"Doctor" McKee
Two notional Irishmen have played for Scotland. Subsequently excluded Willie Maley was one, James McKee, known as "Doctor" the other. A centre-forward, McKee had as the 19th Century became the 20th a career of over a decade at top-flight in Scotland and England, winning a single cap in 1898, versus Wales, scoring twice.
Brought up in Shotts cum Harthill, which remained his home-town (he would die there too) he was one of six children of an iron/coal miner. Both his parents were Irish-born, as were according to the 1881 census their two eldest wains. By then Doctor, born in 1871, was ten. However, there is problem. It is that the 1891 census shows that in fact three of the young McKees had been born o'er the water. And it is this second record that is correct. James McKee's birthplace was actually either Tullyard by Moira or Dromore, both in Co. Down, the family moving to Scotland at some point before 1877 so with him about five years old.
Senior football for Doctor began late, at the age of twenty-four at Hearts, and as something of a journeyman. He made only two appearances in a season, scoring once. Before that he had played locally in Benhar and Dykehead. Even when he went straight the following season from Edinburgh to England, to Darwen, then in mid- Second Division, he made little more impact; eight games, three goals. And that was followed by three seasons at East Stirlingshire and outwith the Scottish divisions.
However, at the end of his final season at the Falkirk club it was elected to the Scottish Second Division, clearly with him making a contribution that won inclusion in the Scottish national team, his non-qualification then realised or not, and even at the age of twenty-nine took him back down to England; this time to a Bolton that had just been promoted to the First Division. There in three seasons and before time caught up with him he was to make eighty-one appearances and score nineteen times, after which before retirement there would a drop to the Southern League and one more at both Luton and then New Brompton.
At that point he returned north, to live with his parents, and then mother with his siblings all around and follow his father and brothers down the pit. He never married and on his death in 1949 at the age of seventy-eight he was buried alongside his father, his mother and two of his sisters at Shotts Kirk in a grave in need of some serious and obvious, restorative work.
Birth Locator:
Moira, Co. Down, Northern Ireland
Residence Locations:
1881 - Linds Land, by Shotts, Lanarkshire
1891 - Hassockrigg Row, by Shotts, Lanarkshire
1911 - Eastfield Row, by Harthill, Lanarkshire
1921 - 45, Eastfield, by Harthill, Lanarkshire
Death Locator
1949 - Old Eastfield, by Harthill Lanarkshire
Grave Locator:
Shotts Kirk Old Section, Lanarkshire
Other Locations:
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