Researching Robert Stewart

Brought up in Dundee Street in Edinburgh, 3 miles from Saughton Prison, Stewart completed the Prison Commissioners' Assistant Executioner training course in September 1950 at Pentonville Prison in London. His name first appeared on the Home Office list in 1950, with his first engagement occurring at Norwich on 19 July 1951, assisting Stephen Wade at the execution of Alfred Reynolds.

Stewart was active on the Home Office list between 1950 and the suspension of capital punishment for murder in 1965, carrying out 21 executions as assistant. On the 1957 printing of the list, Stewart and Harry Allen were both promoted to the role of executioner in the wake of the resignation of Albert Pierrepoint and the death of Wade, both in 1956. In this capacity, Stewart carried out six executions. He also assisted Harry Allen at the execution of Anthony Miller, the last teenager to be executed in the United Kingdom.

Stewart performed one of the last executions in the United Kingdom at 8 am on 13 August 1964, when he hanged Peter Anthony Allen at Walton Prison. Allen had been convicted of the murder of John Alan West; Allen's accomplice, Gwynne Owen Evans, was hanged at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, at the same time by Harry Allen. Stewart also carried out the last execution in Wales, that of Vivian Teed at Swansea Prison in May 1958, for the murder of a postmaster during a robbery in Swansea.

Stewart died in South Africa in 1988 at the age of 70. He had emigrated there after the abolition of capital punishment to work as an airline engineer.

From 1980 to 1988, Stewart wrote two books about Merlin, translating and exploring medieval texts on the topic (now published in one volume as Merlin: the Prophetic Vision and Mystic Life, by Penguin Arkana). He also created the Merlin Tarot, (Harper Collins) comprising a book and a deck of cards (painted by Miranda Gray) depicting scenes from ancient Merlin texts. This deck and book have been translated into Japanese, French, Italian, and German.

From 1988 to the present, R J Stewart has taught workshops and classes on Celtic and Classical mythological traditions, music and consciousness. In 1993, he co-wrote Celtic Bards, Celtic Druids, (Published by Cassell, Blandford Press) with harper and storyteller Robin Williamson, founder of The Incredible String Band. R J Stewart teaches the Faery (Fairy) Tradition which he has explored in the books: Living World of Faery, Earthlight, Power within the Land and the Well of Light.This later book has great relevance for the increasingly important practice of "Earth Healing" which has great relevance in our modern-day crisis.As folk musician “Bob Stewart”, he made famous a folk instrument of his own design referred to on his albums as a ‘concert psaltery’. The instrument is similar to a zither, and has groups of strings laid out left to right, in triad chord groups rather than as chromatic scales. Although this can make the instrument difficult to play at speed, complex chord progressions can be easily interwoven around a basic melody.

He was born in Ottawa, Ontario, the son of William Stewart and Sarah Jane Donaldson, migrants from Northern Ireland. Stewart was educated in Ottawa's public school system along with his brothers, J.K., William and Samuel, and continued to take an active interest in the school system's development throughout his life. An insurance and general agent with his firm R. Stewart & Son, he was an alderman on the Ottawa City Council, where he was said to have "represented the city's monied classes," and was president and treasurer of the YMCA. He was elected to the House of Commons of Canada as the Liberal member for Ottawa in the 1904 federal election that returned a third straight majority for Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier. He resigned the riding in 1908 shortly before that year's general election.

In 1877, Stewart married Mary Louisa Howard Sharp. He died in Ottawa at the age of 75.

He is unrelated to the formerly prominent Ottawa family of William Stewart, who owned a large portion of The Glebe and who was father of Ottawa mayor McLeod Stewart, a contemporary of Robert on the Ottawa City Council.

Stewart came to the Philippines in 1943 as a war correspondent for United Press (UP). He fell in love with the country and after the war ended, he decided to stay. In 1948, he met and fell in love with Loreto Feliciano, a widow from Pampanga with three children, and married her the following year.

Stewart was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Stewart was a member for Brisbane City in the Queensland Parliament from 14 November 1873 to 1 February 1878.Stewart later resided in London and was a member of the Board of Advice to the Agent-General, and a director on the London Board of the Queensland National Bank.

Stewart died in Hove, England on 17 September 1908.

He was born in Sydney to master mariner William Stewart and Charlotte Kirk. His father was drowned in 1820 and the family lived on Broken Bay on the Hawkesbury River until 1831, when they went to Sydney. Stewart was apprenticed as a cabinet maker, and later worked as an undertaker. Around 1843 he married Isabella Craig, with whom he had a son. In 1860 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for East Sydney. He retired in 1864, but returned in 1866, retiring again in 1869. He died at Sydney on the day of his wedding to Annie Carss in 1875.