ABSTRACT
M. J. M. Kedslie's study is of the origins and events surrounding the formation of three Scottish professional accountancy' bodies in the mid 1850s (chronologically, in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen). Kedslie's study begins with an examination of the accounting and accounting-related activities with which identifiable accountants were involved prior to professionalization in Scotland. She reveals evidence of these accountants as connected in a variety of ways, and to different degrees, with such businesses as canals and railway, banking, insurance and stockbroking and most particularly, bankruptcy'. Kedslie examines the social origins of the early Scottish professional accountants. When compared with the work of Walker, the analysis is not as statistically detailed and argumentatively complex as his interwoven themes of recruitment factors and his self-recruitment demographic model.
