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Outliers In The Professional Project Of Victorian Public Accountancy: David Souter Robertson, Chartered Accountant, T. A. Lee

Accounting Historians Journal

The first and most specific purpose of this paper is to contrast the private and public lives of a founder of modern public accountancy to illustrate the ambiguity of an outlier in the history of a professional project. A second and more general purpose is to use the founder's personal history to identify archival issues in biographical accounting research. A historical outlier such as Scottish Chartered Accountant David Souter Robertson (DSR) demonstrates how research of the professional project of Victorian public accountants is enhanced by the inclusion of private as well as public aspects of their lives. Set in the …