George Drummond

George Drummond (1688–1766) was accountant-general of excise in Scotland and a local politician, elected Lord Provost of Edinburgh a number of times between 1725 and 1764.

Drummond was born in Blairgowrie, Perthshire. He was educated at the High School in Edinburgh and began his career as an accountant, working on the financial details of the 1707 Act of Union at 18. In 1707 he was appointed Accountant General, at age 20, of the Board of Customs, being promoted to Commissioner in 1717.

By the 1720s, the English were attempting to reform the Scottish taxation system. Although this climate of political turmoil promoted Drummond by 1723, it also led to public demonstrations in June 1725 against the arrival of the English malt tax in Scotland. During the Malt Tax riots in Glasgow, soon to be bookseller Andrew Millar (then still an apprentice), directly challenged Drummond's authority by printing opposition material in Leith, outside the council of Edinburgh's jurisdiction.

Drummond was a strong opponent of Jacobitism, and fought against John Erskine (1675–1732), the 6th Earl of Mar, at the Battle of Sheriffmuir in 1715. He also raised a company of volunteers to try to defend the city of Edinburgh against the army of Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Drummond first joined the Edinburgh Town Council in 1716. He raised funds to build the Royal Infirmary, designed by William Adam in 1738, which quickly became one of the world's foremost teaching hospitals. In 1760 he was responsible for commissioning the Royal Exchange, which later became the Edinburgh City Chambers. He was also a great supporter of the University of Edinburgh, encouraging its enlargement and establishing five chairs of medicine.

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