Group portrait including Rev. D. C. Scott, Blantyre, Malawi, ca.1893

"Mission group, Rev. D.C. Scott, Mrs Henderson, Mrs Hetherwick". Group portrait of mission staff, with Rev. D. C. Scott and two women seated at the front of the image a child is standing between the women. There are three women standing behind of which the one to the right of the image is supporting the child. David Clement Ruffelle Scott, (1853-1907) was born in Edinburgh. He attended school in Edinburgh then worked in an actuary's office before a calling to the church led him to study Arts and Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. Scott was ordained in 1881 and immediately sent to be head of the Church of Scotland mission at Blantyre in Nyasaland [Malawi]. Scott was a brilliant linguist, he wrote the Cyclopaedic Dictionary of the Mang'anja Language (1892). Much of the periodical Life and Work in Central Africa between 1886 and 1898 was written by Scott. In 1895 his wife, brother-in-law and brother died in Malawi. He resigned in 1898. In 1901 he returned to Africa, to head the Kikuyu mission in British East Africa (Kenya) which had just been taken over by the Church of Scotland. The death of his second wife in 1902, a series of illnesses, and criticism of his methods of running the mission at Kikuyu marred the final years of his life. Scott died there on the 13th of October 1907