History Scotland January February 2016

A CENTURY OF STYLE NEW EXHIBITION OF VICTORIAN FASHION
Vol.16 No.1 January/February 2016
REBELLION
NEW SERIES
WITH A CAUSE?
Behind the
scenes at
National
Museum of
Scotland
Rediscovering
the Jacobites
300 years on
REVEALED
Gaelic
education
in the
19th-century
Highlands
Preparing
for death in
medieval
times
THE FACE OF
DARK AGE
SCOTLAND
VIOLENCE AND MURDER IN
POST ROMAN EDINBURGH
DISGUISE, DANGER & DECEIT: A FEMALE CROFTERS

INCREDIBLE DOUBLE LIFE IN HUDSONS BAY
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H I S TO RY SC OT LA ND - SE P T E MB E R / O C TO B E R 2015
01/12/2015 15:40
History
PATRONS
David Breeze
Christopher Smout Historiographer Royal
Elizabeth Ewan University of Guelph
EDITORIAL BOARD
Mr Derek Alexander
Archaeologist,
National Trust for Scotland
Dr John Atkinson
Managing Director
GUARD Archaeology Ltd
Medieval and post-medieval
settlement and industry
Dr Aonghus Mackechnie
Principal Inspector of
Historic Buildings, Historic
Scotland (Architecture,
c.1600 - 1750)
Dr Ann MacSween
Principal Inspector, Historic
Scotland (Prehistory)
Prof Hugh Cheape

Sabhal Mor Ostaig College,
University of the Highlands
and Islands
Dr Colin Martin
Honorary Reader in
Maritime Archeology
University of St Andrews
George Dalgleish
Keeper, Scottish History
and Archaeology, National
Museums Scotland,
Edinburgh. Scottish decorative
arts, specifically silver, ceramics
& pewter; Jacobite collections
Neil McLennan
Writer, education manager
and Past President of the
Scottish Association of
Teachers of History
Dr Piers Dixon
Operations Manager at
the Royal Commission on
the Ancient and Historical
Monuments of Scotland
(RCAHMS), (rural settlement
and medieval archaeology)
Mr Andrew Dunwell
Director, CFA Archaeology,
Edinburgh (Later prehistory
and Roman)
Mark A Hall
History Officer (archaeology
collections) at Perth
Museum & Art Gallery.
Dr Kevin James
Dept of History and Scottish
Studies Programme,
University of Guelph, Canada
Dr S Karly Kehoe
Senior Lecturer in History
in modern history at the
University of Glasgow
Caledonian
Dr Catriona MacDonald
Reader in Late Modern
Scottish History
Cynthia J. Neville
George Munro
Professor of History
and Political Economy,
Dalhousie University
www.historyscotland.com
Volume 16, Number 1
January/February 2016
FROM THE EDITOR

As we enter a new year I would firstly like to pause to thank
you all for your continued support of History Scotland.
Your input in terms of articles, posts and blogs enriches the
magazine and its growing online presence.
It very much looks as though 2016 is going to be an exciting year for many
reasons, not the least the continuing progress of Land Reform in Scotland.
We also have a new public lead body for our historic environment and the progress
of Historic Environment Scotland will be of great interest to many.
As usual in this edition we have a wide spread of interesting material, ranging
from the medieval to the modern, and a good mix of history, environment, health,
archaeology, and conservation.
As you may have seen, we are currently working on a special standalone issue of
History Scotland featuring the latest research and opinions on the lives and reigns
of the Stewart monarchs from Robert II (1316-1390) through to James VI (15661625). The souvenir magazine will be available in UK newsagents from March, but
is already available to pre-order via our website for a special 'early bird' price, so do
take a look at: http://scot.sh/KingsandQueens
Happy New Year!
Dr Allan Kennedy
Research Associate in
British/Scottish History,
University of Manchester
Prof Angela McCarthy
Scottish and Irish History,
University of Otago
Dr Iain MacInnes
Lecturer in Scottish
History, University of the
Highlands and Islands.
Prof Richard Oram
Scottish Medieval History
& Environmental History,
University of Stirling
Matt Ritchie
Archaeologist,
Forestry Commission
Dr Alasdair Ross
Reader in Medieval and
Environmental History,
University of Stirling
Mr Geoffrey Stell
Architectural Historian
Dr Simon Taylor
Scottish place-names,
Dr Fiona Watson
Historian, writer and
broadcaster
Dr Alex Woolf
Senior lecturer in History,
University of St Andrews
History Scotland was launched in October 2001 at the

Royal Museum in Edinburgh by Professor Christopher
Smout, Historiographer Royal, who is now one of the
magazines patrons. It is backed by the Scottish history and
archaeology professions with leading representatives from
a variety of different disciplines on the Editorial Board.
Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed
in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life and
the British Humanities Index
p03 EDS LETTER.indd 3
SCOTLAND
history
SCOTLAND
MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS

Elizabeth Ritchie is a lecturer at the Centre for History, University of
the Highlands and Islands. When she is not reading about 19th-century
Highlanders, she can usually be found cycling around Sutherland
thinking about how the Highlanders organised their settlements and used
the land, and what their family lives were like.
On page 42 Elizabeth explores how 19th-century crofters, ministers
and charities worked together to provide education in the far north.
Dr Lindsay Reid has a background as a midwife and gained a PhD from
the University of Glasgow in the history of midwifery in Scotland. She
works from home in Fife, researching, writing and speaking about her
main subject, as well as working on Scottish historical fiction.
Lindsays two-part feature on the centenary of the Midwives (Scotland)
Act continues on page 33 as she examines how the outbreak of World
War I led to an urgent need for qualified midwives.
Jennifer Geller holds an M.Res in History from the University of Stirling,
an MAT from the University of Pittsburgh, and a BA from Carnegie
Mellon University. She teaches history and social science at Central High
School in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
In this issue (page 24), Jennifer explores the early history of the Devon
Colliery in Clackmannanshire and takes a look at how its environmental
impact was perceived in the 19th century.
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CONTENTS
IN-DEPTH FEATURES
16 Isobel Gunn in Orkney
The fascinating story of a female Orkney crofter who disguised
herself as a man in order to undertake the harsh and dangerous life
of a Hudsons Bay trader
33 The 1915 Midwives (Scotland) Act

In part two of our study of this landmark Midwives Act, we
discover how the outbreak of World War I caused an urgent need
for qualified midwives
24 The Devon Colliery: A Clackmannanshire conundrum

An exploration of the history of the Devon Colliery and Iron Works
which dominated industrial life in Clackmannanshire yet were the
focus of tension due to their environmental impact
42 Gaelic schools in the Northern Highlands

We explore how 19th-century Highland communities turned the
provision of evangelical schools to their own advantage, using
them as a means of learning to read and as a place for socialising
FEATURES
8
A century of style
Eye-catching fashions from an
exhibition on Victorian style
10
22
NEW! Behind the scenes at NMS

Our new series reveals some of the
treasures which will be revealed
when National Museum of Scotland
opens ten new galleries in 2016
History news
Top heritage award for the
Bannockburn Centre and the
achievements of pioneer explorer
Isabella Bird
31
Banished!
Report on a medieval history play
staged by Lismore Gaelic Heritage
Centre and Lismore islanders
Rebellion with a cause?

National Archives records relating to
the 1715 Jacobite Rising
ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS
12
23
Showing Scotland to the world

Scotlands Blue Badge tour
guides discuss their work
40
15th-century Scottish kingship

The potency of royal power in the
reign of James I
46
Preparing for the afterlife

Funerals in the Middle Ages
50
A CENTURY
OF STYLE
David Dale: new research

Were the achievements of the textile
pioneer deliberately underplayed?
NEW EXHIBITION
Vol.16 No.1
OF VICTORIAN
FASHION
DEATH OF A KING
THE SHOCKING PRICE
hi
story
SC OT LA
bruary 2016
January/Fe
PAID FOR GUNPOW
DER MANIA
Vol.15 No.6 November/Decem
ber 2015
REBELLION
E?
WITH A CAUS
Rediscovering
the Jacobites
300 years on
NEW SERIES
DISCOVERED
THE SCOTTISH
SOLDIER WHO
FOUGHT FOR
GARIBALDI
Preparing
for death in
medieval
times
ER IN
AND MURD
H
VIOLENCE
N EDINBURG
POST ROMA
Was the National

Covenant really
signed in
a kirkyard?
LIFE ON THE EDGE
THE LAST
ST KILDANS
THE FACE OF
DARK AGE
SCOTLAND
ARCHAEOLOG
Y
SCOTLANDS
EARLIEST
PICTISH FORT
DISCOVERED
ND
Behind the
scenes at
National
Museum of
Scotland
REVEALED
Gaelic
education
in the
19th-century
Highlands
PLUS
4.20
UNCOVERING THE
HOW CENTURIES CELTS: ANCIENT DNA RESEARCH
OF
WITH NEW MIDWIFE TRADITION CLASHED
RE-ASSESSING THE RY REGULATIONS
1997 REFERENDUM
02
527019
9 771475
scotland.com
www.history
13
09:31
12
9 771475 527019
www.historyscotla
4.20
02/12/2015
P01 COVER.indd
nd.com
13
05/10/2015 09:08
p5 Contents - replace cover at bottom with new.indd 5
14
15
Dark Age Edinburgh

New technology reveals the faces
of post Roman skeletons discovered
in a mass grave in Cramond
Mass grave discovery
17th-century skeletons discovered
in Durham revealed as battle of
Dunbar prisoners
Early history of rickets
A Neolithic skeleton found on
the island of Tiree demonstrates
the earliest caes of rickets
discovered in the UK
49
Curators pick
Three objects with an intriguing
history from the collections of
Glencoe Folk Museum
52
Join History Scotland

Your first two issues for just 1
53
Book reviews
The latest Scottish history
and archaeology titles
58
Diary Dates
Lectures, exhibitions and festivals.
Plus, spotlight on winter lectures
60
Spotlight on...
The Scottish Archive of Print &
Publishing History Records
61
Family history news

Newburgh History Society spotlight.
Plus, research advice
from genealogist Chris Paton
62
Final word
Matt Ritchie on his approach to
cultural resource management
2 issues for 1
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02/12/2015 12:48
HISTORY NEWS
Kitchener memorial to benefit
from new round of centenary
war memorial grants
The exposed cliff top location

of the Kitchener Memorial
means it is beginning to show
signs of weather damage
he Kitchener Memorial at Marwick Head in Orkney

is the latest Scottish war memorial to benefit from
funding of 190,000 from the War Memorials Trust
for essential repairs and maintenance.
The memorial, which stands on an exposed cliff edge next to
the sea, has had to withstand extensive weathering which has
led to the cracking of the mortar within the joints and on the
surrounding hard landscaping, allowing water to get into the
memorial. Over the years there have been some changes to the
memorial; the original access has been blocked up preventing
current assessment of the condition of the roof. The inscription
on the commemorative plaque is also difficult to read as there
are lead letters missing.
The grant funding will support works to undertake
extensive re-pointing and repairs to the surrounding hard
landscape, and the original door in the tower will be opened
up and a door fitted to match the original. This will allow
access into the base of the tower for maintenance purposes.
In addition, repair works will be undertaken at roof level
and missing lead letters from the inscription plaque will be
replaced on a like-for-like basis.
Other memorials to benefit from the latest round of grants
include the Helensburgh War Memorial, Caledonian Station War
Memorial, Royal Scots Grey War Memorial and the Glasgow
Academy War Memorial.
p06-07 News.indd 6
This Kitchener Memorial funding brings the total amount

offered to 67 Scottish war memorials since the scheme was
launched in 2013 to 528,000. A total pot of 1 million was
made available for the centenary, in order for communities to
repair and restore their own monuments, and communities can
still apply for a share of this funding. It is believed that up to
ten percent of Scotlands estimated 6,000 war memorials are in
either poor or very bad condition, so there is scope for many
more projects to benefit from the grant scheme.
Frances Moreton, Director of the War Memorials Trust
said: The charity is delighted at the level of interest in this
scheme and the enthusiasm of people across the country to do
something about the condition of their memorials. There are
still plenty of funds available for the right projects so get in
touch to see if we can help your local war memorial.
I am certain that we can maintain the current momentum
to ensure that Scotlands memorials are in the best possible
condition in preparation for the centenary commemoration of
the end of World War I. Also, I would like to remind everyone
that grants are available to memorials commemorating any
conflict for example, recent grants have supported World War
II and Waterloo memorials.
Find out more about the work of the War Memorials Trust
at their website: www.warmemorials.org
02/12/2015 14:33
Top heritage award for

Bannockburn Centre
he Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre has beaten off competition

from the likes of Stonehenge and the King Richard III Visitor Centre
to win two awards at the Association of Heritage Awards.
The awards ceremony took place at the new Stonehenge
Visitor Centre, where Bannockburn beat off competition from heritage sites
across the UK to win both the visitor/ interpretation centre category and the
coveted AHI Award for Excellence in Interpretation. The AHI Award was
selected by the awards judging panel from the five category winners to be
named best overall project of 2015.
The panel scrutinised the interpretive planning, processes and execution
behind the project, as well as the overall visitor experience. After a thorough
read of the extensive application and a mystery visit, the judges assessed
whether the experience delivered.
Bannockburn Centre Property Manager Scott McMaster said: of the win
This is amazing recognition for the pioneering approach we have taken to
telling the story of the Battle of Bannockburn in our fantastic new centre.
We knew when we were creating this experience that it was amazing, and the
feedback we have had, both through the many awards we have received and
from more than 100,000 visitors confirms that.
This is the latest in a line of awards for the Bannockburn project. Other
accolades include the innovation category at the Museums & Heritage Awards
for Excellence, the best visitor attraction from the Association of Scottish
Visitor Attractions awards, best leisure/cultural building from the Scottish
Design Awards and winner of the education/learning website category at the
Herald Digital Business Scotland Awards.
The Battle of Bannockburn experience was supported by the Scottish
Government and the Heritage Lottery Fund and is open all year round, seven days
a week. Find out more at: http://battleofbannockburn.com
Documents reveal Nazi opposition

Historical documents discovered in a storeroom at the University of
Aberdeens Kings College campus have shed light on the universitys
opposition to Hitlers Nazi regime in the years leading up to World War Two.
The papers, which are in the form of minutes from a series of meetings
of the Law Faculty were contained within leather-bound books, and reveal
details of a request sent by the University of Amsterdam to Law Faculties
across Europe and the United States, asking for their support in a resolution
opposing political, ethnic and religious persecution.
The resolution highlighted with sorrow and dismay that people were being
persecuted and tormented on account of their faith, race or political convictions
and expressed concern over the use of so-called concentration camps.
The Faculty unanimously agreed
to support the resolution, and copies
were sent to Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain as well as the Herald,
Scotsman and Press and Journal, along
with a covering letter highlighting the Law
Facultys support.
Read the Universitys Law School blog at:
aberdeenunilaw.wordpress.com
SCOTTISH EXPLORERS
Isabella Bird
Not Scots-born, but linked with
Scotland through her marriage and
her home on the Isle of Mull, Isabella
Bird was diminutive, dauntless, and
almost indestructible writes Jo Woolf
orn in 1831 in
Boroughbridge,
North Yorkshire,
Isabella Lucy Bird
enjoyed an extraordinary life
of adventure that shocked and
fascinated her strait-laced peers:
The tripod of my camera served
for a candle stand, and on it I
hung my clothes and boots at night,
out of the way of rats.With these
arrangements I successfully defied
the legions of vermin which infest
Korean and Chinese inns...
Isabellas travels in Tibet
and western China led her
into serious danger. Her
appearance often spooked the
villagers and on one occasion
she was pursued and knocked
unconscious by a howling mob.
One local custom offered
a curious and effective way of preventing violence.
Speaking to the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
in November 1897, Isabella told of her unconventional
bodyguard as she progressed through Sichuan:
Two handsome laughing girls, distaff in hand,
fearless and full of fun... enlivened the way as far as
Chute. Before starting, each of the girls put on an
extra petticoat. Had any molestation been seriously
threatened, after protesting and calling on all present
to witness the deed, they would have taken off the
additional garments, spreading them solemnly on the
ground, there to remain till the outrage had been either
atoned for or forgiven, the nearest man in authority
being bound to punish the offender
Standing less than five feet tall, Isabella Bird
was blessed with courage, common sense and an
insatiable curiosity. She was one of the best-selling
travel writers of her time, and she also became a
skilled photographer. She married an Edinburgh
surgeon, John Bishop, but was widowed within six
years. In later life she lived at Tobermory, where
she paid for a town clock to be built in memory of
her sister, Henrietta. She was made a Fellow of the
Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 1890, the first
woman to receive this honour.
For more on Scottish explorers and the Royal Scottish
Geographical Society, visit: www.rsgs.org
p06-07 News.indd 7
02/12/2015 09:33
A Century of Style
Costume & Colour 1800-1899
Rebecca Quinton, curator at the Kelvingrove Museum, explores

historic exhibits from a new exhibition which celebrates Glasgows
role in the competitive world of Victorian fashion
ased on three years of

research, a new exhibition
named A Century of Style
explores the story of 100
years of Glasgow fashions, with a look at
the exquisite clothing produced for wealthy
patrons, as well as those involved in the
production of the raw materials and the sale of
the finished product.
The displays feature dresses and outfits
made with delicate embroidered cottons and
elaborate woven silks, as well as beautiful
wedding dresses and opulent evening gowns.
Leading Glaswegian department stores and
dressmakers are represented in the exhibition
and there is also a wide range of accessories
on show, including delicate jewellery,

bonnets, colourful shawls, purses and even a
metamorphic parasol.
The exhibits are taken from the collections
of Glasgow Museums, which have
been donated over a period of
more than 120 years. Both
individuals and businesses
donated items over the years,
starting in the 1870s.
The century covered by the exhibition
coincides with Glasgows growth as a
manufacturer on a global scale and, according
to Kelvingrove Museum curator Rebecca
Quinton, Glasgows place at the heart of
the fashion industry was thanks in no small
measure to the strength of its other industries:
Glasgow had quite a large role to play
in the fashion industry, particularly
in terms of the fabrics that were
woven and printed in the area.
There were large dyeworks
in the city and chemists
producing chemicals for
those dye factories.
In terms of the
Top: dress by R Simpson & Sons, Glasgow, c.1883-85; right: dress, c.1857;
Above: the exhibition includes Victorian fashions for men, women and
children created in an age when Glasgow was renowned for its clothes
production, and exported textiles and finished garments around the world
p08-09 style.indd 8
citys place in the Empire, we have also

noted that as the 19th century progressed,
some of the larger department stores
were selling, not just to Glasgow, but to
countries as far afield as Australia and
Canada. Members of the Scottish diaspora
were seemingly going to and fro, buying
clothes and taking them out to places such
as Australia; during our research we have
even found adverts for Glasgow stores in
New Zealand publications.
Glasgows status as a major port also
played its part in bringing the fashion
industry to the area, because as raw textiles
such as cotton were brought into Glasgow
via the Clyde, they could be printed and
embroidered in or close to the city.
So what would life have been like for
fashion industry workers at this time? We
have found two types of working
conditions, says Rebecca. To begin
with, people would have been
working long hours for poor
money but at the start of the
19th century, they would
have been employed by
small establishments,
or doing piecework at
home. As the century
progressed, factories for
the ready to wear market
began to emerge, although
alongside this, legislation
to protect workers was
also coming into force.
And this legislation
certainly was enforced
I recently came
across a notice in
the Glasgow Herald
announcing that
Miss Armour, a
dressmaker in the
city, had been
fined 1/2s for
breach of the
Factory Act for
keeping her dressmakers working until late on
a Saturday afternoon.
02/12/2015 09:36
Scottish fashion
Several of the items featured in the

exhibition were donated by one family, such
as the Houstouns of Johnstone Castle in
Renfrewshire. Researching the stories behind
these garments has given Rebecca the chance
to find out more about the lifestyles of those
wealthy enough to buy finely crafted garments:
It has been nice to put the people back into
the family tree, and it is nice to know that in
some cases we have examples of the clothes
worn by three generations of one family.
Some of these items also reflect the familys
heritage; there is a lovely white muslin dress
in the exhibition which is embroidered with
cornsheaves and dates back to the 1820s. We
found out that it was worn by Ann Stirling,
who was one of the daughters of businessman
John Stirling of Kippendavie and Mary
Graham. It is interesting that the dress is made
of cotton, as Anns father in law established a
cotton mill in the area.
As for childrens clothing, apart from
clothing for toddlers, the styles would echo
those found in adult clothing, so from the
age of about three a boy would be dressed
as a little gentleman; weve got some great
examples of little velvet suits for boys.
My favourite item in the exhibition is a
beautiful dress from the early 1860s in a
light purple wool. There is just something
about it, the way it lies, and how it looks
when put on a mannequin. It is beautifully
cut with a nice camberwork border and
the colour may mean it was worn as halfmourning, which many people adopted after
the death of Prince Albert in 1861.
Once the exhibition closes in February,
items in the collection will go back into
special, temperature-controlled storage in
acid-free boxes, however, Rebecca hopes to
help ensure that members of the public can
continue to enjoy the clothes. The clothing
will go into temporary specialist storage
but will soon move into what we hope will
become a specialised textile store meaning we
can provide more access. At the moment we
do viewing sessions, where people can come
along and get the chance to see the items up
close, examine their fastenings and linings,
for example. We will also be able to allow
fashion students to access the collections.
Above: shoes by J Macneille, Ayr, c.1830

Below left: dress, c.1863; below right: dress by Madame
Merlot-Larcheveque, Paris, c.1880-82
A Century of Style: Costume & Colour

is at the Kelvingrove Museum until 14
February, 2016.Tickets: 5 per adult/
3 concession/ under sixteens free.
Kelvingrove Museum, Argyle
Street, Glasgow G3 8AG;
tel: 0141 276 9599; website:
www.glasgowlife.org.uk/
museums/kelvingrove
p08-09 style.indd 9
02/12/2015 14:33
CUTTING EDGE
CONSERVATION
In the first of a new series looking behind the scenes as the National Museum of Scotland
prepares to open ten new galleries, Isabell Wagner talks about recent conservation work she
has been carrying out on a silver-gilt travelling service which belonged to Napoleons sister
n summer 2016, ten new

galleries will open at the
National Museum of
Scotland in Edinburgh,
creating compelling and
inspiring interpretations of applied
art, design and fashion, alongside
cutting-edge science and technology.
This exciting 14 million
project, supported by the
Heritage Lottery Fund, will
see over 3,000 objects going on
display many of them for the
first time in generations and we
conservators have been very busy
behind the scenes getting them
ready for the opening.
One of the most fascinating
objects I have been working
on is the travelling service of
the Emperor Napoleons sister,
Princess Pauline Borghese. One
of National Museums Scotlands
great treasures, the service was
supplied by Napoleons official
goldsmith in connection with
Paulines marriage to Prince

Camillo Borghese in 1803.
It contains over 100 silver-gilt
items intended for washing and
dressing, eating and drinking, and
everything else that a lady might need
when travelling. In addition to tea
and coffee pots, plates and cutlery,
the contents include a ewer and
basin, scent bottles, combs, mirrors,
toothbrushes and a tongue scraper.
How it came to this country
is interesting in itself. In 1825
Princess Pauline bequeathed the
travelling service to Alexander,
10th duke of Hamilton, who was
a great admirer of hers. He was
a prolific art collector and her
bequest inspired him to commission
Napoleons former architect
Charles Percier to produce designs
for the new interiors of Hamilton
Palace the greatest powerhouse
and treasure house in Scotland until
its demolition in the 1920s. The
service was acquired by National
10
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Isabell carrying out

conservation work on
a silver gilt travelling
service which
belonged to Princess
Pauline Borghese
Museums Scotland in 1986, with

assistance from the National
Heritage Memorial Fund and the
Art Fund.
Preparing the service for its
re-display has been one of the
biggest conservation jobs of the
project, requiring over 250 hours
of conservation time.
At National Museums Scotlands
conservation laboratories,
conserving silver-gilt objects involves
cleaning surface pollutants from all
surfaces and then removing tarnish
(corrosion-forming silver sulphide).
With most methods of tarnish
removal, however careful we are,
we risk losing the uppermost layers
of the silver-gilt surface during the
process. We are therefore keen to
reduce the need to remove tarnish
again in the future.
The new galleries will feature
airtight cases which include
compartments which will contain
humidity and pollution controls.
02/12/2015 09:37
Behind the scenes at

Keeping humidity and ultraviolet
light levels low and filtering out air
pollutants can mean that silver on
display stays untarnished for decades.
The starting point for display,
however, is a pollutant-free silvergilt object. To achieve this, I began
by using small cloths cut from a
soft, white cotton T-shirt to clean
all the surfaces with white spirit,
then alcohol or acetone. It can be
surprising how most of the tarnish
will sometimes be removed with
just the very soft abrasion of the
cotton, and this was the case with
the Borghese service. After this
initial clean, there were still some
patches of thicker silver corrosion.
As the gilt layer on historic pieces,
such as this service is often thin
from use, I needed to avoid using
any silver cleaning products.
Instead I used a new tool
which we have recently added to
our metals conservation kit: an
electrolytic pen specially designed
for converting silver corrosion back
to silver metal. Unlike electrolytic
reduction techniques used in the
past, this pen precisely controls
the whole process, avoiding the
problems of micro-pitted surfaces
and pollutant redeposition.
It requires training to use but its
results are very satisfying for the
conservator. When cleaning the
gilded silver surfaces of the Borghese
travelling service, the high-tech
electrolytic pen preserved all of the
remaining gilt layer and protected
the silver underneath.
As a final step, each of the objects
which make up the Borghese
travelling service has now been
safely packed away in special
corrosion-inhibiting bags made
of cotton imbued with reactive
Clockwise from above left: the individual items of the service; Isabell with the electrolytic pen; care has to be taken to avoid
silver particles, until their turn
damaging the thin gilt layer on the items; the service will now be safely stored until the new galleries open
comes for installation in our new
galleries next summer. The service
will be displayed in our new Art of
EXCLUSIVE READER OFFER!
Living gallery, which will contain
National Museums Scotland Membership gives you unlimited free entry
many of our greatest works of art;
to Scotlands award-winning national museums, where you can discover
expressions of beauty and skill, taste
amazing treasures and inspiring stories.
and learning, power and devotion.
History Scotland readers can enjoy 5 off all categories of Membership.
Pay by card, cheque or annual Direct Debit; to purchase e-mail:
Isabell Wagner is Assistant Conservator
membership@nms.ac.uk or call: 0131 247 4294 quoting History Scotland.
at National Museums Scotland
For more details and terms and conditions visit: http://scot.sh/nms-offer
p10 NMS.indd 11
11
02/12/2015 09:38
ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS
Edinburghs Dark Age residents

NEW FACIAL RECONSTRUCTIONS
SHED LIGHT ON
Archaeologists have used the latest technology to re-create the faces of skeletons
discovered in a mass grave in Cramond, which include a warrior and a murder victim
he village of Cramond,
situated to the west of
Edinburgh, is possibly the
oldest occupied village in
Scotland, with archaeological remains
dating back to c.8600BC. However,
since its excavation in the 1950s, it is
the Roman fort at the centre of the
village which has been the focus of
archaeological research.
The investigation of this site has
challenged much of what was previously
known about the longevity and nature
of Roman occupation in Scotland
during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD
and also about the post-Roman and
early medieval occupation of this region.
During the construction works
for a new car park in 1975, the
12
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Six of the eight

Cramond individuals
investigated grew up
in the Lothians
remains of the forts bathouse were

discovered. During the subsequent
excavations of the site in 1976,
the City of Edinburgh Councils
Archaeology Service (CECAS)
made an unexpected discovery a
mass grave containing the remains
of nine adults and three newborns,
discovered within the latrine
attached to the forts bathhouse.
At the time of the excavation,
the burials were not scientifically
dated, with dating instead based on
the presence of locally produced
medieval pottery, from associated
midden deposits filling the latrine.
With the aid of a grant from
the local community (Cramond
Heritage Trust) over the last two
years, CECAS has undertaken
an extensive reinvestigation of
these remains, in partnership with
Aberdeen University, University
of Edinburgh and Natural History
Museum in London.
The most significant early
discovery came from radiocarbon
dating of the adult individuals. The
results showed that the individuals
actually died 800 years earlier than
previously thought, in the postRoman period, probably between
550-600AD.
The new analysis showed that the
twelve individuals had not been
buried at the same time as initially
thought. Instead, they had been
buried individually or in small groups
during two main phases of burial.
The forensic analysis of the
02/12/2015 14:34
BURIAL 1 (WARRIOR)
skeletons revealed much about the
lifestyles of the individuals. The
results found that they were all in
good health, however some evidence
for minor injuries such as fractured
bones were recorded. The lack of
severe injuries and the fact that three
individuals lived beyond 45 years may
be an indication of high status.
Although the forensic analysis
was unable to determine the cause
of death of six of the Cramond
skeletons, at least two of the other
individuals appear to have been
murdered. Two adult females and
one adult of undetermined sex were
all buried during the last phase of
burial and each had suffered violent
blows to the head. These injuries
happened just before or at the time
of death and were fatal, as there are
no signs of healing in the bone.
Isotype analysis
In order to discover whether the
individuals buried at Cramond
lived locally prior to their death,
archaeological scientists at the
University of Aberdeen carried out
isotopic analysis on the collagen from
the skulls of each of the adult skeletons.
Isotype analysis also showed that
six of the eight tested had spent
their childhoods in the local area
(Lothian) while two spent their
childhoods further afield. Burial 1,
an adult male aged 25-35, grew up
in either Peebleshire, Lanarkshire or
Argyll/ Loch Lomondside. Burial 8,
an adult male aged over 45, however
probably grew up much further
Burial 7 was a warrior aged

between 18 and 25 years old
field, probably either in the Inner

Hebrides, the Isle of Skye, Canna,
Rum, or Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall.
Questions surround how the
individual named burial 8 came to be
buried at Cramond. Was he an early
local saint or monk? Both the Inner
Hebrides and Cornwall are known to
have been important early Christian
centres at this time, however as the
abbey at Iona was not founded until
565AD, the date of death of this
individual (c.450-550AD) would rather
indicate that he was secular, possibly a
warrior, attracted to the court
of Goddodin.
By the date of their death in the
6th century AD, the inhabitants
buried at Cramond formed part of
the early Christian kingdom of the
Gododdin, based in Lothian and
south east Scotland. What makes
the Cramond burial site stand out
as possibly unique is that it is unlike
any of its contemporaries, as the
normal Christian practice was to
be buried in east-west orientated
stone-lined graves.
At Cramond, the burial site is a
mass grave containing a mixed
group of burials deposited at
different times over a short period.
The site of the bathhouse appears
to have been carefully chosen for
these burials and it is possible that
it was partially rebuilt as a small
chapel, with the latrine reused as a
crypt, possibly for a family.
The special nature of these
burials may also add weight to
the argument that Cramond was
the Goddodin royal stronghold of
Iudeu, mentioned by Bede as being
located in the middle of the Firth of
Forth, but whose exact location has
so far remained elusive.
Many mysteries still surround the
Cramond grave and it may never be
known exactly who these individuals
were or why they were buried here.
However, what is certain is that the
re-analysis of this mysterious burial
is opening up a new window into
the turbulent history of Dark Age
Cramond and northern Britain.
The Roman & Dark Age Cramond
exhibition is at Museum of
Edinburgh until 27 February, 2016.
142-146 Canongate, EH8 8DD; tel:
0131 529 4143; website:
http://scot.sh/hsxmuse
MALE, 26-35 YEARS

DATE OF BURIAL:
540-610AD
Isotopic analysis
Spent final years
preceding death in the
local area (Cramond,
Edinburgh, Lothians)
Grew up in either
Peeblesshire, Lanarkshire or
further afield in Argyll/ Loch Lomondside,
in the British kingdom of Alt Clut (Strathclyde)
Forensic report
Evidence of sharp and blunt force injuries
Blunt injury, known as a depressed fracture above
the left eye. Probably caused by a blunt weapon
such as the butt of a spear shaft
Two cut marks caused by a sharp-edged weapon on
the right side of the head above the eye, caused by a
sharp edged weapon such as a sword or spear
Signs of one of the injuries having been infected
at some point, identified by pitting on the skull
surrounding the injury
Unlikely to have been caused by a single blow as
they are on slightly different alignments
Not possible to determine which injury came first
but may have been part of a single attack
BURIAL 5 (MURDER VICTIM)

FEMALE, 18-25 YEARS
DATE OF BURIAL:
430-570AD
Isotopic analysis
Grew up locally (Cramond,
Edinburgh, Lothians)
Spent final years preceding
death in the area
Forensic report
Evidence of blunt-force injury
A large egg-shaped depression to the right side of
the skull which would have left the brain exposed.
Could have been caused by a weapon such as the
butt end of a spear
Piece of bone still partially attached and five
fractures radiate from the injury
Chipping to right molar may be further evidence for
violent assault
Bulging of the skull immediately behind it would
have caused further damage to the brain
13
02/12/2015 14:35
Archaeology news
17th-century
Scottish soldiers
found in mass
grave in Durham
New analysis carried out on skeletons discovered
in a centuries-old mass grave in Durham has led
experts to conclude they are the remains of Scottish
soldiers taken prisoner after the Battle of Dunbar
esearchers at Durham
University have
concluded that the
identification of the
remains as the Dunbar prisoners
was the only plausible explanation
when scientific data was analysed
alongside historical information.
The Battle of Dunbar was one
of the most brutal, bloody and
short battles of the 17th-century
civil wars. In less than an hour, the
English Parliamentarian army, under
the command of Oliver Cromwell,
defeated the Scottish Covenanting
army who supported the claims of
Charles II to the Scottish throne.
Although the exact figures are not
known, it is thought that around
1,700 Scottish soldiers died of
malnutrition, disease and cold
after being marched over 100 miles
from the south east of Scotland to
Durham, where they were imprisoned
in Durham cathedral and castle, by
then disused for several years.
What happened to their bodies
has been a mystery for almost 400
years, but the Durham University
researchers believe they have begun to
solve the puzzle.
In November 2013, during
construction of a new caf for the
Universitys Palace Green Library,
human remains were uncovered by
Durham University
archaeologists who were
present throughout the building work.
The jumbled skeletons of at least
seventeen and up to 28 individuals
were subsequently excavated from
two burial pits (a 29th individual
was not exhumed). Since then,
researchers have been carrying out
a wide range of tests to try and
establish their identities.
Experts initially considered that
most of the evidence was consistent
with the bodies being those of the
Scottish soldiers but could not draw
a firm conclusion from research
conducted in 2014 because initial
radiocarbon dating analysis indicated
a slightly earlier date of death than
the Dunbar battle.
However, further radiocarbon
dating analysis of four additional
samples, which were carefully selected
to ensure a more precise result, in
combination with the fact that some
of the prisoners had smoked
clay pipes known to
be in common use in
Scotland after 1620 has
concluded that the date
of death was between
1625 and 1660.
When these dates are
combined with the nature
of the graves; the results
of earlier scientific and
observational tests that
established the adult skeletons
14
Above: the jumbled

skeletons of up to
28 individuals were
excavated from the
mass grave
Inset: the skeletons
were aged
predominantly
between 13 and 25
years old
Experts at Durham
University worked
on identifying
the remains
were all male; the fact that the

skeletons were predominantly aged
between 13 and 25; and as isotope
analysis showed the skeletons were
of likely Scottish origin: this evidence
points to their identification as the
prisoners from the Dunbar battle.
A team of experts from
Archaeological Services Durham
University the Universitys
commercial archaeology consultancy
unit and academics from the
departments of Archaeology and
Earth Sciences, worked together to
excavate and analyse the skeletons.
Richard Annis, senior
archaeologist, Archaeological
Services Durham University, said:
This is an extremely significant
find, particularly because it sheds
new light on a 365-year-old mystery
of what happened to the bodies of
the soldiers who died.
Their burial was a military
operation: the dead bodies were
tipped into two pits, possibly
over a period of days. They
were at the far end of
what would have been the
Durham Castle grounds, as
far as possible from the castle
itself they were out of sight,
out of mind.
It is quite possible that there
are more mass graves under what
are now university buildings that
would have been open ground in the
early to mid-17th century.
02/12/2015 09:50
Tiree skeleton reveals

early history of rickets
Rickets has been identified in a Neolithic skeleton from the island of Tiree,
making it the earliest case of the disease in the UK, according to research
announced at the British Science Festival
he skeleton was
discovered along with
at least three other
burials during an
amateur excavation in 1912. Only
one of the skeletons was taken
off the island, and is now part of
the Hunterian collection at the
University of Glasgow, although
photographs of the others remain.
The skeleton was always assumed
to date from the same period as a
nearby Iron Age settlement.
However, recent radiocarbon
dating by a team from the
Universities of Bradford and
Durham showed the skeleton
was actually much earlier from
between 3340BC and 3090
BC placing it firmly in the
Neolithic period. The skeleton
is a woman, aged between
25 and 30 years, measuring
between 4 9 and 411
(145-150cm) which is short
even by Neolithic standards.
The bones show a number of
deformities that are caused
by rickets particularly in
the breastbone, ribs, and
the arms and legs. These
would have left the woman
pigeon-chested with
misshapen limbs typical
characteristics of the disease.
The isotopic analysis also showed
that she was local to the area
Above: the Tiree

skeleton skull
Right: 1912 sketch
showing original
position of stones
on the grave
Below: sketch
of skeleton from
the original dig
in 1912
Professor Ian Armit, University of Bradford
levels of strontium
were high, which is a
key characteristic of
ancient communities
living on islands such
as the wind-blown
Hebrides, where crops
were fertilised with
seaweed and subject to
salty sea-spray.
Professor Ian Armit
(pictured) from the
University of Bradford
explains: The earliest case
of rickets in Britain until
now dated from the Roman
period, but this discovery takes it
back more than 3,000 years.
There have been a few possible

cases in other parts of the world
that are around the same time, but
none as clear-cut as this. While
we cant say for certain that this is
the earliest case in the world, it is
definitely very unusual.
Vitamin D deficiency should not
be a problem for anyone exposed to
an outdoor lifestyle, so there must
have been particular circumstances
that restricted this womans access
to sunlight as a child. It is most
likely she either wore a costume
that covered her body or she
constantly remained indoors, but
whether this was because she held a
religious role, suffered from illness
or was a domestic slave, we will
probably never know.
15
02/12/2015 09:51
An Orkney woman
in Hudsons Bay
Part One
The
of Isobel
Gunn
Thesecret
storylife
of Isobel
Gunn
Jocelyn Rendall tells the incredible story of why a young female crofter chose
to leave her island home disguised as a man in order to embark upon the harsh
and dangerous life of a Hudsons Bay Company trader
n 29 October, 1809
the Hudsons Bay
Company ship
Prince ofWales was
sighted sailing into
Stromness harbour. The return of
the Company ships was always an
occasion for considerable excitement in
the town. Parents, wives, sweethearts,
who had waited for long years for
their men to return home, eagerly
watched the approaching sails. The
tippling houses prepared for a run of
business. Among all the men on board
impatiently watching the grey strip
of houses grow nearer, one woman
stood, a little apart, holding by the
hand a little boy not two years old.
Hers was the only face that showed no
excitement, no expectation of a happy
reunion with friends and family.
I have imagined Isobel Gunns
return to Stromness. Hers is a
remarkable adventure that was
embroidered in the telling from the
beginning, inspired poems and novels

and has become an essential item of
the literature of Hudsons Bay, but
only the outline of her story is known
for certain. In the summer of 1806, a
young Orkney woman dressed herself
in mens clothes and signed on with
the Company agent in Stromness as
John Fubbister. In early August she
landed in Moose Bay and for the
next seventeen months worked at
anything and well like the rest of the
men: labouring at the Company forts,
paddling and portaging heavy canoes
up river to collect furs. Apparently
no-one suspected her disguise until
the moment when she gave birth to a
baby in December 1807.
When I first read the story of
Isobel Gunn, I was sceptical that
a woman could possibly live with
a large number of men in the total
lack of privacy afforded by an 18thcentury sailing ship or labourers
barracks without her sex being
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p16 Women of Orkney.indd 16
Traders working for

the Hudsons Bay
Company in the
1870s, the difficult
work was deemed to
be only suitable for
men, forcing Isobel to
lead a double life
detected. However, Julie Wheelwright

has demonstrated that in fact Isobel
was one of an extraordinarily large
number of women who successfully
worked in male employment in
disguise, occasionally for romance
and adventure, but more often to
escape the suffocating tedium of
the work that was available to them
as women and to access the higher
wages and better social status and
conditions that were available to
working men. Around the time of
Isobels birth, Deborah Sampson,
alias Robert Shurtleff, was in action
in the American War of Independence
and became ADC to General
Paterson in 1783. Later she admitted
that she enlisted to have a little frolic
and to see how it would seem to put
on a mans clothing but chiefly for
the purpose of procuring a more
ample supply of money. Women
from several European countries
fought in the Napoleonic wars and a
02/12/2015 09:53
An Orkney woman in Hudsons

Drummond
Bay
number died at Waterloo. It is alleged

there were as many as 400 women
serving in regiments on both sides in
the American Civil War. Among them
was Emma Edmonds who joined up
aged nineteen and followed through
hard-fought battles, never flinched
from duty, and was never suspected
of being else than what she seemed.
The sheer number of female sailors
who worked on British ships in the
19th century is astonishing.
Less romantically, many working
class women found employment as
navvies, miners, dockers: often these
were widows or had been abandoned
by their husbands and had children
to support. The hard physical work
was no worse than was the normal lot
of a female farm labourer, or of a girl
growing up on an Orkney croft, like
Isobel Gunn. The interesting thing
about these stories is the common
thread running through them. All the
women longed for liberation from
the constraints of their smothering
clothing, from the powerlessness and
poverty, the lack of adventure and
opportunity that custom and culture
forced upon them. For a time at
least, they were perfectly successful in
their disguise and proved themselves
equally competent as, or even excelled,
their male colleagues in performing
their work, even when it required
heavy labour, the agility to climb a
ships rigging in a storm, or bravery
under fire. As soon as their disguise
was discovered, they were dismissed
from their employment, usually
treated with scorn, forced into female
dress and female work, suffered a
humiliating financial and social loss
and, in most cases, died in poverty.
The story of Isobel Gunn is not just
the strange adventure of an Orkney
girl, but the story of the anomalous
attitudes to working women who were
often obliged to support themselves
and their families by the hardest and
heaviest physical labour, yet debarred
from the better paid masculine roles
that were regarded as unfeminine
and unsuitable.
Isobel was born in 1780, the fourth
daughter in a family of one son and
five girls who were brought up in
Kirbister in the parish of Orphir.
It was a bleak time to grow up in
Orkney. The late 18th century saw
cycles of exceptionally cold, wet
seasons and unseasonal summer
storms which repeatedly ruined the

crops and brought famine to the
islands. When Isobel was two years
old, the savage weather destroyed the
crops not only in Orkney but all over
Scotland, England and even abroad
so that grain could only be bought
at an exorbitant price. In the mid
1780s the merchant laird William
Watt wrote: You cannot conceive the
for famine relief, which has

preserved the lives of many of the
inhabitants who must otherwise
have perished. Even in good years,
the small tenant farms offered scant
livelihood for large families. Boys
and girls worked as herds when they
were only nine or ten years old; by
the time they were in their teens
most boys had left their cramped
Isobel was one of an extraordinarily large

number of women who successfully worked
in male employment in disguise
situation of this country at present:

there is not an Article it produces
but has failed as well as the crops.
The death of cattle has been a sore
strock to the poorer sort of people.
The newly-introduced potato helped
families avoid starvation, but hunger
must have been a regular companion
of Isobels childhood.
The early years of the 19th
century brought little improvement.
In 1804 the Government sent
10,000 worth of meal to Orkney
Browns Close in
Stromness, a close
similar to the one
where Isobel would
have grown up
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homes to find work as labourers

on the big farms, or as fishermen,
or left the islands altogether to join
the merchant or Royal Navy, or the
whaling fleets that headed to the
Davis Straits. In increasing numbers
throughout the 18th century, they
sailed to Hudsons Bay.
The Hudsons Bay Company
(HBC) had been founded in 1670
to exploit the rich harvest of furs
discovered in the territory that
Charles II annexed for Britain as
Ruperts Land. For the first century
of its existence, the Company
operated from a few forts scattered
around the shores of Hudsons Bay.
In the spring, Indian trappers canoed
to the trading posts with furs and
exchanged them for manufactured
goods: knives, kettles, axes, beads,
needles and blankets. In summer two
or three ships sailed out from Britain
with fresh supplies and men and
returned in the early autumn before
the Bay froze, carrying furs and
retired employees who had finished
their contract. The trade brought
staggering profits to investors. The
pelts of arctic fox, otter, marten,
muskrat were all highly prized, but
above all it was the harmless and
civilised Beaver whose misfortune
it was to have a waterproof coat that
was the ideal material for European
gentlemens hats.
Englands almost constant state
of war made such a drain on her
manpower that it was hard for the
Committee that ran the HBC to
recruit servants. The Londoners that
the Navy had not already pressganged they found to have a poor
physique, a poor work ethic, and
17
02/12/2015 09:54
asaas
As soon as their
ship landed,
the new HBC
employees would
have begun
hunting, to build
up stocks for the
harsh winter ahead
Isobel could have
been in no doubt of
the harsh realities
that awaited those
brave enough to
leave Orkney for
Hudsons Bay
drank. They turned to Scots, who

they perceived to be more sober and
accustomed to deprivation, for that
countrie is a hard country to live
in and in 1702 they sent a ship to
Stromness for the first time, to hire
ten or twelve stout able young men.
The Company found Orcadians
to be good servants: so poor that
they were willing to work for low
wages, more sober and tractable
than the Irish, used to hard work
outdoors and to managing boats.
For the Orkney men, the Company
offered more stability than fishing or
whaling and, despite all the hazards,
a higher chance of survival than in
the Royal Navy, and good wages. In
the 1790s, a man might earn 3 or
4 a year drudging as a farm servant,
with miserable living conditions

and little hope of improvement or
promotion. As an unskilled labourer
in Company employment he could
earn 8, and there was the potential
for him to move rapidly up the
hierarchy as he learned skills such
as managing canoes. Craftsmen
such as blacksmiths and carpenters
and boat builders could earn twice
the basic wage.
One can imagine little, other than
family ties, that would have held a
young man in Orkney. Home for
the majority of the population was
a one-room, damp, windowless,
chimneyless hovel, often shared with
domestic animals. After six days
of toil, the Sabbath was no day of
rest or recreation but of enduring
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lengthy sermons in an equally

damp and cold kirk. Anyone who
absented themselves, or was seen
out of doors other than on their
way to the kirk, or was suspected of
other misdemeanours (sexual ones
take up most of the space in Kirk
Session minutes) was punished by
fines or penance exacted by the
Session. Isobel would have witnessed
the penitents sitting in sackcloth
on the stool of repentance and had
no illusions as to the Kirks zero
tolerance of anyone stepping out of
line. For the men, the promise that
there were no ministers at the Bay
and considerable sexual freedom to
be enjoyed with the Indian women
at the trading posts, unaccompanied
by retribution, was undoubtedly
attractive. By 1800, 418 of a total of
524 employees, or nearly 80 percent
of all the men in the HBCs pay,
were Orcadians.
Most of them were illiterate and
so signed on as labourers. Only a
few who were lucky enough to come
from wealthier backgrounds and get
a private education could access the
clerical jobs that led to the highly
paid Chief Factor posts. Theoretically,
there was a parochial school in every
parish supported by the heritors,
but in practice they were usually too
niggardly to pay their contribution
so sometimes there was no school
building at all (which seems to have
been the case when Isobel was a child)
and the schoolmasters were poorly
paid, when paid at all. Even when
a school was functioning, it was a
common complaint of the teachers
that children were often kept at home
to help with the farm work, and for
many of them in outlying areas of
extensive parishes, one central school
was just too far away to reach. Possibly
Isobel could read, it is unlikely that
she could write more than her name.
02/12/2015 09:54

Drummond
Bay
The society in which Isobel grew

up was overwhelmingly female.
Almost every family she knew had a
husband, son or brother working at
sea or abroad and by the mid 1790s
the population of many parishes
had dropped significantly since the
Webster census in 1755. There were
almost 100 more females than males
in Orphir, a parish of 855 souls;
in the village of Stromness, there
were 851 females to 493 males.
At the best of times, Orkney wives
and daughters were accustomed to
the heavy physical tasks of carrying
water from the well and peats from
the hill and ware from the shore.
Women milked the cow and cared
for the cattle in the byre, ground
grain in the quern, cooked over an
open fire, and produced children.
Men usually did the ploughing and
cultivating, but with so many of the
able-bodied (and more enterprising)
men absent, much of their share of
the work fell to the women, who also
had to take on the decision-making
roles that traditionally had belonged
to their men. Their only alternative
was to find work in service and if
there were no opportunities in the
big houses in Orkney, this meant
going to the cities in the south.
Isobel could not have
underestimated the dangers of life
in the Bay. She saw the cripples
who were carried off the ships
in the autumn, men maimed by
frostbite or by shooting accident
(like her brother George who was
invalided home in 1799 after eight
years service) or with their health
broken by the rigours of their
journeys. Orcadians were hardy
and accustomed to handling small
fishing boats in all weathers, but
they had no experience of sub-arctic
winters with temperatures that
plunged to minus 50 degrees, of
steering birch bark canoes through
rapids, of living off the land far from
friendly shelter or handling rifles
with frostbitten fingers. Death from
drowning, exposure or starvation
was not uncommon. But Isobel
would also have heard stories of
canoeing through great forests or
journeys on snowshoes through deep
snow (both almost unimaginable
to an Orcadian audience) of firelit
camps with friendly Indians or
astonishing encounters with wild
FIND OUT MORE

Using the records of the Hudsons Bay company
Hudsons Bay Company is the
oldest chartered trading company
in the world and, over the years,
became renowned for its meticulous
approach to record keeping. The
Hudsons Bay Company Archives, a
division of the Archives of Manitoba,
is based at Winnipeg in Canada.
Here, researchers can explore more
than 3,000 linear metres of documentary archives dating from 1671;
minute books for each year through to 1970; accounts, letters and diaries;
as well as photographs, maps and architectural drawings.
If you are unable to visit the archives in person, there are several
online finding aids on the website (http://scot.sh/hudsonhs) whilst some
of the archive material is available on microfilm through inter-institutional
loans. Archives staff can also undertake limited general research on behalf
of an individual and can advise on professional research services.
Hudsons Bay Company Archives, 130-200 Vaughan Street, Winnipeg MB,
Canada; tel: 204 945 4949; e-mail: hbca@gov.mb.ca;
website: http://scot.sh/hudsonhs
The building
housing the
Hudsons Bay
Company agency
until 1835. It is
the furthest right
building gable
end to the sea
animals, of frozen rivers, vast spaces

and great silences. There were some
who spoke with nostalgia for a life of
adventure in a new land, free from
the conventions and constraints of
Orkney society and family. Some,
after a winter of rain-laden skies
and mud, of low wages and hunger,
of exacting lairds and disapproving
ministers, returned to the agents
house in Stromness when the ships
called again in early summer.
When Isobel was in her teens,
there were 120 unmarried women
above the age of 20 in Orphir, so it
is not surprising that she was still
a spinster at the age of 25 when
she took her great decision. In the
spring of 1806 the HBC ship Prince
of Wales lay in Stromness harbour to

take on new supplies and recruits.
Recruitment had been difficult: due
to the war with France many of the
men in their prime had already been
pressed into the army or the navy.
David Geddes, the HBC agent,
would have been anxious to fill his
quota and perhaps he did not look at
the recruits who came to his office in
Stromness with too critical an eye.
It is not hard to imagine Isobel
passing for a man in her brothers
clothes and, in a society where only
men wore trousers, anyone wearing
trousers would be assumed to be
a man. After a life of hard physical
graft, outdoors in all weathers,
she would have had a thoroughly
19
02/12/2015 09:54
weather-beaten complexion; if we
had met her we would probably have
taken her for much older than her
25 years. She may have been wellbuilt for a woman, and certainly was
muscular after a life of lifting heavy
creels of peat or sea-ware, steering
a plough through heather and rock,
carrying stones to mend a dyke or
a byre. Her hands were coarsened
with work, ingrained with dirt, just
like those of the other recruits who
picked up the unfamiliar tool on
Geddes desk and fumbled their way
through a signature or an unsteady
cross beside their name. Isobel
Gunn of Orphir disappeared, (if her
family were not party to her plot, was
there no hue and cry at her sudden
disappearance?) and John Fubbister
from St Andrews parish appeared on
the books of the HBC.
Almost all the accounts of Isobel
Gunn assume that the motivation for
her disguise was to follow her lover
to Hudsons Bay. A man, John Scarth
from Firth, seventeen years older
than Isobel, had entered the service
in 1789, come home on leave in 1796
(did he meet and impress the sixteenyear-old Isobel then?) and signed
on again for another eight years in
1797. He came home on leave in
September 1805 and travelled back
out to the Bay on the Prince of
Wales with Isobel in the summer of
1806. When her child was born in

December 1807 and two years later,
at his baptism in Stromness, she gave
Scarths name as the father. Her HBC
colleagues assumed that she had
joined the Company to follow him.
Was this the only motivation
that they could imagine? I am
unconvinced that Isobel went to
the Bay to follow Scarth or anyone
else. If she had an Orkney lover who
went to the Bay, it is inconceivable
that either of them could have
had any illusions about enjoying a
romantic relationship there. Women
were banned from the territory, the
men were there to make money
and no man would have willingly
risked disgrace or demotion by
smuggling a mistress onto the
ship or their quarters at one of the
forts. She staked everything on this
adventure: discovery of her deceit
would obviously destroy not only
John Fubbister but her whole future;
there was no way that she would
ever be able to pick up the threads
of her former life in Orkney again.
Did Ruperts Land seduce her with
the possibility of an escape from the
drab drudgery of her life in Orphir,
a life of constant heavy toil with so
little reward but ruined harvests,
little prospect of marriage or of any
improvement in her circumstances?
Brother George and many other HBC
Workers were forced

to make the best of
the icy conditions
when working in
their new
overseas post
men had come home with tales of

their exploits some horrific, but
some exciting - and with money
in their pockets. Is it impossible to
imagine that Isobel took the great
risks she took for adventure?
Many of the women who adopted
male dress initially for economic
motives found it immensely liberating
to step out of the constraints that
society imposed on women. Elsa
Guerin, a widow left penniless with
two children, lived undetected for
thirteen years in North America as
Mountain Charley. To change
from the cumbersome, unhealthy
attire of a woman to the more
convenient, healthful habilements
of a man, wrote Elsa, was to be
instantly transformed into a state
more physically comfortable and
better paid, with a degree of authority
and a voice: assets that they could
never have in female dress. There
were many ballads written and sung
about their adventures; perhaps they
reached Orkney, and Isobel knew that
there were women who had made the
great escape and, for a time at least,
succeeded and enjoyed their liberty.
Whatever the truth, Isobel sailed
out of Stromness on the Prince of
Wales on 29 June, 1806, with about
40 other Orcadians, new recruits
like herself and returning old hands
like Scarth. Five weeks later, the
Isobel would have

heard stories of
canoeing through
great forests
or journeys on
showshoes through
deep snow, of
re-lit camps with
friendly Indians
or astonishing
encounters with
wild animals
20
H I S TO
H I SRY
TO SC
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SCLA
OTND
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- JA -NUA
J U LY
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F EGBURUA
ST 2015
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02/12/2015 09:54

Drummond
Bay
ship dropped anchor at Moose

Factory, the oldest HBC post on
the Bay and, on 27 August, John
Fubbister and John Scarth were
sent to the fort at Albany. How
Isobel could have kept her sex a
secret in the cramped conditions of
a sailing ship is a mystery.
Summer in the Bay is short, and
as soon as the ship landed the men
were at work unloading the stores
started to arrive from inland, they

had to be packed and stored ready
to be sent to England when the
Company boats arrived.
The HBC archives have a record
of all their employees and the
expeditions they undertook. Early
in September 1806, John Hodgson,
the Chief at Albany, sent a party
to canoe up the Albany River to
Henley House with provisions and
Isobel could not have underestimated the danger

of life in the Bay. She saw the cripples who were
carried off the ships in the autumn, men maimed
by frostbite or by shooting accident
and preparing for the long winter.
From the late 18th century, the
HBC had adopted a policy of cutting
down on imported foodstuffs (and
those that were sent from England
were often rotten when they arrived)
so much of the time the men spent
at the forts they were fishing,
hunting, trapping and brewing;
salting down partridge, geese, rabbits
and deer; packing the provisions in
sawdust or in ice-houses for their
preservation. There was firewood
to be cut and also timber for new
buildings or repairing old ones; there
were the few cows and pigs they had
brought with them to be cared for,
and hay made for their fodder. All
this had to be done in the relentlessly
insect-ridden heat, driven mad
by mosquitoes and flies. The new
recruits soon learned that the climate
of Ruperts Land was savagely
inhospitable in all seasons.
When the winter set in, there
were still plenty of tasks to keep the
Company servants employed. The
decline of the beaver in areas easily
accessible from the Bay was driving
them further and further afield in the
search for furs. Stores for the inland
posts had to be repacked for canoe
transport to the interior the following
summer. There were guns and
ammunition to mend and prepare
for hunting, sleds and snowshoes to
make for travelling, skins to dry and
stretch for clothing, iron kettles and
hatchets to beat out for trading. In
the spring, when canoe loads of furs
trading goods and to return with

timber for building new boats.
The party included Fubbister and
the Steersman Scarth. There were
no complaints about Fubbisters
performance. She spent her first
winter in Albany fort and the
following May was sent on another
three-week expedition taking inland
cargo upriver to Martin Falls on
the Albany River and returning
with furs, again with Scarth in the
team. After a couple of days back
in Albany, Fubbister was one of the
crew of several boats which returned
to Martin Falls with more cargo.
In the fall his brigade travelled
the long route by Lac Seul to the
Winnipeg River and up the Red
River to the fort at Pembina. Hugh
Heney arrived to take charge of the
post in mid September. One of his
men, David Spence, had drowned
in rapids on the way. December
was bitterly cold and stormy but
buffalo had been plentiful so there
was a good supply of food. The men
visited the North-West Company
post of Alexander Heney to share
the Christmas celebrations.
Heneys journal entry for
29 December has often been quoted.
The Hudsons Bay men returned to
their post that morning but Fubbister
asked to be allowed to stay behind.
I was surprised at the fellows
demand; however, I told him to
sit down and warm himself. I
returned to my own room, where
I had not been long before he
sent one of my people, requesting

the favor of speaking with me.
Accordingly I stepped down to
him, and was much surprised to
find him extended on the hearth,
uttering dreadful lamentations; he
stretched out his hands towards
me, and in piteous tones begged
me to be kind to a poor, helpless,
abandoned wretch, who was not
of the sex I had supposed, but an
unfortunate Orkney girl, pregnant,
and actually in childbirth. In
saying this she opened her jacket,
and displayed a pair of beautiful,
round, white breasts... In about an
hour she was safely delivered of
a fine boy, and that same day she
was conveyed home in my cariole,
where she soon recovered.
TO BE CONTINUED IN THE
MAR/APR ISSUE, ON SALE
13 FEBRUARY
Jocelyn Rendall is a freelance
historian, with Orkney social history a
sideline to helping to run the 400 acre
family farm in Papa Westray.
FURTHER
READING
Hudsons Bay Company
Archives, Manitoba
The Orkney Parishes, containing
the Statistical Account of Orkney
1795-98, drawn up from the
Communications of the Ministers
of the Different Parishes by Sir John
Sinclair, Bart. Clouston, J. Storer,
1928 (Kirkwall)
Men of Spirit and Enterprise. Scots
and Orkneymen in the Hudsons Bay
Company 1780-1821, Rigg, S., 2011
(Edinburgh)
Many Tender Ties, Women in FurTrade Society 1670-1870, Van Kirk,
S., 1980 (University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman and London)
1989 Amazons and Military maids:
women who dressed as men in
pursuit of life, liberty and happiness,
Wheelwright, J., (London)
21
02/12/2015 09:55
Part 2
A rebellion with a cause?

Remembering the Jacobites 300 years on
Ralph Thompson introduces records held at the National Archives in London

which shed light on key events surrounding the 1715 Rising
n 29 August,
1715, 300 years
ago, Jacobite clans
led by the earl of
Mar gathered at
Braemar Castle, Aberdeenshire.
On 6 September, 1715, they raised
the standard of the Old Pretender
James Edward Stuart, son of the
exiled James VII and II, to claim the
throne from the new Hanoverian
king, George I. Although the Old
Pretender himself did not arrive in
Scotland until 22 December, 1715,
the rebellion known as the Fifteen
had officially begun.
To mark the Jacobite anniversary,
The National Archives, with the
valuable help of volunteers, has
been cataloguing its State Papers
collection for the period from 171547, which cover Military (SP 41),
Naval (SP 42), Scotland (SP 55),
Domestic George I (SP 35) and
George II (in SP 36).
These series include papers on
the aftermath of the better-known
Forty-Five Rising which was
led by the Old Pretenders son,
Bonnie Prince Charlie. There is
also the Scotland series II (SP 54
files series) collection of papers
which is a particularly rich source
relating to internal affairs in North
Britain. Within these collections
you can find manifestos and letters
as well as poems, songs, and maps.
Tracing the path to rebellion
Although the Treaty of Utrecht
of 1713 had barred the Catholic
James Edward from succeeding his
Protestant half-sister, Queen Anne
(the last of her line) as ruler of a
recently unified Great Britain, the
Hanoverian succession was opposed
by a significant minority of the
population in many parts of the British
Isles. Subsequently Mar, the outgoing
Secretary of State for Scotland,
was commissioned as LieutenantGeneral of the Jacobite forces and
was increasingly assured the support
of the nobility (together with many
22
p22 Jacobite and Blue.indd 22
Extract from SP 35/40/1/58, Portrait of

James Edward Stuart, found amongst
captured papers in 1722
An account of the
Battle of Dunblane
(Sheriffmuir) in
a letter sent to
Edinburgh,
17 November, 1715
(SP 54/10/46B)
of the major clan chiefdoms)

as a result of the much hoped
for arrival of Roving Jamie in
Scotland as their king.
Factors, however,
soon moved to favour
the seemingly far weaker
government forces. While
royal troops were mustered
in autumn 1715 around
the impregnable garrison at
Stirling, the Jacobites failed
to secure both the strategic
fortress of Edinburgh
Castle or the citys port
of Leith. The death of
Louis XIV that August
wrecked any realistic plans of a
genuine commitment from Bourbon
France. Furthermore, the interim
regency government there enacted an
embargo of assistance for the Scottish
rebels from its ports.
On 15 November, 4,000 Scots
Lowlanders and Northumbrians
advanced into Lancashire, in the
hope of securing 20,000 recruits
on their march to Liverpool, They

were forced to surrender to superior
government forces after a bitter
two-day street fight at Preston. In
Scotland, a day earlier, Mar was
unable to defeat a smaller army led
by the Campbell duke of Argyll at
Sherrifmuir on the Plain of Stirling.
This led his army in retreat towards
their stronghold of Perth. Whilst
a token Spanish force of 500 men
managed to land in the Western
Isles (with 300 Jacobites under lord
Tullibardine) in 1719, this would
prove to be the last serious Jacobite
enterprise for a quarter of a century.
Essentially the period 1715-23
was to be the high water mark for
Jacobitism. The Jacobite military
leaders such as Mar and the duke
of Ormonde could have carried the
day with their superior numbers and
initial widespread support across
much of Britain. But at best, Mar (or
Bobbing John, as he was known)
was ineffectual and half-hearted
in his leadership of an army which
had quickly swelled to some 8,000
strong. The Old Pretender himself,
who fled from Scotland after only six
weeks, urged his supporters to look
to themselves, and was regarded as a
political embarrassment at Versailles.
As part of this commemoration,
The National Archives is hosting
Jacobite themed talks including The
Last Battle on English Soil: Preston
1715 and a curated display of the
original documents from our Jacobite
collection in the Keepers Gallery.
You can also view a Jacobite
timeline, read blogs on the Jacobites
and see some of the most notable
historic Jacobite documents in The
National Archives collection online:
http://scot.sh/hsx1715
Ralph Thompson is Reader Adviser
at the National Archives.
02/12/2015 09:58
Fairfield Heritage Centre
Showing Scotland to the world
For more than fifty years, the Scottish Tour Guides Association has guided visitors
around some of the countrys most popular destinations. We find out what it is like to be
a tour guide, and how the expectations of travellers have changed over the years
Mary Kemp Clarke is course director of
tourist guide training at the STGA and has
been guiding visitors around Scotland for
more than fifteen years
How has the job changed since you started?
In 1999, when I became a Blue Badge STGA guide, visitor
attractions, hotels and agents did not expect phone calls during
the actual tours. We would call and confirm everything prior to
the day of the tour, so we had to be very organised beforehand.
Similarly, we now search online and on-the-go for information such as contacts
and ticket prices, translating a particularly obscure ingredient in some menu,
routes or even something forgotten about geology or history.
In Scotland, new types of tours have developed since 1999 too. Now, in addition to
ancestral tours or gastronomical tours, we have adventure tours, sporting tours, Harry
Potter or Outlander tours. So many wonderful new ways of seeing Scotland.
Have the expectations of visitors changed over the years?

Definitely. Travel has become so much more accessible over the years, so people
are now, on the whole, much more experienced travellers. Tourists have a greater
understanding of what quality services are and what their consumer rights as
visitors are than they used to have at the end of the last century.
Visitors have always expected us to offer a duty of care as guides encompassing
all aspects of their stay, from personal safety to understanding their cultural issues
and expectations. This is now emphasised much more because of litigation alas,
which, as everywhere else is on the increase.
Tripadvisor, social media, Instagram and even Google Earth have made people
aware of so much more prior to their visit to a particular place, which means
that one cannot avoid being asked about all kinds of subjects. Being prepared
for everything is not easy or even possible. However it is good that a professional
tourist guide avoids the look of the rabbit being caught in the headlights, and in
answer offers a balanced and non-controversial response, calmly and with a smile.
What is the most unusual tour you have ever led?

A few come to mind. One for instance, on a very cold January for a group of
twenty colombofilos Spanish pigeon-fanciers. We spent a whole week only visiting
doocots, whole ones and ruined ones.
Another wonderful tour included a day with a group of ten people from Spain
taking a private flight from Inverness up to Orkney for the afternoon, and then
returning by private jet again to Edinburgh in the evening. Why? Just to spend an
afternoon on our tummies with binoculars watching seabirds off Marwick Head.
What might surprise people about the work of STGA guides?

The fact that no two tours are the same the variety of places, routes, itineraries,
interests and people make each tour unique. Also, the work demands huge amounts
of stamina as we work extremely long days. It is just as well we love what we do.
And finally, the work is definitely not all about history people want to know
about today and possible tomorrows as well as about the past.
Pamela Wells is based

in Aberdeen and has
been a tour guide for
almost thirty years.
She was brought up in
Glasgow and during
her life has worked in
the Middle East, North
Africa and the USA
In what ways does working with
overseas visitors differ from working
with Scottish clients?
Overseas clients are usually particularly
interested in history, house prices, population
numbers, average salaries, differing resident
nationalities and why they are here.
Scottish clients, on the other hand, are more
interested in comparing what they see and learn
to their own home background within Scotland.
What is your favourite Aberdeen site?

Old Aberdeen, because it displays some fabulously
elegant older buildings, many of which visitors can
explore from within, which is an absolute delight.
My other top favourite has to be Aberdeen
Harbour, firstly because it is located in the
city centre quite unexpected for some and
secondly because it allows visitors to see some
of the typical offshore-related vessels and so
get a feel for Aberdeens offshore links. By
combining these experiences with a visit to the
five star Maritime Museum in historic Shiprow,
visitors have the full picture of the citys
maritime history right up to the present day.
What part of the job is the most

challenging?
For me a real challenge is working with cruise
ship passengers whose return time to the ship is
so critical and of course linked to tidal timings.
I always wonder what would happen if I arrived
back in the harbour with my group to see the
ship sailing off into the distance!
To find out more about the work of the STGA,
visit: www.stga.org.uk
p22 Jacobite and Blue.indd 23
23
02/12/2015 14:36
Part 2
THE DEVON
COLLIERY
A Clackmannanshire conundrum
T
Jennifer Geller explores the history of the Devon Colliery and Iron Works
which dominated industrial life in Clackmannanshire yet were the
focus of tension due to their environmental impact
here is probably
no Scottish county
so underrated as
Clackmannan, wrote John
Carvel in 1944. One would
never gather, he continued, that
the slopes rising from the plain
of Clackmannan were grander
than those in any other part of
the range hillscape, romantic
river stretches, deep ravines,
woodlands, fertile carselands, all
are here. Yet the real mystery is

why Carvel chose to conclude his
history of Alloa Coal Company,
one of biggest industrial concerns
in Clackmannanshire from 1835
to 1946, with this paean to the
pastoral sublime. He would have
been more than well aware that
the Ochils and the River Devon
valley had cloaked not only coal
pits, but also silver mines, textile
mills, distilleries and bleach
24
p24 Devon Colliery.indd 24
Devon Colliery
engine house, built
in 1865. In the
front wall is a large
arched opening,
partly timbered,
through which
worked the cast-iron
beam of a Cornish
pumping engine,
built by Neilson and
Co, Glasgow in 1865
works. Carvels remarks highlight

the 200 year paradox of the wee
countys historical landscape:
the county, despite its pockets of
industrialisation, never urbanised.
The Hillfoots villages remained
villages and agriculture never
completely disappeared from
the carseland, but neither did
the regions rural environment
remain pristine.
Of particular interest within this
02/12/2015 10:01
Industrial history
landscape is the transformation of

the site of Devon Colliery, Alloa
Coals largest pit, as well as the
location of the former Devon Iron
Works, established in 1792. The
colliery and iron works sat on the
banks of the River Devon, almost
exactly half-way along a six mile
transect between the Ochils to
the north and Alloa to the south,
and on the apex of a triangle
between the hillfoots villages of
Alva and Tillicoultry. Even from
its earliest days as an industrial
site, tensions between concerns
about the environmental impact
of coal mining and desires for
profitable pits contributed to the
paradoxical nature of the site. The
first recorded instance of minerelated environmental damage
at the colliery occurred in 1825
when mine water burst forth from
an old day level. According to the
Stirling Jour nal,
[T]he torrentemptied its
contents into the river Devon,
changing the colour of the stream
into a clayey red. Some hours after
this several salmon and trout were
seen, seemingly in a sickly state.
By 1854, further difficulties
with water and water-related
subsidence prompted Alloa Coal
to close Devon Colliery for nearly
three decades, but rumours of
the most valuable kind of coal
lured the company to modernise
and re-open the pit in 1882.
This decision contributed to
a five-time increase in output,
resulting not only in obviously
greater profit for Alloa Coal, but
also in public acknowledgement
of coals polluting capabilities.
In 1893, according to Scottish
Board of Health papers, the bed
of the river was silted up with
coal washing 8 to 10 inches thick
for miles below the colliery. When
the National Coal Board (NCB)
abandoned the Devon Colliery
in 1960, it left behind a bing
covering 4.8 hectares of land.
The site was officially classified
as derelict by the Scottish
Development Agency in 1975
and was mitigated by the Central
Regional Council (CRC) in 1977.
Today, one can no longer as
Carvel did, look back across
the valley from the main road

into Tillicoultry and pick out
the old slag-heap of the Iron
Works projecting toward the
river. Instead, haphazard farms
and the Scottish Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals (SSPCA)
wildlife rescue centre
have superimposed
themselves on the site
of the former Devon
Colliery. The Ochils
continue to tower
over the now postindustrial villages and
the River Devon still
straggles along their
edges. The ambiguous
nature of the area from
the earliest days of its
industrialisation, through
the 19th and first half
of the 20th centuries, has
created a conundrum for the
management of its legacy postindustrialisation. Should the site
be celebrated as an expression
of community identity, or
should reminders of a difficult
past be suppressed?
Agriculture versus
industry, 1792-1835
Carvel was not the only
historian of Clackmannanshire
to note the paradoxical nature
of the countys landscape.
The origins of its ambiguity
reach at least as far back as
the late 18th century, when
local estate owners, including
the earls of Mar and the earls
of Mansfield, began to take
an interest not only in the
new agricultural techniques
that had helped generate the
improvement across Scotland,
but also in other forms of
income-generating activities,
including coal mining and
iron-making. At this time, the
Devon Colliery, owned by John
Francis Erskine, the seventh
earl of Mar, would have been an
anomalous blip on the otherwise
agricultural landscape, sending
out shoots of industrialisation
including the adjacent Devon
Iron Works, leased by the earl
of Mansfield to Mr Roebuck
Robert Bald, mine

manager at Devon
Colliery. Bald was
ahead of his time
in his awareness of
the environmental
consequences of
coal mining
and Mr Eddison. In his 1795

General View of the Agriculture of
the County of Clackmannan, John
Francis Erskine himself described
the pleasant vale of the Dovan,
which was very fertile and bears
excellent grain in practically the
same breath as he described the
Devon Iron Works with its two
furnaces, each upwards of 40
feet high by 14 feet in diameter.
The Old Statistical Account (OSA)
descriptions of Clackmannanshire
from the same period reveal
similar tensions. The OSA
reported that [T]he improvement
of agriculture has, indeed, been
most uncommonly rapid in this
little corner, perhaps more than
any other, while also noting with
admiration that the Devon
Iron Works,
merit the attention of the curious
in mechanicks and architecture
Inftead of the ufual method of
building with ftone and lime, the
ferveral parts of the works have been
formedby excavations made in
the rock.
25
02/12/2015 10:01
The ambiguity of this landscape

lay in the uneasy coexistence of
agriculture and early industry.
Within its boundaries, the
landscape contained the means
to industrialisation, yet the
profits produced there were
used to enhance an established
agricultural estate.
Furthermore, the need for
these profits was countered
by an early awareness of the
impact of industrial activity on a
pastoral environment. In his 1819
work, On the Coal Formation of
Clackmannanshire, Robert Bald,
John Francis Erskines mine
manager wrote:
Though the total removal of the
alluvial cover might, in one view,
appear to be of great advantage
this advantage would be greatly
outweighed by the disadvantages,
not only in the want of soil for
cultivation, butthe coal mines
would be deluged with water every
rainy season.
Furthermore, Bald understood
that employing either mining
technique: the more traditional
post and stall method, or the newer
longwall system would result in
environmental consequences.
Nowhere is this understanding
more apparent than in his
comments about the exhaustibility
of Scotlands coal mines. He wrote:
Even if the Grampian Mountains
were composed of coal, we would
ultimately bring down their proud
and cloud-capped summits, and
make them level with the vales.
One is tempted to conclude that
Robert Balds decisions concerning
the Devon Colliery were an
attempt, as Bald himself put it, to
allow him and Erskine to serve as
good husbands of that which so
very materially concerns those who
are to succeed us. Regardless of
intention, though, Balds decisions
created an ambivalent relationship
between the early industrial
landscape and its more pastoral
surroundings.
Below ground damage
versus above ground
development, 1835-82
The paradoxical nature of the
landscape remained strongly
evident in contemporary
descriptions of the area even after

Robert Bald resigned his post as
Devon Colliery mine manager
and John Francis Miller Erskine
relinquished control of the site
to the newly formed Alloa Coal
Company in 1835. As described
by the New Statistical Account
(NSA), the River Devon was
still celebrated by tourists and
poets the most remarkable
stream in the parish, while
the Devon Colliery was
only afforded a mention in
relation to its production for
the iron works rather than as
an industrial concern in its
own right. Perhaps the NSAs
descriptions simply reflected the
uncertainty of production at both
the colliery and the iron works.
By 1854 mine flooding had
prompted Alloa Coal to suspend
production at Devon Colliery
and in 1858, Devon Iron Works
went out of business. Three
years after their closing, James
Lothian still considered the iron
works worthy of mention in Alloa
and its Environs, although like
NSA, he contrasted its existence
with a description of the Devon
district, which had always been
a favourite resort of tourists...
It is, indeed, a most beautiful,
attractive, and salubrious
locality. The failed colliery,
along its invisible underground
water damage, was deemed
as insignificant by Lothian as
it had been by the NSA. By
mid-century, then, disconnect
between above and below ground
environments replaced the
tensions between agricultural
and industry as the main factor
determining the ambiguity of the
Devon Colliery site.
The most significant above/
below ground environmental
issue facing Alloa Coal at this
time concerned flooded mines
and water-related subsidence.
Water had overpowered the
North Sauchie pumping engine
responsible for keeping Devon
Colliery pits dry, and William
Paton, manager of the colliery
from 1835 to 1865, suspended
pumping in 1854, allowing the
enormous waste, extending for
miles on the south, east and
26
John Francis Erskine,

the 7th earl of Mar,
owner of the Devon
Colliery (from the
collection of the Earl
of Mar and Kellie at
National Trust for
Scotland, Alloa Tower)
west to fill with water. Excess

water weakened underground
mine structures such as roofs,
pillars and floors designed
to keep the pits open and
workable, eventually causing
these structures to collapse or
sink, creating surface subsidence.
In 1863, a plump had opened
up on James Johnstones Alva
property on the north side of the
River Devon which he claimed
was due to operations at Devon
Colliery. Mining engineer John
Williamsons report revealed that
[T]he plump is situated12
yards from the River Devon.
Its dimensions are 18 feet long
by 16 feet It is six feet deep in
centreThe bank has subsided
into the hole. He concluded:
[I]t certainly requires a rather
strong stretch of the imagination
to conceive that so strong
workingsat such a depth and
filled with water could have been
the occasion of such a hole as we
have attempted to describe. If a
mining engineer himself could
not explain how something he
could see could be caused by
something he could not see, how
could anyone who had never
been below ground ever make the
02/12/2015 10:01
Industrial history
connection? The invisible cause

of the visible damage contributed
to the enigmatic nature of the
site, making it difficult for
contemporaries to describe.
By 1873, however, concerns
over underground challenges
were set aside in light of a report
issued by mining engineers
Mackenzies and Cowan revealing
that nearly two million tons of
coal were available in the 430
acre area of the Devon Colliery.
Over the next decade, manager
Alexander Roxburgh oversaw
both the above and below ground
transformation of the Devon
Colliery as Alloa Coal prepared
to reopen its Furnace Bank pit
at the site. A new 600 foot shaft
was sunk, an 800 yard dook ran
toward the valley of the river and
a cross cut mine of 700 yards was
excavated in order to access the
nine feet and upper five feet coal
seams. This three square mile
underground operation naturally
required corresponding above
ground transformation. A year
before the colliery reopened, the
Alloa Advertiser described the
more than 10,000 project. A new
engine enclosed in a neat and
commodious building and a 36
ton beam which could lift five tons
of water per minute were among
the most notable components of
the new industrial infrastructure.
When the colliery reopened in
1882, the Advertiser reported with
a great deal of pride that the new
mine which promises to be
one of the largest in Scotland has
been laid out in a manner which
reflects the greatest credit upon
all concerned.
The extent of below ground
activity, including mining under
the River Devon, made possible by
the new and highly visible surface
infrastructure must have been
inconceivable to Clackmannanshire
Victorians. Such mystery made
ignoring the mine and its impact
on the environment easier, at least
for a time.
The invisible versus the
visible, 1882-1960
Between Devon Collierys
reopening in 1882 and its final
closing by NCB in 1960, the
continued invisibility of the

mine as a part of the landscape
contrasted with increasingly
visible pollution produced by
the mine and contributed to the
enigmatic nature of the site. David
Beveridge, who grew up in the
county, noted in 1888: Here too,
[the Devon valley] strikes a visitor
as being divested of the prosaic
and monotonous surroundings
which are often the characteristics
of factory life. Rather, in
Clackmannanshire, rocky
glens and cascades abut on the
factories, and beautiful mountain
scenery is within five minutes
walk of the whir of the spindles.
The same sort of awareness of
between 1870 and 1899 resulted

in greater amounts of waste so
that by 1893, the County Medical
Officer of Clackmannanshire
reported that [B]elow Tillicoultry
the stream is very much fouled
by the water from the Devon coal
pit and also from the dust, etc.,
removed by the process of coal
washing which goes on at the pit.
A four year battle with both local
and national government ensued
but did nothing to ameliorate
conditions on the Devon. New
washing plants were installed by
Alloa Coal in 1913, but by 1926,
the 600 tons of coal per day that
had to be separated from the
dirt which accompanied it to the
Despite the invisibility of the mine itself, its

polluting capabilities were becoming more
visible to the public
the peculiarity of the region was
demonstrated by William Gibson,
also a native of Clackmannan,
who wrote in 1882: to any one
who wishes to see the lovely valley
of the Devon in all its beauty, let
them take a birds-eye view of it
and they will be amply rewarded
for their trouble. Like Beveridge,
Gibson dedicated significant
passages to descriptions of various
manufacturing firms in the
Hillfoots villages, yet he wrote
not a single word about coal
mining. Gibsons birds-eye view
apparently did not afford him the
sight of the Devon Colliery and
its brand new, sprawling industrial
apparatus. Despite the invisibility
of the mine itself, its polluting
capabilities were becoming more
visible to the public. However,
the response by local and
national authorities to increased
complaints about environmental
degradation remained inconclusive
for the life of the mine.
Damage to the environment in
the form of water pollution had a
way of making the invisible more
visible as the River Devon moved
the waste emanating from its
banks into a wider context. The
increase in Alloa Coals output
surface meant that the settling

tanks had become completely
silted up and useless, according to
the Scottish Board of Health.
Fortunately, however, the
invisible was becoming more
visible to private citizens, who
tried to push public officials to
act more decisively. In 1926,
the Devon Angling Association,
formed in 1905 to provide
affordable trout fishing for the
local community and to act
to protect and enhance the
river environment complained
about the condition of the
River Devon to George Donald,
Assistant Sanitary Inspector
for the Burgh of Tillicoultry.
Donald corroborated the
fishermens observations that
one of the most serious sources
of pollution is the effluent
from the Coal Washing Plant
at Devon Colliery. Even though
the Scottish Board of Health
ordered Alloa Coal to update their
washers and settling tanks, the
Angling Association at their 1927
annual general meeting reported
that coal dust from Devon
Colliery remained the worst
factor in the pollution question.
The increased dereliction and
27
02/12/2015 10:01
contamination of the site itself

during this time seemed to
isolate it further not only from
the surrounding communities,
but also from regulation, thus
perpetuating its contradictory
status as a rural wasteland.
In the early 1940s, national
attention again focused itself on
the quality of the River Devon
and some effort was made to
mitigate the effects of the colliery
pollution.
However, the reluctance to
deal with Devon Colliery as the
source of the waste highlighted
the continued invisibility of the
colliery itself to the public eye.
A drainage scheme proposed by
the Department of Agriculture
and Fisheries in 1942, for the
improvement of agricultural land
situated within the catchment area
of the Devon involved dredging
the stretch of the river directly
below and above stream of the
colliery. A draft of the drainage

scheme noted: [I]t is the opinion
of the majority of landowners
that in addition to water from the
pit workings being discharged
into the river a great deal of
coal washings are also discharged
directly into the river without
going through any settling.
Apparently the coal washing
plants and settling tanks installed
fifteen years earlier were not doing
their job, yet there is no evidence
that they received any further
attention during the remaining
eighteen year life of the mine.
Despite its visible impact on the
environment, there were no efforts
to mitigate the problem at its
source, a place seemingly out-ofsight, out-of-mind in the publics
perception. Indeed, this was to
remain the case during NCB
takeover of the mine in 1946 and
into the final fourteen years of the
Collierys existence.
28
Contemporary view
of the Cornish Beam
Engine House with its
pumping engine beam
still clearly visible
Transformation versus
preservation,1960-2015
Following its closure by NCB
in 1960, the Devon Colliery site
remained disused for fifteen years,
a classic wasteland, even more
easily ignored by the public than
when it served a crucial economic
role in the community. Resolving
the paradox of the sites legacy
became the challenge for the
CRC as it made preparations to
rehabilitate the bing beginning
in 1976. Ironically, for the first
time in its 200 year life, the
former mine was fully in the
public eye. Plans drawn by the
CRC in 1977 for the mitigation
of the derelict land at Devon
Colliery show a tip 72.5 meters
high adjacent to a space directly
to the east consisting of extremely
irregular, haphazard contours,
with an elevation of 45 meters.
The proposed rehabilitation
involved spreading the waste
02/12/2015 10:02
Industrial history
north west to create a ten metre

high bank on the Devon as well
as using the spoil to even out the
irregular contours on the east side
of the bing so that at its highest
elevation, the tip would measure
41 metres. The actual mitigation
of the site began on 30 August,
1976 with the extraction of slurry
by the South of Scotland Electric
Board for use at the Methil Power
Station. Finally, on 19 April,
1979, the rehabilitated Devon
Colliery site extending to 131.39
acres was purchased by the CRC
from NCB for 112,750.
On the one hand, the deliberate
wilding of the space by removing
environmental hazards and
returning the land to a more
rural-looking landscape of grass
and trees in effect erased the sites
industrial legacy. However, the
effort to return the land to an
agricultural state in conjunction
with preserving the legacy of
coal mining via the restoration
of the Cornish beam engine
house (one of only two of its kind
remaining in Scotland) actually
echoed the initial development
of a space coexisting between
farming and industry 200 years
prior. If inadvertently, the CRCs
mitigation efforts preserved the
enigmatic nature of the site,
allowing its very ambiguity to
become its legacy.
Between 1979, when the CRC
purchased the former Devon
Colliery site from NCB and
1988, when they handed the land
over to the Clackmannanshire
District Council (CDC), the
land was let for grazing. Then in
1988, CDC invested 236,000 in
capital expenditures to develop an
equestrian centre on the site, in
addition to repurposing the beam
engine house as a ranger station
and community space.
The Devon Equestrian Centre
operated between 1992 and 2006
and was, according to CDC,
held up as a showpiece for the
district. However, management
difficulties at the Equestrian
Centre prompted the CDC
in 2006 to seek new tenants
who would make the most of
Clackmannanshires unique built
Damage to the environment in the form of

water pollution had a way of making the
invisible more visible as the River Devon
moved the waste emanating from its banks
into a wider context
and natural environment. By
2010, the CDC was fortunate to
be able to find just such tenants.
The SSPCA needed a location
where they could care for injured
wildlife that could not survive on
their own in the true wild, but a
more urban setting for a wildlife
centre was a contradiction
in terms.
The semi-rural, partially
isolated nature of the former
Devon Colliery location met
the needs of the SSPCA whilst
simultaneously allowing the CDC
to fulfill their mission to utilise
the site in a way that would be
compatible with the uses of the
surrounding land. The CDC has
managed to maintain the former
Devon Colliery as a location
neither urban or nor rural, almost
invisible, yet still accessible,
without having to resolve its
paradoxical legacy.
For two centuries of Devon
Colliery workers, the pit and the
bing were, of course, anything
but invisible, a central fact of
their livelihood. As part of the
landscape, though, it was, perhaps
so much a part of everyday life
that it went unremarked.
Instead, historians of
Clackmannanshire chose to
celebrate that which could not
be accessed during the course of
a gruelling work week, walking
the hills, fishing the river, or
simply pausing to admire the view.
Standing today on the remnants
of the former bing, ones sight is
drawn not downwards into the
depths below the woody grass that
now covers the site, but outward,
to the summit of Ben Cleuch.
In the end, the most enduring
aspect of the legacy of the Devon
Colliery is its invisibility. The
site remains, but it should pass

as unnoticed as it did during its
working life. The eye should not
seek the shadow of the bing. It
should gaze instead, as Robert
Burns did, on the pleasant banks
of the clear winding Devon and
allow the enigma of the landscape
to speak for itself.
Jennifer Geller holds an M.Res
in History from the University of
Stirling, an MAT from the University
of Pittsburgh, and a BA from
Carnegie Mellon University. She
teaches history and social science at
Central High School in Providence,
Rhode Island, USA.
FURTHER
READING
One Hundred Years in Coal:
The History of the Alloa Coal
Company, John Lees Carvel,
(Edinburgh, 1944)
A History of the Scottish Coal
Industry, Volume 1: 1700-1815, A
Social and Industrial History, Baron
F. Duckham (Newton Abbot, 1970)
Tillicoultry A Centenary History:
1871-1971, Eric J. Evans,
(Tillicoultry, 1972)
Mining From Kirkintillock to
Clackmannan and Stirling to
Slamannan, Guthrie Hutton,
(Ochiltree, 2000)
The Firth of Forth: An
Environmental History, T. C.
Smout, and Marie Stewart,
(Edinburgh, 2012)
29
02/12/2015 10:02
OPINION: HISTORY IN EDUCATION
Indiana Jones and

the Dead Poets Society
In the latest of his columns on history in education, Neil McLennan
reports on a trip to the USA following in the footsteps of poet Wilfred Owen
t was great to spend some time last summer back on

the history adventure. War Poet Wilfred Owen has been
something of an enigma for me. I first took an interest
in him when I was head of history at Tynecastle School.
At that time I was fascinated by his time in Edinburgh and in
particular that he taught English at the school as part of his
treatment from war neurosis. I have pursued an active research
interest in him for the past seven years and this has led me
down some interesting avenues. Never did I think though that
it would require and adventure through fires, explosions, shoot
outs and floods.
I have travelled up and down to London and Oxford a
fair number of times trying to piece together Owens time in
Edinburgh, many times returning to his letters and also to
various archives around Edinburgh. The search seemed to
hit a brick wall when certain letters appeared to be missing.
However the hunt resumed at an opportune moment in late
2014 when I found that many of Owens letters had been taken
over to a collection in America. Some letters are now held in
Austin with others held in New York. My trip to see the final
pieces in my jigsaw (made possible by the Royal Society of
Edinburgh) also took in McLennan County capital, Waco. The
Country was founded in the 19th century by Skye emigrant,
Neil McLennan. Whilst I have visited before a fleeting visit on
route to Austin could not be missed.
My trip to the States had all the drama of Hollywood screen
set. As if a shoot-out in Waco (and not the historic event)
was not enough there was also a fire in a car parking lot, an
explosion, floods and tornadoes.
We arrived in Austin and that night friends who have now
moved to the area showed us some of the damage to houses,
shops, football stadiums and anything else which got in the path
of the raging flow of water. Thankfully our accommodation and,
most importantly the final archives we were to see, were not hit.
Dr Henry Jones Snr would have been proud!
Since the American trip was planned, a group of like-minded
individuals and organisations have got together to look at putting
together a series of events to commemorate Wilfred Owens time
in Edinburgh. The Wilfred Owen 2017 Committee compromises
of organisations such as Poppy Scotland, Scottish Governmental
and Napier University and has engaged organisations as diverse
as the Balmoral Hotel and Virgin Trains in their quest to ensure
Owens time in Edinburgh is remembered.
The committee have met twice already and meet again in
2016. More details will come in due course about the proposed
events for 2017. But like Owens journey itself the outcome of
his work is one thing, but the journey itself is worth retracting.
The adventures are the exciting bit!
In other history news, locally it has been great to see the
Stonehaven Old Town House open after a major renovation
which now sees a small, but very informative and interesting,
museum and video presentation open to the public. The building
30
p30 opinion.indd 30
will be the starting point of the traditional Fireballs Ceremony to

bring in the new year to the North East of Scotland.
In Glasgow it has been pleasing to see the Digging In Project
engage learners, young and old, as to what trench life would
have been like 100 years ago in France and Flanders. A great
project to interest and inspire. http://diggingin.co.uk
It is also great to see a project reach right out across the
country to inspire students about history and how it connects
beyond boundaries. The Times Education Huge History
Project (https://www.tes.com/hugehistory/) looks great. I have
challenged former colleagues on the SATH Committee to come
up with something similar for 2017 Year of History, Heritage
and Archaeology. It would be great to see significant partners
come together to promote something which engaged every
household in Scotland alongside every
school student. What better model than
a Huge History Lesson?
Futility
Move him into the sun
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds,
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved still warm too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earths sleep at all?
Wilfred Owen
02/12/2015 10:05
Part 2
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BANISH
Jennifer Baker reports on a history play staged by Lismore Gaelic Heritage Centre
which was inspired by historic accounts of a violent encounter between a 15th-century
bishop and his power-hungry officials
In 1452, Lauder made a rare
journey north to Lismore with
his entourage to take, it was
rumoured, church benefices away
from Sir Gilbert McLachlan (the
cathedral chancellor) and Sir Morris
McFadyen (treasurer), and install
Master Hercules Scrymgeour,
parson of Glassary, in their place.
Sir Gilbert and Sir Morris were
both locals, and cathedral canons
(taking the title sir as senior, but
non-graduate, churchmen), who
had taken advantage of the bishops
long absence to move into positions
of power, probably dispossessing
Hercules Scrymgeour in the process.
For fifteen years they had enjoyed
authority and wealth on the island.
All parties had agreed to meet
to discuss this state of affairs in a
civilised way (to make gud trety).
Instead, Sir Gilbert and Sir Morris
met Lauder with a mob, taunting
him in Gaelic, pulling him from
his horse and stripping him and
his men of all their jewels and fine
silks, thus ridiculing them and
causing maximum humiliation to a
senior churchman. These were bold
men indeed.
Finally, they threatened to kill
Lauder if he did not grant them
absolution from the great sin that
they had committed by attacking
a man of God. A very frightened
Lauder absolved them all and then
left the island never to return. Ten
years later the Pope issued an indult
permitting him to live outside the
diocese, in Glasgow, or elsewhere
within two days ride of the diocese
on account of strife rageing between
temporal lords and other magnates of
his diocese, and the tumults of wars

and dangers arising therefrom, and is
unable to reside in Argyll.
A dramatised version of this
incident, written, produced and
directed by Jennifer Baker, who lives
on the island, and starring only island
residents, most of whom had never
acted before, was staged out-of-doors
this summer on Lismore.
Almost a quarter of the population
of the island was involved, as actors,
costume makers, musicians, and in
props and publicity, as well as all the
attendant tasks necessary to bring a
play to performance. Lismore Voices,
the island community choir, led by
musical director Sarah Campbell,
introduced the play with a setting
of Ubi Caritas and closed with the
madrigal Weep O Mine Eyes.
The performance was staged
outside the cathedral church of St
Moluag, the actual site of the fracas,
which has a convenient car park
stage. A large audience of more than
50 islanders and visitors entered into
the mood of the play with enthusiasm;
with the encouragement of actors
in amongst them, they became a
medieval mob, shouting curses at
the English-speaking bishop. It was a
great start to a weekend celebrating
the raising, restoration and safehousing of the grave slabs from the
ancient graveyard beside the church.
31
. . . schir Gilbert and schir Morys come with all

the power that thai mycht be in fere of were, upon
the forsaid lord the bischope and his company
and spak till himself richt dispituoslie with
felloun wordis and scorne . . . and pullit him fra
his hors and brak the lordis belt . . . and band the
gentill man and thocht to strik of his hed
(From Ane Schort Memoriale of the Scottis Corniklis for
Addicioun, a brief history of Scotland during the reign of James
II (1437-60), known as the Auchinleck Chronicle, preserved in
an early 16th-century anthology).
n 1452 there was a

violent incident on the
Isle of Lismore, recorded
in the Auchinleck
Chronicle, involving
churchmen and people. A copy of
this document, held at the Lismore
Heritage Centre, was the inspiration
for a short play to introduce Lismore
Medieval Weekend a celebration
of the preservation and display of
eight West Highland grave slabs,
and the long-awaited publication
of the 1970s archaeological dig at
Achinduin Castle.
George Lauder from Fife, the
first non Gaelic-speaking bishop of
Argyll, spent most of his time in the
Lowlands of Scotland and was seldom
seen at his cathedral on the island.
In these years of extreme insecurity
in the Highlands, it was safer to
operate from his base at Dunoon.
He was, therefore, very unpopular
in the diocese, making it easy for
unscrupulous men to exploit his
absence, to their advantage.
p31 Play USE.indd 31
Above: Sir Gilbert

McLachlan and Sir
Morris McFadyen;
Islanders laying
hands on the bishop
Jennifer Baker is a curator at Lismore

Gaelic Heritage Centre and wrote and
produced Banished.
For more on Lismore Gaelic
Heritage Centre, visit: www.
lismoregaelicheritagecentre.org
02/12/2015 10:11
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12/11/2015 16:22
Midwives Act centenary
The 1915 Midwives (Scotland) Act:
Moving towards legislation for

midwives in Scotland
Part Two
In part II of her study of the 1915 Midwives Act, Lindsay Reid demonstrates how the outbreak of
World War I caused the need for qualified midwives to become an urgent one, as many doctors
were called up for military service, leaving a void in maternity care
or midwifery in Scotland
to progress, statutory
legislation was necessary.
As shown in the first part of
this series (vol 15.6) this was provided
in England and Wales by the 1902
Midwives Act which epitomised a
major legislative milestone in the
professionalisation of midwifery. This
Act included neither Scotland nor
Ireland. It was to be another thirteen
years before the Midwives (Scotland)
Act was passed in 1915. This second
article explores why the Scottish Act
was enacted when it was, and the
early after effects.
The run-up to the Act

The first Midwives (Scotland) Bills
were proposed before the outbreak
of World War I. By this time opinion
had shifted in Scotland to unanimous
support: the Act might have been
passed sooner had war not broken

out. Nevertheless, the war put the
Acts passage beyond doubt when its
provisions were portrayed as part of
the war effort.
The first reading of a Midwives
(Scotland) Bill took place in the
House of Commons on 23 April,
1912. Hansards record states that
its purpose was to secure the better
training of Midwives in Scotland,
and to regulate their practice. It
was drafted as a consequence of
the efforts of the infant mortality
movement by the Society of Medical
Officers of Health (MOH), and in
particular Dr Campbell Munro,
MOH for Renfrewshire, but it failed
to pass into law.
The next Bill was put forward in
April 1914. The Scottish Examining
Board for Midwives, set up in 1903
by the hospitals in the four Scottish
A fresco now kept

in the Dark Church,
Cappadocia, of the
midwife Salome
bathing the infant
Jesus. Many
early Christian
representations
of the Nativity
included Salome
p33 midwives.indd 33
cities, ceased to function in 1914

because of lack of Government
support. Certificates given to
midwives training through the
hospitals were the only protection
against the work of the untrained
midwives or howdies, many of whom
were employed by families obtaining
maternity benefit under the National
Insurance Act of 1911. In February
1914, recognising the need for action,
representatives from the hospitals
of the four cities prepared for a
privately sponsored bill promoting
legislation for midwifery in Scotland.
The result was the presentation of an
amended Midwives (Scotland) Bill
to the House of Lords on 1 April,
1914. Lord Balfour of Burleigh,
who had been in charge of the
1902 Midwives Bill for England,
hinted why the Act was not passed in
Scotland at the same time:
33
02/12/2015 10:07
I became aware that opinion was not

sufficiently ripe in Scotland to make it
expedient at that time to extend similar
proposals to the country north of the
Tweed. I need not go into the reasons for
it.There are certain differences of practice,
and opinion was not in favour of the
change at that time.
However, opinions had now changed.
Lord Balfour went on to emphasise
the changes in attitudes in Scotland
towards midwifery legislation and
how, in 1914, opinion in favour of
a Bill was practically unanimous.
This included opinions from the
Committee of the British Medical
Association (BMA) for Scotland,
the Local Government Board for
Scotland (LGBS), the Medical
Service Committee for the Highlands
and Islands of Scotland, the MOHs
of many large towns, the medical staff
of the four great centres of medical
education Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Aberdeen and Dundee, and nurses
at an important nursing conference
in Glasgow held the previous month.
There is no mention of any opinion
from midwives. However, because
of the frequent use at the time of
the term nurse for midwife it is
possible that some of these nurses
were midwives.
This Bill was held up for a long
time. It might have become law in
1914 if war had not broken out,
diverting Parliamentary attention. It
was therefore dropped in the House
of Commons mainly for want of
time at the end of a busy session.
There were also Parliamentary rules
about measures Parliament could
address during wartime. There was
a skirmish in the Commons over
a Scottish Bill taking precedence
over English measures especially
during wartime, with the argument
that the Midwives (Scotland) Bill
was not directly to do with the war.
However, some MPs saw it as an
emergency measure, especially as
the Minister of Munitions approved.
The Lord President of the Council,
the marquis of Crewe, defended the
Bills passage during wartime:
The Bill was urgent and a war measure
due to the mortality of war; there was a
current awareness to preserve new life;
and, war was instrumental in many
doctors being called up for military
34
Mary Bryce Smellie

Henderson, howdie.
She was one of the
first midwives to
be enrolled after
the 1915 Midwives
(Scotland) Act
service.Their absence created a void in

maternity care which was rapidly being
filled by midwives, many of whom were
unqualified and uncertificated.
According to the obstetrician Sir
John Halliday Croom, the action of
influential medical personnel was
the origin of the 1915 Midwives
(Scotland) Act. The Memorial anent
a Midwives Bill for Scotland, sent to
the Secretary for Scotland and the
Lord President of the Privy Council
on 19 August, 1915, carried
30 influential signatures. These
included medical practitioners,
obstetricians, MOHs, lecturers and
examiners from Scottish universities
and other senior university staff.
The urgency of the need for a
Midwives Bill for Scotland was
made clear at its second reading in
the Commons on 25 November,
1915, by Thomas McKinnon

Wood (1855-1927), Secretary for
Scotland. He had been inundated
by approaches from those making a
case for a Midwives Act for Scotland,
particularly at this time of war:
As the House is aware, the medical
profession has been sadly depleted.
A great many doctors have gone
to the front, leaving rural districts
inadequately provided with medical
practitioners; so that competent
midwives are absolutely necessary
throughout Scotland....The Scottish
midwife is not able to obtain a formal
qualification except in England.When
she returns to Scotland she is not
under the same control as the English
midwife is. Altogether, I think, the case
for treating this as a matter of urgency
is virtually made out on very high
authority indeed.
02/12/2015 10:08
The Midwives (Scotland) Bill received

the Royal Assent on 23 December,
1915 and came into operation on
1 January, 1916. However, the
speedy enactment of the Bill was due
primarily to the wartime shortage
of doctors in Scotland and not
because of the need to recognise
the importance of the profession of
midwifery and its place in the health
care of the people of Scotland. The
Bills passage through the Houses of
Parliament was helped by many of

its clauses being similar to those in
the Midwives Act for England and
Wales, and as Eugene Wason MP,
who had previously argued against
midwifery legislation in Scotland, said,
that measure has, I believe worked
exceedingly well.
Provisions of the Midwives

(Scotland) Act 1915
The Provisions of the Midwives
(Scotland) Act (known as the Act)
were similar to those of the Midwives
Act 1902, with a few specific
differences. Its 29 sections lay down
rules regarding:
Certification of midwives and
provision for existing midwives; the
Constitution of the Central Midwives
Board for Scotland, its future revision,
and duties and powers of the Board;
Rules pertaining to suspension or

removal of names from the roll of
midwives who offended or who
broke Rules of practice. Rules about
local supervision of midwives;
annual reports and definitions, and,
it seemed, everything else that a
midwife may or may not do.
Missed the first

part of this article?
Order the Nov/Dec
2015 back issue via
our website, just
visit: http://scot.sh/
novdec15
As in England and Wales, a Central

Midwives Board (CMBS) was set
up in Scotland as an examining and
supervisory body and to establish a

Roll of midwives. Its duties included
the regulation of the issue of
certificates, conditions of admission
to the Roll of midwives, the course of
training in midwifery, and conduct
of examinations and remuneration of
examiners. Also, like the CMBE&W,
the CMBS initially recognised three
categories of midwife:
Inside a ward of
the Glasgow Royal
Maternity Hospital,
known as Rottenrow,
c.1902
Those who were enrolled by virtue

of bona fide practice who were
nicknamed the bona fides;
The certificated midwives who
had obtained a certificate from
one of a variety of institutions...
and were enrolled by virtue of
prior certification;
And... those who had taken and
passed the CMBS examination.
The bona fides had to have been in

practice (as uncertified midwives or
howdies) for a minimum of a year
before the passing of the Act and had
to be of good character. Although
the bona fides could be registered
without examination, one third of the
candidates presenting themselves for
the first CMBS examination were
already on the new CMBS roll of
midwives in Scotland as bona fide
midwives and had voluntarily come
forward for examination.
One of the first bona fides to register
was Mary Bryce Smellie Henderson.
She was one of the first midwives in
Scotland to be certified as a midwife
after the implementation of the Act.
She lived and worked as a midwife in
Larkhall, Lanarkshire, about twenty
miles from Glasgow city centre. Her
grand-daughter, Agnes Young, wrote:
She worked on many cases, living
with her patient for some three weeks
at a time and bringing home the
accouchement linen to be washed.
She had six children of her own,
five surviving to adulthood. Born
in 1854, she married on 29 July
1880 and died in 1938.
Although bringing home the
accouchement linen to be washed
seems over and above the call of
duty, the practice of staying with the
mothers for a few weeks was common
among howdies. Two howdies whom
I interviewed made a practice of
booking mothers for a certain number
of weeks. Annie Kerr, a howdie in the
Borders in the 1940s, said:
I went a wee while before the baby
wis born. Not as much as a couple o
weeks. I was there before, I know that.
I wis wi them and did everything that
wis to be done, ye know, to give her a
rest.That workit in fine I took care
of the baby afterwards until she wis fit.
I wid mebbe be there a fortnight.
Doddie Davidson, howdie,
Aberdeenshire, 1930s and 1940s, said:
I went an lived in the hoose afore the
bairns were born.The babies delivered
themselves.There wis naebiddy there
bit me. Sometimes, if there wis a
neighbour handy she wid have come
in, bit often ye see, in a fairm its
usually on its own an it wis maistly
cotter hooses or fairms I aye kent
in time afore Usually they were
needin some help especially fan there
35
02/12/2015 10:08
wis some little eens. An then ye stayed,

sometimes a week, sometimes mair,
sometimes ye didna hae time ti spare
but ye aye hid aboot a wik wi them or
ten days.
Doddie also saw living-in as part of
her payment. She said:
The pey wis jist naethin then ye ken. Fan
I stairted first it wis five shillings (25
pence) a wik.Then it gid up. I think it
wis aboot ten shillins fur a lot o the babies.
Some o the folk couldna afford at. But
ye aye hid yer food an yer bed wi them.
Ye hid yer keep. But it didna seem ti be
important tae me, the money. As lang as I
could dee fit I wis needed tae dee.
the Act stated that no woman in

Scotland shall habitually and for
gain attend women in childbirth
otherwise than under the direction
of a registered medical practitioner
unless she be certified under this Act.
This breathing space was seen as a
reasonable time for the howdies to see
about applying for enrolment. Many,
like Mary Henderson, did.
The use of the term, habitually
and for gain which appeared in both
Midwives Acts was controversial. It
allowed uncertified women (howdies)
to practise midwifery as long as it
could be seen that they were not
doing it habitually and for gain.
Howdies were evident in Scotland until at

least the 1950s. Their early importance and
contribution to midwifery history in Scotland
is recognised and should be remembered
Most certified midwives did not
live-in the mothers home. However
exceptions existed particularly in
rural areas. For instance, Mima
Sutherland, on Raasay in the 1930s,
described the difficulties of an island
midwife when she said:
I was called to Fladda [from Raasay]
on a terrible midsummers day The
garage-man put me the nine miles
then I had to start walking up and
down hills about five miles to the
shore you could see the banks on
the opposite side. If the tide was in,
the boatman came across for me but
if it was out I walked across. On that
day, the baby had been born before I
arrived and it was just wrapped up
and I did the rest. I had to stay three
days that time stayed in the same
room as the patient.The beds had
lovely fresh chaff.
This, and the phrase otherwise than

under the direction of a registered
medical practitioner, left loopholes
in the law for exploitation by some
uncertified midwives and some
medical practitioners. However, Sir
John Halliday Croom, the CMBSs
first Chairman, said:
[I] regret that the qualifying words
habitually and for gain which was
a distinct flaw in the English Act,
is perpetuated in the Scottish one,
but we have good reason to believe
that had the abolition of these words
been insisted upon the Act would
not have been passed.
Who may act as a midwife?

For decades after the Act, there was
argument and discussion about
who may act as a midwife. This
debate particularly surrounded the
howdies. Initially, after a years grace,
no woman could call herself, or even
imply that she was a midwife without
being certified under the Act. Also,
after 1 January, 1922, the culmination
of another five years period of grace,
Covering of howdies by
medical practitioners
After the passing of the Act, and the
time allowed for enrolment, unless
it was an emergency, howdies could
only continue to practise legally
under the direct supervision of a
medical practitioner.
The CMBS did its best to stop
the practice of howdies. Its statutory
role in the regulation of midwifery
36
Croom did not explain his reasoning.

MPs may have felt that to omit
habitually and for gain in 1915
would have made too great a
difference between the two Acts.
in Scotland was to a certain extent

undermined by the howdies and,
sometimes, by working with them,
members of the medical profession.
This continued for many years after
the authorised time ended in 1922.
The CMBE&W had a similar
problem after the 1902 Midwives
Act. Uncertified women practised
midwifery with the nominal
co-operation of qualified medical
practitioners who professed to
give them medical supervision.
This was known as covering of
bona fide midwives by medical
practitioners. Without direct
medical supervision, it was
unacceptable, illegal and could
result in the removal of a medical
practitioners name from the
General Medical Council
(GMC) Register. Also, the
certified midwifes livelihood was
threatened by this practice, while
the medical practitioner and the
howdie, could prosper.
LAs acted as Local Supervising
Authorities (LSA) to midwives.
In December 1921, the CMBS
reminded LSAs and GPs of the
law, and requested MOHs to notify
Procurators Fiscal of any cases of
women practising midwifery without
certification in their areas. So, this
was not only a further warning to
medical practitioners about covering
howdies, the Board also asked
doctors to inform against them
and this began in 1922. The first
documented case of someone using
the cover of a doctor was in 1923.
Here a howdie was prosecuted in
Kilmarnock by the Procurator Fiscal
for practising without enrolment,
covered by a medical practitioner
certifying for maternity benefit
under the Insurance Act. She was
fined 5 or 21 days imprisonment.
In this instance, it was only the
midwife who was punished.
However, even with threats of
prosecution, the practice of the
uncertified midwife, or howdie,
continued in Scotland
until the 1950s.
Some GP-uncertified midwife
teams worked legally with the
GP giving direct supervision. For
instance, a grand-daughter wrote:
I was delivered [in 1934] by my
grandmother Johnann Roberton
who was the uncertificated midwife for
02/12/2015 10:08
the King Street area [Aberdeen]. She

was employed by a Dr Coutts who
specialised in confinements and
child care. He ran the main surgery
in King Street and she was called out
at all hours to confinements in houses.
She had her own special bag When
a birth happened unexpectedly, Dr
Coutts would collect her in his little
car, but otherwise she had to walk to
all the other call-outs.
In some rural areas there was a
shortage of midwives. For instance,
Doddie Davidson, an Aberdeenshire
howdie in the 1940s, said: There
wis nae midwife. They caed ye the
howdie. Fan ye arrived they said,
Are you the howdie?
Sometimes GPs appeared to
prefer working with howdies
than with certified midwives, as
Chrissie Sandison, historian, of
Shetland illustrated:
The doctor that I remember [in the
1920s][he] was a good doctor and
the women liked him but he would
never fetch the midwife [certified
midwife] until she was required. This
was my aunts second baby. She
said he sat down the stairs reading
a book and he never went upstairs
until he knew that the midwife had
gone to the lavatory. This was a
good bit from the house. It was a wee
house across a burn, there was no
bucket just a seat across a burn and
I dont know about a toilet roll
likely it was a bit of newspaper and
no buckets to empty When she had
to go, he went up to see the mother
and when she came back hed go
downstairs again.When she had her
next baby in 1929, she employed
another woman who wasnt a
certified midwife. Then the doctor
was quite happy. He didnt like
working with the trained midwife
he maybe thought she knew as much
as he did.
The continuing presence of the
howdies caused problems for the
certified midwives as another
midwife told me:
I came [here] from the Simpson
where everything was ahead of
its time At that time there were at
least five or six howdies. I found
it extremely difficult because these
other people were depending on it for
a livelihood Of course the people
Title page of
Aristotles
Compleat and
Experienced
Midwife, showing
midwives attending
a mother and child
here knew them. The mothers booked

these howdies and the doctor
might or might not be involved.
Another midwife described a similar
situation where the howdie made a
habit of being present for the birth
instead of the midwife:
In that area I was in, in Central
Scotland [in the 1940s], there was
[a howdie] she was very loath
to give up.You see she was in a
country area of town, and she was
kind and she was the one who would
deliver the babies. Some of [the
certified midwives] had battles with
her. I think she would say [to the
mother], Oh youve time enough to
send for the midwife, and then

she would be able to get the baby.
One midwife agreed that the howdie
learned skills from the doctor with
whom she worked. The doctor
might take her with him, if he
needed somebody. Therefore she
would get a bit of experience. But
then mothers sometimes just had
the howdie. If they [the mothers]
needed the doctor you had to
hope that the howdie knew enough
to know when to get him. She was
also concerned that the howdies
took on mothers whom she felt
should have gone to hospital to have
their babies:
37
02/12/2015 10:09
To have eight and nine children wasnt

unusual at one time and if you had
that howdie for your first baby and
everything was all right, you would go
on and have another and so [this
howdie] would have delivered eight
and nine of the same family not
always with the doctor and might not
spot a problem in time.
Local GPs, especially in rural areas,
could be influential in obtaining
work for howdies. Doddie Davidson,
in early 1940s Aberdeenshire, had
never seen a baby born before. She
was eighteen and attending her first
birth. The woman was in labour and
her husband had gone to fetch the
doctor in the snow. She recalled a
hair-raising birth:
An I could see there wis twa
cords on its neck. The heid wis oot,
an the bairn jist didna look richt. It
wis growin bluer So I pushed the
heidie back a wee bittie and I got
one finger in below the cord and I
got it ower. The second bit o the cord
wis easy. It wis the first ye see. An
eventually, the baby wis born, nae
doctor, nae hubby, naebiddy.
Howdies were evident in

Scotland until at least the 1950s.
Their early importance and
contribution to midwifery history
in Scotland is recognised and should
be remembered.
As midwives charged less than doctors

for their services, the women the midwives
attended were usually poorer, less wellnourished and less able to withstand
infection than the clients of doctors
Later, when the doctor came:

I telt him. I wis fair shakkin, ye ken,
wi fit I did.Ye ken, pushed the bairn
back a bit and put ma finger in. So
he commended me. He said, Oh, at
wis jist great. He says, Oh I could
dae wi you on the [district]. I wis
really worried aboot it but A wis
wi him a few times efter at.
This gives some indication of
the deference ordinary people
accorded medical practitioners. It
also demonstrates the GPs ability
to obtain work for howdies and how
they worked together.
Annie Kerr, another howdie, made
a similar comment: Dr Welsh knew
I likit these kind of jobs away oot of
the road of everybody and no other
body would go near them I can
min Dr Welsh gied me great jobs.
However, GPs not only obtained
work and recommendations for the
howdies, they needed them. Ann
Lamb indicated this when describing
her mother in rural Banffshire. She
said, She was a bit of a midwife
as well and the Doctor always told
them, Fetch Mrs. Lamb until I
come. (from Tomintoul).
38
as representatives of other bodies.

Other differences were financial.
Scottish LAs were authorised to
contribute financially to training of
midwives (although for many years
midwives in Scotland had to pay for
An English midwife
on her rounds.
Scotlands Midwives
Act came thirteen
years after that of
England and Wales
The work of the

CMBS and LSA
The CMBS comprising twelve
members was set up early in 1916.
The CMBS had the power to frame
Rules which were valid only after
approval by the Privy Council and
who had to take into consideration
comments from the GMC.
To a certain extent, the CMBS
benefited from seeing how the
CMBE&W had fared over the
previous thirteen years and,
stimulated by this, the introduction
of improvements within the Scottish
Act. An important difference
between the two CMBs was that
the CMBE&W comprised just nine
members; having twelve members
on the CMBS made room for the
statutory inclusion of two midwives
as well as six medical practitioners
and four lay members. Initially, the
CMBE&W had no statutory midwife
members, although
midwives sat on
the CMBE&W
their training and had no training

income); midwives expenses, for
example, compensation for loss of
income due to suspension; payment
and supply of official forms and
stamped envelopes; and payment of
a doctors fee when called out in an
emergency by a midwife. This fee
was recoverable if possible from the
husband or guardian of the patient.
These differences were eliminated
after the 1918 Midwives Act for
England and Wales was passed.
The CMBS could suspend, or,
if necessary, strike from the Roll,
midwives who broke the Rules;
the CMBE&W could only strike
midwives from the Roll. Another
difference (and initially a sore point)
between the two Acts was to do with
reciprocity of midwifery practice. The
Midwives (Scotland) Act contained
a clause enabling certified midwives
from, for instance England, to be
certified in Scotland. To begin with
Scottish certified midwives could
not practise as such in England.
However, this was also amended with
the 1918 Act after which certified
02/12/2015 10:09
midwives, as long as they paid an

appropriate enrolment fee, could
practise in any of the UK countries.
The 1915 Act, like the 1902 Act
for England and Wales, placed much
of the responsibility for supervising
midwives and regularising midwifery
with LAs. Under the Act, each
LA became the Local Supervising
Authority (LSA) over midwives.
This title carried with it extensive
powers and duties (as shown in the
table below). The power of LSAs in
Scotland was strengthened in 1915
by a clause in the 1915 Notification
of Births (Extension) Act, and
which heralded the evolution of
the Maternity Services Schemes in
Scotland. However, even with their
wide supervisory powers, LAs were
Conclusion
Before 1915, midwifery in
Scotland was alegal with no
existing regulations or licensing
requirements. Early attempts to
formalise midwifery training in
Scotland preceded the eventual
statutory regulation of midwifery
in Scotland in 1915, thirteen years
after a similar Act for England and
Wales. Scotlands unique Schemes
of Maternity and Child Welfare
in Scotland, and the removal of
doctors to the Front during World
War I, acted as significant levers for
the Acts passing at this time. An
important objective, only fulfilled
four decades later, was to prevent
unqualified, unsupervised midwives
attending women in childbirth.
Powers and duties of the Local Supervising Authority

1. Supervision of midwives practising within their district in accordance with the
Rules framed by the CMBS.
2. Investigation of charges against a midwife of malpractice, negligence or
misconduct, conviction or unprofessional conduct.
3. The power to suspend a midwife to prevent the spread of infection.
4. Power of Entry to premises where a midwife was known to be practising and also where
a woman who was not a certified midwife might be practising in contravention of the Act.
5. An obligation to report these activities to the CMBS as they happened and also
through the MOH, on an annual basis.
6. Receive and supply to the CMBS names of all midwives who had notified their
intention to practise within the district.
7. Ensure that all midwives knew that they had to notify their intention to practise
annually as well as the new rules about certification.
8. Keep a current copy of the Roll of midwives accessible for public inspection. This
enabled the public, especially to begin with, to find out which midwives were certified.
obliged to work under the rules of the

CMBS. So, the Act was not only for
regulation and training purposes. It
was an administrative Act that placed
an obligation on LAs to see that the
work of midwives was maintained on
high professional levels.
Thus, the 1915 Midwives (Scotland)
Act, implemented speedily because
of the war and a shortage of doctors,
was also part of a move to benefit
the health of mothers and babies
through the provision of a practical,
educational and administrative
midwifery service in Scotland.
The CMBS, as an examining

and supervisory body, oversaw
midwives who became legal
practitioners of normal midwifery.
At the start, after the Act, only two
midwives representing this new
professional group, were allowed
to be on the CMBS: their own
Board. Midwives were allowed by
Statute to practise autonomously,
and yet they were unable at the
time to withstand the power of
the historically strong medical
profession in Scotland, members
of which comprised the largest
professional entity in the early

CMBS. This medically dominated
Board and the power of the
medical profession was further
strengthened by the Maternity
Services Schemes in Scotland,
LAs with LSAs and the MOHs.
Together they held power when it
came to organising maternity care
in Scotland.
A century later the new
professional group is a very
different entity. Comprising both
women and men, midwives now
work in partnership with other
professional people. While normal
birth has remained the same,
midwives today can practise within
different models and varying
strands of the profession. They use
their professionalism and expertise
to work with women as partners to
try to give them the birth of their
choice. Rules and codes of practice
remain, but alongside, there is a
confidence and strength of purpose
which have taken 100 tumultuous
years to develop.
Dr Lindsay Reid is a midwife
historian and writer and works
from home. She acknowledges with
thanks the help given in the research
for these articles by Professors
Marguerite Dupree and Malcolm
Nicolson, University of Glasgow,
and Professor Edith Hillan,
University of Toronto.
FURTHER
READING
The Rottenrow: The History of the
Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital
1834-1984, D Dow (Carnforth, 1984).
Death in Childbirth, I Loudon
(Oxford, 1992)
Midwives, Society and Childbirth, H
Marland, A M Rafferty (London, 1997)
Midwifery in Scotland:
A History, L Reid (Erskine, 2011)
Scottish Midwives: Twentieth
Century Voices, L Reid
(East Linton, 2000)
39
02/12/2015 10:09
Part 2
James I
and the
character of
15th-century
Scottish
kingship
Michael Brown explores the potency of royal

power in the reign of King James I
he centrepiece of
the 2014 Edinburgh
International festival was
undoubtedly the National
Theatre of Scotlands
performance of the trilogy of plays
written by Rona Munro about the
reigns of the first three Stewart kings
named James. The James Plays used
the reigns of these rulers as the basis
for a dramatic recreation of Scotland
in the 15th century. Both critics and
audiences responded positively.
For a historian of late medieval
Scotland, the main reaction was one of
pleasure that someone had chosen to
look beyond the tales of Wallace, Bruce
and, especially in 2014, the sacred
field of Bannockburn to consider
other elements in their countrys
long, rich and eminently dramatisable
history. Munro encouraged audiences,
both of Scots and from around the
world, to consider a period of the
countrys past when it enjoyed full and
internationally-recognised sovereignty.
The plays succeeded in creating
scenarios and raising themes which
had contemporary resonance in that
most politically engaged summer but
which never turned the drama into
crude allegory. Instead audiences were
invited to think about the nature of
the Scottish kingdom, threatened from

outside but more directly by internal
issues of law and unity.
From the trilogy it is the first play,
James I:The Key will Keep the Lock,
that provides deepest consideration of
the state of Scotland and the role of
its ruler. Munros play tells the story
of Jamess return to Scotland in 1424
following his long captivity in England
and his first thirteen months as ruler,
which culminated in the execution of
Murdoch, duke of Albany, the kings
cousin and greatest subject. The dukes
death marked Jamess first major
success and secured his position at the
head of the realm. While there may
well be other ways of unpicking what
40
p40 James.indd 40
The life of King

James I has
inspired historians
and dramatists
for centuries
A carving of King
James on the
Scott Monument
happened in 1424-45, a concentration

on the actions and character of the
king reflects what survives from
contemporary verdicts. Above all, our
knowledge of the downfall of Albany
and of the subsequent reign of the king
depends on one man. Walter Bower
was abbot of the religious house on
the island of Inchcolm in the Forth
and author of the longest and greatest
history of Scotland produced in the
Middle Ages, Scotichronicon. Bower
devoted the last book of his work to
James I, a man he knew from close
observation in parliament and at
court. All subsequent views of the king
as a man with a mission have relied
substantially on Bowers views.
02/12/2015 10:26
King James I
Like most medieval subjects of a

monarch, for Bower, the key to good
government rested in the personality
of the king. Both the formation of a
princes character and his qualities as a
ruler were a central theme of medieval
political theory and historical writing.
Bower devoted twelve chapters of his
book on James to a description of the
kings virtues and the benefits for his
realm. He described Jamess skills as
a musician on drum, harp, organ and
flute, as an athlete, a jouster, an archer
and a wrestler, and as a philosopher
king able to display his knowledge
of scripture, poetry, painting and
mechanical skills such as gardening.
This Renaissance man deployed his
abilities to do many good things for his
kingdom. Above all, for Bower, James
was our lawgiver king, whose job was
to free the poor from the powerful, to
suppress thieves and expel feuds, even
amongst the great nobles, and establish
firm peace within the kingdom. As
a result, the people were settled in
peaceful prosperity with happy
hearts, calm minds and tranquil spirits.
Such conclusions have coloured
all later accounts, but need to be
handled with care. Bower had his own
motives for his depiction of the king.
He was writing after James Is death
in the troubled years of James IIs
early reign and sought to provide the
child king with the model of his father
like an image shown in a mirror. The
chronicler was concerned to show how
the exercise of kingship could provide
the answer to what he saw as the daily
acts of tyranny by robbers and nobles
and the deceit of the present times
which contrasted with the golden
age of peace under the late king.
Bowers account of this golden age
was designed to confirm this sense of
present crisis and he drew on materials
which allowed him to make this case.
The laws issued by James I, against
private war to make firm and sikker
pece throu all the realme, to judges
to do justice als wele to pur as to rich
and against retinues riding to law
courts all appear amongst Bowers lists
of achievements. However such laws
were passed as statements of intent or
ideology, not as things achieved. The
writer was essentially selling the kings
message to create a rosier image of
James and his rule.
Bowers own account reveals the
gap between his chosen depiction

of the reign and his personal
observation. On our lawgiver
king he also remarked that the
kings laws would have served the
kingdom well enough if they
had been kept. This jaundiced
sideswipe demonstrates that
beneath the ideal king of Bowers
eulogy, his account of the reign
displayed doubts. Against the
claim of prosperity, in 1433
the chronicle stated that the
people began to mutter against
the king, claiming his taxation
was impoverishing them. As he
had acted as an auditor for royal
taxation, the abbots views on
this subject rested on personal
experience. Even on the fall of
Albany and his sons, Bower
inserted sympathy with them as
giants among men of noble
character whose deaths were
lamented because of their
admirable reputation.
Such opinions temper the
general praise which Abbot
Bower heaped on his subject
only marginally. The choice to
mute his criticism may have been
influenced by Bowers shock at
the way James Is reign ended.
On 21 February, 1437 the king
was killed in his chambers in
the Perth Blackfriars by a group
of his subjects which included
members of the royal household.
This bitter bloodshed was, for
Bower and many others, the
worst of crimes against both man
and God. That it ushered in an era of
political instability only emphasised
the depth of Scotlands loss. Like
some modern media discussions of
terrorist ourages, in Scotichronicon
Bower sought no explanation of such
an event beyond reference to the evil
natures of the perpetrators. However,
other contemporaries were not so
squeamish. An account of the crime
circulating on the continent linked
the kings death both to his treatment
of Albany and to the impoverishment
of his subjects through his insatiable
covetousness. This version contained
accusations from Robert Graham,
who led the assassins, that James
was not righteous but a tyrannous
prince. Bowers own muted doubts
about Jamess kingship were amplified
King James I monument

at Dryburgh Abbey
Read more about the

Stewarts in our special
souvenir magazine,
published in March
p40 James.indd 41
into a justification for regicide.

After the kings murder
and the brutal execution of
his killers, expressions of
these criticisms in any form
may have become more risky.
However, the assassination
and its treatment by writers
clearly illustrate the way in
which James Is personal reign
of only thirteen years had
polarised opinion. This brief
career also demonstrated a fact
which may seem surprising to a
21st century audience used to
regarding monarchy as a staid,
conservative institution. In 15thcentury Scotland, kingship was
a revolutionary force. A man like
James Stewart, an outsider to
his realm in 1424, could use the
power of his office to restructure
a whole land. His ability to
draw on his subjects resources
through taxation and his forceful
challenges to the political status
quo via assaults on Albany and
many other great lords were
sanctioned by his possession
the ideological high-ground
through the sacred and sworn
authority of the crown. As his
opponents found, resistance to
royal demands could be defined
as rebellion and treason. Bowers
may have expressed discomfort
with the experience of Jamess
ruler but could in no way
sanction armed resistance to it.
His final verdict on the role
of the king as the guarantor of law
and peace marked a reversion to safe
convention after an era of radical
change. The portrayal of James I in
Scotichronicon, however idealised,
demonstrated the potency of personal
monarchy in 15th-century Scotland.
Professor Michael Brown is the author of
James I published by Birlinn.
Discover more about the lives
and times of the fascinating
Stewart dynasty in our souvenir
magazine Kings & Queens of
Scotland: The Stewarts, on sale
12 March, 2016.
Find out more on page 63, and
pre-order the issue at:
http://scot.sh/KingsandQueens
41
02/12/2015 10:27
Part 2
Most anxious to have a teacher

Gaelic schools in the
Northern Highlands
Elizabeth Ritchie explores how 19th-century Highland communities turned the provision of
evangelical schools to their own advantage, using them as a means of learning to read and
as a place for socialising, as much as learning about the Bible
f, on a winter evening
in 1831, you had
been walking through
Achnacarnin in Assynt,
you might have wondered
why one large building was so
brightly lit. Had you crept through
the doorway you might have
slipped into a seat with about
40 adults and 40 young people
listening to David Munro as he
used his grammar book and his
Bible to explain the rudiments
of reading Gaelic. This was one
of the six night classes Munro
conducted each week on top of his
daytime teaching commitments.
There were a few other schools
in the area, but this one, financed
by the Edinburgh Society for
the Support of Gaelic Schools

(ESSGS) was the only one
focused on teaching everyone who
was interested, regardless of age
or sex, in learning to read their
own language. The brainchild of
a group of philanthropists, the
main aim of the ESSGS was to
spread Evangelical Christianity
through teaching Gaelic speakers
to read the Bible. Founded
in 1811, the Society followed
a pattern instituted in Wales:
they went only where they were
welcomed, charged no fees and
taught people to read their own
language in temporary schools.
Across the north, communities
took advantage of the schools
to support their own religious
42
p42 Schools.indd 42
The crofting
township of Laid can
be seen scattered
out along the road on
the far bank of Loch
Eriboll. People were
moved to townships
like this during the
Clearances and it
was isolated
communities such as
this which benefited
from the provision of
a Gaelic school
culture and to overcome the

barriers of geography, work and
money which stood in the way of
becoming literate.
John Knox had envisioned a
school in every parish, but even
where a school was present,
distance and terrain made getting
there impossible for many. The
ESSGS therefore focused on
geographically challenging areas.
120 were on the school roll at
Dalhalvaig in 1838, but the people
who lived on the opposite side
of the River Halladale were cut
off from it and begged of me to
get the school removed to their
side for the next season. Teachers
moved on every few years to
meet the demand for schooling in
02/12/2015 10:12
History of education
districts with few roads

and bridges.
Gaelic schools also worked
around work patterns. Families
depended on childrens labour.
At Knockarthur, Rogart, most
pupils were kept out of school,
during Summer and Harvest,
herding cattle. In nearby Morness
the teacher noticed that until
early December attendance was
very small until the harvest was
secured. During the winter slack
time when days were dark, people
must have congregated to the
schools for entertainment and
socialising as much as education.
The ESSGS charged nothing as
they knew many could not even
afford a nominal fee. In 1826
Assynts minister begged for a
school describing the destitute
state of Achamelvich where about
200 people lived and where the
parents are most anxious to have a
Teacher. However, the lack of fees
did not remove the difficulties for
the poorest. One Assynt teacher
discovered parents were unable to
buy any schoolbooks. Catastrophe
had struck this community: he had
nineteen orphans in my School,
whose parents were drowned, and
I am in a stress what to do with
them concerning the Books. In
other places children did not have
enough clothes to make them
decent and had to stay in bed for
warmth. Despite circumstances,
some children made remarkable
intellectual achievements. At
Kinnauld, Rogart, there were
only 24 present, from four to
fifteen years of age. From the
appearance of these children,
their parents must be in great
poverty, as they were not only
ill-clothed, but almost all of them
had the appearance of want of
sufficient food. Despite this
Fifteen of them read the Bible
most distinctly and fluently; they
also repeated portions of various
parts of the Scriptures by heart
two girls, sisters, eleven and
twelve years old, could repeat
twenty-nine chapters each by
heart! Another girl, six years old,
could repeat three chapters. Not a
sentence of English is understood
by any one in this School.
Considering these children

were cold and hungry, probably
most of the time, their ability to
concentrate is impressive.
A missionary organisation
The ESSGS were sometimes
asked to provide schools for
communities recently placed
on an insecure economic and
cultural footing by Clearance
policies. In 1824 many Gaelic
speaking people uprooted
from the fertile inland straths
of Sutherland were trying to
resettle in English speaking
parts of Caithness. In Heathfield
Rev Alexander Campbell
A cluster of longhouses
and outbuildings
at the township of
Caen, Sutherland.
Gaelic schools were
designed to serve
such communities.
School buildings,
being constructed
by members of the
community, were
doubtless similar to
peoples houses
Communities took advantage of the schools to

support their own religious culture and to overcome
the barriers of geography, work and money which
stood in the way of becoming literate
noted 700 souls were thus
deprived of every opportunity
of attending the means of
grace in the language which
they understand. He wanted a
Gaelic teacher to provide some
religious education. He perhaps
also hoped reading Gaelic would
help them learn English. In 1839
William Findlater, minister of
Durness, requested a teacher
be sent to Laide another
p42 Schools.indd 43
poor district of this parish

on the western shore of Loch
Erribole, where there are about
26 families a new settlement,
they are at least six miles distant
from the nearest school, and about
twelve miles from the church.
Findlater and Campbell
emphasized church as much
as school because they knew
the ESSGS was essentially a
missionary organisation. The
schools were not intended to
host a Gaelic cultural renaissance
or even really to improve
educational standards. They
were to promote Evangelical
Christianity. After mastering
linguistic basics, pupils graduated

to reading the Bible. In
Dalhalvaig, 24 were studying the
elementary books, eight could
read the New Testament, and
28 the Old. Indeed there were
few other Gaelic publications to
read. Teachers also encouraged
their students to memorise. Most
Dalhalvaig pupils could repeat
more or less of the Shorter
Catechism; and a few of them had
43
02/12/2015 10:46
portions of Scripture committed

to memory. Memorisation has
been criticised by both historians
and contemporaries. Indeed
knowing something by heart is
useless if it is not understood,
as was too often the case in
18th-century charity schools.
However, memorising Gaelic
scripture fitted both the schools
evangelistic aims and with the
oral culture of the Gidhealtachd.
and, to the disgust of the minister,

great was the injustice which the
good Word suffered. Gaelic Bibles
and the ability to read Gaelic were
necessary. Where a Gaelic schoolmaster was at hand, he sometimes
conducted Sunday meetings. On
Sabbath evenings the school at
Achnarras, Halkirk, was as full
as it can accommodate. John
Sutherland opened it up for reading the Scriptures, singing and
During the winter, when days were

dark, people must have congregated
in the schools for entertainment and
socialising as much as for education
Enthusiastic scholars
18th century religious life was
oral, dominated by the dain
spioradail of poets like Donald
Matheson, Kildonan; John MacKay, Mudale; Dugald Buchanans
poetry; psalm singing, preaching,
and catechising. The New Testament was not published in Scots
Gaelic until 1767, nor the Old
until 1801. People living close to
the parish church therefore relied
on the ministers ability to translate extemporaneously from the
English. In enormous parishes
like Durness many
people, like those at
Eriboll, met together
independently for
Sunday worship. By
the 1820s this community had a supply
of Bibles, but they
were in English. Some
of the children could
read the language
but they wanted the
ability to translate
prayer, until it is past eight of the

clock. Residents of Armadale
were particularly enthusiastic. On
the Sabbath day, after returning
home, a distance of six English
miles, from preaching in the parish church, the inhabitants and
their Teacher meet for religious
exercises. The ESSGS promoted
Evangelical Christianity, but also
supported local religious culture
wherever it already existed.
The missionary ethos of the
ESSGS meant they were happy
to educate anyone who walked
through the door, regardless
of age or sex. A report from
Creich parish in 1825
was typical. 38-yearold Janet MacKay
attended along
with her five
children, the
youngest a
boy of
44
p42 Schools.indd 44
Balnakeil church
at Durness. William
Findlater was
minister here and
tried to get a Gaelic
school provided for
the inhabitants of
nearby Laide
3 years of age, who reads and

spells correctly words of three
and four letters. She could not
read any Gaelic, and very little
English, when the Teacher opened
school here; now she reads and
repeats the Psalms with ease
and accuracy; her oldest son is
monitor of the highest class; and
all her children are good scholars.
Teachers sometimes taught extra
classes to fit adult work patterns.
In Embo the Teacher gave
lessons, after School hours, to
another married man. At Brimms
Donald Hood assembles the
parents and children on Sabbath
evenings. Achnacarnins David
Munro not only took night classes
but also went house to house to
teach the elderly.
For most Highlanders of either
sex, schooling was out of the
question, but there was a long
standing reluctance in Highland
communities to school girls. In
other charity schools the male
to female ratio was about three
to one. However, Gaelic schools
were popular for girls. In 1821
David MacKenzie, minister
of Farr, made the astonishing
discovery that at Swordly 66 out
of 78 of the pupils were female.
Averages at ESSGS schools across
the Highlands that decade were a
nicely balanced 55.4 percent boys
and 44.6 percent girls, so why
were 84 percent of Swordly
pupils female? The case
shows what local people
thought of schooling.
Few men attended as
they were much
employed in day
labour and
fishing. The
parish school
was close to
Swordly so
parents,
02/12/2015 10:47
History
In the next issue
ofof
according to their usual practice,

contrive to keep their boys at that
School, but are not so anxious
about the education of their
Daughters. With men working
away and boys enrolled in the
parish school, girls and women
were allowed to attend the
temporary Gaelic school as they
could learn the reading for the
Scriptures in so short a time. So
girls learning English, writing,
arithmetic or more advanced
subjects was not considered worth
the time, money or loss of labour,
but learning to read Gaelic at a
free school focused on religion
was socially appropriate.
Had the philanthropists who
financed the ESSGS, who felt
they were bringing Evangelical
Christianity to benighted
Highlanders, read between the
lines of reports like that from
Swordly, they might have realised
local people used the schools on
their own terms. The residents of
Baddydarrach by Lochinver had
specific expectations for their
school: after three years parents
withdrew their children as most of
the young people have been taught
to read the Scriptures pretty
correctly. Elsewhere in Assynt the

schools had an unexpected result.
In 1837 the minister observed
that the diligent work of David
Munro, Achnacarnins Gaelic
teacher, was instilling in the young
an ambition to learn English in
order to remove any bars to their
advancement in life. Forward
thinking youth recognised the
usefulness of literacy and used
the Gaelic school to improve
their economic rather than their
spiritual prospects. The 80 crofters
and cottars crowded into the
room at Achnacarnin appreciated
the schools emphasis on Gaelic,
religion, oral culture and the
way it dealt with the challenges
of the farming year, geography
and poverty. Like communities
all over the Highlands, they used
their school to support their own
goals: their religious life, providing
daughters as well as sons with
basic literacy, and to ensure better
economic opportunities for the
next generation.
Elizabeth Ritchie is a lecturer at the

Centre for History, University of the
Highlands and Islands.
education
history
SCOTLAND
Vol 16.2
MAR/APR 2016
On sale:
13 Feb
World War II and its aftermath

in the Highlands & Islands
We explore the key role of the Highlands and Islands in
defending Britain during World War II and discover the
impact that new military bases created during the war had
on the communities close to them, as well as exploring
what happened in the area once peace returned.
Prehistoric predecessors: Shipping on

Loch Ness before the Caledonian Canal
The opening of the
Caledonian Canal in 1818
brought to an end centuries
of commercial shipping in
the Great Glen. Often used
for political and/or military
advantage, the ships that
sailed Loch Ness varied in
both size and use, as we discover in this in-depth history
of pre-19th-century shipping on Loch Ness.
The Battle of Culloden from the Public

Record of Northern Ireland archives
For centuries, events surrounding the battle of Culloden
have inspired authors, songwriters and military historians.
In our special feature, we take a look at what private
archives held in the Public Record Office of Northern
Ireland can tell us about the battle through letters, first-
FURTHER READING
The People of the Great Faith: The Highland Church, 1690-1900, Douglas
Ansdell Stornoway: Acair, 1998)
hand accounts of the fighting and genealogical notes.
An Orkney woman in Hudsons Bay, part II

In the second part of our study of Isobel Gunns daring
plan to become a Hudsons Bay Company trader, we
discover what happened to Isobel once her baby was
The Decline of the Celtic Languages: A Study of Linguistic and Cultural

Conflict in Scotland, Wales and Ireland from the Reformation to the
Twentieth Century, Victor Durkacz (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1983)
Donald E. Meek, Gaelic Bible, revival and mission: the spiritual rebirth of the
nineteenth century Highlands in The Church in the Highlands, James Kirk
(ed) (Edinburgh: Scottish Church History Society, 1998)
born, bringing her ploy to disguise herself as a man to an

abrupt end. The disparaging way in which Isobel and her
fellow female workers were treated sheds light on the
attitudes of the Hudsons Bay Company towards women
at this time a stance which dramatically was at odds
with that of native communities in Canada.
Elizabeth Ritchie, Looking for Catholics: Using Protestant Missionary

Society Records to Investigate Nineteenth-Century Highland Catholicism,
Innes Review (Spring 2014), pp. 52-75.
PLUS: Archaeology site report from Bannockburn,
Gaelic Scotland: The Transformation of a Culture Region, Charles W.J.

Withers (London and New York: 1988)
magnificent Elgin Cathedral stones.
East Sutherland history blog:

https://historylinksdornoch.wordpress.com/
exploring the archives of Drum Castle, Strathclyde

Universitys new DNA project, and spotlight on the
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p42 Schools.indd 45
45
02/12/2015 10:12
Part 2
PREPARING FOR
THE AFTERLIFE
A short history of death and funerals
Ann Galliard explores the many rites and rituals associated with death in the medieval era
ne of the first
printed books
which circulated
soon after Sir
Duncan Campbell
endowed the
church at Kilmun in 1442 was Ars
Moriendi (The Art of Dying). To a
world reeling from the devastating
effects of the Black Death, it was a
timely publication. Then, as now,
death was part of being human, but
infant mortality was high, there were
plagues, leprosy, syphilis and famine,
and people did not expect to live a
long life. The main consideration was
preparation for a good death and
publications such as Ars Moriendi
helped people make their plans as
well as providing consoling thoughts
of salvation. There was a universal
fear of dying suddenly, unprepared
for the afterlife.
Disease and illness were associated
with sin and it was important that bad
behaviour was confessed and forgiven.

People thought that the dead did not
go directly to salvation, but passed
through purgatory where sins were
purged in a painful manner. There
was also a belief that these sufferings
could be eased by the prayers of the
living. Prayers said by the clergy were
the most effective, and so were highly
valued. This belief was instrumental
in establishing the fashion for the
endowment of churches and religious
foundations, although ordinary people
had to make do with the prayers said
for the dead on All Souls Day.
The preparation for death included
settling affairs and making property
grants; wills were not common but
were increasingly made in the 16th
century by those who owned land
and property. People did dwell on the
business of dying and were not reticent
in talking about the subject.
Archibald the 7th earl (The Grim)
wrote to the octogenarian Duncan of
46
p46 Funerals.indd 46
The catastrophic
effects of the Black
Death were a stark
warning that life
could end at any
time, meaning that it
was wise to prepare
for a good death
Glenorchy that he wanted to visit his

friends in Scotland soon:
Especially souch as you who ar neer the
winning of thair days, that befoir we go to
rest we mycht bid on and uther farewaile.
Glenorchy died, in his eighties, two
years later, having received a stack of
letters from well-wishers hoping that
he might have a happy end. His last
request was that his corpse was not
preserved and that his burial was quiet
and simple.
Expression of grief was natural
and part of the funeral ritual. People
believed that death was not the end
of existence, and believed that they
should not show any doubt about
the Resurrection, although it was
expected that mourners could express
regret for the separation. Outside the
practices of pre-Reformation funerals,
there was little hope of a fast journey
through purgatory for the soul of the
02/12/2015 15:08
Death in the Middle Ages
departed but it seemed that it was

easier for the rich to attain salvation.
There were some practices peculiar to
the Highlands the coronach was the
wailing and shrieking of older women
during the funeral. This was considered
primitive and superstitious; some
Highland ministers tried to ban it but
there were still minutes of disapproval
by the synod of Argyll as late as the mid
17th century.
Church burials
Burial within the church was favoured
for the clergy who worked there and
also the nobility; the early Campbell
burials were indeed beneath the floor
of the medieval Kilmun church. It was
important to be buried in consecrated
ground (so that the body would be
reunited with the soul at the Day of
Judgement) and aligned to the east in
preparation for Jesuss arrival. A grave
close to the altar was the most sought
after position, but obviously restricted;
not least because it reflected the status
of the deceased. This was an important
aspect of church burial; not only was
the deceased remembered, but his
family could continue their enjoyment
of his or her high status. Even in
the graveyard there was an order.
Historically, women or lay people were
often buried in the less desirable part
and monks in the better areas.
The General Assembly outlawed the
practice of church burial in 1576, with
punishments extending to possible
excommunication for anyone ignoring
the injunction. This was difficult to
enforce, and it took some years before
communities began to comply. The
early burials under the earthen floor
of Kilmun Church were still causing
problems as late as the end of the
17th century, but the Campbells had
followed the rules by using a side
chapel for burials, which was not
considered part of the main church
and therefore was permitted. We know
that the 7th earl, who died in 1638, was
known to be buried in the area now
occupied by the mausoleum, then a
side chapel of the church; the previous
earl (who died in 1584) as well as
the 5th earl (who died in 1573) were
probably also in the same area. This
was the beginning of the foundation of
a separate mausoleum.
The change in attitudes gives
some explanation to the question
of why there are only two effigies
for such an important family. The

example of the burial of the 5th earl,
who held strong Reformist ideals,
demonstrates his wish to have a
simple memorial. His Latin epigraph
reads (in translation):
Paintings and
illustrations relating
to death became
popular, such as
The Dance Macabre
which showed that in
death, all are equal
Archibald Campbell, earl of Argyll, an

imitator of ancestral virtues and most
worthy of such a family, a most resolute
supporter of religious truth, died in the
year 1573.
Before the Middle Ages, the bodies
of important people were laid in
tombs and in stone kists, but during
medieval times the majority of burials
took place without coffins. In 1583
the General Assembly decreed that
each parish was to have a common
coffin to conceal the shrouded body
as it was carried to the grave, where
it should be buried at least six feet
under the ground. The coffin was
carried on a bier; often merely simple
rails to bear the coffin.
These coffins were usually hinged,
for easy removal of the corpse, and
were used again and again, with a fee
to be paid to the church for use of the

dead kist. Anyone rich enough had
their own coffin, probably made from
black-painted oak and containing a
thick layer of bran to soak up fluids
and reduce the smell. Some of these
would be decorated to show the status
of the deceased.
The practice of covering the coffin or
shrouded body with a pall or mortcloth
grew, and a payment for the hire of the
cloth was made to the church. From
these simple covers, more elaborate
decoration was added, with symbolic
embroidery on velvet. The best
mortcloth was made available to people
who could afford to pay a little more
and often the funds raised went to pay
for paupers funerals.
By 1700, a funeral trade had become
established, providing coffins for
anyone who could pay. Even poorer
people managed to get their local
carpenter to make a simple wooden
box. The coffins of the rich were
a much more elaborate and costly
affair. Triple coffins were costly
and demonstrated the importance
of the deceased and his family.
47
02/12/2015 15:08
There are individual descriptions

of coffins like these which lie in
the mausoleum at Kilmun, but a
general pattern was followed.
As time passed, the thoughts of
Church leaders on the subject of
funerals became more moderate,
and eventually an unofficial
funeral sermon was approved,
a low-key concession. The
remembrance by mourners was
still of utmost importance, and any
sermon should be short, restrained
and demonstrate the equality of all
at death.
The government also laid down
rules about funerals. In 1686 the
Scottish Parliament passed the Act
anent Burying in Scots Linen. This
prohibited the use of rich materials
for making grave clothes or shrouds,
and decreed that the material of plain
linen and hemp which was allowed
had to be made in Scotland.
Fines for non-compliance were
severe 300 for a nobleman and
200 for anyone else. The minister
had to keep a record of anyone buried
in the parish and two people had to
declare that the corpse was wrapped
in Scots linen. Other Acts followed; in
1707 the fabric to be used was wool.
A final goodbye
When someone was dying, the many
preparations associated with the
passing began. Friends and family
would gather in the hope of saying
goodbye, and the passing bell would
be tolled, a relic of the days when
it was believed that the noise might
frighten off evil spirits. Nine rings
for a man, six for a woman and
three for a child, followed by one
ring for each year of the persons
life. Someone would be sent around
the community to let everyone
know when the person died and a
flurry of activity would begin in the
household. If the death occurred
away from home, the arrangements
would be even more complicated.
Around the beginning of the
17th century, a searcher who was
a person of suitable moral standing,
and often an elderly woman of the
parish, would be called upon to
determine the cause of death.
The body would then be cleaned
and embalmed before being dressed
in appropriate clothes, often to
reflect the status of the deceased, and
then. placed in the best bed ready for

viewing by mourners.
The house would be draped with
black mourning cloths; mirrors
windows, and reflective surfaces,
candles would be placed around the
bed and the room filled with flowers.
Invitations were sent to distant family
and friends, tenants and dignitaries.
A list of people who were to be
told when a duke or his wife died
would read like a Whos Who of the
establishment and it would be a great
slight if someone expecting to be
invited was left out.
Messengers were sent bearing the
news which could be written as a
letter or on a special card. In the 17th
century, these often had illustrations
of skeletons or other gruesome
images as a reminder to the living
that death was all around.
Newspapers would often give
information about the funeral when
details were released and while
placing notices became popular for
the majority, it was not needed for
someone of high status whose demise
would have made the news pages of the
publication anyway.
The custom of a lykewake was
observed by many families in the
Highlands and west of Scotland. The
lyke was the unburied corpse, and
a constant watch was kept over it,
night and day, in order to ward off
evil spirits. Family and friends could
do this, but often noble families
would see that this was done by
servants or the militia. This period
was also a time for people to come
to pay their respects, often touching
48
Above left: Friends

and family would
gather at the bedside
of the mortally
ill person, as a
passing bell was
tolled to mark their
imminent departure
from the earth
Above right: Special
cards advised
mourners of funeral
arrangements, with
macabre illustrations
reminding people that
death could come
at any time
the corpse with their left hand.

In the case of a person who
dominated a community, or even a
county, like a duke and his family,
there would be long queues of
people wishing to pay their respects,
and it was necessary to have set
periods when the general public
could attend.
At the end of the lykewake there
was normally a banquet followed by
the kisting or laying of the body in
the coffin if this had not previously
been possible.
Historic Kilmun would like to thank
the Duke of Argyll for access to archive
material used to research this feature.
Ann Galliard is chair of Historic Kilmun,
which cares for the Argyll Mausoleum in
the village of Kilmun, Argyll.
To find out more about the history
of the area and to read tales of
its notable past inhabitants, visit:
www.historickilmun.org
02/12/2015 15:08
Curators pick
The remarkable
Dr Grant
Jenna Rose of Glencoe Folk Museum selects three related

objects which together tell the story of a local GP and his
passion for medical and household innovations
nyone who has visited Glencoe Folk

Museum in recent years will have
come across the reconstruction of
Dr Lachlan Grants medical surgery
within the Byre and will have read about him
being a leading advocate in the formation of
The Highlands and Islands Medical Services
Committee. The Committee revolutionised
medical service provision in the Highlands and
Islands by forming the worlds first state-provided
health service, which is considered to be the
precursor to the National Health Service.
In addition to this, visitors will no doubt
have been fascinated by Dr Grant becoming
central to a labour dispute of nationwide
significance. Dr Grant had been appointed as
the medical officer of the Ballachulish Slate
Quarry Company, and medical practitioner
to the communities of Ballachulish, Glencoe,
Duror and Kinlochleven. He showed a
strong determination to improve the rights
of the companys employees. This stance was
unpopular at management level and ultimately
resulted in his unfair dismissal. In support of
their doctor, the quarry men went on strike
for a year, a period known as The Ballachulish
Lockout. Eventually, after long legal and

political battles, Dr Grant was reinstated and
the case led to fundamental improvements in
the rights of workers nationally.
Many people will not be familiar with Dr
Grants influential background and his flair
for innovation. Dr Lachlan Grant was born in
Johnstone, Renfrewshire, on 18 April, 1871. He
was the eldest of seven children born to Peter
and Jean Grant and was seven years old when the
family moved to Glencoe.
Peter Grant had an entrepreneurial flair.
Together with his good friend Archibald
McFarlane, they set up a firm called Grant and
McFarlane which was based in Johnstone, near
Glasgow. The men traded as cabinet makers,
engineers, wood merchants, joiners and sawmillers and were well practised at creating new
items for the growing consumer market,and
improving those that already existed. An example
of this is an advertisement card (below left) for
their improved washing machine.
Like his father, Lachlan Grant was fond of
creating and inventing items he considered to be
necessary, not only for his role as a practitioner,
but also for domestic and social purposes.
Clockwise from top left: Grants teapot; the doctor on his travels; the Grant & McFarlane washing machine
created by Grants father; Grants devotion to his workers resulted in the Ballachulish lock out
One of his inventions was the Grant Teapot

whose notable feature was the paddle attached
to its lid which enabled the infused tea to be
uniformly and evenly stirred, with the tea leaves
remaining undisturbed by the action. The teapot
is marked with the patent number 122093 and
the invention is titled Improvements in and
relating to Stirring and Agitating Devices for
Tea-pots, Coffee Pots, Cocoa Vessels and the
like. The idea of attaching the stirrer to the lid
was registered on 4 April, 1918.
Marks on the teapot show it is made of
electroplated nickel silver. Electroplating of
nickel, brass, tin and zinc was well developed by
the 1900s and as a result, the cost of domestic
items such as buttons, coffee and tea sets was far
less than had been the case previously.
Dr Grant also invented sunshades which
comprised of light aluminium frames which
clipped around the ears. The shades had no lens
but sported circular rims to which hooded metal
awnings were attached at eyebrow level. Another
of his inventions was a portable reservoir with
a spray, which was to help reduce the risk of
infection, and also an aluminium throat swab.
Dr Lachlan Grant was undoubtedly an
innovator in an array of fields. He was influential
in transforming healthcare, playing a key role in
standing up for the rights of slate workers and
attempting to improve the world with his series
of inventions. He was someone who was truly
ahead of his time and it is an honour to tell his
story through the objects in our collection.
Glencoe Folk Museum, Main Street, Glencoe
Village, Glencoe, Highland, PH49 4HS; tel:
01855 811664; e-mail: curator@glencoemuseum.
com; website: www.glencoemuseum.com
p49 Curator's pick.indd 49
49
02/12/2015 10:15
Part 2
DAVID DALE:
the forgotten
entrepreneur
The achievements of David Dale, founder of New Lanark Mills,

have been overshadowed by the fame of his son-in-law Robert Owen,
who may have deliberately underplayed Dales influence, writes David McLaren
n 21 March,
1806, the streets
of Glasgow were
thronged with
mourners for the
funeral procession of one of the
citys most prominent citizens.
Guests included the magistrates,
members of the Established and
Secessionist churches and between
200 to 300 respectable inhabitants.
In addition, The Times noted that
what it called the concourse of
spectators was immense. Behind
the coffin as it made its way to the
Ramshorn Kirkyard walked the
still unfamiliar figure of Robert
Owen, accompanied by his fiveyear-old son. After the funeral, small
sums of money were distributed to
several hundred of the citys poor.
The deceased would certainly
have approved. Described by Sir
Tom Devine as the greatest cotton
magnate of his time in Scotland,
David Dale was finally at peace.
But who was Dale? Why was

Owen a prominent figure at the
funeral and why is so little known
about Dale today? The short
answer to each of these is that
Dale founded New Lanark and
became an important historical
figure in his own right; that Owen
was his son-in-law and manager
after Dales retirement and that
Scottish history has underplayed
Dales achievements.
Owens association with New
Lanark between 1800 and 1824
is well known. A very profitable
spinning business was combined
with a great social experiment in
communitarian living. The New
Social System or New Moral World
which Owen sought could only be
achieved by enlightened social and
educational circumstances. A mans
character was formed for him, not
by him and so education was central
to the vision. Owen pioneered a
radical system of infant/elementary
50
p50 David Dale.indd 50
The mills at New

Lanark, established
by David Dale in
1786, over ten
years before Robert
Owen first visited
Inset: David Dale,
whose contribution
to Scotlands
industrial history
has largely
been overlooked
education, based on Pestalozzian

principles and including such
subjects as singing, dancing, natural
history and geography. Adults
could attend improving lectures
on topics deemed appropriate for
communitarian living. The New
Institution for the Formation of
Character, opened in 1816, was
designed for this very purpose and
the community became well known
at home and abroad.
There is, of course, a back story to
all of this. Dale had established the
village and managed the business for
some fifteen years prior to Owens
take over in 1800. The principles of
enlightened social and educational
provision were well established
in New Lanark by the turn of the
century. Daless original partners,
Richard Arkwright and George
Dempster quickly found other
interests and Dale was the sole
owner by the time the mills started
spinning in 1786.
02/12/2015 10:17
Industrial history
Dale had done well for himself.

Born in Stewarton, he had arrived
in Glasgow c.1763 and proceeded to
make a fortune as a yarn dealer. He
married Anne Caroline Campbell
whose father had been chief cashier
at the Royal Bank of Scotland
in Edinburgh. By 1783 he had
established himself as a successful
merchant, become a founder
member of Glasgow Chamber of
Commerce (the first in Britain),
built a mansion in Charlotte Street
and, with R.S Moncrieff, and had
been appointed as an agent for the
first Glasgow branch of the Royal
Bank a branch which achieved
an annual turnover of 1m within
a few years. Here indeed was an
entrepreneur on the move.
By the 1790s there were over
1,300 employees in New Lanark,
the majority of whom were women
and children. By 18th century
standards, conditions were far
superior to anything offered in other
factory communities in the UK.
This was particularly true for the
young pauper or parish apprentices
sent out by the churches, charities
and town councils to earn a living.
They were boarded in clean
dormitories in No.4 Mill and had
a varied and healthy diet. In fact,
their health was often better than
that of the village children who
lived at home. Trained teachers
were employed to teach in the free
evening school and also in the day
school for the under sixes unheard
of elsewhere. The community
prospered and between 1795 and
1799, more than 3,000 visitors,
many from overseas, came to see this
community which, for the first time,
combined industry, philanthropy,
education and community. Robert
Owen was attracted to the idea and
visited in 1798.
New Lanark was a huge
achievement but Dale was
becoming a major figure in the
business community elsewhere. He
established Blantyre cotton mills
(with a school) in 1785 and, in
partnership with Claud Alexander
of Ballochmyle, founded the Catrine
Cotton Works in Ayrshire which
by 1796 employed almost as many
people as New Lanark. Other
business interests included a Turkey
Red (sometimes known as Dales

Red) Dyeworks in Glasgow and
an extensive property portfolio,
including warehouses, in the city.
Practical philanthropy
It is true to say that Dale was as
well known for his philanthropy
and public works as he was for his
entrepreneurial success. He was an
evangelical Dissenter and donated
large sums to various religious
causes but his philanthropy took
many practical forms. Concerned
about poverty and emigration in
the Highlands, he sent more than
one vessel loaded with grain for the
starving population. Families were
offered work (hence Caithness Row
in New Lanark).
He invested in a small cotton
mill in Spinningdale, Sutherland, in
the full knowledge that the venture
was unlikely to be profitable and he
continued to support it long after
other partners had abandoned the
scheme. In Glasgow, Dale played
a major role in the establishment
of the Royal Infirmary and as a
director/manager of the Towns
Hospital, the Humane Society and
the Chamber of Commerce. Local
newspapers also knew him as the
benevolent Magistrate.
Recent research has revealed that
Dale became the first Chairman of
the Glasgow Society for the Abolition
of the Slave Trade in 1791. This was a
courageous position to take, given the
issue of slave cotton and the fact that
many of his business colleagues were
West India merchants, uncommitted
to the cause. Nevertheless, reports
of Dales involvement appeared
regularly in the newspapers as the
society raised funds, distributed
literature from Clarksons London
committee and gathered names for a
petition to Parliament.
Dales involvement in these
business and philanthropic ventures
continued until the last year or two
of his life. He began to reduce his
commitments from c.1800 when
Owen (by now married to Dales
eldest daughter) took over the
management of New Lanark and
advised him to sell some of his
businesses. When Scott Moncrieff
retired from the Royal Bank in 1803,
Dale rather reluctantly did likewise.
Robert Owens
institution at New
Lanark. By the
time Owen took
over the mills, the
community already
had initiatives
set up by Dale which
combined industry,
education and
community
p50 David Dale.indd 51
After Dales death, Owens

management of Dales reputation
(and his estate) has attracted some
criticism. There were certainly some
financial irregularities but equally
unfortunate was Owens failure to
acknowledge fully the achievements
of his father in law in New Lanark
and elsewhere. He noted Dales
heroic efforts but felt that the
community (and the whole world)
could only achieve what he called
happiness under a new social
order, ie Owenism.
However, while Owens
achievements in New Lanark were
of enormous importance, they ought
not to be allowed to obscure Dales
status as a significant historical
figure in his own right. Until
recently, he has never been given the
attention and the credit he deserves.
A new biography of Dale goes a long
way to redressing the balance and,
for the first time, there is a full and
detailed picture of Dales life and
times. Many would argue that it is
long overdue.
Dr David McLaren has recently
retired from the School of Education,
Strathclyde University. He has written
numerous papers on New Harmony,
New Lanark, Dale and Owen. His
extensive biography of Dale has recently
been published.
FURTHER
READING
David Dale: A Life, David J McLaren
(Stenlake Publications, 2015)
51
02/12/2015 10:17
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01/12/2015 15:53
BOOKREVIEWS
Edited by Dr Allan Kennedy

reviews@historyscotland.com
Military might
Dr Matthew Dziennik reviews the first full-length biography of military commander

John Forbes, which uncovers new information and dispels long-held myths about the
career of this well-respected army officer
John Forbes: Scotland, Flanders
and the Seven YearsWar,
1707-1759
John Oliphant
Bloomsbury Academic, 2015
224 pages
Hardback; 65
ISBN: 9781472511188
John Forbes may not be
the most familiar name in
the long list of Scotlands
military heroes. As John
Oliphant proves, however,
in this first full-length
biography, Forbes life and
achievements are worthy of greater attention.
Born in the same year as the passage of
the Treaty of Union (1707) Forbes military
career reflected the wider political and cultural
incorporation of Scotland into the British
Union. Trained in medicine, Forbes joined the
army as a surgeon in 1729 before purchasing
a commission in the Royal North British
Dragoons in 1735. He proved to be a capable
staff officer serving as a quartermaster
general and adjutant general during the War
of Austrian Succession, as British forces fought
alongside Dutch and Austrian armies to limit
French expansion in Flanders.
Forbes renown rests on the role he played
in the capture of Fort Duquesne (modern
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) during the Seven
Years War. The scene of a catastrophic
disaster for British forces in 1755, Forbes led
the army that finally achieved the capture
of the fort in 1758. To achieve this feat, the
army had to cut a 200-mile track through
the Appalachian wilderness and it took all of
Forbes energy to keep together his diverse
army of British regulars, colonial provincials,
and Native American allies. The triumph
was all the more impressive as Forbes was
gravely ill at the time and was unable to walk
or ride for most of the campaign. He died
at the age of 51, within a few months of his
great success, in March 1759.
Oliphants attention to his sources
is impressive and the book offers an
unrivalled insight into Forbes development
as an officer. The author uncovers new

information that corrects some of the
enduring assumptions about Forbes early
career, particularly the myth that he fought
at the battle of Culloden. He also brings
some new perspectives on the integration of
Scottish officers into the British Army.
The great focus of the book is identity,
particularly how Scottish identity operated
within an emerging British state. Oliphant
explores the close connections that were
forged between Forbes and other Scottish
officers, men such as Sir James Campbell
of Lawers, John Campbell, 4th earl of
Loudoun, and Lord Charles Hay (third
son of the marquess of Tweeddale). In
an environment where patronage was
essential to promotion, these connections
allowed Scottish officers to assume a
disproportionate role in the states military
and political hierarchies.
At the same time, Oliphant perhaps puts
too much emphasis on national identity.
As he notes, English connections also
helped Forbes elevation to command. His
connections with the duke of Cumberland,
the duke of Bedford, and the earl of
Ablemarle figures hardly renowned for
their love of Scots were probably more
important to Forbes than his Scottish
connections. The book also has the tendency
to neglect other forms of identification in
favour of a national perspective.
The assertion that the notorious sex
club, the Beggars Benison, was a space for
the preservation of a nostalgic Lowland
Scottish identity (p.26) does not fit with
recent interpretations of associational
clubs as forums for elite masculinity
rather than national identity. Much more
might also have been said about the role
of Protestantism in how Scottish officers
viewed the British state.
The greatest weakness of the book is its
treatment of Forbes final campaign. While
the focus on his early career is exceptional,
the triumph at Fort Duquesne is relegated
to the last 30 pages of the book, something
that does an injustice to Oliphants
unparalleled knowledge of the man and the
p53 book reviews.indd 53
In 1958, the US Postal Service commemorated the 200th

anniversary of the capture of Fort Duquesne. Forbes is
shown on the left, lying wounded on a stretcher
campaign. Even within this relatively short

section, alliances with indigenous powers
in Oliphants view the most significant
reason for the victory are not treated with
due consideration.
Given that the authors previous work
was an excellent study of Anglo-Cherokee
relations in the 1750s, the assertion that
indigenous warriors were fickle (p.2),
temperamental (p.109), and touchy
(p.111) is to be regretted and does a
disservice to the complex relationships that
Forbes was forced to navigate.
The quality of the publishing also raises
some concerns and detracts attention from
Oliphants analysis. The book is riddled
with typographical errors; for example,
the Dutch commander during the War of
Austrian Succession is at one point rendered
as Welbeck, not Waldeck (p.63) and the
battles of Cromdale and Culloden are both
given with incorrect dates (pp.20, 85). For a
relatively short book, the price may also be
off-putting to many readers.
Nevertheless, Oliphant has provided a
much-welcomed biography of this neglected
figure. The narrative is sweeping, the writing
style is easy and accessible, and those
interested in Scotlands role in the 18th
century British Army will enjoy Forbes
story and the insight Oliphant brings to it.
Dr Matthew Dziennik teaches British imperial
history at the University of Saskatchewan
and is the author of The Fatal Land: War,
Empire, and The Highland Soldier in British
America (Yale, 2015).
53
02/12/2015 10:20
BOOK REVIEWS
A landmark excavation
The excavation of Broxmouth Hillfort near Edinburgh provided an invaluable record of
an important Iron Age site which has now been destroyed, writes Dr Kate Buchanan
An Inherited Place:
Broxmouth Hillfort and the
South-East Scottish Iron Age
Ian Armit and Jo McKenzie
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2013
538 pages
Hardback, 35
ISBN: 9781908332059
An Inherited Place:
Broxmouth Hillfort and
the South-East Scottish
Iron Age is a beautifully
produced excavation
report of one of the
most thorough rescue
excavations undertaken
in Scotland. The site was identified in 1956
by J.K. St Joseph when he observed the crop
marks which revealed the site. Under the
direction of Peter Hill, excavations began
in 1977, when the site was threatened by
expanding cement quarrying which has
since destroyed it. As is the case with many
excavation reports, publication of the finds
were long delayed. In 2007, the material was
used by the University of Bradford for new
assessment and analysis; the compilations of
research of many people on the Broxmouth
finds has resulted in this book. It has
summaries in English, French and German
and is divided into five parts.
The first part of the book introduces the
site of Broxmouth, which sits 40km southeast of Edinburgh. The geological make-up
of the site, composed primarily of limestone
and alkaline-rich soil, has resulted in a wealth
of preserved material. Radiocarbon dating,
along with Bayesian analysis (a method to
guide the inference of predicted dates) of 158
dates, has been used to identify seven main
phases of human use at Broxmouth. Part two
discusses the phases of the hillfort in detail.
The first phase was in the early Iron Age and
dates to approximately 640/570 cal BC.
During this time, a palisade and ditch
were formed with one large roundhouse.
Only the east half of the first roundhouse
survives, as the west half was destroyed by
54
phase 2 and 3 ditch construction. A second,

large roundhouse was built after the first
fell out of use but was centred further west,
resulting in even less survival. Two graves
were also identified with this phase. Phase
2 (490/430 cal BC) saw the construction of
ramparts and ditches with timber corridor
entrances in the east and west. During phase
3 (395/375 cal BC), the entrance was moved
to the south-west and remodelled several
times. No evidence of the dwellings for phase
2 or 3 survives. Phase 4 (295/235 cal BC)
consisted of the expansion of the settlement.
The enclosure was no longer maintained and
six smaller roundhouses were built.
Midden material and an inhumation
cemetery consisting of nine graves, one of
which was a double grave, were identified
with phase 5 (235/210 cal BC). Most of the
graves were oriented north-south, except
for one east-west grave. Phase 6 (100/60 cal
BC) was the last stage of major settlement
and resembled an enclosed village with eight
small roundhouses and a roadway. The site
was likely abandoned in AD 155/210, though
one grave dating from cal AD 400-540 was
found and identified as phase 7, a time of
later visitations.
Part Three runs under the theme of
Time, Culture, Materiality. The first
chapter (chapter 9) of this section provides
a detailed report on the method used for
the radiocarbon dating and subsequent
Bayesian analysis, with the results presented
in wonderfully coloured tables and diagrams.
The next chapter details the finds from the
site with a full catalogue list. This includes
420 shards of pottery from approximately
109 vessels, including Samian, Middle
Neolithic, post-Medieval, and baked clay
pottery. Residence analysis was done on
these finds, though only two had enough
lipid survival to get results. These showed
evidence for terrestrial meat and limited
plant material but no aquatic remains.
Worked bone and antler pieces were also
found including pins, combs, needles,
spearheads and gaming pieces. Coarse stone
querns and red sandstone balls were also
found. 34 copper alloy finds consisted of

swans neck ring-headed pins from phase 2,
bracelets from phase 3 and finger or toe rings
from phases 5 and 6. A coral bead from the
Mediterranean belonging to phase 4 was also
found along with Roman glass.
Part Four considers life at Broxmouth
through People, Subsistence, Economy.
Chapter 11 deals with assessment of the
bodies found in the graves. Out of the
fourteen bodies, the sex of only ten could be
identified (four males, six females) but age
could be identified for all (two children aged
9-13, one child aged 16-18, six adults aged
18-25 and five adults aged 26-35). Three
of these bodies displayed craniosynostosis,
a congenital disease resulting in premature
fusing of the skull bones in infants.
Chapter 12 describes the analysis of the
animal bones from the midden, of which
cattle, sheep and pigs were greatly present.
Horse, dog, red deer and roe deer were also
present. Interestingly, aquatic animals (otter,
seal and whale) were barely present and only
in phases 5 and 6. The excavation was done
prior to a standard practice of systematic
soil sampling but some retained soil gave
evidence for the presence of wheat, barley
and oats. Part Five provides a discussion of
the civilisation developed at Broxmouth from
being concentrated in one large house, big
enough for 30 to 48 people, to many small
houses for nine to fifteen people.
Ian Armit and Jo McKenzie have produced
a magnificent archaeological excavation report
in this book, packed with information and
full of beautiful photos, diagrams and tables.
It is an excellent teaching tool for both Iron
Age Scotland and archaeological method. An
Inherited Place is filled with information for
curious minds to dip into but is, perhaps, too
technical for a general audience.
Dr Kate Buchanan completed her PhD at
the University of Stirling in November 2014.
Her current research interests focus on digital
approaches to medieval architecture and
landscapes, especially spatial and
network approaches.
02/12/2015 10:21
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Scotland Book Shop at: http://scot.sh/hsbooks
The development of
the legal profession
Allan Kennedy reviews an in-depth study of Scotlands legal system in the 18th
century, which uses print and manuscript sources to explore the lives of the countrys
legal practitioners and their use of patronage and networking
Legal Practice in
Eighteenth-Century Scotland
John Finlay
Brill, 2015
447 pages
Hardback, 114
ISBN: 9789004294936
The extensive back
catalogue of John Finlay
will be familiar to
anyone with an interest
in Scottish legal history
or the development of
the legal profession,
particularly (but by no
means exclusively) in the early-modern
period. Having already published books
on pre-Reformation lawyers and on the
College of Justice, Finlays latest volume,
building upon a stream of recent essays
and articles, offers by far the most detailed
extant investigation into the professional
lives and activities of legal practitioners in
the 18th century. The authors declared
aim is to cast some light on those who
practised [the law] and on an important
area of life in 18th-century Scotland
(p.30). Finlay is perhaps guilty of excessive
modesty here; the book is much more
important than that.
The book begins with a sizeable
introduction providing useful background
information about both the structure
and size of the lawyer community, while
also previewing some of the main issues
and lines of argument developed later.
Ten thematic chapters follow, covering, in
turn, lawyer-client relationships; income;
business management; ethics; pro bono;
legal societies; practitioner solidarity; the
linkages between burghs and lawyers;
procurators fiscal; and notaries. The text is
illustrated with six good-quality black-andwhite images, and boasts useful indexes
and a secondary-source bibliography. There

is also a fascinating appendix presenting
transcriptions of some primary sources
to complement the text. As one would
expect with a publisher such as Brill, the
production standards are high throughout,
although that will probably not be sufficient
to convince many readers to cough up for
Brills typically huge RRP.
As the culmination of many years work,
the great strength of the book is the depth
of the research underpinning it. Finlay
draws upon a formidable array of print and
manuscript sources indeed so extensive
that the absence of a comprehensive list in
the bibliography really is regrettable and
he has an eye for telling facts and anecdotes
dredged up from deep within large and
unwieldy collections. This allows him to
present a fantastically detailed narrative
that reveals the mechanics of legal practice
with hitherto unimagined intimacy.
The overriding picture is one of variety
and complexity; Finlay shows that lawyers
pursued a wide range of different activities,
employed a plethora of business strategies
and engaged many different types of client.
The importance of subdivisions within the
profession, whether of function, rank or
wealth, is also stressed. Equally, the book
ties into some themes that will be familiar
to students of the 18th-century more
generally; the importance to lawyers of
patronage and networking, for example, is
made obvious.
Nonetheless, some areas amenable
to improvement could be identified.
The definition of 18th century is
understandably flexible, but sometimes
excessively so; advice on minimising the
costs of accessing legal expertise dating
from 1870 (p.79) is perhaps pushing it!
More seriously, stuffed with detail and
learning, Finlays book is hardly an easy
read, a situation not helped by the perhaps
unavoidable but certainly confusing

proliferation of legal terminology. Perhaps
a more stripped back writing style, and a
little more time spent on explanation and/
or definition, would have opened up the
work for less specialist readers.
At the same time, further
contextualisation might have been
advantageous in terms of highlighting the
wider importance of Finlays work. What
does the experience of lawyers tell us about
the wider currents of Scottish history in
this period, particularly in terms of the
rise of the professional classes, changing
social structures, or the impact of union
and empire? Equally, the reader might have
gained a deeper appreciation of Scottish
developments if these had been placed
in fuller comparative context did legal
practice in Scotland differ significantly
from the situation in England and
continental Europe, and did this change
over the course of the century? In essence,
the book straddles legal and social history,
but with the emphasis very much on the
former; a little more of the latter might
have proved enriching.
Those with only general interests,
then, should tread warily. Legal Practice
in Eighteenth-Century Scotland is no
textbook; it is large and detailed, making
significant demands upon its readers and
being disinclined to spoon-feed them its
insights. But as an academic text, the book
succeeds admirably. It marshals painstaking
research to provide a rich and sophisticated
reconstruction of the 18th-century legal
profession, thereby significantly expanding
our understanding of Scottish legal history
in particular and the development of 18thcentury Scotland more generally.
Dr Allan Kennedy is Reviews Editor of History
Scotland and Research Associate in British/
Scottish History at The University of Manchester
55
02/12/2015 10:21
Become a History Scotland book reviewer

The books we review cover all periods and genres of history.
To apply to join the review team, e-mail your name, address and details of your
field of expertise or special interest to: reviews@historyscotland.com
The lost line

The East Fife Central Railway should never have been built, yet managed to
survive the Depression and the closure of local industries, writes Alastair Durie
The East Fife Central Railway
Andrew Hajducki, Mike Jodeluk
and Alan Simpson
Oakwood Press, 2015
104 pages; Paperback, 10.95
ISBN: 9780853617389
This team have already

completed the trilogy
of the three railways
that together made up
the East Fife coastal
loop from Leven to St
Andrews. They now
extend the picture with
this study of the remaining railway,
the grandly named East Fife Central
railway, but in reality an obscure rural
line just over fourteen miles long that
found its way from Cameron Bridge to
the villages of Kennoway and Largoward
before petering out at Lochty. Opened in
1898, closed in 1964, it was a line that
never paid its way, and probably should
never have been built. Its prospectus
had, of course promised much. The
promoters envisaged a further extension
to Dundee via Ceres, and a junction
J36 class 0-6-0 No 65345
approaches Burnside with a
goods train on 18 February 1961
56
with the Anstruther & St Andrews line.

But unless these connections were built,
little passenger traffic could be expected,
holiday or otherwise; the biggest
community on the Lochty route was
Largoward with a population of just over
1,000 scarcely a metropolis. There
would be some agricultural business,
but what the promoters were banking on
was coal from the upland area known as
men were employed and also a recent

technological innovation, the steam
navvy, a steam powered bucket and grab.
Both men and machine seem to have
worked well. The navvies, who were
accommodated in huts, were (contrary
to reputation) mostly a well-behaved
workforce although the East Fife Record
did note that there had been some lively
scenes on Saturdays.
Opened in 1898, closed in 1964, it was a

line that never paid its way, and probably
should never have been built
the Rigging of Fife. There were already
pits working at Largoward and an expert
report promised more development. But
even as the line was being constructed,
these hopes were beginning to dim;
drilling for new coal seams at Lochty
did not prove successful.
The promoters might have cut their
losses then, but optimism prevailed and
the line was pushed on to completion.
At the peak of the work, some 400
The first year of operation showed

that the North British Railway had
not got a paying line on its hands. The
total expenditure on the line had come
to 132,000 which was only a slight
overrun on the estimated cost. The
real problem was revenue; only 1,124
in the first full year of operation. The
projected level of revenue was three
times that, and the North British tried
to recoup the shortfall by pursuing
the shareholders of the Fife Central.
How to raise more revenue was to be a
continuing challenge as coal mines came
and went. Flooding caused more than
one closure as at Largobeath in 1914,
opened only the previous year.
The East Fife had provided special
workmens trains to bring pit workers
to that pit from Leven and that traffic
too was lost. These miners trains were
the only passenger services on the line
other than of some troops to Territorial
Army camps at Largoward. Mostly the
line handled some coal, lime, livestock
and seed potatoes, and from 1926, sugar
beet for the factory at Cupar.
Just occasionally there was a special
working. Sir John Gilmore, who had
required that a culvert be built under the
line to allow his foxhound safe passage,
booked a special train on 28 September
to move his horses from Montrave to
Perth, where there was to be a hunt.
02/12/2015 10:21
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Scotland Book Shop at: http://scot.sh/hsbooks
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
Preserved LNER Gresley A4
pacic No. 9 Union of South
Africa on the Lochty Private
Railway in 1970
By the interwar years the line was

officially open only during daylight
hours, with workings three days a
week. Takings, never high, declined
further during the early 1930s when
to Depression was added competition
from the motor lorry. Why the line
was not closed then is a mystery;
the authors speculate that either it
had simply been forgotten about,
or as long as no expenditure was
required, it was just left alone. It was
the recognition in the early 1960s
that the whole of the permanent
way had to be renewed that was
the final signal; the line was closed
and then cut up. But there was to
be one last flicker. John Cameron,
a farmer and later chair of Scotrail,
bought the farm of Lochty in August
1966, re-laid the track on the last
three-quarters of a mile from Lochty
and reopened the line as a private
railway, whose star attraction was the
A4 Pacific Union of South Africa.
Thousands of visitors turned up
(including this reviewer in 1968) for
the seven minute trip down the line,

and seven minutes back.
But with rising insurance and
other costs, in 1992 the Lochty Private
Railway had to close. The track was
lifted and the stock moved to Kirkland
yard in Leven, headquarters of the
Kingdom of Fife Railway Preservation
Society. There are to be found the last
reminders of the railway system of the
East Neuk of which the Lochty railway
was a very insignificant part. But,
given the Borders railway, perhaps
rail services may return to Leven
or St Andrews? This is charming
account of a very minor venture,
which is beautifully illustrated with
photographs and maps.
Dr Alastair Durie is a Scottish social
historian formerly of Aberdeen and
Glasgow Universities, now teaching at
Stirling and for the Open University.
His interests have included transport,
textiles and banking history, but he is
currently working up a new history of
tourism in Scotland.
Glasgow:
Mapping the City
Birlinn, 30
This lavishly illustrated
book features eighty
maps which have
been selected for the
particular stories they
reveal about different political, commercial and
social aspects of Scotlands largest city.
The maps featured provide insights into
topics such as the development of the Clyde
and its shipbuilding industry, the villages which
were gradually subsumed into the city, how the
city was policed, what lies underneath the city
streets, and the growth of Glasgow during the
Industrial Revolution.
Scottish Railway Icons:
Central Belt to
the Borders
Amberley, 14.99
Railway Mania changed
Victorian Scotland forever.
Fortunes were made
and lost as rival railway
promoters transformed
the landscape with
stations, cuttings, tunnels
and bridges. Scottish railways had a flavour,
evident in their engineering and architecture, the
more innovative of which attained icon status, at
a local, national and even international level.
Love Among the
Archives: Writing the
Lives of Sir George Scharf,
Victorian Bachelor
Edinburgh University
Press, 19.99
Part biography, part
detective novel, part
love story, and part
meditation on archival
research, Love Among
the Archives is an
experiment in writing a life. This is the story
of two literary critics attempts to track down
Sir George Scharf, the founding director of the
National Portrait Gallery in London, famous in
his day and strangely obscure in our own. The
written record of his nightmares, debts, gifts,
and dinner parties comes together to produce
a rich Victorian character whose personal and
professional lives challenge what we think we
know about sex, class, and profession in his time.
57
02/12/2015 10:21
Add your organisation or

societys event to our website:
http://scot.sh/events-diary
EXHIBITION
The Kangaroo and the Moose,

until 21 February
Covering themes of exploration, art and
science, this new exhibition focuses on the
Kangaroo painting by George Stubbs, on loan
from National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
The work will be displayed with The Hunterians
own famous paintings of New World animals
by George Stubbs and related natural history
specimens, artefacts and prints.
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow,
Glasgow G12 8QQ; tel: 0141 330 4221;
website: www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian
DIARY DATES
History lectures
EVENT
Celebration of Burns, 23 and 24 January

Discover how Stirling Castle inspired the literary
works of Robert Burns who visited the castle in
1787 and was inspired to write Stirling Lines.
Stirling Castle, Castle Esplanade,
Stirling FK8 1EJ; tel: 01786 450000;
website: www.stirlingcastle.gov.uk
CONFERENCE,
Death & identity in Scotland, 29 January

The third in a series of conferences that aims
to accelerate interest and research into Scottish
death studies. The theme for 2016 is death and
identity and plenary speakers include Professor
Christine Borland, Professor Ian Campbell and
Professor Douglas Davies. The plenary discussion
will cover death after the Reformation and what
we still need to understand about continuity and
change in beliefs, attitudes and practices.
New College, University of Edinburgh,
Edinburgh EH1 2LU; tel: 07546 897469;
e-mail: susan.buckham@stir.ac.uk;
website: http://scot.sh/hsdeath
EXHIBITION
The Spirit of Line: DY Cameron at 150,

until 21 February
Marking the 150th anniversary of Sir David
Young Camerons birth, National Galleries
of Scotland presents a new exhibition of
prints and watercolours, celebrating the
work of one of Scotlands most prolific and
influential artists. The National Galleries of
Scotland holds an extensive collection of
Camerons work and the exhibition draws
from this along with a small selection from
an outstanding private collection on long
loan to the Galleries.
Scottish National Gallery, The Mound,
Edinburgh EH2 2EL; tel: 0131 624 6200;
website: www.nationalgalleries.org/visit
Make the most of the winter evenings with our pick of history
and archaeology lectures on subjects ranging from Bronze Age
ceramics to modern-day tower blocks
TALK
Scandals and Reay House, 21 January
A talk by Roger Young relating to
Reay House scandals, including
bankruptcies, fornication, kidnapping
and the pursuit of debt.
Tickets 3, starts 7.30pm.
West Church Hall, Cromarty
LECTURE
The Bronze Age Neolithic: Problems of
continuity and chronology, 11 January
Lecture by Dr Alex Gibson, Reader
in Prehistory, University of Bradford,
in association with The Prehistoric
Society. For some time it has been
commonly acknowledged that
Bronze Age ceramics developed
from Neolithic forms. Radiocarbon
chronology, however, has shown
that there was almost a millennium
between the demise of Impressed
Wares and the advent of food vessels
and urns. Given this chronological gap,
how do we explain the undeniable
similarities? Runs 6pm to 7pm.
Auditorium, National Museum
of Scotland, Chambers Street,
Edinburgh EH1 1JF; e-mail:
info@socantscot.org; website:
www.socantscot.org
LECTURE
6,000 Years of Architecture,
Innovation & Design, 1 February
A journey through Scottish
architecture from the earliest
buildings to todays tower blocks.
The three speakers have each been
given a period of Scotlands past and

presented the challenge to choose
their three examples of architectural
innovation and design that changed
the face of Scotland. Come and
hear their choices and contribute
your own. A Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland and National Museums
Scotland partnership. Runs 6-7pm.
Auditorium, National Museum
of Scotland, Chambers Street,
Edinburgh EH1 1JF; e-mail: info@
socantscot.org; website:
www.socantscot.org
LECTURE
A founders workshop from the
Bronze Age? Excavations in the
shadow of Hunterston, 17 February
(Inverness) 18 February (Glasgow)
Lecture by Mr Tom Rees, Consultant
Archaeologist, Rathmell Archaeology
Limited. Investigations during
construction of the Western Link
Convertor Station at Hunterston in
Ayrshire revealed a small area of
intense prehistoric activity. Excavation
revealed a sequence of enclosures
bounding a hollow within which were
dense pit clusters, working surfaces
and post-holes.
Inverness venue: Inverness Museum
& Art Gallery, Castle Wynd, Inverness
IV2 3EB (7pm to 8pm); Glasgow
venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Boyd Orr
Building, University of Glasgow,
Glasgow G12 8QQ (7.30pm to
8.30pm); e-mail: info@socantscot.org;
website: www.socantscot.org
58
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02/12/2015 14:38
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e-newsletter for events, news and
more: http://scot.sh/free-e-news
SPOTLIGHT
TALK
EXHIBITION
Tax records, 13 February

In the 18th century, windows, servants, horses
and dogs were just some of the items that
were taxed. Joy Dodd will give a talk on how to
access tax records, explaining what information
they contain. Runs 10am to noon.
Scottish Genealogy Society, 15 Victoria
Terrace, Edinburgh EH1 2JL; tel: 0131 220
3677; e-mail: enquiries@scotsgenealogy.
com; website: www.scotsgenealogy.com
Heavenly Creatures: Angels in

Faith, History and Popular Culture,
until 17 April
A new exhibition at St Mungos
Museum of Religious Life and Art
explores angels and their different
portrayal in sacred writings,
customs and traditions, art and
popular culture across the world
and across time.
Paintings, sculpture, stainedglass, photographs and other
objects from Glasgow Museums
Collection will encourage audiences
to discover the many ways angels
are represented all around us in art,
stories, songs, film and television.
An accompanying programme of
free talks, events and workshops
for all ages will complement
the exhibition.
The Angel (1881) Edward Burne-Jones
St Mungos Museum of Religious
Life and Art, 2 Castle Street,
Glasgow G4 0RH;
tel: 0141 276 1625; e-mail: museums@glasgowlife.org.uk;
website: www.glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/st-mungos
EXHIBITION
A Tale of Two Cities, until 14 February

The exhibition a Tale of Two Cities tells the story of how the cities of
Edinburgh and Nanjing have developed over the centuries.
Using facsimiles of archival material and interactive digital content, the
exhibition tells the story of how the cities of Edinburgh and Nanjing
(a former capital of China) have developed over the centuries, and
investigates the similarities as well as celebrating the differences.
Edinburgh Castle, Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2NG; tel: 0131 225 9846;
website: www.edinburghcastle.gov.uk
The exhibition explores how both Edinburgh
and Nanjing have developed over the centuries
EVENT
New Years Schiltron, 1, 2 and 3 January

Visit Edinburgh Castle for your chance to try
your hand at schiltron and see how 16th-century
soldiers fought. Suitable for the whole family,
with demonstrations at 11.15am, 12.15pm, 2pm
and 3pm. No need to book, just turn up.
Edinburgh Castle, Castlehill,
Edinburgh EH1 2NG; tel: 0131 225 9846;
website: www.edinburghcastle.gov.uk
EXHIBITION
The artist and the sea, until 8 May

Scotland has a long maritime history and
over the centuries, artists have sought to
portray the sea and Scotlands coastline in
many different ways. Some have portrayed
significant maritime events such as the Battle
of Trafalgar or the arrival of King George IV
into Leith harbour in 1822, whilst others
have focused on recording the day-to-day
experiences of coastal communities.
The exhibition contains examples of
painting, drawing, printmaking, photography
and sculpture, and featured artists include
John Bellany, William McTaggart, Joan
Eardley and Elizabeth Ogilvie.
City Art Centre, 2 Market Street,
Edinburgh EH1 1DE; tel: 0131 529 3993;
website: www.edinburghmuseums.org.
uk/venues/city-art-centre
EXHIBITION
Making History, until 30 October

The exhibition explores the recent work by
Alexander Stoddart (Sculptor in Ordinary to
the Queen in Scotland) commissioned by the
Scottish National Portrait Gallery the making
of a monumental figure representing History
for the exterior of the Gallery. This will replace
William Birnie Rhinds History figure, which is
now weathered beyond repair.
Scottish National Portrait Gallery,
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD;
tel: 0131 624 6200;
website: www.nationalgalleries.org
59
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02/12/2015 14:38
SPOTLIGHT ON
Your regular guide to Scottish history resources
The cutting house at Kinleith

Mill; inset: a print apprentice
sorts paper sheets
The Scottish Archive

of Print and Publishing
History Records
David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery introduce SAPPHIRE, an archive which holds a wealth
of material relating to the social, cultural and economic history of the print industry
n 1996, Professor David Finkelstein

and Professor Alistair McCleery
brought together a group of
educational, professional and noncommercial organisations with interests
in Scotlands printing and publishing
heritage to establish the framework
for what has become SAPPHIRE (the
Scottish Archive of Print and Publishing
History Records). The importance of
the print and publishing industry to
20th-century Scottish economic, social
and cultural development has been often
acknowledged but little researched.
Well into the 1960s, the Scottish print
industry accounted for a labour force
of between 5,000 and 7,000 people in
Edinburgh alone. While there exist major
Scottish archive holdings relating to the
pre-20th-century print and publishing
industry, there are major gaps in our
knowledge of its more recent history.
Over the last two decades, SAPPHIRE
has sought to plug this gap. A social
history initiative co-directed between the
University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh
Napier University, SAPPHIRE has
gathered material on the social, economic
and cultural heritage of the past 100 years
of Scottish printing and allied trades. It has
documented aspects of the working lives
of people who have been employed in the
industry and have witnessed the changes
that have taken place within it. As a result
of its pioneering work, SAPPHIRE was
awarded a Glenfiddich Living Scotland
60
p60 Spotlight Sapphire.indd 60
Award for its preservation and promotion

of Scotlands cultural heritage.
The SAPPHIRE material is held at the
Centre for Research Collections at the
University of Edinburgh, where the physical
archive is being catalogued. The bulk of the
archived material consists of recordings of
personal reminiscences of over 120 former
and current workers within the print and
publishing industry, along with photographs,
videos and a substantial collection of
ephemera such as trade literature and other
memorabilia donated by contacts and
interviewees. It also holds business records
relating to printing firms such as Hislop and
Day, as well as social history and business
documents relating to Thomas Nelson and
Sons, complementing other Nelson archives
held at the University of Edinburghs Centre
for Research Collections.
Digitised elements of the SAPPHIRE
archive are available online through
www.sapphire.ac.uk along with online
exhibitions, databases and work-in-progress
material. Among the many features of the
archive are social histories of the Edinburgh
publishers Thomas Nelson and Sons,
Papermakers on the Water of Leith, Scottish
booksellers, Scottish reading history, the
Wayzgoose phenomenon, Scots-New
Zealand print trade connections and a
photographic archive of the contemporary
book trade in Edinburgh, including
libraries and bookshops.
While the work of SAPPHIRE has
resulted primarily in the creation of a
permanent archive, SAPPHIRE material has

also been disseminated in a number of ways
to maximise access. These include: Alistair
McCleery, David Finkelstein and Jennie
Renton, eds. An Honest Trade: Booksellers and
Bookselling in Scotland, 2009; Finkelstein
and McCleery, eds. Edinburgh History of the
Book in Scotland, vol. 4: Professionalisation
and Diversity, 1880-2000, 2007; McCleery,
Finkelstein and Sarah Bromage, eds.
Papermaking on the Water of Leith, 2006; and
Heather Holmes and David Finkelstein, eds.
Thomas Nelson and Sons, 2001. SAPPHIRE
material has also featured in journal articles
and newspaper reports, and formed the
basis for several travelling exhibitions, most
recently a collaboration with Publishing
Scotland on 40 Years of Scottish Publishing,
1974-2014, which featured at the 2014
Edinburgh International Book Festival, the
Dundee Literary Festival and at the Mitchell
Library in Glasgow.
Enquiries about the SAPPHIRE initiative can
directed to Professor David Finkelstein, e-mail:
d.finkelstein@ed.ac.uk
The collection can be consulted Monday
to Friday, 9am to 5pm, at the Centre
for Research Collections, Edinburgh
University Library, George Square,
Edinburgh, EH8 9LJ; tel: 0131 650 8379;
website: www.sapphire.ac.uk
Prof David Finkelstein and Prof Alistair
McCleery are co-directors of SAPPHIRE.
H I S TO RY S C OT LA ND - JA NUA RY / F E B RUA RY 2016
02/12/2015 10:25
Local and family history
es
Local history focus: Newburgh History Society

The year 2016 marks the 750th anniversary
of Alexander III granting town status to the
community of Newburgh in Fife, a settlement
with a long history of fruit growing, fishing and
weaving; and an important stopping off
point on the pilgrimage route between Perth
and St Andrews. The Tay estuary area around
Newburgh has been settled since at least the
Mesolithic era.
Newburgh History Society was founded to
promote the history and archaeology of the town;
a goal which will certainly be in evidence over
the coming year as the Society takes part in the
towns Newburgh 750 celebrations.
Members meet during the winter and spring
months for talks on topics relating to the history
of the town and its surroundings, and the group
has close connections to the Laing Museum,
which is currently displaying a postcard collection
of historic images of Newburgh.
New members are always welcome. To find out
more, e-mail: karenbryce123@btinternet.com or
visit: http://newburgh-history-society.org.uk
The Laing Museum, one of Newburghs most significant historical

buildings and recently re-opened to the public
Your history online

Family historian Chris Paton describes various finding aids for Covenanter ancestors
The 'Scottish Covenanters
Index' is a dataset located
on Ancestry at http://scot.
sh/hsindex which names
over 26,000 Covenanters
persecuted for their
religious beliefs in the
Scottish lowlands between 1660 and 1690.
The index has been compiled by
Canadian based Isabelle Downs from
a series of 24 key texts on Covenanter
history, held predominantly at Vancouver
School of Theology in Vancouver, British
Columbia, and the University of Guelph
in Ontario.
Each entry provides the Covenanter's
full name, the birth or baptismal date
and location, and a full reference to help
identify the volume and page in which the
relevant individual is found.
The FindmyPast website has recently
released a database entitled 'Scottish
Covenanters 1679-1688'.
This is a similar index, though this time
created by Alan E. Laurie from primary

sources held at both the National Records
of Scotland and the National Library of
Scotland in Edinburgh.
Amongst the sources consulted are
various High Court of Justiciary books of
adjournal and minute books, Circuit Court
minute books, financial papers such as the
Registers of Lawburrows, Hornings and
Poindings, losts of prisoner returns and
those accused of being Covenanters, Privy
Council papers, submitted private estate
papers, and more. The dataset can be
accessed at http://scot.sh/hsfind
Although quite an old platform,
the Scottish Covenanter Memorials
Association website at www.covenanter.
org.uk is the online web presence of a
society first established by Walter Storrar,
William Miller and William Stirling in
1966, and given charitable status in 1993.
The Scottish Covenanter Memorials
Association today has over 400 members
based around the world.
H I S TO RY S C OT LA ND - JA NUA RY / F E B RUA RY 2016
p60 Spotlight Sapphire.indd 61
In addition to detailing its work in

preserving many Covenanter memorials
across the country, the website also
provides several case studies from some
of the most notable individuals caught
up in the religious conflict in the 17th
century. An online bookshop is also
available on the site, as well as a feature
about who the Covenanters were.
Chris Paton holds a Postgraduate
Diploma in Genealogical Studies and
runs the Scotlands Greatest Story
ancestral research service (www.
ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk), as well
as the daily British GENES blog
(www.BritishGENES.blogspot.co.uk).
He tutors family history courses, is
the author of several family history
books (including Down and Out in
Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis),
and has regularly lectured in Scotland
and abroad in Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and Europe.
61
02/12/2015 10:25
Volume 16, Number 1

January/February 2016
EDITORIAL
Editor: Dr Alasdair Ross
School of Arts and Humanities
University of Stirling, FK9 4LA
editorial@historyscotland.com
Reviews Editor: Dr Allan Kennedy
reviews@historyscotland.com
News Editor: Rachel Bellerby
rachelb@warnersgroup.co.uk
Tel: 0113 200 2922
ADMINISTRATION
Warners Group Publications
Fifth Floor, 31-32 Park Row,
Leeds, LS1 5JD
Publisher: Janet Davison
Managing Editor: Matthew Hill
Senior Designer: Nathan Ward
Designers: Mary Ward, Laura Tordoff
Advertising: Kathryn Ford
kathrynf@warnersgroup.co.uk
Tel: 0113 200 2925
Marketing: Lauren Beharrell
lauren.beharrell@warnersgroup.co.uk
Tel: 0113 200 2916
History Scotland Subscriptions
Warners Group Publications
The Maltings, Bourne, PE10 9PH
subscriptions@warnersgroup.co.uk
Tel: 01778 392 463
Subscription details on page 52.
Mar/Apr issue: on sale 13 February, 2016
History Scotland is published bi-monthly by
Warners Group Publications ISSN: 1475-5270
Printed by Warners (Midlands) plc,
The Maltings, Bourne, Lincs PE10 9PH
Distribution by Warners Group Publications plc
The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the
publisher. Every care is taken to ensure that the contents of the magazine
are accurate, but the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors.
While reasonable care is taken when accepting advertisements, the
publisher cannot accept responsibility for any resulting unsatisfactory
transactions, but will immediately investigate any written complaints.
Copyright: No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted without the prior written permission of
the publisher. WARNERS GROUP PUBLICATIONS PLC 2015
PICTURE CREDITS:
Cover and p12-13 Reconstructions by Hayley Fisher

City of Edinburgh Council Archaeological Services
p7 Aberdeen Law School University of Aberdeen
Law School
p8-9 Glasgow Museums
p10-11 Neil Hanna Photography/National
Museums Scotland
p14 Durham University Archaeological
Services/ North News
p15 Stones sketch Position of stones on grave - original
1912 Sketch and skeleton photographs The Hunterian;
Ian Armit University of Bradford
p16-21 Orkney woman Kirbister S J Gibbon; Browns
Close and Hudsons Bay Company agency Orkney
Library & Archives
p22 Crown copyright images courtesy of The
National Archives
p23 Eilean Donan Diliff; Ring of Brodgar
Paddy Patterson; Tourists Colin; Welcome sign
Amanda Slater
p24-29 Devon Colliery archive image Canmore/SCRAN;
Earl of Mar Earl of Mar & Kellie; contemporary Cornish
Beam Engine House Jennifer Geller; Robert the Bald
Clackmannanshire Council
p31 JakobTrepel
p40 King James I monument KimTraynor; Scott
Monument Stephencdickson;
p43 Reconstruction St Andrews University/Timespan
p56 Preserved LNER Mike Jodeluk; J 36 Class
W S Sellar
p58-59 Bronze Age vessel Hartmann Linge;The Angel,
1881, Burne-Jones Glasgow Museums
FINAL WORD
Matt Ritchie, Forestry Commission Scotland

archaeologist, describes his approach to cultural
resource management and his enthusiasm for
Scotlands Archaeology Strategy
Could you explain your role within the

Forestry Commission?
I provide advice and guidance in relation to
the protection, conservation and presentation
of the historic environment on Scotlands
National Forest Estate (covering about nine
percent of the country). I am a cultural resource
manager, ensuring that we meet relevant policy
requirements and responsibilities
and looking for opportunities
to undertake research and to
communicate our work. Our
historic environment programme
includes walkover survey,
site-based conservation
management, archaeological
measured survey, research
excavation, interpretation,
outreach and the development of a
range of learning resources.
By using creative archaeological visualisation

within the interpretative framework (such
as digital terrain models of the township),
the archaeological work becomes part of
the narrative of the site and its history.
Including and promoting the science helps to
demonstrate the value and importance placed
on both the site and its conservation and study.
No matter how many special

events and site open days are
run, nothing beats a wellprepared teacher paired with an
enthusiastic and knowledgeable
archaeological educator
Can you describe your approach to the job?

We approach the historic environment as a
combination of tangible objects, structures,
landscapes and features bound up with the
intangible social context of stories, traditions
and concepts. The sustainable management
of our historic environment rightly considers
it as a finite resource to be understood,
protected and valued.
Landscape character assessments and
assessments of cultural significance provide
relative measures within their local and regional
context. The cultural resource manager can
build upon this approach by identifying
highlights, presenting individual monuments,
groups of sites or historic landscapes on the
estate or within their region as an integrated
outdoor collection. This helps direct scarce
resources towards effective high-impact projects,
seeking to mainstream the historic environment
by celebrating both valued archaeology and our
own archaeological values.
Raising the profile of archaeology and historic
environment conservation management has
resulted in both becoming integral and accepted
aspects of our environmental portfolio.
I think we will need an example!
I believe that the creative use of archaeological
measured survey can form an important element
of cultural heritage interpretation. We recently
used the high resolution aerial laser scan survey
of the 18th-century landscape at Rosal in
Sutherland to create an innovative new set of
interpretative panels and a leaflet guide.
Do you use this approach elsewhere?

The cross-curricular approach embedded
within Scotlands Curriculum for Excellence
is a great opportunity to promote the value of
archaeology and heritage in schools. We have
produced a number of well-received learning
resources, blending archaeology and heritage
with woodland and outdoor learning.
However, I have come to realise that no matter
how many learning resources or loan boxes are
provided, no matter how many special events
and site open days are run, nothing beats a wellprepared teacher paired with an enthusiastic and
knowledgeable archaeological educator.
Finding the balance between providing
engaging and attractive archaeological learning
resources and training the next generation of
heritage learning specialists is really important
and I am pleased to see this emphasis embedded
within Scotlands new Archaeology Strategy.
How do you think this will help?
The archaeological community as described
by Scotlands Archaeology Strategy (http://
archaeologystrategy.scot/) is holistic, including
everyone from volunteer through to professional.
The Strategy provides a roadmap to help make
archaeology matter and it is up to us all to drive
it forward. My work in Forestry Commission
Scotland would be impossible without my
colleagues specialists in environmental
management, forest planning, recreation,
interpretation and harvesting operations.
Similarly, delivering the vision set out in
Scotlands Archaeology Strategy requires us all to
buy in and to work together, demonstrating and
confirming the value of archaeology.
H I S TO RY SC OT LA ND - NOV E MB E R/D E C E MB E R 2013

__________________
62
p62 final word - add crisp logo to top of flannel.indd 62
02/12/2015 12:55
SPECIAL SOUVENIR ISSUE SPECIAL SOUVENIR ISSUE SPECIAL S
KINGS &
QUEENS
SOUVENIR ISSUE
OF SCOTLAND
Published in March, The Stewarts is

a souvenir issue of History Scotland
that presents the latest research
and opinions on the lives and reigns
of the Stewart monarchs from
Robert II (1316-1390) through to
James VI (1566-1625).
THE STEWARTS
Guarantee your copy by pre-ordering for just 3.99,
saving you 1 on the normal cover price!
Order online at: http://scot.sh/KingsandQueens

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A CENTURY OF STYLE NEW EXHIBITION OF VICTORIAN FASHION

Vol.16 No.1 January/February 2016

DISGUISE, DANGER & DECEIT: A FEMALE CROFTERS

Prof Hugh Cheape

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H I S TO RY SC OT LA ND - JA NUA RY / F E B RUA RY 2016

33 The 1915 Midwives (Scotland) Act

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The exposed cliff top location

he Kitchener Memorial at Marwick Head in Orkney

This Kitchener Memorial funding brings the total amount

H I S TO RY SC OT LA ND - JA NUA RY / F E B RUA RY 2016

Top heritage award for

he Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre has beaten off competition

Documents reveal Nazi opposition

H I S TO RY SC OT LA ND - JA NUA RY / F E B RUA RY 2016

Rebecca Quinton, curator at the Kelvingrove Museum, explores

ased on three years of

on show, including delicate jewellery,

citys place in the Empire, we have also

H I S TO RY SC OT LA ND - JA NUA RY / F E B RUA RY 2016

Several of the items featured in the

Above: shoes by J Macneille, Ayr, c.1830

A Century of Style: Costume & Colour

n summer 2016, ten new

Paulines marriage to Prince

H I S TO RY SC OT LA ND - JA NUA RY / F E B RUA RY 2016

Isabell carrying out

Museums Scotland in 1986, with

Behind the scenes at

Edinburghs Dark Age residents

p12 Archaeology news.indd 12