Scott was born in 1853 in
Edinburgh. He was an exceptional student and a polymath who excelled at philosophy. He attended
Greenside Church in Edinburgh. He led the mission at Blantyre in Nyasaland which is now Malawi from 1881 From 1881 to 1898, the mission in Blantyre was run by Scott. In 1883 a former missionary George Fenwick had been killed after he had murdered the
Makololo chief Chipatula. Fenwick's wife
Elizabeth had also arrived as a missionary and after the George's death, David and Bella took Elizabeth into their home. Elizabeth was to become a valued teacher and in time she married Scott's deputy and successor
Alexander Hetherwick. The three Beck sisters were parishioners at Scott's former Greenside Church in Edinburgh and they decided to send one of them to Blantyre. Scott escorted
Janet S. Beck to join the mission in 1888. She served in Blantyre for nearly thirty years supported by her sisters. He also created his ''Encyclopaedic Dictionary of the Mang'anja Language'', the foremost dictionary for Mang'anja and the closely related
Chichewa language. Scott reverred the language comparing it to Greek. Hynde disagreed with Scott who was an advocate of the
ordination of Africans. From the early 1890s onwards, Hynde gathered support from other Scottish planters, and plotted against Scott with the help of James Rankin who was the minister of Muthill. British moves to establish more control, and their high-handed approach to the land, provoked African resistance. Hynde and his business partner Robert Ross Stark were involved in a violent episode in 1895, reported on by Scott at Damosi. Scott wrote home to Scotland about an attack in early 1895 on the mission station. It was carried out by followers of Kawinga, a Yao chief, who started by molesting Malemia's people, taking some prisoner. Attacks by Kawinga aimed at the mission were driven off by Malemia, and then by British-led
Sikhs and
Atonga under
Alfred Sharpe. On 27 January a
boma was partially completed by Malemia's men with an NCO of the
Royal Engineers named Fletcher, as a defensive work. A serious attack by Kawinga's forces came on 7 February, backed by other local chiefs, targeting the mission, the
boma and Hynde and Stark's residence. In 1895 Hynde and Starke founded the
Central African Planter which voiced complaints from the white planters against Scott. In his introduction to a 1985 reprint of the
Planter, McCracken credits Hynde's editorial line with prompting the Commission of Inquiry into Scott's mission work. Hynde wrote to
The Scotsman on the matter under the name "The Planter", and with Dr James Rankin attended the 1897 meeting in Edinburgh of the Foreign Mission Committee of the Church of Scotland that nominated the Commission. Scott had been named a "negrophile" and he returned to Scotland after he lost his first wife. He was relieved of his position in 1898 under the guise of his ill health. Here he cleared the land and to the annoyance of the Foreign Mission Committee he bought an estate of 3,000 acres which was managed by a Christian labour force. He lost his own and other peoples money and the Foreign Mission Committee again insisted on his obedience. He died in Kikuyu in 1907. ==Legacy==