Tattoo ephemera, early 20th Century, collected by Robert Andrew Scott MacFie to include various contemporary flyers for tattoo artists, a leaflet on The Life of Madame Elia: The Wonderful and most Marvellous Tattooed Lady, manuscript notes; a manuscript letter by Sutherland MacDonald, Tattoo Artist in Jermyn Street, London, signed on letterhead paper, regarding the use of client images in a lecture to be given by MacFie (qty)

Robert Andrew Scott MacFie was the financial sponsor and the catalyst that revitalised the development of the Gypsy Lore Society in 1907.

MacFie was meticulous in the running of the GLS, storing all incoming correspondence in letterbooks, and keeping a copy of all his replies, using a Watt Copying Machine. He claimed that he had filled at least ten letterbooks, each of a thousand pages. He also catalogued a library of books, press clippings and other ephemera of which the current lot appears to be a part. Many of these documents are now in the University of Liverpool’s Special Collections and Archives.

Beneath his meticulous attention to details and apparent conformity, MacFie also had a Bohemian streak, for he had the arms and motto of MacFie of Dreghorn tattooed on his chest, which he frequently displayed for the Gypsies in Bulgaria.

MacFie spent time in the bohemian circle of both John Sampson and Augustus John, see: Augustus John and Liverpool’s Gypsy Lore Society