My friend and fellow researcher whose prolific output I listed a while ago
has brought to my attention a statement given by 72 year-old Charles Shaw, W.S., late Sheriff-Substitute of Inverness-shire, at Lochmaddy to the Napier Commission in Inverness.
The testimony (‘a simple narrative’)
exceeds 10,500 words so I have chosen to divide it into several entries. In
each of these I shall scrutinise some selected
extracts (in italics) following each
extract with my observations regarding the content of Charles Shaw’s carefully
constructed piece. (Phrases of particular significance
have been emboldened)
A full analysis of Shaw’s essay (it
is worthy of the name!) could easily form the basis of a thesis!
It has...occurred
to me that a simple narrative of a few facts within my knowledge may be useful
to the Commissioners, and without any
desire to challenge the veracity of any man, and in bringing to light the actual
facts as they presented themselves at the time to one who was equally
interested in all.
Whether he manages to avoid making
any such challenges we shall soon see!
I began business in 1835, by receiving from Lord Macdonald a joint commission with my father as factor of North Uist. I also to
some extent assisted him in the management of Lord Dunmore's estate of Harris,
and of Clanranald's estate of South Uist.
This linkage of the traditionally
MacDonald land of North Uist with that of the traditionally MacLeod land of Harris is
significant and, I contend, one that was maintained for half-a-century.
I was also factor during part of 1836 and 1837 for
the trustee on the sequestrated estate of General MacNeill of Barra.
For two years then father & son
were exerting their power & influence over all of the Western Isles with
the exception of Lewis. I suggest this included a degree of power and influence
over the absentee landlords at this time, a time that saw the first failure of
the potato crop in the isles.
At Whitsunday 1838 I was appointed factor on Lord
Macdonald's estate in Skye, which then included the large property now
possessed by Major Fraser of Kilmuir.
For the next here years, the pair
held sway in Skye, Harris, North & South Uist.
I held this
last office till I was appointed Sheriff-Substitute of the Long Island in
November 1841, and I remained there till 1881, when I left the Long Island.
He was the Sheriff-Substitute for the
Inverness-shire islands from Harris in the north to Barra in the south with
only the Ross-shire Isle of Lewis outside his jurisdiction and he held office
for 40 years.
My
earliest recollection goes back to 1817, and the great famine of that year.
This famine was not owing to a failure of the potato crop in particular, but to
a generally very bad and late harvest in 1816 over all Scotland. The spring of
1817 was also bad and backward, and of both these the Highlands had more than
their proportion.
He was 5 years-old and, whilst it is
entirely plausible that he was aware that his neighbours were suffering from
that famine, his subsequent analysis is obviously the result of research rather
than recollection. It’s a rhetorical trick, and one that I think we must
applaud the retired lawyer for employing!
The proprietors of the Long Island imported meal
largely for the crofters, and Government supplied a considerable quantity of
oat seed, which gave the year the name of the " the year of the big
seed," and it is, I have no doubt, still known by that name to a few old
people. The seed was of no use in the outer islands for the purpose for which
it was sent, being unsuitable for the soil. The people got it ground into meal,
and in this way it was of service. The crofters were due to the proprietors a
considerable portion of the price of that seed, when I ceased to have anything to do with Long Island estates in 1838.
Apart from being in charge of the law
for 40 of the next 43 years...
When in Edinburgh learning my profession in 1828-35,
I made the acquaintance of Mr Robert Brown, at that time factor for the Duke of
Hamilton at Hamilton. Mr Brown had gone
to Uist as Sheriff-Substitute of the Long Island District, and factor for
Clanranald, I think in 1796, and remained there till he went to Hamilton in
1811. My father succeeded him at Nunton
in Benbecula in both offices.
Not only is it extremely questionable
that one single person should hold these two particular offices simultaneously,
but this is the first time that I have seen it revealed that Charles Shaw’s
father, Duncan Shaw, was also a legal practitioner. This invites further
investigation.
In the next few passages Shaw
describes Robert Brown’s view that Clanranald treated his tenants well, that ‘My connection with North Uist began in 1829,
when my father got the management of it from Lord Macdonald in succession to Mr
Cameron.’ and that rents were reduced slightly after a valuation in 1830
and were held stable for the next 50 years. This last point being made to rebut
the allegation that throughout the Hebrides rents were raised to more than
double on account of the peoples increased income from kelp. It is impossible
to know for sure what period is being compared here but it is quite possible
for both descriptions to be true IF there had been an increase in the number of
households paying rent due to the demand for kelp workers. The rental of the
estate could thus have increased whilst the rent from each householder was
frozen. I shall have to see if further corroboration for either side of the argument
can be found.
When
in 1842 it became evident that the kelp manufacture must be abandoned, and that
the potatoes were beginning to fail, Godfrey Lord Macdonald brought to
North Uist from Perthshire a man to superintend the making of drains on the
crofts.
It is good to have a definitive date
for the decision to cease kelp making in North Uist but equally, unless his
memory was playing tricks, the suggestion that the potato crop was already
suffering in 1842 is in itself interesting. Was there a weakening of the plants
already taking place that may have allowed the blight an easy place to gain a
hold in 1846, perhaps?
During the famine of 1836, George Earl of Dunmore sent
about 700 bolls of meal to the crofters in Harris, and in 1837, his son
Alexander Edward Earl of Dunmore sent 1000 bolls all at prime cost and on
credit, and larger quantities in
subsequent years, as to which I am not able to speak, having ceased to have
official connection with Harris
The traditional responsibility for
the territorial chief to provide for his people was still being undertaken by
the landlords who usurped them and this, even before it became enshrined in
law, clearly caused concern amongst the landowners and their factors. It must,
however, be remembered that such emergency relief was provided on the
understanding that, eventually, its recipients would pay it back thus adding to
the woes to many already impoverished and hungry people.
There was a medical man on the estate, paid much in
the same way as in North Uist, and there were three or four schools besides the
parish school, all contributed to by Lord Dunmore, and a sewing school kept up
by the Countess.
Harris had some medical provision,
then, but the thought of just one ‘medical man’ having responsibility for the
several thousand scattered souls of Harris and the accompanying isles can have
been of little comfort. I have discussed education in Harris elsewhere but
would remind readers that the ‘sewing
school’ referred to was the embroidery school at An-t-Ob established by the
Dowager Countess and Fanny Thomas in 1857. Some say it was essentially a
sweat-shop.
During
the minority of the present Earl, the Countess, who was his guardian, was
unremitting in her attention to the wants of the crofters, and in the trying
times that began with the famine of 1846, expended large sums out of her own
private means in improving their condition. At an early stage of her connection
with the estate, she expended large sums in the purchase of wool and in the
employment of the females on the estate in various kinds of manufactures, and
exerted herself to an extraordinary extent in the sale of these manufactures.
The implication being that these
activities ceased once the 7th Earl took control on his 21st
birthday.
Charles Shaw, as I think we can
easily see, chose each of his thousands of words most carefully and thus his
phrases ‘During the minority’ and ‘At an early stage’ surely point at
these having been relatively short-lived rather than ongoing endeavours? My
research generally supports this view.
I regret that, owing to the distance of my residence at Lochmaddy and the indifferent
communication then between these parts of my jurisdiction, I am unable to
give such full particulars as I should wish of a work so deserving of being
better known.
Clearly wanting to distance himself
from Harris, he rather overstates the situation for Lochmaddy and Rodel are
less than 15 maritime miles apart, and each of them had regular postal services,
the Harris mail boat itself being sited in Strond in 1851 . Certainly Mrs Charles Shaw can be expected
to have been in contact with her uncle in Rodel, John Robertson MacDonald the
Factor of Harris...
We next get a lengthy description of
the circumstances leading to the evictions at Sollas, North Uist, the
subsequent sailing of the ‘Hercules’ for Australia and an amazingly
self-serving account of correspondence received from grateful emigrants in
later years, but these are too large subjects in themselves for inclusion in
this piece.
He then turns his attention to
communication within the islands and contrasts the relatively infrequent
services of past years with the current provision which is described here:
When I left Lochmaddy, a little more than two years
ago, there were three steamers in the week trading along the whole of my old
jurisdiction, and doing a fair amount of business. The advantages which the
visits of these steamers have conferred on these far-away islands it is not
easy to overrate. They have given an easy and rapid means of sending all their
produce, cattle, sheep, eggs, lobsters, whelks, &c, to all the markets in
the kingdom. The men can now get with ease, and at little expense, to the east
coast fishing, where they seldom went before, and also to the training ships. Men and women can, and do continually, go to
the south for service, on the other hand, meal and flour, which they now stand
so much in need of, they can get rapidly imported, and in fact a new world has
been created in these distant islands.
This image of hustle & bustle is
not lost on the Commissioners but he has also fed the myth of the supposed remoteness
of ‘these far-way islands’, ignoring
the fact that a flotilla of sailing vessels plied the coastal waters of
Scotland’s West coast throughout the period making for much more effective communications than Shaw
would have us believe.
Another source for making money which, within
recent years, young men from these islands have largely availed themselves of,
is the militia service. There are rather
more than 1000 men in the militia regiment, embodied from the counties of
Banff, Elgin, Nairn, and Inverness. Of
that number sometimes as many as 700 are said to be natives of the three
parishes of North and South Uist and Harris, and the number from these islands
is, I am told, seldom less than 600.
About two-thirds of the manpower
recruited from four Counties came from just three Parishes within
Inverness-shire. This is a far from unfamiliar kind of statistic regarding the
huge contribution made by islanders to the fighting-forces but Shaw paints it
merely as being ‘Another source of making
money’ rather than as a reminder of a long and honourable tradition.
Another long passage argues against some
of the evidence that the Commission had heard in both North and South Uist,
even pointing out that one man was born four years after the evictions and
suggesting that his testimony was mere ‘hearsay’ which neatly ignores the fact
that those appearing at the Commission were selected by local people and given
time to prepare their evidence. It is therefore entirely plausible that someone would be
chosen for their confidence in reading and speaking English rather than because
they were able to give an eyewitness account. The term 'hearsay' is revealingly patronising to a preominantly oral culture.
Of another witness Shaw says:
Then the delegate mentions that Mr Cooper states in
a pamphlet that Mr Macdonald telegraphed to Earl Grey for a regiment of
soldiers. What Mr Cooper says in his pamphlet I really do not know, but what
the delegate says is not correct Sir
George Grey and not Earl Grey was Home Secretary. Mr Macdonald neither
telegraphed nor did anything else about soldiers or evictions. There was no telegraph in North Uist for
more than twenty years after these evictions. There was no emigrant ship
brought to Lochmaddy to take families to Australia.
The first two points, namely the
confusion between the two Greys and the anachronism regarding the alleged use
of a telegraph two decades before the undersea cable link had been established,
are, perhaps, mildly amusing in themselves but hardly strong evidence for
doubting the general circumstances that the witness had described.
The final point is interesting in confirming that those emigrating to Australia, at least prior to 1883, would
have had to have met their ocean-going vessel elsewhere (most likely in Glasgow
or Liverpool).
We are someway past the halfway mark
of Charles Shaw’s statement and I think a pause is required before looking at
what he has to say about the kelp industry and also of the land issue in the
islands.
These links to previous entries that
are about, or mention, the roles of Charles Shaw and his father may be of
interest. The timeline is useful for observing the sequence of events in Harris during the
period.
