The founding of the Manila St. Andrew’s Society in 1879, most of whose members have belonged to the Manila Club, was confirmed by one source and very strongly inferred by a second.

The first source was Gordon Weatherstone Mackay (1901-86). His father, John Alexander Mackay, who came to Manila in 1882 and died in 1924, told him that 1879 was the year the Society was founded.

The second source was the Sunday Tribune of 22 November 1925, which stated that the St. Andrew’s Ball would be held on the following Friday at the Santa Ana Cabaret and that the occasion had been celebrated by the Society every year for the previous forty-seven years. In 1925 it had more than seventy members. James Walker Cairns was Chieftain (described as President), his Vice was J.R. Irvine, and Gordon Mackay was Honorary Secretary. Between 1903 and 1916, Manila City Directories list a ‘Caledonian Club’ with addresses in Binondo that are obviously the offices of its chieftains. Perhaps, therefore, it was founded under that name, or perhaps there was an intermediate change of name, for it seems extremely unlikely that a second Scottish group was formed and nor did Gordon Mackay ever mention one.

Forty-seven years before 1925 dates the Society to 1878, not 1879.

This was explained by James Flemming Macleod (c.1857-1926), known as Don Jaime, who arrived in Manila in1878 and who also attended the 1925 Ball, by his statement in the Sunday Tribune that the first known celebration by Scots in Manila in honour of St. Andrew was ‘in 1878 at Macleod & Co.’s Mess where now stands the Pacific Building’ (near the southwest corner of the Escolta). Doubtless similar annual celebrations had taken place after November 1827 when John Murray, James Strachan, and Robert Ker founded Ker & Co., but with no record of them surviving to the near end of the century.

Present at the celebration in Macleod & Co.’s mess were Alexander Stewart Macleod (1842-1911), the head of his firm; his cousin James Macleod mentioned above and William Colquhoun who both worked for Alexander; George Buchan Cadell (1839-c.1904), Harry Alexander MacPherson (1856-1939), and Alexander Armstrong (1835-1920), later senior partner in John Mackay’s brokerage; Dugald Munn (c.1848-c.1917), Frederick Bolton, and R.J. Paterson all of Ker & Co.; Robert Wright (c.1859-1944) of Findlay Richardson & Co.; George Martin; and Edward Bousted, Jr. (c.1845-c.1915) concerning whose daughter Nellie a duel was fought in Paris between José Rizal and Antonio Luna.

The 1925 Sunday Tribune, surely quoting James Macleod, described the 1878 affair thus:

A soul-stirring haggis, which was accorded due honor, was a salient
feature of the celebration. All the whiskey (sic) in Manila – 4 bottles
of Glenlivet – was secured for the occasion, and were absorbed
as it was the belief in those days that whiskey would not keep
long in the tropics. A formal society was formed a few years later.

The statement that the Society was formed ‘a few years later’ can be attributed either to a lazy newspaper reporter or to James Macleod’s poor memory, but it is not strong enough to put in doubt what John Mackay told to his son Gordon about the founding in 1879.

By happy coincidence, St. Andrew, the Patron Saint of Scotland, is also (alias San Andrés) one of the secondary patron saints of the City of Manila, together with St. Policarpio, St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi. The primary position is held by Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, as Patroness Saint of the Philippines and therefore also of the City of Manila.