Philip Dundas - Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous Scotland
Sir Philip Dundas (1899 - 1952) was the grandson of Sir Robert, 1st Baronet of Arniston, the family a remarkable Scottish legal and political dynasty and their line can be traced back to Sir James Dundas (1570-1628), the first member of the family to enter law, he, Governor of Berwick and M.P. for Midlothian (1612 - 1625), knighted by James VI and I.
Philip Dundas was the eldest of a family of six boys and one girl and inherited the baronetcy on the death of his father in 1930. However, he never lived at the family home of Arniston House.Dundas served for many years in The Black Watch, including a tour of duty in Silesia after The First World War,where his regiment was stationed to keep the peace until plebiscites were arranged to settle the new borders between Germany and Poland.
On retirement from the army, he began farming at Kildalloig, just outside Campbeltown, in Kintyre.
His greatest achievement however is unconnected with either the army or farming and arises from a personal battle with alcoholism.
it is most likely that Dundas' contact was through the first English branch of Alcoholics Anonymous,which had been founded in 1948, after an American woman, staying in London's Dorchester Hotel, had written to five Londoners, already in touch with 'The Alcoholic Foundation' and brought them together, on March 31, 1947,with other, North Amercian 'Alcoholics
Anonymous' members.
Dundas was so grateful for his own liberation from alcoholism that he determined to introduce this new approach to
his own country and thus became the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in Scotland, the first meetings in Scotland in May 1949, in Edinburgh and in Glasgow's St Enoch (Station) Hotel.
There are still some today who remember meeting him and are grateful for his influence and example. There are many more who are profoundly thankful for his work and he is held in high esteem by the Scottish branch of Alcoholics Anonymous.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6323365/Phili ... s-Scotland