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The Ayrshire
Directory was transcribed by Keith Muirhead.
"I hope that
the towns have provided someone with that little snippet of info needed to
answer another question in the quest for knowledge of our forebears."
Keith Muirhead - on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland
The following item appeared in Ayrshire Notes published by
the Ayrshire Archæological & Natural History Society. Thanks to
David McClure and his
Ayrshire History site for
this item.
This commentary on Pigot's Directory appeared in the
Kilmarnock Weekly Post in June 1860:
"Piggott's Directory - The titles of some books are
but a sorry index of their contents. They are sometimes such that
the most learned would shrink to own, and promise information which
it is not in the power of man to bestow. In short, they are literary
shams. Piggott's Directory for Scotland is now lying before us. It
is not a literary work in the common acceptation of the term. It is
a matter of fact thing, and the information it has to communicate
lies perfectly within the reach of the understanding - indeed,
within the reach of an ordinary man of business, if he were to set
his mind to it. Yet this book, in a very large part, has a wrong
title applied to it. It should have been called a misdirectory. We
glanced over a portion under the head Kilmarnock, and blunders
egregious and numerous presented themselves. We gave up the task of
scrutinising as too laborious and disagreeable, and shut the book,
which is badly printed and miserably bound. We hope, for the sake of
commercial men who require a reliable directory, that if ever the
publishers or proprietors of Piggott prepare another issue, they
will exhibit that scrupulous care which such a task demands."
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