Burns' house and the Directors of Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

THE Royal Burgh of Dumfries has much to occupy those interested in the life of Robert Burns. During his tenancy of Ellisland Farm, six miles from Dumfries, the poet was a frequent visitor to the town. On 4 June 1787, two months after publication of the second edition of his poems, he was admitted burgess of the Burgh. Later, at Martinmas, 1791, he took up permanent residence in Dumfries with his wife, Jean Armour, and their three children, Robert, Francis and William, and in this town passed the remaining years of his life. After occupying three small rooms in the Wee Vennel (now Bank Street), he moved to a house in Millbrae Vennel (now Burns Street), where he died in 1796. Jean Armour, with their children, continued to dwell there until her death thirty-eight years later. Although much has been written regarding Burns' illnesses, there is no record of his having attended Dumfries and Galloway Infirmary (later Royal Infirmary) at any time, a surprising fact when one recalls that the years spent in the Burgh were times of chronic ill-health. Despite the apparent absence of any association during his lifetime with the Infirmary, a posthumous connection developed when the Directors of the latter Institution acquired the poet's residence. Some fifty years after the death of Robert Burns, his son, Colonel William Nicol Burns, purchased the house once rented to the poet, together with adjoining property, with the object of establishing a memorial to the bard. For several years Colonel Burns let the House and neighbouring weaving shop to the Dumfries and Maxwelltown Education Society at an annual rent of £15, the house being used as a teacher's residence and the weaving shop as a classroom in connection with a Ragged School conducted by that Society. In 1858, by two dispositions dated 18 June of that year, Colonel Burns conveyed to the Education Society Burns' House and other premises. If, however, that Society ceased to exist or to maintain within the Burgh a Ragged School or other similar Charitable Educational Institution, then the property was to go to the Directors of Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary or their successors in office. I, COLONEL WILLIAM NICOL BURNS, late of the Honble. the East India Company's Service, now residing in Cheltenham, CONSIDERING that I several years ago acquired certain Subjects situated in Bums Street, Dumfries, including the Dwellinghouse in which my Father, Robert Bums, Poet, lived for some years prior to his death and in which he died, and that I am desirous of providing for the proper maintenance and keeping in repair of the said Dwellinghouse after my decease, as forming an interesting relic connected with my Father's memory, and also for the maintenance and keeping in repair the Mausoleum erected to his memory in Saint Michael's Churchyard of Dumfries, and within which the mortal remains of the Poet and of his Wife (my Mother) Jean Armour, as well as some other members of the family are