Author: FrenchPhillips

We are currently researching a location where many of the Scots soldiers who fought and died with the British Auxiliary Legion in the Carlist Wars were laid to rest. A cemetery full of sculptures, mausoleums, and funerary architecture, now enveloped by the lush vegetation of Monte Urgull, San Sebastian.

We will share any interesting finds.

There must be so many of these (pre-20th C) places around the world. We have all seen the graveyards full of, or memorials to, people we have never heard of, but many of whom lived lives well worth the telling of a story.

We posted on twitter recently about Gabriel de Montgommery (as the French refer to him). He was Captain of the Scots Guard to the King of France, Henri II. Unfortunately, our Scot fatally wounded the king in a jousting competition, which didn’t do much for his future prospects!

Anyway, the tweet led to a comment from a battlefield tour guide, ‘Do you know about the plaque in Bergues [northern town in France] to the 1745 Highland lad’. We didn’t and were sent a photograph of a tribute to Cameron of Lochiel (who is buried in the local graveyard).

This was Donald Cameron of Lochiel, 19th Chief of the Clan Cameron (aka the Gentle Lochiel) of the ’45 Jacobite Uprising. He met with Bonnie Prince Charlie at Glenfinnan, along with an army of 800 Camerons, in 1745, when the Royal Stuart Standard was raised and the Jacobite Uprising initiated.

An unlikely Jacobite, John Slezer, was released from prison soon after the siege of Dunkeld. He was a Dutch engineer who had been appointed surveyor of His Majesty’s stores and magazines. Or more precisely, he compiled detailed accounts and made drawings of Scotland’s fortified places. But he is much more famous for his Theatrum Scotiea. Published in 1693, it is the first pictorial survey of Scotland, and its 70 engravings of towns and buildings offer a fascinating snapshot of the last quarter of the 17th century.

Scotland: A History from Earliest Times by Alistair Moffatt

Selzer obtained a royal licence for his books and the three volumes were published in London. However, they failed to sell and, to avoid ‘debtor’s prison’, he was reduced to living in sanctuary in Holyrood Abbey. From there he was permitted to visit his family . . . but only on Sundays. All of this time he retained the title ‘Captain of the Train of Artillery of Scotland’. He died in poverty in 1717.

Selzer’s drawings should be taken with certain caveats. There are some liberties; some features are repeated in different areas, and a degree of artistic ‘sentimentality’. His drawings focus mainly on ‘towns’. Many of these ‘towns’ would have populations only in the hundreds. Also, Scotland at the end of the 17thC had an estimated population of between 900,000 and 1 million. In a complete reversal of today’s demographics, 90% of the population was involved in agriculture, was dispersed across the countryside and was not ‘urbanised’ even by the standards of the day. But this is precisely why his drawings have such historical value today. What Selzer captured in the Scottish countryside of the late 17thC had remained almost unchanged since the 12th-13th centuries; the traditional runrig ploughing patterns can still be seen.

The Battle of Dunkeld (15 miles north of Perth) was a defining one in the Jacobite Rising of 1689 and was fought between Jacobite clans on the side of King James VII of Scotland and the supporters of King William of Orange (Covenanters). Those years were punctuated with bewilderingly complex (often internecine) conflicts tied up in nationalism, succession disputes, religious freedoms and family turf-wars and are not the focus of this post. But the Battle of Dunkeld is fascinating because it was essentially a street-fight in what would today be considered a very small village (more on that to follow no doubt).

From the late 1850s until the Second World War, between 6,000 and 10,000 women (many young, mostly Scottish) led a nomadic existence for seven (sometimes more) months of the year, travelling to the Shetland Islands or the Western Isles for the opening of the Herring season and then following the fleet south, traversing the Moray Firth to Aberdeen, onwards to Hartlepool, Grimsby, Hull, Scarborough and on to where most would end the season in Great Yarmouth and nearby Lowestoft — the centre of the Herring industry at the time.

With the Scots of other fishing-trades and the men of the herring fleets it was estimated that the town hosted an additional 40,000 workers from September to December. It was said that you could walk across Yarmouth’s great harbour from deck-to-deck of the Scottish boats.

Life was tough and the Herring Lassies or ‘Quines’ worked — usually outdoors — until the entire catch was cleared, often 14 or 15 hours a day. The method of preserving the fish was known as the ‘Scotch Cure’ and involved gutting and removing the gills with one movement of the sharp knife (‘futtle’) and packing the fish in a barrel between layers of salt. In truth, this method was actually the ‘Dutch Cure’ and — and as illustrated by the New York Times in 1886 carrying a report of the 500th anniversary — it had taken an age for the British to recognise the potential. The long-gutting of each fish literally took just one second. The sharpness of the knives and the constant contact with salt meant wounds were frequent and extremely painful. Since the Lassies could not take time off to heal, they bound their fingers with cotton (‘cooties’) to protect them.

Early Lassies and those working the isles travelled by boat, with conditions the same as the cattle which crossed with them. Crossings were often rough and they were not provided with lifejackets. The coming of the railways in the 1860s made life a little easier and the thousands would travel en masse. Annie Watt of Peterhead (1892-1978) who started work as a Herring Lassie aged 13, and first travelled to Yarmouth aged 15, recalled,

“When we came to Yarmouth and Lowestoft we used tae come down by train . . . Ye never went to sleep. All the guttin’ crews would be singing and dancing. We used to have small spirit lamps and make tea in the train. Oh it was fun. Ye never felt the time. I wish it was those days now.”

Annie would marry a Yarmouth man and settle there as many of the women did.

The industry hit a peak in the years immediately prior to the First World War. Since 80% of the fish were exported to Germany, Poland and Russia the war decimated trade. A significant element did survive the war although even this was hit again when the Bolsheviks cancelled Tsarist era foreign debts and again when Germany suffered the 1923 currency crisis, and many Scottish and English producers went bankrupt. By 1936 there were an estimated 2,000 Herring Lassies following the fishing. That same year the Lassies staged a strike and won an increase in wages, In 1938 they successfully struck again, this time in protest against English boats Sunday working.

This radical activism was entirely in character for these strong and independent women. Interestingly it is also evident among their counterparts in Iceland where the Herring Girls who unionised in 1920 and first went on strike in 1925 are credited with a significant contribution to ending the vestiges of serfdom and achieving universal suffrage. They hold a similar place in the history of Scandinavian and Baltic states.

For all of the privations, the Herring Lassies preferred their lot to the limited alternatives open to poor women of the time. They could earn more than domestic servants who left home for a big house in the city; they were not subjected to the kind of class discrimination and misogyny which was commonplace, and they had an unparalleled network of support and comradeship.

It’s a common belief that our ancestors had limited experience of travel beyond their immediate horizons. None more so than the women. This is just one example of how little we appreciate or understand even our closest, particularly the poor and rural ones.