Magnus Shearer (i)

After leaving school, he served as a cook on board the Whalsay herring boat 'Reindeer', but thereafter began a cooper's apprenticeship under his father, making barrels in Lerwick for A. Wood & Sons, who later employed him on a station in Shields.

He joined the Gordon Highlanders in 1912, and in 1914 when war broke out he was called back to Lerwick. He left Shetland with other GHs in 1915 and was picked for officer training and commissioned in 1916 before crossing to France where he served on the Western Front as a Lieutenant in the 9th Gordon Highlanders. He volunteered for overseas active service and held the Volunteer Medal. He declined a post in Nova Scotia as a fishery officer to return to Shetland, and set up a Herring curing business in Lerwick, J & M Shearer. When the Second World War broke out he was against called for duty, being asked to take command with the rank of Major. He was initially posted away from Shetland but returned in 1941, remaining in the Military Control until the end of the war in 1945. He then received a Territorial Decoration and was accorded the rank Lt-Col.

In public life, he was a councillor, a Justice of the Peace in 1949, a vice-consul for Sweden, an honorary Sheriff-Substitute. Politically, he was a Conservative, and was adopted early in the 1950's as a prospective parliamentary candidate but he resigned in 1953 owing to illness.