Birth name | James Laidlaw Huggan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Date of birth | 11 October 1888 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Place of birth | Jedburgh, Scotland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Date of death | 16 September 1914 | (aged 25)||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Place of death | Aisne. France | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rugby union career | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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James Laidlaw Huggan (11 October 1888 – 16 September 1914) was a Scotland rugby union player. He was killed in World War I[1] at the First Battle of the Aisne.[2]
James Huggan was born in Jedburgh on 11 October 1888.[3] He was educated at Darlington Grammar School before reading medicine at the University of Edinburgh.[3]
Huggan played for Jed-Forest. On moving to Edinburgh University to study he then played for Edinburgh University.
He then moved to play for London Scottish.
He played for the South of Scotland in 1910.[4]
He had taken part in the last rugby international before the war, the Calcutta Cup match at Inverleith (Edinburgh) in March 1914, scoring three tries in the game.[2]
Huggan was a lieutenant of the Royal Army Medical Corps, attached to the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards.[3] He is commemorated at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre memorial.[5] He died two days after Ronald Simson, another Scottish player, who was the first rugby international to die in the conflict, and who was also at the Aisne.[2]