FINDLAY, Alexander George
6 Jan 1812 – May 1875
Engraver, geographer and hydrographer
Fellow Royal Geographical Society
Alexander George Findlay was born in 1812 to Alexander and Sarah Findlay. He followed his father’s profession as an engraver and cartographer, producing many maps for R H Laurie. In 1842 he published a revised version of Brooke’s Gazetteer & the Coasts & Islands of the Pacific Ocean. His output was prolific and well described in his obituary by the Royal Geographical Society of which he became a member in 1844. He produced a unique series of Six Nautical Directories of the Great Oceans which were widely used. He sat on the Arctic Committee of the Royal Geographical Society. and he was a friend of Dr Livingstone, mapping the Nile and the routes taken by Burton and Speke in central Africa in 1858-9. On R H Laurie’s death in 1858 he took over the publishing firm. He was awarded the medal of the Society of Arts for his dissertation on ‘The English Lighthouse System.
In Hayes he designed a new altar screen for the Church and painted the wording of the Ten Commandments as a thanksgiving for his recovery from an illness in 1847. Today, these hang in the belfry of Hayes Parish Church. In the same year he also drew a detailed plan of the Church interior.
In 1850 he married Sarah Rutley and moved to Rockwells, Dulwich Wood Park where he died 3 May 1875 aged 63. He was buried in Hayes.
He had no children so left the business to his nephews, Daniel and William Kettle, who lived with their mother Sarah at the White House. They were already involved and continued both to produce original works and also to revise and update some of their uncle’s maps. William was described as a hydrographer in the 1881 Census but by 1891 both he and his brother Daniel were listed as Nautical Publishers. In 1897, the year they left Hayes, William Richardson Kettle FRGS, for example, produced a supplement to the 4th edition of Findlay’s Sailing Directory for the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Bay of Bengal.
Daniel with his interest in antiquity and local history seems to have been the brother who was more involved with events in Hayes although both brothers subscribed a guinea (£1.05) annually to the Hayes Church School.
References: P Griffiths, The Findlays of Leith & London and their Kettle Descendants, with special thanks for the image of Alexander George Findlay.
C Kadwell History of Hayes Bromley Historic Collections p180/28/12