(George) Robert Gair (6 August 1907St. Martin's Press Staff (2001). Who Was Who 1996–2000 Volume X: A Companion to WHO'S WHO – Containing the Biographies of Those Who Died During the Period 1996–2000. Palgrave Macmillan, . Some sources give 1905 as birth year. – 10 February 1996), who later assumed the surname Gayre of Gayre and Nigg, was a Scottish anthropologist who founded Mankind Quarterly, a peer-reviewed academic journal which has been described as a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment". An authority on heraldry, he also founded The Armorial, and published a number of books on this subject. He achieved notoriety for claiming to be the Chief of "Clan Gayre" and "Clan Gayre and Nigg", it being subsequently found that such a "clan" had never existed; according to the Glasgow Herald, Gayre created "a Scottish clan from scratch, providing it with traditions, rituals, precedences and privileges". Further, not only did he not have legitimate male-line Gair descent (his father being the illegitimate child of a working-class woman of the name of Gair), but he had falsified a pedigree, given to Burke's Peerage among others, connecting his ancestor to a minor (not chiefly) family of the name resident at Nigg.Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 2, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 1531 Many biographical details, such as ranks, degrees, and titles he claimed, are not independently verifiable, deriving from his own writings..
Early life and education Gayre was born as George Robert Gair on 6 August 1907 in Dublin to Robert William Gair (1875–1957), later of Sprotbrough, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, a pastry baker and confectioner, and Clara Hull or Hart. His younger brother and two sisters retained the spelling of "Gair". In bogus pedigrees recorded in Ireland in 1950 and published between 1952 and 2003,"Supplement to Burke's Landed Gentry" (1952), "Burke's Landed Gentry of Great Britain: the Kingdom in Scotland" (2001) and, in an abbreviated form, in "Burke's Peerage" (2003). he claimed that his father was the son of portrait painter William Gillies Gair (1842–1906), but he was actually the illegitimate son of the painter's sister Jessie Gair (died 1897), both being children of Alexander Gair (1810–1884), a Greenock joiner. Jessie Gair was described on her son's birth certificate as a "fancy goods shopwoman". Two years after the child's birth, now described as a "drapery saleswoman", she became the second wife of William Sutherland, a journeyman plasterer of Glasgow, who died aged 45 at a Glasgow poorhouse. Jessie died in 1897 aged 47 at a Gourock asylum, her occupation given as "sewer".
He earned an MA from University of Edinburgh, then completed research but did not take a degree at Exeter College, Oxford.International Book of Honor, American Biographical Institute, 1987, p. 131. He would later also claim to have three PhDs (sometimes mentioning them to be "honorary") from Italian universities: in Political Science from the University of Palermo, in Philosophy from the University of Messina, and in Science from the University of Naples, awarded in 1943 and 1944, at which time Britain was at war with Italy.Patrick Comerford, "Robert Gair, a racist from Rathmines who invented his own clan", 2020
Military service According to his own account, Gayre served as an "officer of the Regular Army Reserve"Miscellaneous Racial Studies, 1943–1972: 1943–1956, Robert Gayre, The Armorial, 1972, p. 12 with the Royal Artillery as part of the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1939, later claiming the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He stated that he entered the Royal Artillery in 1931 as a second lieutenant, was promoted to lieutenant in 1934, and to captain in 1940, later being promoted to major; this progression is corroborated by the London Gazette: George Robert Gair – late an officer cadet of the University of Edinburgh Officer Training Corps – was to be a second lieutenant in the Supplementary Reserve of Officers of the Royal Regiment of Artillery from 5 August 1931;The London Gazette, issue 33741, 4 August 1931, p. 5112 2nd Lt G. R. Gair, of the Supplementary Reserve of Officers of the Royal Artillery, was to be lieutenant as of 5 August 1934;The London Gazette, issue 34093, 5 October 1934, p. 6250 Lt G. R. Gayre was to be war substantive captain as of 5 August 1941;Supplement to the London Gazette, issue 35278, 19 September 1941, p. 5404 War Substantive Captain G. R. Gayre, of the Royal Artillery, was transferred to the Army Educational Corps at that same rank as of 27 January 1942;Supplement to the London Gazette, issue 35473, 3 March 1942, p. 999 Captain (War Substantive Major) G. R. Gayre, of the Royal Army Educational Corps, was promoted to the rank of Major as of 1 January 1949.Supplement to The London Gazette, issue 38989, 11 August 1950, p. 4090 Afterwards he claimed to have been Educational Adviser to the Allied Military Government of Italy, based in Palermo, where he fought for the exclusion of left-wing text-books and communist influence from the Italian education system. He was thereafter Director of Education to the Allied Control Commission for Italy, based in Naples; and Chief of Education and Religious Affairs, German Planning Unit, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.Gayre of Gayre & Nigg, Robert, A Case for Monarchy, Edinburgh, 1962: vii – ix After the war he spent a considerable amount of time in India where he was instrumental in the establishment of the Italo-Indian Institute.Gayre of Gayre & Nigg, Robert, A Case for Monarchy, Edinburgh, 1962: x He served as professor of anthropology at the University of Saugor from 1954 to 1956.
Heraldry Gayre was author of a number of books on heraldry. As Chief of Clan Gayre, he styled himself "of Gayre and Nigg", and became Grand Almoner, and Hereditary Commander of Lochore, of the Order of Saint Lazarus (statuted 1910).Gayre of Gayre & Nigg, Robert, with Dunn, John, The Armorial Who is Who, 5th edition, Edinburgh, 1978:135
His books on Heraldic Standards and Other Ensigns (1959) and Heraldic Cadency (1961) are considered valuable and authoritative contributions to the field, and he also contributed on the topic to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Mankind Quarterly and publications on race Gayre was one of the founders of Mankind Quarterly and an editor from 1960 to 1978. He was honorary editor-in-chief thereafter.Gayre, Robert, summary and photo of him on: Race and Nazi Racism and the Latter's Impact on Anthropology. The Mankind Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, (April–June 1978), pp. 293–303.
The magazine has been called a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment" and a "white supremacist journal",Joe L. Kincheloe, et al., Measured Lies: The Bell Curve Examined, Palgrave Macmillan, 1997, pg. 39 "scientific racism's keepers of the flame",William H. Tucker, The funding of scientific racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund, University of Illinois Press, 2002, pg. 2 a journal with a "racist orientation" and an "infamous racist journal",Ibrahim G. Aoudé, The ethnic studies story: politics and social movements in Hawaiʻi, University of Hawaii Press, 1999, pg. 111 and "journal of 'scientific racism'".Kenneth Leech, Race, Church Publishing, Inc., 2005, pg. 14
In 1968 he testified on behalf of members of the Racial Preservation Society who were charged under the Race Relations Act for publishing racialist material. They prevailed in their defence. In his evidence to the court Gayre described blacks as being "feckless" and he maintained that scientific evidence showed that blacks "prefer their leisure to the dynamism which the white and yellow races show."Billig, Michael (1979). in Birmingham: A.F. & R. Publications.
Falsified ancestry; creation of "Clan Gayre" Even according to the falsified pedigree he provided to Burke's Peerage for publication, previous generations of Gayre's Gair ancestors all used the spelling "Gair" as far back as the 17th century.Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 2, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 1531 Gayre's university degree in the mid-1920s was likewise issued with the "Gair" spelling, but he began spelling it "Gayre" at least as early as 1943. In 1957, after the death of his father, he changed his surname to "Gayre of Gayre and Nigg", a title that had never before been used.
Gayre claimed to be the Chief of "Clan Gayre" and "Clan Gayre and Nigg". In 1947, he wrote a book titled Gayre's Booke: Being a History of the Family of Gayre, in which, without mentioning his illegitimate descent, he presented an ancestry that supposedly established his claim to be the chieftain of the Clan of Gayre; however no clan or sept by that name is mentioned in any record prior to Gayre's use of it in the second quarter of the 20th century. World Orders of Knighthood and Merit by Guy Stair Sainty (published by Burke's Peerage) refers to Gayre as "...the late Robert Gayre (first Chief of the newly formed Clan Gayre)...".World Orders of Knighthood and Merit by Guy Stair Sainty, pg. 1866, Burke's Peerage London 2006 () The Glasgow Herald Newspaper, on 14 June 1975, wrote "Robert Gayre, of Gayre and Nigg, is singular among genealogists, dynasts and the like, if only for the reason that, alone among them, he has been able to create a Scottish clan from scratch, providing it with traditions, rituals, precedences and privileges..."
Titles and styles
In the early 1960s, Gayre was appointed "Commissioner-General of the English Tongue" of the Order of Saint Lazarus, one of the many neo-chivalrous self-styled orders that arose in the early twentieth century.
In 1964, Gayre formed the International Commission on Orders of Chivalry (ICOC), an ostensibly academic but non-authoritative panel whose purpose was to review and approve of or reject claimed Orders of Chivalry. | Prof. James J. Algrant The Commission originally included many holders of legitimate titles and honours, but when it became evident that Gayre intended to bolster the legitimacy of the Order of St. Lazarus through the commission's published Register, some of the original members resigned in protest. The privately run and privately funded ICOC continued to act as a vehicle for promoting the cause of establishing the Order of St. Lazarus' legitimacy until Gayre's death in 1996.pp. 298–300,"The Sword and the Green Cross: The Saga of the Knights of Saint Lazarus from the Crusades to the 21st Century" by Max J. Ellul, Authorhouse, 2011, In this, he was assisted by his friend, protege, fellow member of the Order of St Lazarus, and vice-president of the ICOC Terence MacCarthy, whose pedigree has been shown to be similarly bogus.
In 1967 Gayre established a Commandery of the Order of St Lazarus. In 1971 he bought St Vincent's Church, Edinburgh. He established it as a collegiate church, and the seat of the Commandery of Lochore. It was the first church to have been acquired by the Order of St Lazarus since the Reformation. In 2018 Gayre's son gave the church back to the Vestry.https://www.stvincentschapel.org.uk/st-vincents-and-the-order-of-st-lazarus/ The interior of the church contains many features, including shields, stained glass windows, and banners, relating to the Order.