(A two minute read)

‘Big Rachel’ (1829-1899) aka Mrs. Rachel Molly Hamilton (neé Johnston), stood 6 feet 4 inches (1.93m) and weighed 17 stone (108 kilos). She worked variously as a labourer-forewoman in Glasgow’s Tod & MacGregor shipyards and Jordanhill brickworks, and as a farm labourer at Anniesland. But those are not her only, or major, claims to fame.

Big Rachel had quite a reputation as a peacekeeper and enforcer of law and order in the workplace. It was because of this that, when three days of violent sectarian riots broke out in Glasgow’s Partick district in 1875, Rachel was one of thirty local citizens sworn in as Special Constables and deputed to drive the rioters back over the River Kelvin and into the city . . . successfully as it would turn out.

The population of Partick had exploded as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, and tens of thousands of Irish migrants arrived in Glasgow desperate for work. The UK had already seen outbreaks of violence between Irish ‘Home Rulers’ (those wanting independence for Ireland) and the Orange Lodges/Orange Men who were staunchly opposed.

In August 1875, Home Rulers amongst the newly arrived Irish population marched through the city to celebrate what would have been Daniel O’Connell’s 100th birthday (O’Connell being one of the heroes of the 1829 Catholic Emancipation).

The march through the centre of Glasgow went off without incident. But when the large Partick contingent (numbering almost 1,000) returned home, violence flared. Nothwithstanding accusations of ‘stereotyping Glasgow’  . . . it does not seem unreasonable to assume that by 8pm on a Saturday night, in midsummer, after what one group saw as ‘celebration’ and another saw as ‘provocation’, drink may have played a part.

“While passing through the principal street of the burgh, a processionist struck one of the bystanders, who returned the blow by giving his assailant a smack on the face. This was the signal for a free fight between the processionists and the crowd,” reported the Glasgow Herald of August 9, 1875.

“A great many people were hurt by stone-throwing and other forms of ruffianism. But their injuries, except in a few cases, are not of a serious nature,” added the Herald.

Rachel was also an Irish immigrant to Glasgow, driven away from home by extreme poverty.

Soldier, hunter, and showman – William “Buffalo Bill” Cody wore many cowboy hats throughout his long life.

It’s been over a hundred years since his death, but his Wild West Show (sharp-shooting, historical reenactments, rope tricks, etc), still has a resonance in our thinking of ‘the West’ today.

That Show travelled the world for 30 years, and some stops along the way were in Scotland.

The Herald documented an account of this visit in 2000, detailing how researcher Tom Cunningham unearthed newspaper reports of a visit by Buffalo Bill to Ibrox on November 7, 1891, where Rangers were playing a Glasgow Cup match against Queens Park.

‘Cody, wearing a white sombrero and a broad smile, received a warm reception. Some wit in the crowd, referring to the Colonel’s flowing locks, shouted ”get your hair cut”.

There was no room in the grandstand, and Cody and crew were ushered by the club secretary to VIP seats in front of the pavilion where they watched the game with several Bailies and members of the local Unionist party.

The Scottish Referee newspaper dated November 9, 1891, reported: ”From under the shadow of his huge sombrero the Colonel watched what he called the show.” At half-time he was presented to both teams.

Contemporary reports say Cody was very much taken by the ”blue shirts”. He confessed he did not know very much about their ”show” but invited them to visit his. He was also said to have been impressed by Rangers’ ”fighting spirit” despite their eventual 3-0 defeat.’

We recently had a client that travelled to the UK to investigate some sites that had relevance to his family history. He had carried out fairly extensive and quite thorough research tracing his lineage back to the first settlers to travel to Virginia in the 1600s. He had reached a ‘brick wall’ with one of their immediate predecessors. The individual in question was a successful trader and had become the Mayor of Southampton, Edward Barlow.

Our client was trying to establish a link to other branches of the family he believed to be from Lancashire. He wrote to me, ‘There are a lot of resources like Ancestry that provide good information, but is very uneven with accuracy…word on the net says that the Isle of Wight ancestors are connected to the Lancashire ancestors, but I cannot make that connection’. We were commissioned to find that link.

Our client had done all the right things and done them well. He had amassed a solid database that took him a long way back to the 16th Century, but in the later 1500s the data had let him down and there was no clear pathway to be found. It has to be emphasised that when you are looking at historical sources, there will be occasions when, for a whole variety of reasons, there simply is no information to find. Assumptions can, and often are, made with empirical information that may prove to be correct, but there is no guarantee.

So, we went over all the data that the client had. We then narrowed down our own search to a much more focused timeline. We went through everything, again, in detail. We widened the search outwards once more to include new sources (both primary and secondary). Nothing came up.

Then, when we applied the rubric that the ‘established’ information could possibly be incorrect for some of the chain. We double-checked everything with this in mind.

In this case, it transpired that there was a commonly held and agreed date of birth for Edward Barlow. That date of 1560 was published in books and showed up on a number of websites and had been added to a good many genealogy trees on a variety of genealogy websites. However, we found that there did not seem to be any direct evidence for this. In fact, it very much appeared that one of the respected historians who had done such a good job of documenting the Virginia settlements had potentially jumped to the wrong conclusion, and every other source had just copied that.

I contacted the client stating, ‘I don’t think the reference that seems common for William being Edward’s father is backed by any evidence. The reference you make (and others) seems to me to be based on Dale’s supposition about Sir Walter Raleigh and Roanoke etc – looks like a bit of confirmation bias to me. So, I went through the evidence that there is (marriage, kids, etc). The timeline seems to make more sense if Edward was not born in 1560’.

We had found our pivot point.

We started anew and we discovered the evidence for an alternate timeline and everything began to fall into place. On the basis of this, we discovered some obscure, but solid research that suggested new familial links and established a basis for connecting the line to the family in Lancashire. One of the mainstays of this was that Edward Barlow’s parentage became much clearer.

Many moons ago, my (now) wife and I took a road trip from Budapest to Transylvania

We ended up in a town called Sighișoara. In German, it was known as Schässburg, and by the Hungarians, Segesvár, reflecting some of the many changes in its fascinating history.

It is a remarkably enchanting town that also happens to be the birthplace of Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler, if you prefer. He was born in 1431 and ruled the Wallachia region of (now) Romania at various times between 1456 and 1462. Vlad’s father (also called Vlad) was prince of Wallachia from 1436 to 1442, a member of the Dragon Order, or ‘Dracul’ order in the local dialect. That’s where the name comes from. We all know what Bram Stoker did with that name and the origin myth.

The town circles a hill, on the summit of which stands a citadel with a ring of walls, nine extant towers, and a number of medieval churches (one of which is at the top of the hill). After midnight, full of red wine and bonhomie, we decided to ‘find a vampire’.

We ascended the Covered Stairs (a wooden walkway) that connects the Citadel Square with the church on the hill, and behind the church is an old cemetery, a resting place of Sighisoara’s early German settlers. It was the eeriest place. There ensued our own little drama of imagination coupled with an atmosphere literally charged with another place and another time. In the daylight, we laughed at how spooked we had been, and how excited also…

Now press the rewind button to the grim post-war inner city landscape of the Gorbals in a Glasgow of the 1950s.

On September 23rd, 1954, police were called to the Southern Necropolis, (a huge graveyard in the Gorbals said to be home to a quarter of a million dead). Constables made their way to the graveyard, expecting to find vandals—not an uncommon occurrence in the Necropolis. PC Alex Deeprose was the first to arrive on the scene and he was in for quite a shock. There were hundreds of children running all around the graveyard. Alarmingly, those children (aged from toddlers through to teenagers) were weaponised – they had crosses, crucifixes, axes, and even knives.

Constable Deeprose, in no uncertain terms, asked them what was going on.

The excited responses all led to the same clear conclusion. The children were hunting what they called The Gorbals Vampire, a 7-foot tall creature with iron teeth. They believed that this creature was behind the murders of two other children that had recently been consumed in the Necropolis.

Copyright Bradley Michael and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence

Tam Smith was a seven-year-old schoolboy at the time. He recalled the scene in a local newspaper interview:

“The walls were lined with people. We ventured through the gatehouse and there were loads of kids in there, some wandering around, some sitting on the walls. There were a lot of dogs too, and mums and dads with kids.

“We found a place to stand out of the way because there were so many people there. I think the whole of the Gorbals was in that graveyard. It’s hard to put an estimate on the number of people.”

Being Glasgow, it wasn’t long before the rain came and called a halt to the evening hunt. However, the children returned again the next night…and the night after that. By this time, the police had been called multiple times and the legend of the Gorbals Vampire was beginning to take root…

Parents began to worry about the creature that was stalking and killing children in the dead of night and discussions were frequent on the subject of ‘what to do’. Not surprisingly, rumours were rife in the schoolyard. An excitement laced with an element of fear was palpable. It became, in effect, a form of mass hysteria.

And then it all just stopped. It ran its course and that was it. While the children vampire hunting in the graveyard at night, illuminated by the fire of the nearby steelworks, was very real…the tale of the vampire seemed to be just a story. According to investigations by the police and reporters at the time, no children were missing or had been found dead or injured in the area during the time.

So, what had caused so many people to believe there was a vampire in their midst? Did it all start and end in the playground fueled by childhood fantasies? That was the conclusion of the Press and of many parents.

Maybe they were half right. There was a story of an iron-tooth vampire published in an American comic the year before (December 1953 issue of Dark Mysteries #15). Could this have been the spark? The result was that scary comic books were blamed, and the MP for the Gorbals introduced the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act the following year.

However, according to a report in the Scotsman newspaper, the children may have updated a local boogeyman into something more easily hunted,

“Myths of iron-toothed monsters have haunted Glasgow for some time. According to Tam Smith, parents sometimes warned their badly behaved offspring that the ‘Iron Man’ – a local ogre – would get them.”

The Southern Necropolis cemetery was indeed located near an ironworks called Dixon Blazes, and there had been tales through the generations that a monster resided there…

So, Glasgow kids didn’t need to turn to American comics for a story about a flesh-eating, iron-toothed monster. Such creatures were already firmly embedded in other local legends such as Jenny Wi’ the Airn [iron] Teeth, a figure immortalised in a 19th-century poem by Scottish railway worker-turned-poet Alexander Anderson. The poem, used to frighten children who refused to go to sleep, told of a creature that would carry away restless kids, but not before she sank her iron teeth into “his wee plump sides.”

‘Jenny’ is a far more illusive character than the Gorbals Vampire and is often mentioned as part of the cultural mix that led to her more famous offspring but she deserves attention on her own. It was believed a monster haunted Glasgow Green and lived in a shed owned by two elderly women – one of whom had substandard dental work carried out leaving iron fillings in her teeth clearly visible.

Interestingly, many local legends such as ‘Jenny’ were works of fiction designed to make children wary of something. There are similar stories told all over the United Kingdom – no matter what name you use – Ginny Greenteeth, Nelly Longarms, Ginny Burntarse, Peg Powler, Jenny Wi’ the Airn Teeth, or Screeching Ginny.

There is another report from Liverpool where locals still remember the St James’s cemetery lodge being pelted with eggs in the 1950s by local schoolchildren believing it to be the home of Ginny Greenteeth.

And then there were the notorious living conditions in the Gorbals, which had to rival some of the worst in Europe. This might have made local children welcome a vampire hunt by way of an exciting diversion from the grind of everyday life.

As a matter of fact, the Gorbals legends and folk tales may even have had some roots in Central and Eastern Europe. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Romania during the century before, peasants and other village folks would use the vampire as scapegoats for everything from plague to bad weather. Many immigrants from those regions had settled in Glasgow during the 19th Century expansion of inner-city industries.

Whatever the main cause or catalyst, what we have seems to be a striking example of children’s world-building in action, and by extension the power of imagination combined with social networks and local (and wider) cultures. Maybe it is not so surprising that we now live in a world rife with adults claiming ‘this and that’ incredulous conspiracy – social media and mass information systems have made it much easier for local to become international…

So what’s the link between perhaps the greatest Bob Dylan album, Highway 61 Revisited, and Scotland?

Of course, it could be linked to Bob’s love of traditional folk music. An early Dylan recording, Black Jack Davey, is widely believed to be derived from the Scottish tune The Gypsy Loddy (c 1720) which mentions the Earl of Cassilis in Ayrshire. This being Britain, there is still an Earl of Cassilis, twenty-seven year old Archibald David Kennedy. But no . . .

The answer lies in the fourth track of side one; the great From a Buick 6. The founder of the Buick Motor Company, David Dunbar Buick was born in 1854 in Arbroath – home of the famous Smokies (smoked Haddock). Admittedly, David’s family moved to Chicago when he was still an infant but he can still lay claim to founding the motor company which became General Motors.

By that time, however, a broke David had been bought out – taking with him a single share worth $100,000. Buick was a fine inventor (his important role in developing the overhead cam engine has been, sadly, lost in history) but expended all of his energies and cash on research and development. He then tried his hand in the oil industry and also land sales/development. Failing at both, with his son Tom Buick, he established the Lorraine Motor Company. Sure enough, despite producing what Buick Snr. thought his best car, Lorraine also went bust.

Tom later recalled the family’s financial plight being so acute that they were evicted from thirteen apartments. In 1928, a famous Civil War historian located David Buick and found him almost penniless, working as “an obscure instructor” at the Detroit School of Trades. Soon after, his health deteriorated so much that he was moved to the information desk.

David Dunbar Buick died penniless in the following year (1929) and his son Tom Buick died in 1942, a Fuller Brush salesman.

The quote is worth repeating. The advertising titan Theodore F. McManus said of Buick “Fame beckoned [to him]. He sipped from the cup of greatness, and then spilled what it held.”

[Sources; mainly Chrysler by Vincent Curio (OUP), plus wiki and various others online]

What’s the connection between Peter Fonda’s ‘Captain America’ (Wyatt) in Easy Rider, the Sons of Anarchy, and the early medieval, Pictish, ‘Serpent Stone’ in rural Angus?

[A mellow, 90 second read]

It was from a two-bedroomed cottage in the tiny hamlet of Netherton, nr. the village of Aberlemno, in the Angus countryside between Dundee and Aberdeen that the Harley-Davidson story began. Alexander ‘Sandy’ Davidson, a wheelwright, lived here next to the smithy/smiddy with his wife Margaret, their six children and two fellow labourers. In 1858, we can assume influenced by the harsh and cramped conditions at home, the Davidsons (by now Sandy was fifty-two years old) emigrated to America. After a short time, Sandy found work as a carpenter with the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad and the family settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

One of their Angus-born sons, William C. Davidson married a woman of Scottish descent (another Margaret) and together they raised two daughters, Janet and Elizabeth, and three sons – Arthur, William and Walter. Arthur (born in Milwaukee, 1881) developed a close childhood friendship with William (Bill) Sylvester Harley, the son of an English railway engineer, William Harley and his wife Mary – both of whom came from the village of Littleport in Cambridgeshire.

In 1903 Arthur and Bill established the proto Harley-Davidson company, which would be legally registered in 1907, and were joined in the endeavour by William and Walter Davidson.

Both Arthur and Bill were outdoor enthusiasts, and the Harley-Davidson legend has it that (arguably) the world’s most iconic motorcycle brand was born of Arthur’s passion for fishing and his desire to ease the strain of cycling around the Wisconsin countryside with his fishing gear. [As an aside, when he was sixty-nine years old, tragedy struck the family when Arthur and his wife Clara died in a two-car road traffic accident – two others also died – on a rural road in Wisconsin in December 1950.]

In 2008, three Harley-Davidson enthusiasts found the cottage in Netherton, “a crumbling ruin… [and] earmarked for demolition to make way for a new housing development.” This small group worked tirelessly to fundraise and make true their dream of saving and restoring Sandy and Margaret’s former home and turning it into a site of pilgrimage for fellow H-D disciples. Since 2012, bikers from all over the world, but particularly the USA, Europe, and Australia, have visited the cottage to pay their respects. Visitors are still welcome and it is even possible, by arrangement, to stay at the cottage.

Long before the discovery of its links with motorcycling aristocracy, and its place at the centre of American popular culture, Aberlemno was noted as being home to five early-medieval (7-8th century) carved Pictish standing stones. Four of these remain dotted around the village (in the churchyard or at the roadside) while one is now on display at a museum in Dundee. If visiting, note that they are covered from late September to April to protect them from frost damage.

[As another aside, Bill Harley’s ancestral village in England has its own rich heritage. Littleport was founded by King Canute, was the scene of some infamous rioting involving returning soldiers after the Battle of Waterloo, and was the home of the legendary Burns guitars.]

1. DIASPORA. 2. SLAVERY. 3. CLEARANCES. 4. HEADSTONE ICONOGRAPHY.

This headstone is near the entrance of the Old Urquhart Cemetery. Urquhart has a population of just 420 people and is a pretty remote farming settlement in north Moray.

It turns out the real story is not Thomas Gilzean but his nephew, Alexander Gilzean (who is not the ‘Alex’ mentioned on the stone). Alexander Gilzean was born in 1777 at Nether Meft, on the Innes House Estate near Urquhart. The Innes House Estate still exists and today is a popular, award-winning, location for the weddings of the wealthy (photo below). His father was James Gilzean, but it was his mother Henrietta Kelly whose family connections would prove most influential in deciding Alexander’s travels. Henrietta came from Alves, near Elgin, and had a cousin George Forteath, a half-brother John, and a cousin William Falconer, who were established in Jamaica in the 1770s and 1780s.

Alexander Gilzean emigrated to Jamaica in the 1790s where he worked as an attorney. Throughout his life, Alexander seems to have been in receipt of considerable largesse from his family, mainly from the successful and influential Thomas (it seems he may have been Provost of Inverness) referred to on this headstone. Records show that Thomas paid for his shoes, clothing, furniture, books and Latin lessons but also regularly sent cash and picked up his debts. Interestingly the go-between for this largesse was one Thomas Sellar, the father of the notorious ‘factor’ Patrick Sellar. For those not familiar with the name, Patrick Sellar is, almost inarguably, the most infamous figure in the Highland Clearances since it was he who unsympathetically drove the tenants from the Sutherland Estate and was later charged, and acquitted, of culpable homicide.

To cut a very long and detailed story a little shorter we can say without fear of contradiction that, in addition to being incapable of looking after money, Alexander Gilzean plus his younger brother Thomas, and at least one cousin bought, sold, and ‘owned’ a number of slaves who worked their plantations in the West Indies. In 1817 the Jamaica Almanacs show Alexander as proprietor of the ‘Dunvegan’ plantation in St Tomas in the Vale. Dunvegan was a 47-acre property accommodating between 28 and 52 slaves at any one time. He is also recorded as having been the manager of a plantation when an enslaved man – Alexander Kelly – was flogged to death, supposedly for not ‘surrendering a borrowed horse’.

As if all of that was not sufficient, at some point around 1810, Alexander began a relationship with Sarah Gilzean. Age 25 years and described as “African” in the Slave Register of 1817, she was registered as the property of Alexander Gilzean along with her sons Thomas age 6 and James age 2. In his 1832 return, Gilzean records the manumission (freeing of slaves) since 1829 of both these sons, along with 3 further mixed-race children, Henrietta Kelly, Alexander and Isabella. There is, however, no indication of any formal manumission for Sarah. Much later, his will makes provision for Sarah to have use of Dunvegan – although it was to be owned by James and Isabella.

From the Legacies of British Slavery, “Alexander returned to Scotland in the mid-1840s, although there is no evidence that Sarah travelled with him (she is not found in the 1851 census for Scotland nor in the statutory deaths after 1855). He died in Aberlour, Banffshire, in February 1848. Among other bequests, Alexander left his Jamaica estate, Dunvegan to “my reputed children” James, Henrietta, and Isabella, share and share alike, their “mother Sarah Gilzean to have the use of part for her lifetime”.

The threads of the slave trade are long indeed. From a minuscule farming village in Moray to Jamaica and Africa.

Alexander’s eldest son Thomas was left £500 but the census and other public records suggest that his father’s money failed to be sufficient to guarantee him a comfortable existence. The 1851 census has him living at 82 Parkside Street, Edinburgh (photo below), his age recorded as 35, and his birthplace as St Thomas in the Vale, Jamaica, “British subject”, with an 11-year-old son, James, and an 8-year-old daughter Henrietta Kelly. His wife, Barbara’s, age was recorded as 21, and his occupation as “tailor” and at his death from tuberculosis in 1868 he was described as “journeyman tailor”. In the early 1900s TB was identified as a disease of tailors.

As for the iconography. We have seen a number of the ‘primitive’ and more sophisticated carvings on headstones elsewhere. There are a number of the skull and crossbones in this area, and at Cromarty over on the Black Isle is the ‘Pirate’s graveyard’. It seems to be widely accepted by those with more expertise in this field, that the images are simply a way of conveying a message or sentiment when a significant proportion of the population was still illiterate. But . . . we have not seen another exactly like this. There are, however, a few almost identical in the oldest graveyards in America e.g. one pictured below from Bennington Centre Cemetery, Vermont was carved by the itinerant stonemason Ebenezer Soule who left others across Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. So, it may be that a particular design is simply the ‘signature’ or ‘speciality’ of a carver. Or perhaps because it was relatively simple to execute?

If you know of any similar carvings, or any which have caught your attention, please let us know (with a photo if possible).

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.