On the evening of the 30th of March 1851 there were 863 men and 74 women locked-up in the newly expanded Wakefield House of Correction in Yorkshire, England.
With them were another 40 males & 31 females, these being the prison staff and their families, and all were under the watchful eye of the Governor, Edward Shephard.
One of the 937 inmates was a widowed Printer named William Macpherson who, some 44 years earlier, had been born on the Isle of Harris.
I have not investigated the nature of William's crime, nor the circumstances that led him from the Western Isles to Wakefield, but as there are only 26 occurrences of Harris-born Macphersons in the 1851-1901 censuses and his is the only one that records a Hearach in incarceration in England I thought it worth remarking upon.
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