Bo'ness Public School. Queen Kathleen Jamieson - 1930
ABOUT THE FILM : Bo'ness Public School. Queen Kathleen Jamieson
Scottish Screen Archive - National Library of ScotlandYear: 1930
After being crowned, the young Kathleen Jamieson held court for a moment surrounded by her entourage. Hers was a disparate crowd of subjects on this day of the Bo’ness community fair. They paraded: yokels, a boy dressed as a watering can, a Mickey Mouse, a couple of Cossacks. Nearly 2000 pupils from the local primary and secondary schools took part in this fete.
Nationality: Scottish
Length: 3' 51"
Genre: documentary
Sound: silent with soundtrack
Original elements: black & white
Composer: Eric Le Guen
Original language: English
A BRIEF HISTORY : Bo'ness Public School. Queen Kathleen Jamieson
Louis Dickson (1880-1960) was a pioneer of Scottish cinema. He founded the Hippodrome in 1911, Bo’ness's first cinema. This building was acquainted with all sorts of events before being listed in 1979 and entirely renovated between 2006 and 2008. Dickson was attached to local subjects that reflected the region's industrial and popular activity and then showed them in the Hippodrome.
Between 1912 and 1960 he notably filmed the annual children’s fair festival, introduced in 1897 to counteract the miners' day of drinking sessions. Situated to the west of Edinburgh, Borrowstounness, which is usually shortened to Bo’ness, is in fact a small industrial town. During the 18th century the agricultural shows that took place in July were replaced by a fete commemorating the act of liberating the miners in 1779, which ended slavery in Scotland. On that day the fete amounted to a few games and often led to drinking.
In 1897, the town mayor George Cadell Stewart decided to introduce a programme for children, which is still going strong. The hundredth fair took place in 2009!
