| Notes |
- Alexandrina Notman, more often known as Alexina or Lexy, was brought up outside Edinburgh, Scotland, where her father was first a gardener on the estates of at least two large houses. She was the youngest of nine children.
When Alexina was in her teens, the family lived in the gardener’s cottage at New Saughton House, which is better known today as the Cammo Estate, just west of Edinburgh, about half a mile to the south-west of Cramond Bridge, close to the river Almond on the Firth of Forth and near the village of Cramond. The house, now ruined, was a commodious mansion owned by Lady Aberdour.
The name of the estate had changed from Cammo to New Saughton in 1741 when James Watson, the 8th of Saughton, bought it. It retained the name during the Watson family’s ownership. The last Watson owner was Helen Watson, who married Lord Aberdour in 1844, after which the estate passed out of the Watson family and was eventually sold in 1873. The name was then changed back from New Saughton to Cammo.
The choice of the middle name ‘Maitland’ for Alexina has long been a puzzle. There is evidence that the Maitland family was connected to the Cammo Estate (New Saughton) following the Watson family's ownership, but this was many years after Alexina’s birth. After the Watsons sold the estate in 1873, it was purchased by Alexander Campbell and then passed to Margaret Maitland Tennent, daughter of a wealthy tycoon with connections to Australian sheep farming. Margaret Maitland Tennent was notable for her education and promotion of women's university education in Edinburgh.
Andy Arthur, Edinburgh historian and owner of the Threadinburgh website, wrote this in a correspondence with David Ash in September 2025: ‘Having had a look at the 1841 census, the only Maitland in Cramond Parish (where Cammo is located) at this time is Jean Maitland age 16, who is resident at Barnton House with the Ramsays of Barnton. I cannot find out too much about her, except in the 1851 census her occupation is recorded as ‘Fundholder’ and therefore she is obviously provided for by a trust fund and thus I assume a daughter of one of the Maitlands of Clifton or their close relations. This leads me to how the Maitland name chanced to come into your family tree. I'm not sure how you could conclusively prove it without some sort of written record or story passed down through the family but middle names were often used at the time to either pass down a mother's maiden name (we can discount this) or as a mark of honour or respect to someone like a church minister, a doctor, a benefactor or even perhaps an employer. So perhaps there was an acquaintance between your family as resident gardeners of Cammo and Miss Maitland of Barnton and perhaps a shilling or half crown was given to the baby (as was the tradition) by her and her name given to the newborn as a mark of respect and thanks? It was maybe just a coincidence that the child's father later went to work for the Maitlands on the Cliftonhall estate, or maybe it is not.’
Cliftonhall was where Alexina’s father went next when he left New Saughton. It seems to have been a promotion since, from now on, he called himself a ‘land steward’ on documentation. Alexina lived there in her twenties before her marriage to John H Topping in 1855.
Her marriage took her out of the countryside west of Edinburgh into a very different world. She married a man who seems to have been an energetic and committed Baptist missionary and minister who cared deeply for those in need. We know nothing of how they met. However, there is an interesting detail in the record of their banns of marriage, in which we find this: ‘John Hatfield Topping, of Clifton Hall, Ratho, West Lothian, usual of Canadale, Argyleshire, age 25, groom, born and registered at Bradford, Wilts and Alexandrina Maitland Notman, of Clifton Hall, Ratho, West Lothian, usual of Clifton Hall, Ratho, West Lothian, age 26, born and registered at Corstorphine, Midlothian.’ Had John taken a job as a groom at Cliftonhall and is that how he met Alexina? It is the most probable suggestion to have surfaced so far. Intriguingly, one of the witnesses at the wedding was Sir Alexander Charles Ramsay-Gibson-Maitland, 3rd baronet (1820-1876) the Scottish Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1868 to 1874 and the owner of the Cliftonhall Estate.
We have no knowledge of what happened to John & Alexina in the late 1850’s, except that their first son, Walter, was born in Ireland in 1857. This might have been the period when John was working as a missionary there or they could have been visiting family. The fact that he worked in Ireland before moving to Glasgow is recorded in the minutes of the board of Directors of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
We do not know why, in 1861, six years into the marriage, John and Alexina seem to have been living with two small children in a worker’s cottage near the site of a railway tunnel at Whitrope near the border with England and the Kielder Forest. On the 1861 census, John described himself as a missionary, but their accommodation was in the middle of nowhere, so perhaps he was working with the families of the men who were building the Whitrope Tunnel. Their second son William died in infancy while they were there.
By December 1862, however, the family had moved to Glasgow, where John had accepted the post of Chaplain to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Though his appointment was, at first, controversial, he was to stay there for over 15 years until a friendship with a charismatic Hungarian Jewish Christian preacher called Adolph Saphir took him and the family to London in 1878. During this period, as the family grew from two to ten children, they seem to have moved around Glasgow a great deal. They started in Parson St, moved to Stanhope St, then to North John St and, finally, to Chatham Place. We must assume that Alexina had her hands full caring for her growing family during this period.
By the time John and Alexina moved to London in 1878, seven of their children were still at home, including Walter, the eldest at 21, who found a job in the city as a merchant’s clerk. His 15-year-old brother John Alexander (not to be confused with the younger John Philip, who became a surgeon), would soon take his first steps in the shipping industry, to be followed by two of his brothers. According to one family source, at the age of 50, Alexina was working as an assistant secretary whilst living at Loftus Road, Hammersmith, in 1881.
1891 was a significant year in the history of the family. On 4th April, John H Topping’s employer and friend, the preacher Adolph Saphir, died. Saphir had been based in the Notting Hill area of London. That may explain why, on the 1891 census, John and Alexina were at separate addresses. John was alone in a house at 19 Lansdowne Road, Kensington, just north of Holland Park with just a couple of servants for company. Perhaps this was Adolph Saphir’s house. Meanwhile, Alexina with three daughters and a grandson, Kelman, who was Walter’s eldest, were living in a house called ‘Moorhurst’ in Frimley, Surrey, over 30 miles away.
Alexina died in 1895 in Edmonton, London. She survived her husband by two-and-a-half years. Like him, she is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
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1831 - 1895 (64 years)
Census
