nephew David, now aged seventeen, was away on census day, but was still giving this as his home address in 1904.

We have to use some imagination to wrap all this up as a story of childhood romance, of an adopted child finding a home among the tenements with his aunt and uncle, finding love on the playgrounds with a girl he grew up with. What we can be sure about is that some time in the 1890s, between David Wilson's seventh birthday and his seventeenth, the Woods and their orphaned nephew moved to Bowling Green Street. And among the people there they met the Nimmos, whether they were living opposite them for a while or just around the corner on Ballantyne Road. And on the island that was Bowling Green Street, among mills, timber yards, tenements and waste ground, a little Leith within Leith, David Wilson met Sarah Nimmo.

By 1904 her family had moved again at least twice, and suffered its own bereavement. Sarah's mother, Ann Nimmo, died of tuberculosis in 1902, aged 53, at 42 North Junction Street, just over the bridge from Bowling Green. In 1904 Sarah was living a couple of streets nearer the docks in North Leith at 2 West Cromwell Street, between Leith Flour Mills and a railway goods station. She was working as a 'pipes finisher', then as a 'warehousewoman'.

By 1904 David was twenty. He had been with the army to South Africa, and now he was becoming famous. When David Wilson married his childhood sweetheart Sarah Nimmo, on 31st October 1904, he gave his home address as 6 Bowling Green Street, and his occupation as 'professional football player'.

Schoolboy, soldier, footballer

Confusion about David Wilson's family history has led to confused accounts of his life and football career. The first problem was his name. Some contemporary reports said, 'His real name was Wood, but he changed it to David Wilson on joining the army'. The difficulty seems to be caused by David's gratitude to his aunt and uncle for raising him, meaning he used both their names and his father's. There were no formal adoption processes in Leith in the 1890s, the Woods just took him in. So while David was officially a 'Wilson', he may have felt as much like a 'Wood'.

In some versions of his career he enlists with the army in 1896, when he would have only been thirteen, and begins playing football while stationed in Gibraltar. In other versions his birthplace has been transposed to Hebburn, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, mixing him up with another David Wilson and causing confusion about his date of birth, so that some biographies have him joining the army aged eight.

The Edinburgh Evening News of October 1906 gives a solid contemporary biography, contributed by 'A well informed local correspondent' who had watched David Wilson Wood playing football in Leith when he was a teenager:

…[his] name was David Wilson Wood, entered Yardheads Public School, Leith, in 1890, when little over five years of age. He was captain of the school eleven, and led the winners of the Leith School Trophy in 1897-1898. He was the best school back I ever saw, and made a mistake in leaving this position. He played for the Camerons both at Gibraltar and in Scotland, and was transferred to the Black Watch. He was an excellent swimmer, and was one of the Yardheads team that won, in 1898, the Squadron Race Challenge Cup open to Leith schools … He married a Leith girl.

This version lines up. Yardheads school was just a few minutes' walk from Bowling Green Street, with a recreation ground next to it on a cleared triangular site. In 1890 he was six turning seven, so 'a little over five' is roughly correct for his entrance there. When winning the Leith School Trophy in 1898 he was fourteen and likely in his last year of education. Yardheads did indeed win the Leith Board Schools final that year — the Inspector's Cup — beating Lochend 1-0. It was a repeat of the 1897 final that was watched by 5,000 people at Leith Athletic's ground Beechwood Park, that Yardheads won 3-0 after 'Wilson' opened the scoring inside two minutes. It's not certain that goalscorer was David Wilson, but we can be sure that as a boy he was already playing in big soccer matches.

Because it's not known which name David used to sign up with the army, and because both names are common, we have to rely on the number of contemporary reports that agree he served with the Cameron Highlanders and went with them to Gibraltar. If he joined aged sixteen, this was 1899, and one contemporary account says he played for the Highlanders' regimental team as a full-back, a position consistent with his school career. At some point he was transferred to The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) and fought with them in Southern Africa in the Second Boer War, which ended in June 1902. A large contingent of The Black Watch returned to post at Edinburgh Castle in October, and we can find David Wilson there, aged nineteen, in December 1902.

The Black Watch had a football club, founded in 1876, that as well as competing in army competitions would enter amateur tournaments depending where it was based. David Wilson was so impressive for the Black Watch Eleven in a match against Kirkcaldy Amateurs that he was 'captured' by Raith Rovers and put into their team to play St Bernard's on 13th December 1902.

One Raith Rovers supporter was so impressed by Wilson's debut he wrote to the Fife Free Press that he was, 'Greatly struck … by the clever display given by their new centre forward, Wilson, of the Black Watch'. The paper's reporter noted that Wilson's 'dainty work' had 'aroused enthusiasm', and that he was on the right spot and 'smartly netted' to get Rovers' only goal in a 2-1 defeat:

"Steady Black Watch, steady," is the watch-word, and Wilson steadies himself to plant the leather out of Stanners' reach … in the Rovers' forward line great improvement was shown, which was chiefly due to the centre play of Wilson.

By February 1903 Wilson was attracting wider attention, and opportunists: 'An agent was in Kirkcaldy this week making him a tempting offer on behalf, it is alleged, of the Middlesbrough club'. The Daily Record felt it unlikely that Wilson would 'take the "professional" pledge — at least meantime — if for no other reason than that his services are required for the Army Cup'.

By the end of April Wilson's time as an amateur, and as a soldier, was ending. Dundee signed him, along with two other Black Watch players, a week after Wilson had played against them at Dens Park for Raith. It was another case of him playing so well that the other team had to have him, according to the Dundee Evening Post, who dubbed him 'Davie':

(He) gave a sparkling display at Dens Park last Saturday. He is smart on the ball, very unselfish, and can shoot. I was struck with the way he could finish. Whenever he saw an opening he was through between the backs like a flash, and shot with rare force … The spectators were not slow in recognising his ability, and I more than once heard the wish expressed, "If only he was playing for Dundee". Those sentiments are now fulfilled.

His first season for Dundee started with eight goals in thirteen matches, and within a month it was rumoured that one of the Glasgow clubs was offering £400 for his transfer. But his progress was cut short by injury, controversy, then more injury.