Edward Tull-Warnock: The black Glasgow dentist who golfed with Rangers

When Edward was 11 he and his younger brother, Walter, were orphaned and sent to live in an institution in Bethnal Green.

It was there that Glasgow couple James and Jean Warnock were captivated by the older brother's singing, adopting him and enrolling him at Allan Glen's School - no small step for a white couple in the 19th Century.

Walter remained in the orphanage and would visit his brother when possible, and as well as becoming the British Army's first black office he should have been the first black man to pull on the blue of Rangers.

Edward had befriended James Bowie, who represented the Gers and Scotland and later became president of the club, and played golf with him at Turnberry in South Ayrshire.

The younger Tull signed on February 2 1917, and may have played some friendlies with the team.

However, in his role as an army officer he was deployed to the Italian front - where he would be recommended for the Military Cross, an honour he may have been denied due to the colour of his skin - and later to try to repel a German offensive on the Western front.

On March 25 1918, Walter Tull was cut down by machine gun fire near Beugny and, despite the best efforts of his comrades, could not be pulled back behind friendly lines.

With his body never recovered, he is one of 34,785 soldiers with no known grave commemorated at Arras, with his former club Northampton Town erecting a memorial with an inscription by his biographer, Phil Vasili.

On Monday the same author will release a biography of Edward, and the older brother's story is no less remarkable.

Mr Vasili told The Herald: "When I was doing research around Walter, it was mainly the records Edward kept, he really worked to preserve the history of this family and to keep the wider family together.

“In doing that he was meticulous in keeping documents, unconsciously creating an archive – he almost curated the family history.

“But he was a really interesting character in his own right, a very understated character because he was very proud of his heritage, he never shied away from openly talking about his enslaved grandparents and their legacy, spiritual, social and psychological that was passed down.

"The one thing that’s obvious is that tenacity and indefatigable spirit that all of the family, but especially the brothers, had.

Read More: New book highlights hundreds of sites tying Glasgow to the slave trade

“That’s a legacy of their enslaved heritage where you just had to be incredibly strong in so many different ways just to survive.

“There are so many aspects and dimensions to Edward’s life that characterise that, but in a very understated way.

“He could get on with anybody, he mixed in so many different circles.

“From the poorest, treating patients in the tenements around St Vincent Street, and then having people like James Bowie as a best friend and being a member of Turnberry golf club.

"Because he was very good at preserving documents and because the family were institutionalised – they went into an orphanage, one became a footballer and went into an army – all the records were kept.

“There was a traceable family history and the really fortunate dimension for me was that because Edward’s father in Barbados was part of the Moravian church they were meticulous record-keepers too so you had this black Atlantic family you could trace from a Barbados plantation as early as 1808, 26 years before emancipation, right through to 20th Century Britain.

Rymour Books (Image: Finlayson Family Archive)

“So you had this illustrative journey of a black Atlantic family, and I felt the story needed to be told."

Edward Tull was a pioneering dentist in Glasgow, while his strolls on the green with Bowie would have been unusual as a black man far more recently than the early part of the 20th Century.

Mr Vasili says: "I doubt there were many members of golf clubs in Britain at the time who were black - or women.

“That was a real character trait of Edward, he could surmount these obstacles and do it without losing integrity.

“He wasn’t obsequious or fawning, he wasn’t a social climber in the sense of putting aside his principles.

“He remained true to what he believed in throughout his life, and I think because of his honesty in that sense he was accepted by people at all levels.

Read More: How slavery fuels the flames between Scottish nationalism and unionism

“That’s not to say he didn’t face discrimination, there are many instances where it’s recorded.

“When he applied for his first job as a dentist in 1910 he was given a practice in Birmingham. He had his photo as part of the application because he knew there might be some resistance but when he turned up the dentist said, ‘I’m sorry, you’ll destroy my practice in 24 hours’ and turned him away.

“That was his first introduction to dentistry.

“He is a remarkable character. He played for Ayr Parkhouse in the second division, and on one Saturday in March 1909 his brother was playing for the Spurs A team at the time.

“So you had these two mixed heritage brothers playing league football either side of the border on the same Saturday in March, which was probably a first as well.”

Though he may have mixed with the upper classes, Edward was devoted to left-wing politics, offering dental services to the poor of Glasgow and Girvan for free and joining the Socialist Medical Association.

He was also a fan of the singer and activist Paul Robeson, and Mr Vasili believes a working class upbringing and his ties to slavery informed much of Tull's worldview.

He says: "The ethnic background and the plantation, his grandparents being enslaved, he always had his feet on the ground and he never forgot that he came from humble origins.

“He was proud of that, it wasn’t something he ever tried to hide.

"Nye Bevan, when he created the NHS, praised the Socialist Medical Association for being the primary force within medicine pushing for free treatment at the point of use.”

While Edward may have been born in England, with his roots in the Caribbean, there was no doubting how he saw himself.

Mr Vasili says: "He was a proud Glaswegian, that’s what his daughter said to me.

“He saw himself as a black Scot – or just a Scot. He was proud of being a Glaswegian and he loved Glasgow.

“The radical politics of it meant he fitted in perfectly, because he was very left wing.

“Just think of what was going on in 1919 when they sent troops and tanks into George Square, the whole Red Clydeside thing.

“He was at one with that, the politics of it chimed with his politics: he was a member of the League of Coloured People, the first black civil rights organisation in Britain.

“He and Glasgow fitted perfectly.

“His daughter said he felt that Walter received far more racist prejudice against him in London than he’d ever got in Glasgow.

“I think he felt Scotland and Glasgow were much more tolerant toward people of colour."

The Life and Histories of Edward Tull-Warnock will be published by Rymour Books on December 4. A launch event will be held at the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Glasgow. Click here for tickets.