The Female Midshipman

The twenty-year-old worked at the latch until it broke. She pushed the window open and squeezed through, dropping to the ground and giving herself a “sair clyte” in the process. She was either desperate or foolish for she was approaching the end of a six-month sentence for theft – not her first offences – her jail term on this occasion being for stealing from drapers’ shops in Aberdeen.  The temptation when left alone for a few minutes by the jail’s washerwoman proved too inviting and so out the window of Aberdeen’s east prison at Lodge Walk she clambered and once collecting herself after her fall off she ran in a bid for freedom. And so she succeeded. For a time at least. When next she turned up in Aberdeen, she was a he.

She was Isabella Knowles; the day 4 February 1869. Isabella’s flight from justice took her south to Stonehaven initially and from there she made her way into England to Newcastle. Somewhere during her travels she had her long hair cut short and took to wearing breeches, probably stolen. Perhaps a stint in Edinburgh’s Theatre Royal inspired her transformation from Isabella to a sailor called John Brown rigged out in typical seaman’s gear of light tweed trousers, light grey vest and blue silk necktie, sailor’s jacket with anchor studded buttons and a peaked cap and so midshipman Brown was created. Just like that. Gender switch so to speak.  Could she/he pass muster was the question? Away from her home territory the answer was yes but she grew homesick for Newhills just outside Aberdeen and was drawn back north.

In the granite city the midshipman boldly smiled at every police constable she encountered without being recognised and so continued westwards from the town, perhaps to the family home. It was her bad luck and his good luck that one day in April a local shoemaker suffering badly from depression went to a quarry at Hilton intending to drown himself when he noticed a bundle of good quality clothing lying abandoned. Distracted from his purpose and being an honest man, he went off to the police station at Buxburn (Bucksburn) to report the finding. Because the items were of high value a search of the area was undertaken by the police who found more bundles hidden in whin (gorse) bushes. The items had obviously been stolen and so the police set up an overnight watch in case the thief showed up. Around 8 o’clock in the evening they saw a figure approaching – a 

Philip Richard Morris, Two young midshipmen in sight of home

“dashing young midshipman with fine blue suit, and shining yellow buttons, with cap set jauntily on his head, with seaman-like carelessness, and carrying under his arm a bundle”

(Aberdeen Journal, 14 April, 1869)

The man retrieved one of the bales hidden in a bush and was walking away with it when the two watching constables sprang into action and caught hold of the thief. Searching the tall, good-looking stranger they found him in possession of several household articles including pairs of curtains, which later were identified as having been stolen from the lobby of Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree Hotel. A further search of the quarry area turned up nearly 200 articles of stolen property including a riding habit. The estimated value of the goods was about £30, in today’s terms around £5,000. A large proportion of the items belonged to the wife of the owner of the Stoneywood Paper Mill, Mrs Pirie, and had been packed into a trunk left overnight in a room at the mill. The trunk itself was missing, having been emptied and thrown into the nearby river Don.

At the police station the suspected thief identified himself as a seaman from Stonehaven called John Brown but the sergeant’s wife had only to take one look at the person under arrest to declare ‘him’ a her, at which point the prisoner owned up to her deception. It was then the bobbies realised they had unwittingly nabbed the escaped thief, Isabella Knowles, and returned her to Aberdeen to complete her previous sentence and await trial on a fresh set of charges for prison-breaking and theft when the circuit court convened in the city. The press revelled in being able to report on what they dubbed the cross-dressing miscreant, the ‘female midshipman’.

At her trial before Sheriff Comrie Thomson in July 1869 Knowles maintained her innocence over the theft of a chest or trunk and a large quantity of women’s and baby clothing and household linen from a room at Stoneywood Paper Works. Having been previously employed at the paper mill and so familiar with its layout did not help her case and she was found guilty and sentenced to 15 months in prison.

Donside mill before Isabella’s time there

Hardly was that jail term behind her when Knowles was hauled again before the courts when in April 1871 she was accused of stealing a carpetbag filled with clothing from Aberdeen’s steamboat wharf. She deposited the bag in the left luggage office at the nearby railway station but her reputation as a sneak thief was such that Aberdeen’s police had been on the lookout for her and when she returned to the station to retrieve the bag they lifted her. But not for long. Knowles made a run for it pursued by a constable. As he drew close she tripped him up by throwing herself in front of him and made off again but where John Brown might have succeeded in his breeches, Isabella’s skirt caught on a paling (fence). She pulled it free but the delay allowed the police constable to finally catch his quarry. Knowles snatched a knife out of her pocket and threatened him with it but he overpowered her. Back at police headquarters at Lodge Walk it was confirmed he had apprehended the ‘“notorious” female midshipman’. Isabella is listed among prisoners in Aberdeen’s east prison census that year.

When the case came to court Knowles’ long record of prior misdemeanours was read out including her imprisonment for stealing from Borland’s Temperance Hotel in Greenock and the Prince of Wales in Port Glasgow when she was convicted under the name, Jane Robertson (one of a number of her aliases). Her solicitor argued that none of the thefts was deliberate but the mere playfulness of moving articles from one place to another. The jury and sheriff were not persuaded and she was sentenced to 20 months.

On her release, Knowles resumed a criminal career that took her across Scotland and into England. Whatever motivated her – poverty or a mental condition – Knowles was simply not very good at thieving and quickly arrested once more, this time on a charge of stealing poultry and a pair of trousers from a house at Woodside close to the home of her long-suffering and respectable parents. Isabella Knowles, the female midshipman, lived a life of uncertainty and obvious privation. Perhaps something that happened early in her life drove her to follow her bizarre and largely unsuccessful criminal calling. Who’s to say? Her family in Newhills were apparently unremarkable, hard-working folk. Isabella’s father was a master cartwright, her mother didn’t appear to work when the children were growing up. A brother followed his father into the joinery/cartwright trade. A younger son, Alexander, worked in the Woodside mill where Isabella was once employed – she was a mill worker at thirteen and possibly younger. It is likely her younger sisters would have followed them into the mill as it was a major employer in their area. It’s awful to think of these children having to labour long hours in a noisy and dangerous factory where accidents were common occurrences. Isabella is believed to have been badly hurt in an accident. I haven’t found evidence of this but a girl around the same age as Isabella was horribly killed at the Stoneywood mill at the time Isabella was there. The seventeen-year-old’s skirt caught on a revolving machine and despite a young man’s desperate attempt to keep hold of the poor girl the power of the engine dragged her in and she died, crushed between enormous rollers. Whether Isabella witnessed the incident or not she would have known about it. Being around the same age they may have been friends. This is pure speculation, of course.

Nethergate, Dundee where Isabella died

We know that Isabella Knowles was a plucky young woman who survived on her wits when her wits didn’t let her down. Her 1871 sentence in April that year was about the time her father died of Phthisis or tuberculosis aged just 55 years. It’s likely this horrible wasting and contagious disease was passed to his wife during his short illness and she died of the same in 1874 also at the age of 55. Earlier that year their daughter Isabella was once more up in court charged with a series of thefts.  Found guilty she was sentenced to seven years penal servitude.

Isabella’s death certificate and correction certificate

Isabella Knowles would have been released from prison in 1881. With her parents dead there was little to keep her at Newhills and when I next found her, she too had died – still single now a millworker in Dundee she was a jute repairer which sounds like fairly unpleasant work. On 28 February 1899 Isabella was found dead at 74 Nethergate, at 8 am, it was assumed of heart disease at 51. The sometimes comical but tragic life of the ‘romantic prison breaker’, ‘notorious girl’, ‘female midshipman’ had come to a close.

The Infamous Trade: abortion in a man’s world

It was during the autumn of 1920 that Elizabeth Beattie, a twenty-nine year old domestic servant, was charged with concealing a pregnancy. Elizabeth already had a child, a twelve year old son who was in the house when she gave birth to her second child alone one night but she didn’t ask him to go for help because he was afraid of going out in the dark. It was the following morning she wrote a letter to her doctor –

“Will you come soon as I have just had a baby this morning, and I am myself?”

The baby was found to be dead and it was not clear when death occurred. Elizabeth was told she was lucky not to be charged with its murder, only the concealment of a pregnancy and she was sentenced to five months imprisonment.

About the same time a serial bigamist who got a young woman he illegally married pregnant then abandoned her on discovering she was carrying his baby was sentenced to just two months jail.

In 1927 a midwife called Mary Rennie or Patten was charged with conducting an illegal operation at a house on Union Street in Aberdeen that resulted in the death of a waitress, Mary Donald. The case in the High Court attracted much attention – the court was packed, mainly with young women, while hundreds more were left outside during the three-day trial.  

Mary Patten was accused of providing drugs to Mary Donald that caused her death. Patten told the court that Mary had twice come to her to plead for help to terminate her pregnancy and on one occasion she had urged the young woman to get married and have the child. The young waitress called again on Patten telling her she was “sick with the bile” and Patten advised she “take castor oil”. The inference being that Mary Patten was reluctant to become involved but castor oil was also sometimes used to induce labour. She denied accepting money to abort the baby and denied using any instrument on Mary Donald.

At the conclusion of proceedings the Lord Constable reminded the jury they were not judging the accused on her morals for –

“ if they were there would probably be others in the dock, and certainly one would be Linton Souter”

Souter, a young man from Peterhead, was evidently the child’s father who was regarded as a scoundrel by the Lord Constable for deserting Mary Donald when she needed help. It took the jury only twenty minutes to find Patten guilty, by majority not unanimous decision.

A collective “Oh” swept across the courtroom when the fifty-four-year old widow and mother of three children was sentenced to three years in jail.

The medical profession was as divided as society over terminations but the law was unambiguous and doctors adhered to the law making it near impossible for a woman to obtain an abortion legally. One doctor on the side of women who was determined to push for change was Dr Joan Malleson. She suffered intolerable sexism as a young medical student earlier in the century but persevered and went on to work in the field of fertility, reproduction and sexuality. Malleson was unusual in providing birth control advice to her women patients at a time of great ignorance over contraception, especially among the working classes. Any unmarried woman who got pregnant was judged to be immoral and her life often ruined. Married women faced over twenty years of one pregnancy after another that might ruin their health and family life. Malleson recognised the anguish that accompanied unplanned children in families living on the breadline and in overcrowded, insanitary housing. It was Dr Malleson who wrote to a prominent London gynaecologist and obstetrician, Mr Aleck Bourne, to ask if he would terminate the pregnancy of a 14-year-old girl who had been savagely raped by a group of Royal Horse Guards officers. Malleson wanted this prominent surgeon to carry out the termination above board in a hospital knowing he would face prosecution – as a test case to open up debate and extend the grounds that qualified a woman (or girl) for a termination.

Bourne was courageous in taking on the challenge for he was risking both his reputation and career. Having successfully carried out the termination of the girl’s pregnancy Bourne contacted the Attorney General inviting him to take action against him and he was duly charged with performing an illegal operation on a girl at St Mary’s Hospital in London in defiance of an 1861 Offences Against the Person Act that stated –

The Royal Horse Guards 1938. A group of its officers savagely attacked and raped a fourteen year old girl and left her pregnant

“Whosoever, with intent to procure a miscarriage on any woman, whether she be or be not with child, or unlawfully uses any instrument or other means whatsoever with a like intent, shall be guilty of a felony.”

Bourne’s defence was that the 14-year-old had been a virgin when assaulted and raped in Whitehall  and as a consequence became pregnant. On discovering she was carrying a baby the girl sought help from St Thomas’ Hospital but was turned away because her rapists were officers and –

 “she might be carrying a future prime minister” and “that anyhow girls always lead men on.”

Bourne referred to an Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 which specified a single reason for termination of a pregnancy – danger to the life of the mother. Bourne told the court that the girl had suffered physical injuries during the attack which he believed could have serious implications for the safe delivery of the child’s baby and he sought to broaden the definition of danger to the life of the mother to include the girl’s future physical and mental health. Other rape cases were discussed, one involved incest and in both cases the young women went on to experience dreadful mental health damage as a consequence of their experiences.

Whether or not it was his standing in society that persuaded them the jury took just forty minutes to find Bourne not guilty of the charge. People in the public benches rose to their feet as one and a buzz of approval ran through the court and when the news was broken at a conference of the British Medical Association in Plymouth doctors attending also stood up to cheer the verdict. It is clear that the laws relating to pregnancy lagged behind public opinion.

An interesting addendum, however, in that Bourne was not an uncritical supporter of terminations and he was a co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in 1966, a pressure group that opposed the 1967 abortion act that enabled doctors to decide whether a woman could have a termination and so legally operate on them.

At the other end of the UK the equally distinguished gynaecologist and obstetrician, Dugald Baird, was pursuing a similar path. Baird was appointed Regius Professor of Midwifery in Aberdeen in 1937 and he went on to establish the first free family planning service in Aberdeen. Baird had seen enough suffering among the poor in Scotland to understand how devastating it was for women that others had more control over their bodies than the women themselves; devastating for them and their families. In a reference to US president Franklin Roosevelt’s four freedoms – of speech, worship, freedom from want and fear – Baird added a fifth freedom – from the tyranny of excessive fertility on women –

“to relieve women of the burden of multiple pregnancies”

Secret Aberdeen p 73

“Scots law allowed terminations to be carried out if regarded as being in the interests of the mother but it seems only in Aberdeen was this practised to any extent”

Secret Aberdeen– p 77

As the Lord Constable observed in 1927 and Dr Joan Malleson and Mr Aleck Bourne tested in court there was a great deal of hypocrisy lurking over the UK and its laws regarding women, their sexuality and right to control their own bodies. Aberdeen was fortunate in having a group of enlightened doctors determined to provide as much care for women as the law permitted and Dugald Baird’s fifth freedom, the socio-economic justification for abortion, became the key to the 1967 abortion law but even here nothing was straightforward. Laws made by men protected men and as we’ve seen in the Bourne case, protected the middle and upper classes in particular. Only men can get women pregnant but women were and are often left alone to deal with the consequences – life changing ones. Today contraception is easily obtained as is advice on family planning but this was not so in the relatively recent past. For the majority of women and as we’ve seen, girls, who became pregnant there was no legal means to terminate that pregnancy and so desperate women and girls risked their lives in seeking help from abortionists, often a nurse or midwife, working illegally with all the inherent dangers that involved. All risked prosecution under callous and unsympathetic laws.  It wasn’t always so, however.

Back in 18^th century Scotland a foetus was held to be part of a woman’s own body and not a separate being – a rational and humane position and one in tune with the Scottish Enlightenment. But this changed in the Victorian era steeped as it was in hypocrisy and misogyny condemning both the pregnant woman unwilling to complete her pregnancy and her abortionist (but not the man who made the woman pregnant). An Act of 1828 toughened the law surrounding concealment of the birth of a child by a parent meaning all births had to be reported, stillbirth or death shortly after birth. Previously this applied only to unmarried women but the Act applied to any woman, married or not. Charged with murder of her child it was up to a jury to decide the mother’s guilt or innocence where evidence was lacking.

“…in cases where children were still-born, a woman should not be permitted to hide her shame…”

The 1861 Act stated that a woman guilty of causing her own miscarriage faced penal servitude for life or at least three years (penal servitude replaced transportation and was served in a large prison operating a brutal system of enforced labour). Extenuating circumstances might reduce a sentence to a maximum of two years with or without hard labour and/or solitary confinement. For anyone supplying drugs intended to cause a miscarriage the prison term was penal servitude for three years or prison up to two years with or without hard labour. Similar sentences were issued to anyone involved in concealing a birth. This act was repealed for Scotland, England and Wales in 1967 and astonishingly only in 2019 in Northern Ireland.

Arabella Hopton might have expected this level of punishment when she, a nurse, was prosecuted in Gloucester in 1920 for using an instrument with the aim of causing miscarriages in six women and her involvement in a further two abortions. She had been earlier charged with the wilful murder of a woman but no evidence was provided and this charge was dropped. She pleaded not guilty to the other charges. It was clear the Crown prosecution was determined to enforce the law and decided that proving Hopton used an illegal instrument to carry out terminations was a way of ensuring they got her for the wilful murder of one woman. However, the judge refused to sanction picking and choosing bits of the case and so the murder charge was dropped and the nurse was tried for providing drugs to induce abortion as well as using an instrument in some cases.

The evidence was too graphic for one man on the jury who fainted. The Crown accused her of encouraging young women to have sex in the knowledge they could always seek an abortion (as if this was straightforward and safe) and painted a picture of her being an evil abortionist. Hopton’s defence lawyer described her as a kindly woman, a widow and mother to three children as well as a nurse and midwife who had delivered up to 4,000 babies over her working life who wanted to use her expertise to help desperate women. It took the jury ten minutes to return a guilty verdict and Hopton was sentenced to 7 years in prison.

Nine years later when Marjory Gammack from Aberdeenshire told the man who made her pregnant of her pregnancy he left the country. She gave birth to a boy alone in a house in Logie Buchan. When the law caught up with her she said she was unwell following the birth and remained in bed till the following day when she realised the child was dead and she buried the body in the garden. She admitted to her crime and was given a light sentence of three months in jail by the sheriff.

The following year Aberdeen sheriff court tried Mary Gillies charged with giving birth to a female child, failing to call for help and smothering the child. Gillies pleaded guilty to culpable homicide not murder. She had also been abandoned by the child’s father on discovering she was carrying his child. She also gave birth alone then placed the body in a drawer until she later buried it at Forbesfield.  Found guilty Mary Gillies  was sentenced to six months jail.

In 1931 a London coroner criticised nursing home officials and nuns in a convent for their refusal to help a young woman who had just given birth and asked them for help. Patricia Mahon, a children’s nurse, had moved to London from Bournemouth on realising she was pregnant and went to live at a convent until the birth was imminent and had arranged to go into a nursing home to have the child. Before that could happen the baby arrived and she collapsed during the birth while alone in her room, regaining consciousness with her baby lying on the floor. She went to the nursing home for help and was sent back to the convent where the sister in charge told her to get out. So Patricia Mahon packed up her belongings including the body of her baby and left her things at Marylebone station then phoned a friend to ask advice and was told to contact a solicitor which she did. The case was passed to a coroner who asked the nursing home why a woman in need of medical assistance was put out and was told it was because she would have to share a room. The coroner asked,

“So what? She wouldn’t contaminate them.”

When he asked the same question of the convent the nun in charge just shrugged her shoulders at which point the coroner turned on her,

“You are a Sister of Mercy, but was it merciful to treat her like this?”

It was concluded the child died from lack of care at birth but not negligence of the mother and added the only good Samaritan in this case was the solicitor.

Man-made laws (literally) had a devastating impact on women – especially working class women whose circumstances made them especially vulnerable to indifferent and unscrupulous men quick to abandon them rather than face up to the consequences of their reckless lust. It was near impossible for working class women to get information that would enable them to prevent unwanted pregnancies. A single working class woman had to carry the stigma of pregnancy outside of marriage, was labelled as wicked and promiscuous and almost certainly sacked from her work, the shame of being a loose woman following her throughout her life. For married women multiple pregnancies meant providing for another mouth from inadequate wages and in overcrowded and insanitary homes.

I found this one of the most depressing blogs to research. What happened to these women is shocking and unforgiveable. Examples of himpathy if ever there were. Misogyny and sexism have probably always been imposed on women because of their historical subservient position in societies from east to west, north to south. Women told what to wear. Women told how to behave. Women denied education. Women denied abortion. The subjugation of women is and has been created through social and political power structures originally stemming from religion and through time women have fought against the male assertion of authority but it’s a battle not yet won. Not every man is guilty of this. Dugald Baird was himself largely ostracised by his fellow gynaecologists and obstetricians for being overly and overtly sympathetic to the needs of women. But the bigger picture is that both male entitlement and male privilege are parasitic on women’s lives – shapeshifters that will never accept women as autonomous beings.

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The brave sons of Scotia – and their wives: Andrew and Rebecca Kennedy

Andrew Kennedy died of heart failure between three and four in the afternoon –

‘…upon a foot path heading through the gardens upon the southside of the old town of Stonehaven opposite to the Episcopal Chapel – in the Parish of Dunnottar and County of Kincardine.”

He had survived the Battle of Waterloo. And so had his wife, Rebecca, who died of phthisis (pulmonary tuberculosis) at five in the afternoon at St. James Place, Stonehaven, Dunnottar. 

Thirty-two-year-old Edward from Inverness-shire married twenty-one-year-old Rebecca at Stirling on 27 March 1814. He was a private soldier from the 2^nd battalion of the 79^th regiment, the Cameron Highlanders. I don’t know Rebecca’s occupation only that she was from Stirling. The 79^th was raised in 1793 by Allen Cameron of Erracht (a Lochiel) as alarm bells rung in Britain at the chopping off of the head of the King of France by French revolutionaries. The King of Great Britain and his parliament were determined to prevent any democratic nonsense breaching the British Channel (later English Channel once England got bored with pretending the Union was equal). The 2^nd battalion Andrew Kennedy enlisted in was a temporary recruiting unit to boost troop numbers after so many men died in the long years of the war with France. It was disbanded in 1815 and the men incorporated into the 1^st battalion. On 10 May 1815 the 79^th were shipped over to Belgium from Dublin. The Camerons were in Ireland because the British authorities imagined the French crisis over with the abdication of Napoleon in April. However, not so. Napoleon bounced back for a last throw of the dice and the regiment returned to the Continent to what turned out to be the final battles in the Napoleonic Wars. Their ship docked at Ostend and from there they were taken on the canals to Ghent and completed the journey on foot to Brussels.

At ten o’ clock in the evening the men of the 79^th and the regiment’s camp followers that included women were thinking of turning in for the night at their billets around Brussels when the order came through to prepare for marching. One trooper who had put his shirts to be washed found they were still being steeped so he just wrung them out and packed them wet. Others also packed their things quickly in the condition they found them. Packing didn’t take long. Unless you were an officer or officer’s wife you travelled light, mainly out of poverty. Then they waited. Fully dressed. At two in the morning the bugles sounded across the town. The drummers played a regular beat, as they would on the battlefield to signal the loading and firing of weapons. The bagpipers played The Gathering of the Camerons and War-Note of Lochiel. The whole of Brussels was left in no doubt the army was moving out to war. Men bade farewell to their local welcoming hosts who pronounced the Scots lions on the field and lambs in the house – meaning they were brave soldiers and respectful guests. Gifts were pressed into the hands of departing soldiers, the ‘brave sons of Scotia’, – bumpers of gin and loaves of bread.

The muster station was the centre of Brussels where three-days’ food rations were issued and a gin allowance. By four o’clock they had set out to march to Charleroi. Rebecca Ferguson was among several women making up the tail of the regiment on their hike to the battlefield. Until the end of the nineteenth century every European army on campaigns away from home had its camp followers who provided various essential services for a fighting body on the move such as cooking, washing clothing, nursing the sick and injured, even foraging for food when rations were scarce or non-existent. Wives and girlfriends would also provide sexual comfort for their partners and for single men there were often prostitutes ready to deliver intimacy at a price. Women camp followers were not welcomed by the Duke of Wellington, the British army commander at Waterloo, who regarded them as a distraction for the men but he did not discriminate between men and women when it came to punishment. Wellington’s discipline involved subjecting women camp followers accused of misdemeanours such as foraging for or stealing food to around thirty lashes of the whip across their ‘bare doups’ – although this did not occur at Waterloo. Officer’s women on manoeuvres with their men rode on horseback while the wives of rank-and-file men walked, frequently bare foot. Some women put on men’s clothing and fought alongside them in the field. Even non-combatant women could find themselves on the battlefield at times while battles raged, passing on whatever was needed – ammunition, sandbags, water – in order to relieve exhausted and injured men whose duties those were, and to help dress wounds and comfort the dying. In an earlier battle during the Napoleonic Wars Agnes Reston who was a sergeant’s wife relieved a drummer boy ordered to take water to a surgeon attending the injured while under fire from the incessant hail of cannonballs and vicious close combat. The young drummer boy was trembling with terror and Agnes took over from him. Her actions and bravery were recognised at the time by officers on the field but Agnes, like Rebecca, survived Waterloo and in old age when Agnes and her sergeant husband were too old to work (pre-old-age pensions) they became destitute and she died aged eighty-five in a Glasgow poorhouse. A common enough tragedy that sums up Britain’s cold indifference towards its bravest defenders.

Marriage and death certificates for
Andrew and Rebecca

For Andrew Kennedy and Rebecca Ferguson love must surely have kept them together for life on the roads to wars was tough – as it was for all the thousands of women who followed husbands and fathers across continents, walking hundreds of miles in all weathers, their lives in constant danger. Inevitably woman and children died as a consequence of being directly or indirectly involved in battles. Wives who lost their men on the field often remarried quickly for life far from home and in lands whose language they could not speak was fraught with threat, and while a soldier’s pay was tiny, women got nothing and would be left destitute. Possibly soldiers whose wives were killed on manoeuvres would also be keen to marry a spare woman who could cook for him and wash and mend his clothes, supply him with tobacco and clay pipes as well as care for him when wounded and as a sexual partner. 

The mood of men, women and sometimes children on long marches was galvanised by rousing tunes played on the pipes. Having left Brussels the 79^th found the going hard; it was hot and everyone had a thirst on them. A forest provided some relief from a blazing sun and an opportunity to eat and slake their thirst before continuing their four-hour march. As they passed through local villages they found relief for local people had filled tubs with water which they placed along the road so the Scots could help themselves from the wooden cups supplied.

The closeness of the battlefield was signalled by the thunder of cannon and passing them from its direction came a succession of bloodied and wounded Dutch and Belgian soldiers, many with stories of the horror that lay ahead. Then they were there. It was early afternoon. This was Quatre Bras where they would go into combat against the French in what would be the opening encounter of the Battle of Waterloo, to relieve the Belgian and Dutch forces being beaten back by Napoleon’s army. The Cameron Highlanders assembled on farmland – on meadow grass and in fields of rye. Once the order came to advance the 79^th found themselves on ground already strewn with dead and wounded. Instantly one of their company had his bonnet knocked off by a musket ball. He laughed it off. But around him man after man went down; killed outright or fatally wounded even before the order to fire was given. Then it was. Load! Fire! Charge! Men were dropping down dead or gravely wounded under a huge barrage of French artillery fire and then the French cavalry was upon them. Bodies were separated from limbs and heads. Combatants on their feet were spattered with the blood of their companions. A bayonet charge by the 79^th encouraged the French troops to turn and run, cursing ‘the men without breeches’ – the sans-culottes.

The engagement stopped at nightfall with both sides bivouacking overnight in the woods or cornfields but there was little rest for French drummers kept beating their drums through the night and in any case the groans and cries of the wounded and dying prevented sleep. Under cover of darkness some men and possibly women from among the camp followers went through the knapsacks of the slain stealing what possessions they could find. This, then, was Quatre Bras – the prequel to Waterloo. The toll of battle on the Camerons was terrible. About half their number were lost through death or injuries. Their colonel, John Cameron, was killed in the battle and hastily buried by the side of the Ghent road until his regiment was able to disinter his remains and take them back to Scotland for burial in his local churchyard at Kilmallie where his grave is marked by an obelisk and marble plaque containing words of praise from Sir Walter Scott.  

An ominous thunderstorm heralded morning on the 18^th June, drenching everyone and everything. Rum rations and an allowance of beef were distributed but there was little time to cook and eat anything. By 8 a.m. they were readying for the road again. At least the rain had eased. By 10.30 the 79^th came under a fierce a tremendous assault from French cannons. Again the British troops counter-attacked, again with bayonets to the fore, driving the French downhill. The air was thick with smoke and the reek of sulphur and pierced by the screams of the wounded. A shout went out from the Scots Greys entering the fray – “Scotland for ever!” The 79^th depleted by its losses at Quatre Bras two days earlier formed themselves into a square to try to fend off a French attack. Their piper, the muckle Kenneth Mackay, stirred courage with a pibroch, Cogadh no Sith (War or Peace). Those ‘devils in skirts’ as the French called them (the English described the kilt as a petticoat) were duly inspired to fight hard and bravely.  

Remains of a cannnon said to have been used at Waterloo, in Stonehaven

This was the Battle of Waterloo, decisive in defeating Napoleon and the French forces. Brief as the battle was the savagery of death and wounding over its nine hours was horrifying. The injured who could be moved were loaded onto waggons and taken to dressing stations – often local houses – so their injuries could be tended and mangled limbs severed but most were treated where they lay in the open air. It took days to clear the battlefield of its dead and by this time they had been stripped of clothing, boots and any items they possessed by fellow troops, women followers and local people for their own use or to sell for all were impoverished to some extent or another.  Finally, the dead were thrown onto waggons and taken away for burial.

House near Waterloo used as a billet

Thousands of Scots were involved at Waterloo. Of the 675 Cameron Highlanders who set out, 103 were killed and 353 wounded. The regiment was one of only four given specific mention by the Duke of Wellington in his Waterloo dispatch. The 79^th Camerons pursued the French reaching Paris on 8^th July 1815 and there they stayed until December during which time the regiment was inspected by Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, who took unusual interest in the regiment’s kilted ‘giants’, piper Kenneth Mackay and private John Fraser.  The 79^th were stationed in France for a further three years as part of the allied occupation before briefly returning to Britain and then on to Canada and Gibraltar. Andrew Kennedy retired from the 79^th aged 38 in 1823 by which time he was able to claim a pension from the regiment, as a Chelsea Pensioner. Where they went at this point, I don’t know. They were living on Castle brae (Hangman’s brae) in Aberdeen in 1851 and had a young grandson in the house with them then. Andrew was by then a shoemaker. At some later point they flitted to Stonehaven, south of Aberdeen, where the couple who survived Quatre Bras and Waterloo eventually died into their old age.

Castle or Hangman’s brae, Aberdeen

The Kennedy’s gravestone at Dunnottar cemetery

Erected by Andrew Kennedy Late of 79^th

or Cameron Highlanders

in Memory of his wife Rebecca Ferguson,

who accompanied him to the Battle of Waterloo

and Died in Peace at Stonehaven 25 Nov 1861 aged 68;

said Andrew Kennedy died 28 Jun 1865 aged 83 years.

I can scarcely remember my grandmother’s voice

I can scarcely remember my grandmother’s voice – neither of my grandmothers’ voices. Like everyone I had two grannies and in my case both my grannies are now long dead for they were born into a different world, in the late 1900s. I like having that link, however tenuous, with a Scotland that’s gone forever.

My paternal Granny, Harriet (Hetty), was a strong woman, and tall as befits a McHardy from Braemar. In common with lots of folk I didn’t take much interest in either of my grannies lives but filed away in my subconscious were the odd name and incident and these aided and abetted by a few photographs and internet access to census returns, marriage, birth and death certificates have meant I’m able to better place my grannies into their family settings preceding the years I knew them. A wee bit, at least.

Top row: Harriet as a child with her parents at Braemar; at home in Aberdeen, early 1930s; a day out on Deeside with Granda and dog Glen; McHardys at home at Tomintoul, Braemar late 1920s. Bottom row: Harriet with daughter Hetty on Union Street in Aberdeen, 1920s; at home in the 1950s; Braemar pipe band rehearsing; McHardys at the croft on Morrone

Harriet, let’s call her Granny 1, was born on the humble croft her parents worked on the slopes of Morrone, a hill behind Braemar. A bit lower than a Munro, Morrone is a Corbett, which means it’s between 2,500 ft and 3,000ft – an unlikely place to try to farm but somehow a community of five households did just that and they called their wee fermtoun, Tomintoul. This is a different Tomintoul from the well-known village of that name. The McHardys worked 7 acres of this the most elevated cultivated land in the whole of Scotland so it must have surprised a few people that in 1864 Braemar’s Tomintoul had the unlikely distinction of producing the country’s biggest golden yellow turnip – thirty-three inches in circumference and weighing in at a whopping 14 lbs – some achievement for land tilled from under heather, trees and boulders though as far as I know it had nothing to do with my family. For the area to sustain five families would have taken immense effort in clearing a stretch of the hillside of its heather, trees and boulders and neutralising its acid soil – they did this with lime produced from limestone in communal lime kilns. Life on Morrone would have been idyllic in spring, summer and autumn but a mighty struggle to survive in during winter in what is one of the coldest areas of Scotland. Granny’s children – my dad, aunty and uncle – spent childhood holidays on the old croft and retained strong attachment to the area. My husband and I climbed up Morrone one fine summer’s day and were astonished to discover my dad who had driven out to Braemar with us, and was then about seventy and in poor health, struggling up behind us. He made it up that purple remembered hill he’d scampered over all those decades earlier – made it up one last time.

The Tomintoul crofters were poor folk so that everyone had to do their bit. The young tended to go into service – girls became cooks or house servants while boys found work on the big estates of Balmoral and Invercauld or went into a trade. When no local jobs were available the connections made through these landed estates opened up jobs elsewhere in the UK. Granny became a cook to a wealthy London family and on her return to Scotland she cooked for a family in Stonehaven. One of her older sisters, Hellen, became the lifelong companion of ‘a lady’, a Miss Poole from Shepton Mallet, and the two young women travelled extensively abroad and in the UK. When Miss Poole died, as an old woman, the also elderly Hellen returned to Scotland, to Aberdeen near to Granny and the rest of her family.   

Census at Tomintoul, Braemar, 1881

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First there were two world wars to contend with. My grandfather, Granny’s young husband, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps (I have his notebooks from that time in which he scribbled down treatments for everything from shell shock to chilblains along with his wallet containing baby teeth from his children back home). I can only imagine the anxiety Granny suffered during the long years of the Great War guessing what her husband was enduring for he was a stretcher bearer in some of the worst fighting at the Battle of the Somme. But he survived it all. They lived in a tiny tenement flat in Skene Street in Aberdeen until the 1930s when bungalows were built on the west side of the town, off Mid-Stocket Road. It’s a mystery how they afforded to buy one but buy one they did and it remained in the family for over seventy years, nearly unchanged in all that time. It is in this house that I remember the only word spoken by Granny – whenever we arrived on holiday (when I was a bairn) she would pick me up to gauge how much heavier I’d got since our last meeting and call me Tina. I was Tina to no-one else but her. One word isn’t much of a vocal memory but there is a phrase that became something of a family legend though I can’t claim to have heard Granny speak it since I hadn’t then been born. It was during World War 2 when Granny expressed her resistance to the Nazis as the German Luftwaffe flew over Aberdeen dropping their bombs on the city, she’d be out the backdoor shaking a fist at them and shouting defiantly,

“Awa ye buggers!”

I think I take after Granny. Now I can’t claim to have heard her then but I recognise that spirit that stayed with her through her latter years. I don’t know what else Granny was doing through the war while her sons were abroad on military service and her daughter fulfilling her civic duty alerting Aberdonians to air raids but she appears to have made a point of stocking up on food for more than thirty years after her death we found tins of wartime food stored in her cellar. Unopened.

Unusually, my grandmother was ten years older than her husband, my Granda, and considerably taller, but for all their unconventionality theirs was a long, and as far as I am aware, a happy marriage that began in 1911 when my grandfather returned from a spell working in New York to marry his Hetty. He was 21 and she 31 and they had met when he was working as a young baker in Braemar.

Granny was a woman of her time – such a silly phrase as everyone is. She wore her skirts long, often to her ankles, over red flannel petticoats. The beautiful costumes I found in her wardrobe may not have been hers but her sister Hellen’s (though I don’t know for sure).

Harriet as a young woman and with some clothes found in her wardrobe

It is a pity photographs are silent. Sometimes it is a pity. Granny’s voice will always remain in my imagination, an odd word captured in a rather high-pitched, thin, reedy tone and a smile behind each one. If only I could capture more of them.

***

My other granny, my maternal granny (Granny 2), has also been more or less silenced since death. She was about ten years younger than Granny 1 and was also a daughter of a crofting family but hers lived in the Black Isle which enjoys one of the mildest climates in Scotland. A Highlander from Cromarty, Granny 2 was Isabella (Bella), a Miller (sometimes Millar) whose extended family included the geologist Hugh Miller. Like Granny I, Granny 2 was tallish but otherwise they were very different types of women. For one thing, Granny 2 would never have thought of much less uttered Granny 1’s immortal commands to the Luftwaffe.

While not being able to very clearly recall Granny 2’s voice I should because when she was old and had succembed to dementia she would near-endlessly recite rhymes remembered from her childhood or those she shared with her own children. “Here we go round the mulberry bush was often shortened to “on a cold a frosty morning” recited with gusto, as our daughter remembers. “Losh, losh” she’d repeat over and over again – losh being a Scots word for surprise though Granny didn’t say it with any sense of its meaning but more a lament, for what I can only wonder. It was a sad end to her life, drawn out over many years – she seated day-long with nothing to occupy her mind and slipping inevitably into a world of her own, living with her family but separately.

I imagine because I wasn’t there the night she called out in her sleep for her recently dead husband – “John!” was uttered urgently but softly in that light way people with the Gaelic have of talking with a soft palate so that words trickle from the front of the mouth. Bella’s vocabulary was well sprinkled with the Gaelic though she disdained Scots for her generation were encouraged to be ashamed of their own traditional language. A generation before young Bella was born her family were cleared (a polite term for being driven off their land) from Strathconon and ended up in the Black Isle and it was instilled into the people that progress equalled English and backwardness equalled Scots. So Bella venerated the English language and I recall her urging me to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘aye’ – but I cannot remember how she said it.

Bella’s wedding at the Glenalbyn Hotel in Inverness in 1912. Bella and her husband John are surrounded by family and friends – Bella’s sisters on her right. John’s father is the exhausted-looking man with beard fourth left of Bella. He died in 1914, the year following the death of one of his sons of blackwater fever in Mozambique. I don’t know if his son, Rod, is in the picture.

For all that she was a kind and gentle woman, more stoic than her appearance might suggest, encouraging her young farmer husband to take the plunge and rent a bigger farm and in time buy it. They were a team. In common with all farmers’ wives, Bella was responsible for some farm work as well as her domestic duties – eggs and dairy products which she sold at markets each week loading loading eggs, cheese, butter and cream onto the trap and driving the horse the twenty or so miles to Inverness for the weekly market – and presumably Dingwall and Muir of Ord, too.

She and my grandfather married in 1912. Like my Aberdeen grandparents they were 21 and 31 but unlike them the bride was younger than her husband. Unlike Harriet’s husband, Bella’s man was not active abroad during the Great War as farming was a reserved occupation and he had carried out pre-war training in England when he was introduced to the joys of motorcycling but couldn’t work out how to stop his bike so drove round and round the compound until it ran out of fuel. Family members who were at the front included Granny’s cousin whose letters from the trenches are shown here. Many Scottish women were forced to give up their jobs to travel to England to manufacture munitions during the Great War. Bella’s sister, Anne, was one of them conscripted by the government but she was allowed home towards the end of the war to take care of Bella and her children who were suffering from the deadly Spanish ‘flu of 1918. They all survived.

Top row: Bella as a young woman; Bella seated left with family including her mother at Rosemarkie beach in 1923; Bella with mother, daughter and granddaughter c. 1941; in her garden in 1971. Bottom row: Bella at home c.1961; air mail letter for German prisoners of war; on pillion of her younger son’s motorcycle c.1946.

Bella had a passion for auctions or maybe it was a passion driven by necessity. She and John moved into their final home and farm near Strathpeffer in the 1920s and the rambling old farmhouse took a lot of filling. Bella furnished it with all sorts of weird and wonderful pieces purchased from the Dingwall mart, including a large glass display case of stuffed birds I spent so much time staring at as a young child. The house was a magical playground for us children with more than fourteen rooms plus bathrooms. There was a pantry where Granny’s home-made jams, jellies, chutneys and wine (lethal) were stored, a laundry with an enormous timber sink and a dairy where Granny turned the farm’s milk into the butter, cream and cheese she sold at markets. The dairy was always cold irrespective of the heat outside for it was built as a short wing lit by a series of small windows along a single wall shielded from direct sunlight. A row of meat safes and metal presses sat on long wide shelves to keep food cool and insect free. A large room with ample space for food on one side while the other was stacked with decades worth of Ross-shire Journals and editions of the Scotsman. And now I cannot access Ross-shires of that time. I could write a whole blog on the different rooms, some grand and others basic and functional but the lovely building that was always open house to so many in the area, friends, family, visitors and strangers alike was mysteriously destroyed by fire shortly after the farm was sold.

Bella was said to have had the second sight, based on a single incident I believe. The second sight is a phenomenon some believe occurs when someone ‘sees’ an event happening either in some distant place or in the future. In Granny’s case her experience came during World War Two. Her young son who’d lied about his age to join the army disappeared in North Africa after his tank was destroyed. The family didn’t know if he was alive or dead. One morning Bella confidently announced that he was safe for she had dreamt of her son as a baby in a cradle that rocked back and fore, quicker and quicker, until it slowed to a stop. Her confidence was well-founded and her son did eventually return home after four years as a prisoner in Nazi labour camps in Germany and Poland.

Letters to Bella from her cousin thanking her for her parcels sent to him in the trenches during WW1 in 1916 and 1917

Both Bella and Hetty grew up at a time shanks’ pony was the most common means of getting around and horse and trap for longer journeys. They lived into the age of motor cars and motor cycles, the replacement of paraffin and town gas with electricity, from a world in which correspondence meant letters and telegrams to one with near instantaneous communication, the wireless and telephone and eventually television. They lived through a century of incredible societal changes. Of devastating world wars and numerous other wars and conflicts and the crumbling of the British empire. It would be wonderful to be able to sit down and talk to them both about the world’s momentous events and little domestic dramas but that’s just idle contemplation. Now it is easy to record grannies in full flow so their voices can accompany those who care about them into the future and that can only be a good thing.

---

A Scot in Africa – victim of Blackwater Fever

This was once such a brisk little village: the northeast’s lost communities

The window is nailed and boarded through which I saw…

and will strike the deer that goes dizzily, sniffing at the grass-grown ruined homes…

(Hallaig, Sorley MacLean)

One by one northeast Scotland’s wee fishing communities gave up their struggle to eke a living out of the sea for the battle was proving hopeless – up against bigger, better equipped vessels that encroached on the waters off their townships. A separate battle, too, of the young’s discontent with their parents’ and grandparents’ way of life. A life of constant danger that gave little back in return.   

Before the days of the northeast’s millionaire trawler dynasties thousands of northeasters were dependent on the sea for a modest living. Their little brown-sail vessels were a common sight, bobbing up and down on the German Ocean (now north sea) fishing for skate, ling, turbot, whiting, flounders, cod and haddock.  But come the twentieth century those days were numbered. The old were left to maintain the tradition as best they could but penury drove many of them away from the place that had been home for generations. So, they stood to look out one   last time through the windows to the sea and sky not fearing the stirring of a storm, that harbinger of death, but to a capture a memory of times past. Those tiny windows in a wall of stone that engaged a stranger to peek into from outside when walking by deserted home after deserted home.

There was still hope in the 1920s among some in fishing communities that their decline might be stalled. But no. The family fishing boat crewed by fathers and sons and brothers and nephews and cousins could not compete with the big boys from bigger ports. Women were essential, if unacknowledged partners (junior, of course), in the family enterprise through their roles scranning for bait, baiting hooks on fishing lines, cleaning, curing and selling the fish – hard, hard work. Younger women increasingly chose to look for jobs elsewhere, with better pay and didn’t involve being half frozen to death. Women’s work. Traipsing mile upon mile over rough country, back straining under a wicker creel heavy with fish that had to be sold – to country folk. Little wonder, then, given a choice of a different life, there were women who opted for that – emancipation became a dirty word in the opinion of their older menfolk despairing over their lost source of cheap labour.   

Young men, too, were off. Some with a mind to carry on fishing lacked the disposable income needed to buy a share in a boat with gear constantly needing replacing. They also moved to towns, perhaps to the monotony of industrial labour or learn new skills such as quarrying.

Simple, tiny cottages with hardly a stick of furniture, their inhabitants bearded men in blue ganseys, caps and long boots and women in coarse skirts, long aprons, shawls and bonnets – as poor as church mice – yet so appealing. So picturesque. So quaint. They created a charming scene that was a novelty to toonsers from Aberdeen; day-trippers who would come to gawp at these curious natives. As more homes emptied some of the richer folk even bought up a former fisher’s cottage going for a song as a holiday home.

In the gran’ hooses in th’suburbs o’ Aiberdeen ye’ll find th’ money that should ha’e gaunt ae th’ line fishermen.

Bonnie Muchalls (formerly Stranathra) became a popular weekend resort – and Skateraw, now Newtonhill. From fishing villages to holiday resorts and in time they became dormitory towns for Aberdeen. In 1855 twenty-six Skateraw families fished out of the village. Thirty years later the decline set in. Findon, too, suffered the same fate. Findon where smoked haddock originated, Finnan haddies.

Nearby Downies perched above the cliffs with its tiny rocky shore once sent forty fishermen to sea in seven or eight boats but by the start of the twentieth century that life faltered and soon ceased entirely. Portlethen rubs up against Downies and here crab and lobster catches lingered after the village’s ten yawl fishers were forced to turn their backs on the sea.

Cowie, now absorbed into Steenhive (Stonehaven), operated twenty-three boats including nine herring vessels in 1855 but by the 1930s this has dropped to a single yawl. Stonehaven with its substantial harbour was the area’s centre for landing catches -boats from Cowie, Crawton, Skateraw, Shieldhall and Cove landed and sold their catches there, sometimes having them processed in the town before being sent to be sold in the south. Up to two hundred boats landed at Steenhive in the mid-eighteen hundreds providing plenty work for the town’s eight curing businesses. Stonehaven’s own fleet of fishing boats included sixty line boats in the late nineteenth century before the coming of steam trawlers put a lid on that.

Even at Steenhive the young looked to alternatives to the fishing. When unemployment benefit was introduced in 1920 older men in the town complained that the ‘cursed dole’ provided an alternative to youths otherwise compelled to carry on the fishing tradition. Steenhive’s line fishers were making between £2 and £5 a week – hardly a king’s ransom and while the ‘cursed dole’ was little enough (15 shillings a week for men, 12 shillings a week for women for a maximum of 15 weeks) it didn’t involve risking your neck every time you launched a boat into the north sea.

Most older folk had few expectations beyond scraping by on a paltry living. Days when prices were good were welcome bonuses. Sometimes catches exported to England made ‘a fabulous price’ – ten shillings a stone and for a year or two around the turn of the twentieth century. Stonehaven could probably have absorbed more fishers from its neighbouring villages where the trade was dying fast but for a shortage of housing in the town, but even here by 1928 the port was home to a mere twelve boats, providing work for about fifty men. Twenty years earlier there had been thirty-two big yawls each crewed by five men, eight small yawls and twenty-five herring drifters. Then they were gone.

The Great War of 1914-18 that changed so much in the world accelerated the decline of northeast fishing and the stagnant state of European markets pushed more men and women away from fishing and away from fishing villages. Echoes of the dead hand of Brexit.

The foonds of once thriving Crawton survive battered by a coarse wind off the north sea. The stones howked from the land to make homes for fisherfolk sink slowly back into that same ground. Crawton, about four miles south of Stonehaven, a waterfall dropping down to the sea on one side and a steep path leading down to the water’s edge at the other end of the ghost village. In the best of times Crawton provided a living for forty fishermen and their families with about twelve boats pulled up on its tiny shore but by 1900 the fleet was no more than six or seven yawls and three herring drifters for now larger vessels sailed into Crawton’s ‘turf’. By the 1920s the last of Crawton’s fishermen left, taking themselves off to Steenhive to live out their lives at Dawson’s Buildings. And the village fell into ruin.

The tiny village of Catterline with its white washed cottages strung out in a line along the clifftop, high above the small harbour, became home to farm hands not fishers by 1928. As with Crawton, being a distance from the main road became a costly stumbling block when adding transport costs to the margins made from selling small amounts of catches with boxes of fish and shellfish having to be sent for processing to Stonehaven (6d a box of fish, 4d a box of crab and lobster) and then to England by rail for marketing. Catterlines’ rocky coast made it ideal for lobster and crab fishing but the village also had fourteen line boats and seven herring vessels supplying work for forty men and innumerable women at one time.  But in common with other fishing villages the tradition died, the boats were sold and villagers left and the population dropped from about 100 at the start of the century to about thirty people in 1928, and the bulk of those left were aged over fifty.

Farther north lies Newburgh. Now a bird and seal sanctuary, famous for its long stretches of sandy beach, Newburgh once was a thriving fishing port at the mouth of the river Ythan. The river provided fisherwomen with plentiful supplies of bait for line fishing and the Braidsands a good source of mussels and lugworm. In the late 1880s a dozen boats each with a crew of five fished out of Newburgh, their catches carried deep into the countryside by women, to sell to cottagers and farmers around the area of Tarves, Belhelvie and Dyce, some fifteen miles away and buy farm produce, butter, eggs etc in return. Newburgh’s fishers complained about the encroachment of large vessels sailing in close to their village for its decline that begun around 1880 before a three-mile limit was introduced so there was nothing to prevent trawlers from as far afield as Hull gathering ‘like a forest along the coast.’ Large scale fishing by wealthy skippers was blamed for destroying Newburgh’s fishing grounds and lines and several legal disputes were fought between locals and English fishing companies. The imposition of a three-mile limit and ‘exclusive right to fish’ was enacted in 1883 and expanded in 1889 to ban trawling within three miles off the coast over concerns about dwindling fish catches, not declining villages.  However, next along came seine-net fishermen from Aberdeen, Gourdon and Montrose, again encroaching on inshore fishing.  

Collieston with its haphazard arrangement of tumble-down cottages was once a thriving fishing community. In the opening years of the new century Collieston sent out sixteen line vessels with crews of over sixty men to provide for their families from what they took from the sea – and some fifteen herring boats. But as catches fell away the young left for Aberdeen or to live abroad. Women stopped carrying fish inland, instead most of the fish caught here was transported to Auchmacoy railway station for export to England. Soon enough that trade dried up and as was happening elsewhere, Aberdeen folk, taken by the bonnie setting of the village bought up abandoned houses as second homes.

The name Slains lives on as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Under the shadow of the old castle of Slains a village dependent on fishing for a living emerged. At one time twelve boats fished from here but only two remained by the late 1920s and the village suffered a similar fate to its illustrious castle.

Whinnyfold is perched above a little creek to the south of Cruden Bay. The railway station at Cruden Bay kept the village’s fish trade alive for a while into the twentieth century when it cost four shillings for a box or four, a substantial rate from a box of fish that might fetch ten or twelve shillings. The numbers of men willingly continuing to make a thin living from the sea waned. Where in 1900 there were eight crewed boats by the 1920s there were no more than four. The village’s young men with a taste for the sea looked farther afield, to Shetland, Lowestoft and other bigger ports.

In 1928 a fisherman from nearby Port Errol lamented the end of an era

Fishing will soon die out here . . . this was once such a brisk little village.

And so it was – fifteen big yawls manned by seventy men before WWI as well as up to thirty herring boats. By 1928 there were six motor boats with three or four crew each remaining. Aberdeen and Peterhead absorbed some families while others chose to emigrate.

If they would only give us a six-mile limit, we would make a success of it

observed one younger fisherman in the 1920s. But they didn’t. And Port Errol’s fishing paid the price.

Eighty-five herring and twenty haddock boats used to fish out of Boddam. The village supported thirteen curers. By the 1920s some twelve boats remained. Again trawling was seen as a major cause of their downfall. And what a downfall. On one day in 1928 a Boddam fisherman held up his catch for the day, he and his two crew having fished for two and a half hours – one small codling. A day’s catch usually comprised of one or two boxes of codlings worth thirty shillings – divided between three families.

A County Council report looking into the decline of fishing in the northeast’s coastal villages found that in the eleven places they investigated between 1890 and 1911 the number of fishing boats fell by about forty percent, and tonnage of catches by sixty percent. At Skateraw thirty-four boats catching 599 tons of fish in 1890 dropped to five boats taking in only 36 tons of fish in 1911; Downies eighteen boats dropped to five and fish from 133 tons to 23. At Stonehaven the drop was from 110 boats to fifty-two and about 1700 tons fish to 760 tons.

Were I but young an’ feel again –

An’ that can hardly be,

I’d like to mak’ a change or twa;

I widna seek the sea.

(The Choice, Peter Buchan)

Levelling up, trickling down and a right royal payout

Who pays for the royal family? That shouldn’t be a question. After all nobody pays for my family. Or yours. And the royal family is one of the richest in the UK; estimates of their wealth vary from £28 billion to £67 billion, so obviously they can afford to pay their own way.

The Windsors own land. A lot of land – some is rural and some urban. It owns a share of London’s west end, including part of Regent Street. Beyond land they own much of the seabed surrounding the UK. These holdings, except now in Scotland, are bundled under the title Crown Estate and the family earn a percentage of profits made from enterprises in its Crown Estate. We’ll come back to this.

The royals cost us a lot of money. Their supporters argue they are worth it. These same supporters are often free and easy with figures suggesting the popularity of the royals such as the preposterous figure of 5 billion people said to have watched the late Queen’s funeral. Total fiction.

Figures are important. They certainly are to the royals. The bigger the better. Much like their names and titles the more the merrier which is why we have Charles III, the erstwhile Prince Charles of Edinburgh, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew. Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, Prince of Wales. Titles that lay claim to places whose populations have no say in who flaunts them as idiosyncratic perks. Now that he is plain Mr King, Charles’ titles have magically and effortlessly been passed to his son, Prince William aka Prince of Wales etc – with all the insensitivity we associate with royal privilege.  

With the shift up the ranks, Charles loses his lucrative income from the Duchy of Cornwall which passes to William. The Duchy of Cornwall set up in 1337 by the English king Edward III now has assets worth north of £1.05 billion and surplus of £23 million. Nowadays there are taxes paid on this income, just not in the automatic way the rest of us are taxed. Royals are given a choice over whether to pay tax and at what rate. This also applies to inheritance tax. Royal privilege means their private holdings, such as Balmoral and Sandringham, are exempt from inheritance tax as are other privately held assets such as jewellery, the royal stud, rare art and stamp collections (the late Queen’s stamps are valued about £100 million) so can be passed down the generations in a way not possible for ordinary families.   

But don’t worry about Charles III’s lost Duchy income. There is another Duchy and this comprises the monarch’s main income from a vast portfolio of land, property and assets – the Duchy of Lancaster – it is also exempt from capital gains and corporation taxes. Nice perk if you can work it. And just to turn the screw on the disparity between us punters and royals – they benefit from bona vacantia – cash and property that belonged to people who died without leaving a will or whose heirs cannot be traced. These go to that worthy cause – the Crown. Back it 2000, The Guardian reported that the Queen profited by more than £2.1 million from the proceeds of the intestate. In the same article was an unsavoury revelation that her Duchy of Lancaster fund made a killing from the deaths of widows of soldiers killed in WWII.

The royals, some of them, are immensely rich. And some of them receive public money to carry out public duties and to cover their household expenses – which can come to a lot given the number of properties they elect to live in. Of course, questions have been raised over why tax payers have to fork out at all to boost the incomes of this mega rich family, especially during periods of austerity, such as now. The death of Queen Elizabeth might have created space to discuss the role, if any, for a monarchy in 21^st century UK but the family’s seamless transference of roles didn’t allow for that. And that is obviously deliberate. There is so much that is concealed surrounding palace behaviour and its relationship to the state; negotiations over the family’s public funding and tax affairs is highly secretive and entitlement appears to run deep in the royal psyche. In the 1970s Prince Philip complained about the family’s financial hardship.  

We are in the red and we might have to move out of the house next year.

He didn’t say which of their several houses he was referring to but there was at the time a dispute between them and government over the possibility of absorbing the royals and their public personae within a government department to enable their public funding greater scrutiny. The Queen got all bolshy. Her spokesperson said,

It is not clear that the Queen would wish to continue to occupy Buckingham Palace on these terms. If the palace were in effect a government department she might well wish to live elsewhere in a private capacity and appear at the palace only for official functions.  

As with so many wealthy egos who threaten to leave this place or that – they’re doing it now in Scotland over independence – they rarely follow through their emotional blackmail. However, in 1971 the government did not call the bluff of the Windsors and maintained the traditional secrecy surrounding their finances.  

How did the royals get to this coddled position? It all began a long time ago, back in 1649 with another Charles, Charles II, at a time monarchy and government were more intertwined. For services rendered he was the first monarch to receive what was called the Civil List – a useful payment of £800,000 which is equivalent today to nearly £110 million. Annually. In addition, Charles got revenues from Crown Lands. I assume Crown Lands were property sovereigns won through battles fought mostly by poor people against someone else’s army of poor people. From the money supplied by the state the king was meant to pay salaries for the likes of judges, ambassadors, courtiers, state officers etc but not the very expensive game of war hence the term Civil List, distinguishing it from military and naval expenses which were funded through specifically raised taxes.

James II in 1685 received £1,500,000 a year on much the same terms as Charles. Like Charles he was expected to pay government expenses from the Civil List but neither of them did.

William and Mary came in, in 1689.  They were a bargain compared with the profligate James and Charles. They got £1,200,000. Out of this, £700,000 was set aside for the royal household only; the first time such a distinction was made.

In 1697 parliament fixed the king’s payment, in times of peace, at £1,200,000 per year (£170 million today) in the reign of William III. £700,000 (£99 million today) of this from the Civil List. The national debt was instigated under William III, with funds raised through the sale of state securities. Its popularity flourished. War now, pay later meant easier funding of war and at the end of the Napoleonic wars the national debt stood at 200% of GDP.  

Queen Anne in 1702 was paid the same amount as William and Mary but like the rest of her feckless family, Anne ran up debts. Not just any minor debts, she accrued debts of £1,250,000 (£198,000,000 today). Parliament, tax payers, picked up the tab, in effect paying for her twice over. Her excuse? William had given away so many Crown lands. Given away – not in terms we would understand, you understand, royals don’t give anything away.

George I in 1714 saw a ‘mere’ £700,000 (£105 million) go to him to cover his household expenses. This was raised from taxes on liquor. The Westminster government now included Scotland. A tax on malt (used to make whisky and beer) caused riots ending in deaths and transportations for beer and whisky were everyday drinks at a time drinking water was often contaminated and dangerous.

George II in 1727 couldn’t get by on his £800,000 so parliament paid his debts of £456,000 (£72 million) while he didn’t pay for much of anything he was supposed to. Because George II played fast and loose with public money and failed to part fund government George III in 1760 was forced to surrender some profits from the Crown Estate which were redirected to the Treasury. He still enjoyed income from Duchy of Lancaster holdings. He also benefitted from revenue from excise duties, the post office, wine licences and miscellaneous taxes which might have been renamed – the extravagant sovereign fund and an increased Civil List of £1,030,000. You do the maths.

George IV’s annual Civil List was set at £850,000 in 1820. In addition, he pocketed hereditary revenues of Scotland (£110,000) and Ireland (£207,000). And since that wasn’t enough for him, an additional £225,000 from the public purse.

By 1830 the Civil List was restricted to the cost of upkeep of the royal household, separating this from the monarch’s civil government responsibilities. William IV was given £510,000 annually while the revenues of Scotland and Ireland were now paid to the Exchequer instead of the king’s coffers; Scottish hereditary land revenues were switched from the management of the Barons of the Exchequer to the Commissioners of Woods, Forests, Land Revenues, Works and Buildings and their successors under Crown Lands (Scotland) Acts of 1832, 1833, 1835.

Victoria was next up, in 1837. She received £415,000 annually (£36 million today) with parliament specifying how the funds should be spent. It should be said that other members of the royal family also received public cash but here I’m mostly dealing with the sovereign.  In 1848 the revenue from the Duchy of Cornwall was £67,000 (£6 million). The Prince of Wales, whose revenue stream it was, was 7 years old. An additional award of £7,000 was provided by parliament for his education and maintenance – an annual amount that soared within two years to £39,000 (£4 million). The value of the Crown Estates greatly increased in value over Victoria’s reign.

Ever since accession of House of Hanover, kings of England, as a rule, never lived within their income, and a Sovereign of habits no less simple and unostentatious than GEORGE III, was repeatedly obliged to apply to Parliament to pay his debts. Instead therefore of continually paying sums of money to eke out an income of which a large part was derived from estates of which the rental was unknown, and which were possibly mismanaged, it was obviously an economical course for Parliament to take the landed property of the Crown into its own hands and to settle on the Sovereign for life at the beginning of a reign a revenue sufficient, according to contingencies, calculable at the moment, for a liberal Court expenditure.

(The Mall Gazette, 31 July, 1871)

Prime Minister, William Gladstone, explained in 1871 that the Crown Estates would be transferred to parliament in return for maintenance of the royal family which, he said, gave parliament a moral control over the royal family and was in the long term the most economical. Disraeli argued that the Crown provided as much as the Civil List so defraying their state private expenses but not for providing for the whole of the royal family which begs the question about the size of the royal family and its inability to live within its means.

Edward VII’s initial £470,000 in 1901 crept up to £634,000 by the time he died and was the Civil List paid to George V in 1910. Out of this sum £125,000 was allocated to royal household salaries, £125,800 for pensions and £193,000 for other household expenses.

Into the 1930s, that period of desperate poverty and hunger though not among the royals although George V did give up £50,000 as a token gesture towards what was happening outside his coddled circle.  

Edward VIII, the fascist king, in December 1936 was awarded a Civil List of £370,000. This was due to rise to £410,000 on his marriage. Just not marriage to a fellow fascist. When he was forced out his brother, George VI, got the £410,000 per year.

His daughter, Elizabeth, followed him, in 1952 with the Civil List initially set at £475,000.

The 1972 Civil List Act included provision for a review of royal payments every ten years – but only to allow for increases, not reductions – a result of more secretive negotiations between civil service and palace. So ended a tradition that the Civil List was negotiated once at the beginning of a monarch’s reign for their lifetime.

In 2000 PM Tony Blair told the Commons an agreement struck in 1990 was so generous that the Civil List account was £35 million in the black. But, of course, this did not result in a pause in payments to the palace – because, it was said, of the provisions of the 1972 Act. It transpired the Act never intended any such thing but incredibly the Blair government and the palace agreed on an additional £7.9million a year until 2010.

In 2012 the Civil List was abolished. Not so state benefits to the royals. It was now called the sovereign grant. The sovereign grant in 2020-21 amounted to £51.5 million; a figure calculated at 15% of profits of the Crown Estate. The Crown Estate was valued at £15 billion in 2021 but as royal spending knows no bounds additional claims on the Treasury occur such as £34.5 million for ‘reservicing’ of Buckingham Palace. To cover such costs the palace has been allowed to claim 25% profits until at least 2027 when it is envisaged the rate of income will return to 15%. These extras known as grants-in-aid for unexpected costs such as property maintenance and travel often amount to large sums of cash – in 2017 replacement doors at the orangery at Windsor Castle cost £1.2 million. Where royals are concerned there are always extra costs – policing for royal events, royal weddings, royal celebrations, foreign travel, military parades, RAF flypasts, local government costs during royal visits – it goes on.  

The official expenditure of the Queen 2021 -22 was £102.4 million, a mark-up of 17% from the previous year’s £87.5 million.

It’s costly being a royal. It’s costly not being royal. The sovereign’s personal fund of the Duchy of Lancaster was recently valued at £580 million generating around £20 million in profits annually. The Duchy Cornwall is worth about £960 million and generates something in the region of £20 million. The Queen began to pay tax on the Lancaster income only in 1993. Charles also volunteered to pay some tax. There are other taxes they do pay, VAT and council tax. Council tax on Buckingham Palace is £1,500. A lot of bang for the buck, so to speak.

Things are looking up for the Crown Estate with the surge in renewables on and offshore. Twenty-five percent of current and future profits or even 15% of profits amounts to a huge boost in income. The same applies to future gas and carbon storage to the tune of £billions. the sovereign’s rights to profits from wind and wave power is recent – granted by the Blair/Brown government in 2004.

In 2016 Crown Estate Scotland was created by an act of parliament devolving Crown Estate interests in Scotland from those in other parts of the UK. Crown Estate Scotland is run as a public corporation on behalf of the Scottish government. This means the crown’s economic assets in Scotland, including seabed, mineral and fishing rights have been transferred to Holyrood’s control and revenue is paid into the Scottish Consolidated Fund. They remain the property of the monarch but cannot be sold by him or her. However, the palace stuck their heels in over the majority of its Scottish holding worth 60% of the Crown Estate in Scotland – a 50% stake in Fort Kinnaird, a retail park in Edinburgh, which was retained by the queen and soon sold off privately for £167.25 million. The proceeds were used to buy Gallacher Retail Park in Cheltenham. Which is pretty bloody cynical and exposes the disdain this immensely wealthy family holds towards the well-being of Scots and Scotland depriving causes of much needed funds.  

King Charles III is worth an estimated £538 million and £25 – £38 billion in assets including the Crown Estate, palaces and those lucrative Duchies. So who pays for the royals? We all do. There is nothing certain in this world, except death and taxes – to misquote Benjamin Franklin – except in the case of royalty where death is certain, paying taxes – not so much.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/moray/1504741/uk-crown-estate-accused-of-167-million-cash-grab-from-scottish-purse/

The Scots that built Russia’s army and navy

Why did so many men from northeast Scotland play such an important part in the development of Russia’s army and navy? According to the American writer, Washington Irving, it was down to the topography of their homeland – the flat coast, eastward-facing that produced

men of the clearest brains, the strongest arms, and the most determined wills, to a country in which these commodities have never been wanting.

Russia’s military and naval might might not be what it is today had it not been for a few Scotsmen. Quite a few Scotsmen as it turns out but one or two who were instrumental in reorganising the Russian empire’s defences (and lines of attack.)

Russian Imperial Navy 1700s

Since boats were boats Scots sailed to the Baltic from Aberdeen and Leith and points in-between to trade, to study and ply their crafts – including the arts of war. Mackenzies, Lindsays, Watsons, Farquhars, Hays, Elphinstones, MacLeods, Learmonths – George Mikhail Lermontov, ensign in the Russian army and descendant of Thomas the Rhymer, Gordons.

There are a lot of Gordons in Scotland and quite a lot were to be found in Russia over the past four hundred years.

Patrick Gordon from Auchleuchries in Aberdeenshire was in danger as a Catholic from the religious civil wars that brought Cromwell to power so at the age of sixteen he was taken by his father and uncle to Aberdeen to purchase clothes and put him aboard a merchant ship sailing to Danzig. Danzig (now Gdańsk) then held within a union between Poland and Lithuania was an important Baltic port. There he found accommodation with another Scot, John Donaldson, before making his way across Europe, lodging as he went mainly with Scots with whom he was put in contact. For a time he travelled with fellow-countrymen, Thomas and Michael Menzies and a Jesuit priest, Father Blackhall.

Not familiar with the local languages and dialects young Gordon struggled at first to get by speaking Latin and a smattering of Dutch. One particular day it all got too much for Gordon and he sat down on the roadside and wept from desperation but on being comforted by a stranger the young lad found the determination to continue.   

In 1655 young Patrick Gordon, a capable swordsman, did what thousands of his compatriots did, he sold his battle skills to the highest bidder, as a mercenary soldier. He enlisted with the Swedish army as a cavalryman. Opportunities there were plenty for mercenaries with Europe in constant turmoil battling over land and power. Gordon’s allegiances switched about. He fought with the Swedes at times and at other times with the Poles, against his former comrades. It was while in the pay of the Swedes he found himself a prisoner of a Russian force led by Scot, Colonel John Crawford (Crawfurd). Crawford persuaded Gordon to cross to the Russian Imperial army where he was told he’d be in the company of many Scotsmen.  

Patrick Gordon proved himself again and again on the battlefield and he rose through the ranks becoming a Major General, later Lieutenant General and Chief of Command at Kiev (Kyiv in Ukraine). By this time Gordon had become Pyotr Ivanovich, a trusted adviser and friend to the Tsar, Peter the Great. Gordon was the first foreigner in Russian history that a Tsar visited privately, when eighteen-year old Peter went to Gordon’s house in Moscow’s German Quarter. Trusted implicitly by him, Gordon laid the foundations of Peter the Great’s army that became the strongest in Europe.

Gordon died in 1699 at the age of sixty-four having served under three Tsars. The young Scottish laddie broken by loneliness fifty years earlier ended his life deeply mourned by a Tsar who provided his friend with a state funeral.

By the Grace of God, We Peter the First, Tsar and Sole Monarch of all Russi …blah blah blah …Be it known to Every one, That We have Graciously Appointed and Constituted Thomas Gordon (Captain Commander in our Navy for his well recommended to us Experiences, Dilligence and Zeal for our Service) to be our Rear Admiral the first day of January, 1719…  blah blah etc etc.

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Gordon’s namesake who made a career for himself with the Swedish and Polish armies in which he attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and earned the nickname, Steel Hand for his swordsmanship, is sometimes confused with the Auchleuchries Gordon.

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Another Gordon was Thomas Gordon, sometime captain of a merchant ship, Margaret, that sailed out of the port of Aberdeen, and was in 1703 in charge of the Royal Scots Navy ship, Royal Mary. Until the Union in 1707 Scotland was often the target of English aggression and ambition – some incidents were deadly and others petty though revealing such as Scottish vessels being denied the right to fly the Scottish pennant when in English waters. Following Union with England the Scottish Navy was scrapped in favour of the continuation of England’s Royal Navy. Scottish vessels and crews were absorbed into it and where both navies included identically-named vessels Scottish ships were ordered to change names – a move that was unpopular with Scots crewmen. From the start of the Union it was clear Scotland would be an inferior partner.

Royal Scottish Navy vessel

Thomas Gordon tholed so much English high-handedness but he refused to take an oath to the newly-crowned George I and left the navy, sailing to France where he stayed for a time before joining the Russian navy in 1717. He was promoted to Admiral in 1727 and later made Chief Commander of the Russian maritime port of Kronstadt. 

In common with numerous other Scots of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Thomas Gordon’s family settled in Russia, either marrying Russians or bringing up their families as Russian. Ann Young was Thomas Gordon’s granddaughter. She married Thomas Mackenzie (Mekenzi) a Rear-Admiral in the Russian Navy. Their son, Thomas, also became a Rear-Admiral in the Imperial navy and founder of the city of Sevastopol – the largest city in Crimea and principal port on the Black Sea, in 1783. Sevastopol under him became a vital station for naval supplies as well as developing its shipbuilding capacity. The Mekenzi mountains in Ukraine are named in honour of him.

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The ’Father of the Russian Navy’

The Sevastopol Thomas Gordon served under another Scot, Samuel Greig. Greig, the son of a merchant captain from Inverkeithing in Fife, became an Admiral and then Grand Admiral during the period of Tsarina Catherine the Great, who tasked him with modernising the Imperial Navy. She was the godmother of Samuel Greig’s son, Aleksei Samuilovich Greig, who was given the rank of midshipman at his birth. Almost inevitably the younger Greig made the navy his life. In 1816 he was appointed Commander in Chief of the Black Sea Fleet and ports at a time when Russia had full control of the Black Sea. Other Greigs enjoyed status roles in both the Russian army and navy. This family were part of the elite of Russian society for a century and a half but the sons were educated in Edinburgh.  

When the ‘Father of the Russian Navy’, Samuel Carlovich Greig, died he was given a magnificent funeral. Laid out with full pomp Greig was dressed in his Admiral uniform, his many medals illustrating his service to Russia Governor of Kronstadt, Chevalier of the Order of St Andrew, St Alexander Newski, St George, St Vladimir, St Anne. A crown of laurel was placed on his head. At the foot of the black-draped bier in a silver urn were his bowels.  

If Great and Good Actions
Command the Respect of Mankind,
The name of Greig will live for Ever.
He deserved good Fortune,
And he found it under the Banners of Cath.II.
He scattered the Enemies of Russia . . .

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James Keith from Inverugie in Aberdeenshire who became a General Field Marshall in the Prussian army, a major military leader in Europe and trusted friend and adviser to Frederick the Great was for a time responsible for the Russian forces in Finland then being fought over by Russia and Sweden. Keith was one of three Inspector Generals of the Russian forces – his responsibility being the frontier with Asia along the rivers Volga and Don and a section of the border with Poland. Keith, however, did not settle in Russia but transferred into the service of the Prussia’s Frederick the Great. Like so many fellow-Scots, Keith was forced to flee Scotland because of his religion and/or his support for the Jacobite cause. He did briefly return to Aberdeenshire once no longer branded an outlaw but couldn’t settle having lived so long on the Continent. He returned to the army and died, killed by cannon fire at the Battle of Hochkirch in 1758. He had been let down by the man whose ear he normally had, Frederick the Great. Keith had warned him his Prussian troops were in grave danger from the Austrians if they didn’t alter position. Frederick disagreed, and Keith paid the ultimate penalty, knocked out of his saddle, he was killed instantly. Generalfedlmarschall Jacob von Keith has a granite memorial at Hochkirch.

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An earlier army reformer with Russia’s Imperial forces was Alexander Leslie of Auchintoul in Banffshire (now Aberdeenshire). Alexander Leslie fought for the Swedes and Poles before transferring to the Russians and becoming Russia’s first General. Leslie recruited men from Scotland as part of his army improvements. He returned to the British Isles and took up arms in the Civil Wars for the Duke of Montrose and was ultimately banished from Scotland. Returning to Russia he lived out his life there, dying in Smolensk in 1663. His son, John, was killed while a Colonel in the Russian cavalry. John was married into the Scot-Russo Crawfords mentioned above.

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Thomas Dalyell (Dalziel) of Binns, West Lothian, Bluidy Tam, fought in the Scottish Royalist army. In the civil wars a price of 200 guineas was put on his head. Not unsurprisingly he fled to Russia, into the service of Tsar Alexis I where his brutal reputation earned him the nickname, Muscovite De’il. He did not remain in Russia but returned to Scotland to crack down on the Covenanters with such force he came to be known here as Bluidy Tam.

Russian Imperial Army in the 18th century

Robert Bruce, not that one but a later scion of the clan, whose family under James Daniel Bruce settled in Russia in the mid-1600s – Robert, Roman Vilimovich Bryusov, served in Peter I’s personal guard and he became the first Commander of St Petersburg. His army career lasted around thirty years and when he died in 1720 he was buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg,

Other members of the Bruce family were prominent in Russian society. Robert’s son, Alexander Romanovich Bruce was a Lieutenant-General in Russia’s Imperial army. Alexander’s uncle, Jacob Bruce, was primarily a diplomat and scientist (astronomer and naturalist – and also an alchemist and magician) but he also did a stint in the Russian army during the Russo-Turkish war and the Great Northern War when he was promoted to Major-General of Artillery – and rewarded for his successes by being made a count, one of the first in Russia, almost exactly 300 years ago.  Other Scots would follow into the Russian nobility.

When they travelled Scots took with them their birth brieve – a birth certificate with details of their origins. Additional documentation was kept in the Propinquity Registers of Scotland. Aberdeen holds some of these among its unique collection of archives dating back to Robert the Bruce’s time. Propinquity Books provided early modern travel documents. There’s an entry on 9^th July 1725 relating to the family of the late James Gordon of Auchleuchries, ‘brigadier in the service of the Emperor of Russia’ that records the disposal of his property to his kin in Scotland.  

Aberdeen’s Propinquity Registers reveal the importance and extent of Scotland’s east coast maritime trade with Europe. Sailing from Scottish ports such as Aberdeen to Baltic ports “the path to the Baltic ports was easier, and the welcome greater, than the highway that led to England” it has been said. Europe provided opportunities for wealth and reputation and many a Scottish family counted their fortunes in Russian rubles.

The Union Dividend: emigrate if you know what’s good for you

     Scotland is gradually being emptied of its population, its spirit, its wealth, industry, art, intellect and innate character. If a country exports its most enterprising spirits and best minds year after year, for 50 or 100 or 200 years, some result will inevitably follow.

Edwin Muir, Scottish Journey, 1935:

Migrating Scots mother and children, 1911
(Library & Archives, Canada)

It is reprehensible that any government would regard its people as its main export but this was the fate of Scotland following the establishment of the Union – during the later 18 ^th century, 19^th century and even into the 20^th  century.

Without the broad shoulders of the Union, Scots are frequently told, Scotland would be a failing state – which begs the question, if Scotland has done so well from the Union how is it her population was compelled to abandon her in such huge numbers soon after the Union of 1707?

Either the Union has been devilishly good for Scotland and transformed her from a backward and struggling country into one both so innovative and confidently successful that she would have no trouble forging a bright future alone or it hasn’t. Which is it? We should be told.

Size seems to confound Unionists. Scotland’s population of about 5.5 million is too small, they argue. Successful nations with similar sized populations – Ireland, New Zealand, Kuwait, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Norway, Oman, Croatia might disagree and by now I’m getting into the 4 millions – Latvia, Bahrain, Estonia, Cyprus, Mauritius – below 2 million and could carry on to tiny Malta, Iceland, Barbados, Bermuda, Gibraltar – all of 33,000 inhabitants. But where was I? Scotland, unlike some of the above is richly endowed with potential for market-valuable renewables, is still an oil and gas producer, has unique and sought-after food and drink commodities, has an educated and skilled workforce and strong engineering pedigree.  If Scotland with all of this is not capable of standing on her own feet then the Union has failed Scotland and failed Scotland spectacularly, reducing our country to a pathetic dogsbody of a nation perpetually insulted and patronised and one whose interests are simply ignored by Westminster where the Union’s power is anchored.  

Bring on some goalposts. Not there. Over there. Where size is clearly not the issue it must be the economy that stops independence. Scotland isn’t rich enough. Remember the guffawing back in 2014-15 when oil prices collapsed? You’d be broke, Unionists crowed while simultaneously denying Scotland’s seabed was, in fact, Scottish. They aren’t laughing now with Brent crude prices back up in the 90s. Goalpost change. Climate change – you can’t open any more oil and gas fields – although this is a reserved matter and Unionist HQ, Westminster, is doing just that. Scotland’s large and expanding renewable energy sector is dismissed by Unionists who insist England will refuse to buy Scottish power and fresh water. Doesn’t sound like the actions of a friend never mind Union partner. But the Union has never been a partnership based on respect or trust.

From the inception of the Union government in Westminster operated on the principle that England’s industries and trade took precedence over Scotland’s. And in case we didn’t get the message Scots were told their country was poor and barbaric and we should sling our hooks and leave Scotland, the worthless nation, to rot. And many did. Some were forcibly displaced. Some chose to leave. The British Empire had spaces that needed filling with Europeans – so to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – ousting their native populations. Like so many of today’s migrants, Scots moved abroad in the hope of making a a better future for themselves and their families than was possible at home – because the Union dividend has always been a myth. Or they had no choice but to leave. Because the Union has been a disaster for Scotland.

One hundred years ago, in 1912, in the month of April 9,000 people left Scotland – just under 3,000 in a single week. In another week, in May of 1912,  3,520 Scots migrated to Canada or America from the Clyde alone. Other ports were available. On 1^st June, again from the Clyde, a further 2,000 were shipped west. On 6^th June 1912, a report claimed emigration from Scotland was running twice as fast as from England.

Canada was the favoured destination for Scots. Before the Union, Scotland established a colony in Canada in 1621. It was called Nova Scotia (New Scotland.) This colonisation proved brief, being surrendered to the French in 1632. Two centuries later, under the Union, the Canadian authorities employed squads of agents to sell Canada to Scots – to entice the brightest and best to settle there where farm land could be bought for the price of a year’s rent in Scotland and where industries required skilled men and women. Leaflets were pressed into hands and colourful posters pinned up in public places promising everything that was great and everything that was different from failed Scotland bogged down by hardship, low pay, high rents, filthy slums and poor food – the Union dividend.  

Lord Strathcona, a Scot who became a Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and a big shot in Canada, enthused about the vast territory of Canada able to maintain 150,000,000 people – he wasn’t talking about Canada’s own indigenous peoples, you understand, he wanted Scots to up sticks and settle there where everything was “the best.”

“Anyone – even a lady – could succeed on the land there” Strathcona said by way of encouragement. He knew ‘ladies’ from Russia who were farming. 

Back in Scotland the Union had so run down the country Scots took little persuading to leave. In 1912 a flood of humanity boarded vessels, mainly for Canada and America, but also for South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. This flood was a continuation of the one the year before. In 1911, about 90,000 Scots packed up and left the old country. Across the rest of Europe emigration to America and Canada was slowing down but not from Scotland where it was accelerating because Scots could see no future in Scotland in the Union. In 1906 Scottish exceeded Irish emigration for the first time and did so again in 1911-12.   

In 1911 Scotland recorded its lowest death rate since 1855 (when records began) and lowest birth rate since 1873 except for 1890. The low birth rate might be explained by the drainage of young men, sometimes abandoning wives, and young women moving abroad. Scotland’s population depletion was only regarded with concern once rate payers discovered they were being asked to provide poor relief for deserted families. But emigration provided excellent business opportunities for shipping lines.

American bound from Aberdeen

Between 1830 and 1914 around 2 million Scots emigrated abroad and a similar number are believed to have moved to other parts of the UK. Throughout the 20^th century Scotland’s population decline continued. Since 1851 the proportion of Scotland’s population to the population of the UK as a whole has diminished by 25%.

People, industries and company headquarters have moved away from Scotland. The oil and gas sector off the northeast of Scotland ran counter to this long-term trend and had a major impact on population, jobs and wage levels. Unfortunately, the immense wealth produced off Scotland’s coast failed to benefit Scotland. Instead, Thatcher ensured that London and the southeast of England profited with vast building and infrastructure spending there. Compare Europe’s oil and gas capital, Aberdeen, with London. You would never know Aberdeen was the hub of so much multinational activity. Scotland was prevented from benefitting from this klondike which is an odd sort of dividend – aka no dividend at all but cynical exploitation by a greedy partner.

James Annand, an Aberdeenshire journalist and soon-to-be Liberal MP (the shortest serving MP, dying within a couple of weeks of winning and never taking his seat) was campaigning in 1903. He buttered up his audience in St Fergus with references to townies who had no idea how tough life and work were for country folk and complained about the lack of affordable farms for rent. He reminded his audience that Scotland was a poor country – a poor country? Surely some mistake – after two hundred years of that Union dividend how come Scotland was still poor? The Unionist never explained but he did emphasise just how poor Scotland was and how it was understandable that so very many Scots migrated because they could not make a decent living at home. Annand supported Scots getting out of Scotland to Canada – the land of opportunity.

Canada still tempting Scots away in its quest for “suitable men and women to go there.’  Annand mentioned Texas with its “three million acres of land, owned by a single company, that was being offered in lots for sale at £1000 each” and Australia with its “incalculable opportunities for enterprise in connection with unoccupied territory” – where indigenous people didn’t appear to matter.

And so Scotland continued to be drained of many of its most “suitable men and women” – from countryside and cities – the populations of Edinburgh and Glasgow were also in decline. The tide of migration that swept “the best young men and women of Scotland” ashore in North America was detrimental to the economy back home as well as reinforcing how Scotland was failing its own people following years of underinvestment, attacks on its manufacturing, lack of opportunities, lack of hope and ambition over generations. The coming of the Great War placed a temporary halt on Scotland’s population depletion by emigration, replacing it with another loss, of many of its fine young people, in that disastrous bloodbath.

Early in the twentieth century when England’s population was about five times greater than Scotland’s its wealth was about thirty-six times greater than Scotland’s. That Union dividend, again.

Two hundred years of the Union, of the Union dividend, and the message was – emigrate if you know what’s good for you.                   

Westminster government statistics income 2014-16

For centuries England repeatedly attacked Scotland, in an attempt to annex it. It did not succeed until 1707 when a handful of Scottish nobles sold out their country for personal gain. That was the point that Scotland became an irrelevance in the eyes of the British monarchy and government except for the money it could raise from Scots taxpayers to help pay for England’s near continuing wars and her young men to sacrifice themselves as cannon fodder – for wars have a habit of eliminating people at a fearful rate. Peacetime taxes levied by Westminster favoured English industries to the detriment of Scottish ones. The Union was an English protectionist measure set up by the monarchy and Westminster. The myth it has been good for Scotland is just that. Westminster operates to benefit the city of London and this is why present talk of ‘levelling up’ is just talk. Ireland was treated in a similar manner to Scotland. The Irish woollen trade was destroyed to protect England’s and during the terrible famine years of the 1840s while 400,000 Irish people were starving to death the grain they grew on their land was carted away to fill British bellies. Destitute Irish could see no future at home and so left. Likewise in Scotland. Between 1840 and 1940 a little short of a million Scots went to live in other parts of the UK while more than two million emigrated abroad.

The Highlands and Islands Emigration Society encouraged Scots escape starvation during the Highland Potato Famine of 1846 by emigrating to Australia. In Westminster the Emigration Act of 1851 provided subsidies to landlords to ship people abroad like so much livestock. Queen Victoria and assorted aristocrats contributed to the costs to rid Scotland of Scots, though she, herself, decided to use the country as a holiday retreat.   

At the Union Scotland’s population was about 20% of the UK’s population. Today Scotland’s 5.5 million make up 8.2% of the UK’s overall population. According to the James Hutton Institute Scotland’s rural populations could decline by 33% in little more than 20 years.

While I was able to find sources that looked at the impact of emigration on Ireland I found none on the impact of emigration from Scotland on Scotland. Although not identical emigration from Ireland has comparisons with Scotland but in Ireland’s case destitution drove emigration much more than occurred in Scotland. The perception that migrants are always poor and low skilled has never been true. Of course people emigrate for different reasons and some impoverished and low skilled will take their chances moving abroad, often under duress, but these groups are those least likely to migrate while the educated, skilled and ambitious are more likely to voluntarily emigrate.

Migrants have also moved to Scotland. Through the 19^th and 20^th centuries they came mainly from Ireland, the Baltic countries and northern Europe (a reversal of 16^th and 17^th century Scots moving abroad to trade), Italians and, of course, people from Wales and England. With increasing global migration, the number of Scots born outwith Scotland continues to increase; in 2018-19 just under 40,000 moved to Scotland from overseas – 20,000 greater than left.

Fraser of Allander gross disposable household income across UK 2018

The return of some autonomy to Scotland through the partial resurrection of a parliament in Edinburgh provided hope for the future of the country. However, Westminster jealously guards its overall control of the whole UK and will chip away at Edinburgh’s authority and will as far as possible implement policies that protect and support that southeast corner of England, as it has done since 1707. These are dangerous times for Scots. If Westminster succeeds in extinguishing Scotland’s recently found confidence and optimism the country will again be plunged into a state of hopelessness that led to people leaving over three hundred years. The Union that needed heavily armed fortifications to ensure compliance in its early days, that ran down Scotland and drained it of “its best men and women” might have proved a dividend for Westminster but at a terrible cost for Scotland.

Oncology – Scottish impact on cancer treatment and the perils of radium

Very many of us have had all too close experience of cancer either in our own lives or in those of family and friends. Cancer is not a new disease and historically surgeons cut out malignant growths to try to prevent their spread. It wasn’t until the very end of the 19^th century and into the early part of the 20^th century that there were major scientific developments that would revolutionise the treatment of malignant tumours – with the discovery of radium and x-rays.

Nowadays we bundle cancer treatments under the label oncology, an umbrella term for medical, radiation and surgical methods of dealing with cancers; the intensity of treatments dependent on the severity and stage of illness – frequently surgery is followed by radiotherapy or chemotherapy.

X-rays were discovered at the very end of the 19th century, in 1895, by the German engineer and physicist, Wilhelm Röntgen.  This must have seemed like magic. In 1896 the first patient with a cancer of the throat was irradiated in an attempt to stem the growth of his tumour. The following year Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium salts emitted rays similar to x-rays. That same year Marie and Pierre Curie announced to the world an element they called radium, extracted from radioactive uranite or pitchblende and in 1902 they isolated radioactive radium salts from the mineral.

In 1910 John R. Levack at Foresterhill Hospital in Aberdeen in Scotland sought out a supply of the much talked-about, radium. His request was turned down by the hospital board and then the Great War was upon them so it was not until 1922 that Aberdeen Royal Infirmary obtained a small stock of radium salts, as did a few other hospitals in the UK, which led for instance to their use treating women with cancer of the uterus.

A quantity of radium was provided to the University of Aberdeen’s science hub at Marischal College’s Department of Natural Philosophy (Physics). There radium was turned into radioactive gas, radon, and needles were loaded with radium for medical interventions. Given the hazardous nature of these radioactive substances a radium officer was identified who was given responsibility for their safety. In 1922 this was John Cruickshank, a lecturer in malignant disease. As well as the radium officer, several other new roles were created at the hospital and university relating to the handling of radioactive substances and in order to develop appropriate methods for dispensing radium treatments to the sick.  

Loaded needles were inserted into malignant tumours

New academic and medical departments were created along with a raft of national and international organisations on the back of radioactivity. The British Association for the Advancement of Radiology and Physiotherapy was formed in 1917, later known as the British Institute of Radiology. A UK radium commission was set up in 1929 to regulate the use of radium in Britain, leading to a handful of radium centres and local radium officers. ^1. 

Radium requires very careful handling for it is inherently dangerous and at the onset of WWII a new problem arose – where to store the hospital’s supplies safely in the event of Aberdeen being bombed. It was. Aberdeen was the most bombed Scottish city during WW II. On the 21^st April 1943 127 bombs fell in just 44 minutes killing 125 people and destroying and damaging a huge amount of property. Any direct hit on the city’s store of radioactive material would have spelled death to many more, to thousands potentially, and for years to come with lethal radioactive dust finding its way into people’s and animal’s bodies the nightmare would be long-lasting. What to do? The answer had to come quickly.

In anticipation of this arrangements were made to protect radium supplies. Burying the material underground, to a depth of 50 feet or more was recommended but given Aberdeenshire sits on fairly impenetrable granite this was problematic so where could a place of real depth but still within the vicinity of the city be found? Anyone with any knowledge of Aberdeen will know what comes next – Rubislaw quarry. Rubislaw is 142 metres (465 feet) deep and one of the largest man-made holes in Europe. Local supplies of radium in solution were taken out of their glass containers, dried and restored. (Supplies from Inverness were included.) They were protected with lead and steel and placed in part of the quarry wall that had been specially prepared and the opening plugged with heavy timbers. Gaining access to the hospital’s supplies during the years of the war involved someone being lowered deep into the quarry on a Blondin  – an aerial ropeway. Not for the fainthearted. None of the handling of these toxic substances was for the fainthearted. As it happened the Germany Luftwaffe did manage to find Rubislaw quarry with a bomb but fortunately little damage was done to the borehole containing the hospital’s deadly supplies, and so the good folk of Aberdeen lived to fight another day.  An additional small quantity of radium was also preserved west of Aberdeen at Torphins hospital. Why I don’t know. Could it be that was closer to Balmoral and potential needs of royalty?

The ‘laboratory’ at Cove quarry

Although it was risky having radium right in the heart of the city there was little option if it was to be available for delivering medical treatments given the very limited life of radon gas. It had to be produced near Foresterhill. This couldn’t take place in Rubislaw quarry and the place chosen was at Cove on the southern edge of Aberdeen. Here both electricity and water were available and the railway ran close-by which was to prove valuable. Cove’s Blackhill’s quarry had a face excavated to store glass bulbs filled with dried radium for making into radon gas when needed. In the same way as it was protected at Rubislaw what became the little laboratory at Cove consisted of the mineral, steel, lead and in addition sandbags and a shed. One bad winter a south-bound train carrying the university’s H.D. Griffith (its first medical physicist) and his staff was stopped close to the site so they could more easily get through the snow drifts to make up essential medical supplies.  

Each time radon was needed liquid oxygen and gas cylinders had to be carried in to the ad hoc lab at Cove. But it worked and between March 1940 and September1945 Cove’s little workroom supplied not only Aberdeen but Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle hospitals with radon gas.

Every care was taken to protect and preserve this potentially lethal but medically beneficial substance but still radium did go missing: seven filled needles of it disappeared in 1932; years later a 50 mg tube was flushed down a toilet by a hospital patient and despite valiant attempts to trace the radium through the sewer system to its outlet at the Bay of Nigg nothing was found; a further 50 mg tube was inadvertently incinerated at Woodend Hospital which must have resulted in radioactive smoke getting out into the atmosphere in west Aberdeen but there were no reports of associated health impacts.

Aberdeen’s early foray into nuclear medicine led in 1950 to Britain’s first oncology unit being established at the city’s Royal Infirmary under Professor James F. Philip who had been the hospital’s radium officer from 1939 till then and was a founding member of the British Association of Surgical Oncology. The department initially known as the malignant diseases unit built on Aberdeen’s ground-breaking joined-up approach to nuclear medicine that would influence cancer therapies across Scotland. By the 1970s all Scottish hospitals were encouraged to setup their own units based on what had been operating at Foresterhill for 20 years.

The most stable radium isotope is radium-226 which has a half-life of 1600 years. Radon 222’s half-life by contrast lasts only 3.8 days. Needles of radium salts were able to be used indefinitely but radon within them built up and leakages were likely. Radon needles were designed for fast application and needed constant replacement but their radiation hazard declined quickly. Needles were inserted directly into tumours as opposed to irradiation from outside. Radium or radon are no longer used. In 1980 caesium-137 replaced radium in the treatment of cervical cancer and iridium wire replaced radium for solid tumours.

Establishing safe and effective doses of radium isotopes became the source of many conversations in the scientific world, as among everyone else. Their impact on patients must have been significant.

Finally, a number of years ago I found myself in Würzburg where Roëntgen carried out many of his x-ray experiments and having read there was a small museum dedicated to the great man I tracked down what I thought was the place. Everyone must have been hard at work in labs or offices for it took me quite a time to find anyone there and none of whom seemed to know about displays so I left as disappointed as they were confused. No idea where I was but it doesn’t seem it was the right place because there is a Roëntgen museum which is, thankfully, available online. Nothing to do with this whatsoever but the small private hotel I stayed in for a couple of nights offered the best breakfasts of any hotels I’ve been to. And I’ve been to lots.

https://wilhelmconradroentgen.de/en/

Finally, finally.  The perils of exposure to radium were not understood at the end of the 19^th and start of the 20^th centuries and even when its hazards were beginning to be apparent its potential for industrial applications were too great for commercial enterprises to ignore. Staff and customer safety were of no concern and very young women employed in the USA to paint numbers and hands onto watches and military instruments so they could be seen in the dark involved the women licking the paintbrushes to form delicate points. The women were not told of the dangers of handling this curious paint that glowed in the dark and happily messed about painting it onto their fingernails and even their teeth as they kidded about while working. They became known as the Radium Girls and they developed cancers and many died as a consequence.

Radium ‘girls’

A craze for all things radium early in the 1900s led manufacturers to lace all sorts of products with the stuff, for no reason other than they could – chocolate, cosmetics, playing cards, clothing, health tonics. Bizarrely radium was added to hen feed with the idea irradiated eggs would self-cook and perhaps self-incubate.  Sounds nuts to us today but it was all new then. On the subject of nuts – Brazil nuts contain radium, naturally. Two to three nuts daily is not a health risk but go canny with those moreish chocolate Brazils.

*

^1.One eminent doctor whose name is permanently linked with the early years of radiology is Professor James Mackenzie Davidson one-time president of the British Association of Radiology (BAR) and the British Institute of Radiology (BIR).

Mackenzie Davidson’s parents were among the earliest Scots to emigrate to Argentina, in 1830. At least that was when his father went out there, aged 21, from St Martin’s in Perthshire. Don’t know about his mother because details about women are usually regarded as unimportant – I do know she was from Argyll. The Davidsons bought up pieces of land around the River Platte to farm sheep and cattle and did that successfully. Davidson senior survived many an adventure, including an attack by three gauchos who thought they’d killed him but it was Davidson’s horse that died, on top of him. When he was eventually able to extract himself from under the poor beast he was able, eventually, to find help and lived to experience several more adventures, apparently. The family were related to Marshall Mackenzie, the eminent architect from Elgin and Scotland remained important to the Davidsons who frequently sailed back from South America for visits. Their son, James, was educated at the Scottish School at Buones Aires and studied medicine at Aberdeen, Edinburgh and London. He graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1882 and opened a medical clinic at West North Street in the city. From there, in 1886, he was appointed Professor of Surgery and lecturer in Ophthalmology at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, the Sick Kid’s hospital and Blind Asylum. James Mackenzie Davidson became fascinated by the newly discovered x-rays and visited him at his workshop in Würzburg in Germany to learn more about x-rays and radiation and was able to carry out his own x-ray of a foot that had been pierced with a broken needle.  He devised the cross-thread method of localization to trace foreign bodies in the eye which proved of immense value for treating horrific eye injuries in WWI. Mackenzie Davidson was by this time in London, working with x-rays at Charing Cross Hospital’s Roëntgen Ray department. Following his death in 1919 an annual lecture in his honour was established by the British Radiological Society and a medal is presented for outstanding work in the field of radiological medicine.

H D Griffith Physicist ARI Zodiac Journal of Aberdeen University Medical Society Vol 1 p 190, Jan 1950.

Aberdeen Royal Infirmary: The People’s Hospital of the North-East. Iain Levack and Hugh Dudley, 1992.

The Making of the NHS: from Tannochbrae to the Highlands and Islands

The Great Hair Cut Riots

While hard-nosed peace negotiations were taking place at Versailles in France at the end of the Great War. While 74 ships of the German fleet were scuttled at Scapa Flow in Scotland. While Greeks and Turks fought over territory, encouraged by Britain. While rioting by Canadian troops stationed in England and Wales resulted in brutal murder. While all this was happening in 1919, a year the world was plunged into crises – uprisings, mutinies, riots and revolution – the Spartacists in Germany, reds versus whites in Russia, rebellion against British imperialism just about everywhere – always viciously repressed – in Egypt, Malta, Belize, Trinidad, Jamaica, India – and closer to home tanks and military turning their firepower on civilians in Ireland and in Glasgow. 1919 while the world tottered on its axis Aberdeen was rocked by rioting over haircuts. It happened like this.

Frederick Street School with its rooftop playground

In 1919 young girls usually wore their hair long and loose, no less so in pockets of the city where desperate poverty meant large families lived cheek-by-jowl in tenement rooms with limited access to soap and water – cold water from a communal tap on a stair landing or outside. Never hot water on tap. These were the homes for heroes promised by Lloyd George during WWI. In 1919 seriously deprived families, their men-folk just returning (if they were lucky) from serving in one of the most horrific wars ever, were no doubt struggling to contend with adjusting to life, attempting to find work, trying to keep the wolf from the door and possibly one of the last things on their minds were nits (head lice.)

Nits are little insects that crawl from one head of hair to another. There they set up home and lay their eggs until another head of hair comes close, in which case they may decide to jump ship and infest a different head. Nits are blood-suckers. And they itch like mad. Getting from head A to head B is easier on long hair that effortlessly comes into contact with other long hair. In 1919 the Health Committee of Aberdeen Burgh Education Authority decided to tackle an outbreak of nits among school pupils with action taken in the case of schoolgirls whose parents persistently failed to take responsibility for the problem themselves. Dr George Rose, the schools medical officer took it upon himself to deal with verminous heads and if parents would not cut their child’s hair, he would arrange for it to be done.  

In fact incidence of head lice was not an enormous problem in Aberdeen and Dr Rose found only one girl with ‘filthy hair’ at the Middle School when he inspected children there in June 1919 and when an appeal to her parents was ignored the doctor took matters into his own hands. His insensitive handling of the case was misjudged. All hell broke loose.

Several pupils from the Middle School went on strike, their number boosted by youths already skiving (truanting) who when they heard of the hair-cutting incident readily joined the collective action. STRIKE was chalked over the school’s playgrounds to underline their protest. Word got out and pupils from schools across the east end joined the protesters or rioters as they were identified, mainly but not exclusively, teenage boys. They went from school to school drumming up support. More playgrounds were chalked to indicate strike in those schools and school buildings were pelted with stones. Windows were smashed; scarcely a pane of glass remained intact at the Middle School. Marywell Street and Ferryhill suffered similar attacks. Some rioters turned their attention on Union Terrace, gathering outside the education authority offices they booed their disapproval of the committee that sanctioned cutting girls’ hair. Loud protests carried on into the nights of the third week of July 1919 and there was consternation among the citizens of the town about where it would all end. The local authority fought back.

At the root of this Middle School fracas there seems to be the contempt for and insubordination to authority which are characteristics of the times among certain classes of the community.

I think the city fathers feared rebellion against authority affecting both Britain and the rest of the world that year had permeated through to the lower classes in Aberdeen. The haircut riots had become class riots. Working class parents complained of being given no or too little warning to have their girls’ hair cut and heads treated for lice while middle class critics sneered that –

The working-classes are all for State control of everything…glass was smashed because they dislike the medicine they themselves demand.

These were harsh times. A correspondent to Aberdeen Weekly Journal had little patience for treating children with kid gloves and on the subject of punishing school pupils for misbehaviour had this to say,

A few children may have died as the result of corporal punishment, but they were exceptional cases, and furnish not reason for its abolition. 

The school medical authorities justified their behaviour by pointing to powers under the Scottish Act of 1908 that enabled them to act if after 24 hours written notice to a parent to

…cleanse the child within 24 hours…[if] this notice is not complied with, the medical officer…may remove the children…and cause their persons and clothing to be cleansed.

The school strikes spread. Pupils from Skene Square school abandoned lessons and headed to the beach noisily shouting and cheering. At Frederick Street school the appearance of a nurse at a window led to a rumour that the vilified medical officer, Dr Rose, was about to wield his scissors there. In no time local mothers and children assembled by the school gates. The police were called and tried to assure them Dr Rose was not inside but the crowd were in no mood to be pacified. Missiles were thrown. A janitor was struck. At the end of the school day, at four o’clock, pupils were dismissed with no sign of Dr Rose. The crowd waited; certain the now notorious doctor would emerge. He did not.

Head lice

Some striking youths hanging about the nearby Links decided to seek out Dr Rose at his house in the city’s west end, at Rubislaw Terrace. They lined up outside it, shouting and waving union Jacks before pelting it with stones, breaking one window. When the police turned up a group of rioters disappeared round to the rear of the property where the police didn’t think to follow.  Stones rained down on a garage thought to belong to Dr Rose. It was his unfortunate neighbour who lost 19 panes of glass from his garage. From the west end they turned their attention again to Skene Square School which received volley after volley of rocks.   

One of the lads was dressed in soldier’s trousers and puttees and seemed to be in command. He was carrying a banner and shouting his orders to his ‘troops.’ He was considered a great hero that night, and imagined himself as such. His mother stated that he came home that night without his collar and tie; and thinking he had done a great thing.

Eventually the hair cut riots petered out. Then came the aftermath with punishments taking the form of the scud (the tawse or belt) or an appearance at the Children’s Court which resulted in 12 months probation for all the youths who appeared before it, for glass breaking.

Dr Rose was criticised for acting without tact over the few cases he had to deal with; one or two girls in a thousand had their hair cut by the school authorities. Just nine percent of the city’s girls had what was classified as dirty hair compared with forty percent found ten years earlier. So the problem was waning.

A proposed increase in Dr Rose’s salary was turned down by the Staffing, Salaries and Bursaries Committee and remained at £650. The doctor was backed by the BMA who said his salary should be £800, describing him as one of the best school medical officers not only in Scotland but ‘in the kingdom’ and called the local authority members who failed to support Dr Rose, ‘unfair and cowardly.’

It might be supposed Dr Rose would have decided to move on but in 1920 he was still in his position reporting on the usual childhood ailments: whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever and diphtheria – all on the increase. He also noted a resurgence in city children’s ‘fetish’ for sugar – which had been interrupted during the war years when supplies couldn’t get through. Schoolchildren’s teeth were in bad shape. Some schoolchildren were still verminous – from about 93 city families.

1919 the year of revolt and riot. Few protesters came out on top. Authority everywhere had come though four years of terrible bloody conflict and were in no mood to compromise although in a way Aberdeen’s school authorities did by rapping Dr Rose across the knuckles in denying him a promised salary increase and they did ensure that in future parents would be more courteously treated when asked to keep their children’s heads clean and clear of nits.