Robert Sinclair

He moved to Lerwick and worked for draper James Linklater, before eventually setting up his own business, "Robert Sinclair & Co.", at 60 Commercial Street. He built St Clair Villa in Clairmont Place in Lerwick's new town. Sinclair gave lengthy evidence to the Truck Commission in 1872 about the hosiery trade in the islands.

He was also a keen folklorist. In 1879 he contributed a long account of 'Da tief o' da Neean', a story about a mythical Aithsting outlaw, to The Shetland Times. He also wrote important notes on Shetland folklore and folk-life, which appear in The Shetland Folk Book, 9, 1995. With Arthur Laurenson and other Lerwegians with antiquarian interests he studied Icelandic. In 1885, however, he, his wife Anne More (1825-1891), and their large family, emigrated to New Zealand. Robert died in Australia in 1891.

Sinclair's third child George Sinclair (1852-1928) shared his father's interests. He kept a notebook with important folklore information, some of it derived from Robert, which is now in the State Library, Victoria (microfilm copy in Shetland Archives). He advised the German folklorist Karl Blind on Shetland lore, and wrote a version of the gruesome Shetland story 'Lang lies Lowrie at da Mill, or Lowrie's grienin wife', which is published in The Shetland Folk Book, 8, 1988.