This window is dedicated to the memory of Daniel Bower Mitchell, 1846-1874, who was the voluntary Choirmaster of St Paul’s Church under Bishop Forbes. Mitchell was a young Yorkshireman, and a junior partner in the Dundee firm of O.G. Miller & Co., * merchants and flax spinners. In addition to recruiting men and boys for St Paul’s, and conducting the choir, Mitchell was active on the local music scene, founding the Dundee Association of Church Choirs, of which Bishop Forbes was President.

However, while climbing on Ben More at New Year,1874, Daniel Mitchell slipped on frozen snow and fell to his death. As the memorial brass plate below the window records, he was ‘suddenly cut off in the flower of his age’, leaving a widow and young children. Bishop Forbes conducted Daniel Mitchell’s funeral in a crowded St. Paul’s, and concluded the service with a benediction he used for choristers:

‘Christ, the Lamb of God, whose praise you celebrate on earth, grant you to sing a new song amongst the choirs of angels in Heaven. Amen’.

The main subject of the large, four-light window is a series of scenes from the life of our patron, St Paul. In chronological order these are: the stoning of St Stephen; the Conversion of St. Paul; Ananias giving sight to the convert; divine honours offered at Lystra; St Paul’s deliverance from prison; before Felix, the governor; shipwreck on journey to Rome; St Paul’s martyrdom in Rome, AD 64.

In tribute to Daniel Mitchell, the upper part of the window is full of musical imagery, the heavenly host praising God with voice and instruments, and the figures of King David of Israel with his harp and St. Cecilia, patron saint of music and musicians.

*The senior partner, Oliver Gourlay Miller, was a Vestryman at St. Paul’s in the 1860s.