William Garden Blaikie

William Garden Blaikie
Rev Prof William Garden Blaikie
Born	5 February 1820 Aberdeen, Scotland
Died	11 June 1899
Occupation	Theologian Writer Temperance reformer Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland (1892)
Spouse(s)	Margaret Catherine Biggar (1823-1915)
Children	12
Parent(s)	James Ogilvie Blaikie (1786-1836) Jane Garden (1794-1857)

The Very Rev William Garden Blaikie DD LLD FRSE (5 February 1820, in Aberdeen – 11 June 1899) was a Scottish divine, writer, biographer, and temperance reformer.

His father James Ogilvie Blaikie was the first provost in Aberdeen of the reformed corporation. After studying at Marischal College, where Alexander Bain and David Masson were among his contemporaries, he went in 1839 to Edinburgh to complete his theological studies under Thomas Chalmers. In 1842 he was presented to the living of Drumblade by Lord Kintore, with whose family he was connected. The Disruption of 1843 reached its climax immediately afterwards, and Blaikie was one of the 474 ministers who signed the deed of demission and gave up their livings.

Blaikie was Free Church minister at Pilrig, between Edinburgh and Leith, from 1844 to 1868. Keenly interested in questions of social reform, his first publication was a pamphlet, which was afterwards enlarged into a book called Better Days for Working People. It received public commendation from Lord Brougham, and 60,000 copies were sold. He formed an association for providing better homes for working people, and the Pilrig Model Buildings were erected. He also undertook the editorship of the Free Church Magazine, and then that of the North British Review, which he carried on until 1863. In 1864 he was asked to undertake the Scottish editorship of the Sunday Magazine, and much of his subsequent writing was done for this magazine, especially in the editorial notes.

In 1862, when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh he was living at 9 Palmerston Road in the Grange, Edinburgh.