Jenny Clow of Newburgh

Jenny Clow was a domestic servant in Edinburgh in the late eighteenth century. She acquired a dubious fame via her employer and her employer’s ‘gentleman caller’. Jenny worked for Agnes McElhose, who was one of Robert Burns’ many muses.

Unusually for those times, Agnes was separated from her husband, who had gone to the West Indies to work on a slave plantation. He had been violent towards her, and she stayed in Edinburgh with their four children, living on allowances from relatives. She was better educated than most women of that era and was described at the time as very attractive.

She and Burns developed a passionate, mainly written romance which was never physically consummated due to Agnes’s scruples. They adopted the names Clarinda and Sylvander, from classical Greek mythology, in an attempt to keep their relationship secret.

Agnes asked Jenny Clow to deliver letters to Burns for her; and perhaps on one of these occasions, Burns seduced her. She became pregnant in February 1788. Neither Agnes nor Burns knew of this at first, but Burns found out around June that year when Jenny took out a writ against him. Burns (who by this time had married Jean Armour and moved to Dumfries) appears to have dealt with the legal issue to his own satisfaction. However Agnes was predictably furious and made moves to end their relationship. 

Jenny bore a son in November 1788 and named him ‘Robert Burns Clow’. In 1791, Agnes wrote to Burns in Dumfries begging him to help Jenny, who was dying in Edinburgh. Burns asked Agnes to send Jenny five shillings in his name, and promised to visit her, which he did. He offered to take the child, but Jenny would not allow this. She died two months after his visit, of tuberculosis. Robert Burns Clow became a successful merchant in later life.

Jenny’s genealogy is recorded in our Newburgh Family Tree. Her parents were Andrew or Alexander Clow and her mother, Margaret Inglis of Newburgh; Jenny was the youngest of eight children.

How would a young servant girl end up so far from home in Edinburgh? A visitor to the Laing from Cupar Museum pointed out that many wealthy Edinburgh families owned ‘country seats’. It is possible that Jenny had first worked nearer home, for someone who knew Agnes McElhose, and that she was later offered a job in Edinburgh. It must have seemed an exciting prospect for a young country girl of that time but sadly it didn’t work out well for her. The Clow family line has continued down through the ages.