In one of last Sunday’s papers, I read with interest about a:
4th October 2026, Scotland on Sunday:
In this feature article, David Harrower, the playwright of a new stage version of Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for Edinburgh’s Lyceum, said:
He then asked:
Before going on to say:
Miss Jean Brodie was a fictional character. Miss Christina Kay, the most influential teacher of Muriel Spark, was not.
I would like here to share what I have found out about Miss Kay. The sparse archive is free of personal story. But, what is revealed, is surely relevant.
24 October 1804, Society, Hopetoun estate: Birth of Jean Dick [who grew up to become grandmother of Miss Kay]: 
1841 census, Society, Hopetoun [Miss Kay’s grandparents]:
1854 Ordnance Survey map: Society, Hopetoun Estate by the Firth of Forth:
Miss Christina Kay was born in 1878 in 4 Grindlay Street, Edinburgh. She lived in this tenement house all her life. In this house, her father and mother died.
1878 Ordnance Survey map, Grindlay Street, Edinburgh [opposite Princes Street Goods Station]:
Grindlay Street, Edinburgh [the Kay family lived in one of the tenements near the lamp post on the left hand side of this old photograph]:
1881 census, Grindlay Street, Edinburgh:
2 November 1893: 4 Grindlay Street: death of Miss Kay’s father aged 60 years:
1911 census, Grindlay Street, Edinburgh: Christina Kay, teacher, is living with her mother:
2 February 1913, death of Miss Kay’s mother:
6 March 1914, Edinburgh Evening Dispatch: Opening of the Usher Hall [at the end of Grindlay Street]:
1935 Valuation Roll, Grindlay Street, Edinburgh:
1936, McVities Guest Tearoom, Princes Street, Edinburgh: Miss Kay has tea with Muriel Spark [this was to be there last meeting]:
1 June 1951, The Scotsman: ‘Sudden death’ of Miss Christina Kay at Hopetoun:
Abercorn churchyard: tombstone for Miss Christina Kay:
Muriel Spark:
The following extracts are from ‘Like a Cat Loves a Bird [The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark]’ by James Bailey:
