Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

time and money.” 75 As the list illustrates, many belonged to at least two or
three, with others – for example Sir James Oughton and Reverend William
Robertson – belonging to eleven and twelve clubs respectively.
Joining multiple societies effectively enabled members to pursue a wide-
range of interests, as societies were often established for specific purposes. The
102
Select Society, for example, unequivocally asserted that “what chiefly renders us
considerable is a project of engrafting on the society a scheme for the
encouragement of arts and sciences and manufactures in Scotland.” 76
Organizations were also created purely for amusement, for instance the Wig
Club, which “was organized in 1775 as a burlesque antiquarian club…The
club’s standing joke was a bogus relic, a wig made from the hair of Cleopatra’s
handmaids.” 77 Still others, such as the Philalethic Soceity, limited membership
numbers. This society stated in its laws that “the number of Members [would]
not exceed twenty-five, exclusive of Honorary Members.” 78 Various
associations were specialist societies which served “the professional interests of
doctors and lawyers or the specialist in natural science.” 79 Indeed, one such
organization was socially and professionally exclusive. The Harveian Society
stipulated that
No person, resident in Edinburgh, shall be admitted a Member of the
Society, who is not a Fellow either of the Royal College of Physicians,
or of the Royal College of Surgeons; or a Graduate in Medicine of the
University of Edinburgh; unless he be, or have been, a Medical Officer
75
Ibid, 219.
76
McElroy, Age of Improvement, 51.
77
Ibid, 74.
78
Printed by James Muirhead, Philalethic Society, Regulations of the Philalethic Society
(Edinburgh, 1808), quote in McElroy, “Clubs and Societies,” 298.
79
McElroy, Age of Improvement, 128.