Issue No 18 NEWSLETTER

of Perth & Council Archive

Hon. Presidents: Bob Scott, Provost, Perth & Kinross Council: Sir William Macpherson of Cluny and Blairgowrie

At least the uniforms were glorious….. ’s Fencibles of the 1790s

CONTENTS

CHAIRMAN’S NOTES & ARCHIVES NEWS….2

OH, TO BE A SOLDIER: THE FENCIBLES…..3

AN AULD ARHIVIST REMEMBERS…………7

FOCUS ON BLAIRGOWRIE…………………..8

A SOCIAL HISTORY OF BLAIRGOWRIE…….9

GREYFRIARS BURIAL GROUND…………….10

FINDING AIDS IN THE ARCHIVE…………...13

A Fencibles Colonel of 1795 by John Kay of Edinburgh Perth & Kinross Council Archive, AK Bell Library, York Place, Perth PH2 8EP, Tel: 01738 477012 Email: [email protected] A Word from our Chairman

The Friends have been working away on various projects during the year, accumulating knowledge and information and making it available to the public. A major job is to find a way of communicat- ing this knowledge to the wider public. The Friends committee and Archive staff have been look- ing at applying for grants, which would help us employ a researcher who would be able to take the Friends projects on, incorporating them into the educational aims of Perth & Kinross Council. We will let you know how we get on.

As usual, the newsletter has reached enjoyable and high standards, thanks to the superb efforts of the editor, David Wilson, and the articles submitted by Friends and other visitors to the Archive. We’ve been so fortunate with the number and high standard of articles, that we have several we’re saving for future publications of the newsletter. But to make sure this high standard is maintained – keep sending in those articles!

We’re also looking forward to this year’s AGM, which will be in the AK Bell Theatre on 25 May We’ll be able to catch up with the Friends’ activities and after business we’ll be treated to a very interesting illustrated talk by Chris Fleet, looking at the maps of Perthshire (details are in the en- closed leaflet). We look forward to seeing you there. Jim Ferguson News from the Archives

The work of the Archive continues, helped by our regular band of volunteers who are producing extra finding aids and weeding duplicate material to give us more storage space.

Plans to make the source databases available via the website are under way. We’re also hoping that a six-month project to put all our descriptive lists into electronic format will be able to start soon – we’re just looking for a touch typist! Work on the web pages continues, but we would still like more ideas to include on the Friends pages. So if you can, have a look and let me know if you have any suggestions. You can see the Friends’ pages via www.pkc.gov.uk/archives.

The Archive has been quite busy over the past few months. Recent visitors have been looking at house history and family history – the two most popular kinds of enquiries – as well as; medicine in Perth; Macrosty Park in ; the Pomarium Feuars Association; St John’s Kirk; planning ap- plications; Bleach Fields, and many other subjects. Most of our visitors willingly took part in a national survey at the end of February, which was designed to assess archive services throughout the UK. Judging from the feedback, Perth & Kinross Council Archive appear to be pro- viding quite a good service – although there’s always room for improvement.

Recent accessions include: records of Perth & Kinross Headteachers Association 1931-1995; climatological records, 1973-1996; Perth & District Pipe Band 1967-1998; William Robertson, Merchant, , 1816-1848; Perthshire Society of Natural Sciences, 1867- 1990; Perth City Hall, 1927-2005; Strathearn Ramblers, 1996-2005, Scrimgeours of Crieff, 1901-1951; Stuart of Annat, c1791-1988, and the and United Free Church, 1907-1990. Jan Merchant

2 Oh, to be a Soldier...

Perthshire’s Fencibles Regiments of the 1790s

If you were a young blood in Perth at the end of the 18th century and decided on a night out on the town with the boys, you could end up the next morning nursing not only a thumping hangover, but discovering that you had also joined the Army, whether you liked it or not. Let me explain…

Since the early 17th century, militia regiments had been raised (and in due course disbanded) for home defence purposes. Whenever there was a threat of invasion or internal rebellion, these volunteers stood ready for action, thus releasing regular troops for foreign service.

In the war with France that broke out in 1793 the auxiliary force was raised on a slightly different ba- sis from previous militias. They were the ‘Regiments of Defencible Men,’ shortened to ‘the fencibles’. The fencibles were raised throughout Britain on the command of the sovereign ‘for the duration of the war plus one month’, and Perthshire had its due share. Each regiment consisted of ten companies of a hundred men each; one grenadier, one light infantry and eight ‘battalion’ companies. They used ordi- nary recruiting methods, and were on the same basis as the regular army for pay, weapons, clothing and training, while their officers were appointed as in the army by a sovereign’s commission (unlike

Three Fencibles Officers: Fencibles, with their splendid uniforms but often unmilitary bearing, were mercilessly satirised, as in this 1795 caricature by John Kay

3 regular officers though, they were not entitled to half pay on the disbandment of the regiment). The Scottish fencibles were recruited to serve only at home except in the case of an invasion of England, although they could volunteer for service abroad.

To attract recruits, a bounty was offered, usually £2 2s. or £3 3s., although on occasion as much as £10 was given. Most of the bounty was promptly taken back to pay for the soldier’s uniform and equipment, and he was only left with a residue. Very often a prominent landowner took it upon himself to raise the regiment, and often paid an extra bounty out of his own pocket.

The Perthshire Fencible regiments raised in 1793 and 1794 were as follows:

Sir James Grant of Grant’s Regiment 1793-1800 Perthshire Fencible Cavalry 1794 - 1800 Royal Clan Alpin Fencible Infantry 1799 - 1802 Perthshire Regiment of Fencibles 1794 - 1799 The Duke of Atholl’s Regiment Earl of Breadalbane Fencibles 1793 - 1802 Col. Graham of Balgowan’s Regiment of Perthshire Volunteers 1793 -? Drummond Fencibles 1794 - 1802 (raised in Perth by Capt Drummond for their Colonel, Lord Elgin)

From 1793 onwards recruiting was intensive because of the need to raise large bodies of men quickly, and after the initial surge of volunteers, devious and often distinctly illegal methods came to be used.

The Act of 1793 to raise the Fencibles had stipulated certain safeguards. Recruiting was not allowed on a Sunday; apprentices, schoolmasters, clergymen, indentured clerks, constables, seamen and ‘men with more than two legitimate children’ were all exempt from service, and only authorised commissioned or non-commissioned officers were to be used for recruiting.

The Act laid down that once the recruit had accepted the king’s shilling, he then had twenty-four hours to change his mind. Whether he changed it or not, after twenty-four hours he was brought by the recruiting officer before the magistrate’s court in Perth to be ‘attested’, or sworn in. If the recruit willingly attested, well and good; but many had been given the King’s shilling in extremely doubt- ful circumstances - for instance, when they were too drunk to know what they were doing. In such cases they could petition the magistrates, claiming illegal enlistment. However, they were then obliged to lodge £1 ‘smart money’ as security (the equivalent of a month’s wages for a farm la- bourer.) If the magistrates found that the petitioner had been illegally enlisted, the ‘smart money’ was returned to him; but if they found the enlistment fair, it was the recruiting officer who received the pound, less a couple of shillings for court expenses.

There are nearly two hundred illegal enlistment petitions for the years 1793 and 1794 in the Council Archive, which shows the desperate need to enlist men in those years. Some recruiters had preyed on ignorance and naivety. Cases included giving the King’s shilling on a Sunday; using private sol- diers to do the work (legally it had to be at least a corporal) and trying to recruit apprentices, and even in one case a serving naval seaman! But as recruiting officers received a bounty of up to three guineas a head, their keenness was perhaps understandable.

4 Other more devious methods were used. Drink came into it a lot. A common practice was to get the potential recruit so drunk that he had no idea what he was doing, and slip the shilling into his pocket, or into his hand in a handshake. Many a Perth public house keeper is mentioned in the indictments. The Drummond and Breadalbane Fencibles are two regiments most commonly mentioned, but Lt. McKillop and Sgt. McDonald of the Argyllshire Fencibles, stationed in Perth in 1795, were notorious throughout the county.

On one occasion with a party of soldiers they knocked on the door of a lodging house in Coupar An- gus, allegedly looking for a deserter. The landlady let them in and they searched the house thoroughly. One young man, minding his own business, was offered a shilling by one of the soldiers “as compen- sation for the trouble caused”, but he refused it. As they left the house another soldier offered 1d to him “for further trouble”. Again he refused, for under the 1d was the same shilling! The party went away, but at 2 in the morning,. Sgt. McDonald and some soldiers returned after drinking in the Inn at Coupar Angus, hammered for admittance, searched the house for deserters again then found the same young man in his bed. Not to be foiled, they threw a shilling on the bed, hauled him out, forcibly dressed him and carted him off to Perth, literally in a cart, to incarcerate him in the Guard Room of the Barracks. They then got him drunk and tried to attest him before a Magistrate, but there were too many witnesses in the house and the lad was adjudged to have been illegally enlisted.

On another occasion shortly after- wards, a recruiting Sergeant took a party to an ale house in and after consuming some whisky, “recruited” a young lad who was drunk and came to his home the next day to attest him. However, the women of the village physically resisted and put the soldiers to flight.

Next day the Sergeant came back with a larger party, arrested the man, took him to where they put him in the Tolbooth overnight, then on to Fife the next day, where he managed to escape and arrived back home three days later travelling “at his own ex- pense too” as he put it. He was freed by the Magistrates.

There are instances in Perth of a man being jostled in the street by soldiers who “slipped a shilling into his breeches” and later had him arrested, and a shilling being handed to a lad by a soldier with whom he had been drinking to buy whisky at the bar of the Inn and then immediately accusing him of taking the King’s shilling. On another occasion in 1794, a maltman came into the ale house of a Mrs. McIsaac to do business. It was crowded, and a private in the Dra- goons was unsuccessfully trying to Fencibles in a 1795 John Kay Caricature 5 gain busy Mrs. McIsaac’s attention to buy drink with a shilling. The maltman said “give it to me, I know her” and held it up for her to see. He was immediately accused of taking the King’s shilling and had to go to court to clear himself!

One could not be too careful; wealth and status was no protection — even the Deacon of the Flesh- ers at Cupar and the Sheriff Officer at were “recruited” in spite of their protestations, such was the demand for soldiers.

The Fencible regiments never really saw active duty. In 1797 the militia, a part-time force, was re- established after 100 years abeyance. In the same year, the Fencibles were urged to volunteer for service in Europe for no bounty, but so many refused that between 1799 and 1802 they were dis- banded (the 1st Breadalbane and 1stArgyllshire Fencibles, however, did agree to foreign service).

Then in 1802, a new Militia Act was promulgated after Napoleon reneged the Peace of Amiens, which aimed at raising 7950 men in between the ages of 18 and 45. Substitutes were not allowed, and the service period was 5 years. Annual training was 21 days, extended in 1803 to 28 days.

So the short life of the 1790’s Fencible Regiments came to a close. They served their purpose at the time, and so ended another chapter in Scotland’s long military history.

Graham Watson

Kay’s comment on the Edinburgh fashion scene 1790s All John Kay images © National Museums of Scotland.6 Licensor www.scran.ac.uk A few months ago, the editor suggested to Steve Connelly that Friends might be interested in knowing something about the origins and development of the Archive. As if he wasn’t busy enough! An Auld Archivist Remembers...

The great majority of Scotland’s 32 local councils now have archive services, but this was not the case when I was appointed as the first full-time, permanent archivist to Perth & Kinross District Council in 1978 and became one of the small band of local authority archivists.

In 1975 the administration of local government was divided between regional and district councils, except in the islands where unitary authorities were created. In 1970 in anticipation of these changes the then Scottish Record Office (now the National Archives of Scotland) carried out a survey of the records in the care of the various town, county and district councils that were to be abolished by the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1973. This foresight resulted in the new Perth & Kinross District Council having some idea of the records it should be gathering in and still provides the Council Archive with the basis of its lists of official records.

By 1978 quite a lot of records had been gathered into the basement of the Sandeman Library in Perth and various temporary appoint- ments had been made to tackle the task of sorting and listing them. There had also been an agreement reached with Tayside Regional Council that the historical records of the counties of Perth and Kin- ross, for which it now had a legal responsibility, should be put on indefinite loan with Perth & Kinross District Council.

Within the first year of my appointment I was able to more or less double the quantity of records held. The City Chambers in the High Street of Perth yielded up fabulous collections of 18th and 19th century papers of Perth Town Council and also the water, police, harbour, gas, navigation and electricity commissions that it took over. The old County Council Offices at York Place also had cupboards and stores replete with school board, parochial board and parish council re- cords. These were all transferred to the Sandeman Library with the approval and help of the Dundee City Archivist, Iain Flett, who also acted as Tayside Regional Archivist.

In addition to the official records it was made known that the District Archive would act as the place of de- posit for other local records that were of historical significance and interest. The records of Perth Theatre were among the first to come in. Colleagues within the District Libraries also passed over various manuscript collections that had been acquired by the Sandeman Library and the Perth & Kinross County Library over the years. Other early deposits included the records of David Gorrie & Sons, boilermakers and coppersmiths (rescued by the Urban Archaeological Trust from Hal ‘o the Wynd’s House) and the records of John Pullar & Sons, dyers and cleaners (acquired in collaboration with Perth Museum & Art Gallery). Family and estate papers were also brought in, with those of the Drummond-Hay of Seggieden family being among the first.

Another momentous deposit in those first five years was the early Perth Burgh records. These had been transferred from Perth Town Council to the Scottish Record Office for safekeeping in the early sixties. In advising the council over the appointment of an archivist the SRO had envisaged that these would be re- turned to local custody once an archive service was established in Perth. The return of the city’s royal char- ters, minutes and other early records set up the archive as a place of some standing.

Coping with all this activity was too much for a single person and the Manpower Service Commission’s job creation schemes of the early eighties proved a great boon. Young graduates and clerical staff were set to work on sorting and listing the influx of records. Much of what they did remains indispensable to this day.

7 Blairgowrie Rattray & District Local History Trust

Like Buda and Pest, are separated by a river, but share a history. In 1992, to celebrate and record this history, the trust was formed, backed by local bodies like the Merchants’ Associa- tion, the High School and the Community Council. Its main aims were to collect and record information of historical interest in various formats, and to raise the necessary funds.

The trust has been gifted, or looks after, a mass of historical material - maps, photographs, estate papers and other documents - as well as all kinds of memorabilia such as agricultural, industrial and domestic tools. One of the trust’s long term aims is to set up a permanent local museum to house all this material.

In the meantime the collection has figured largely in the annual series of ‘open days’ each with a particular theme - the raspberry industry; the jute and flax mills with their thriving social life; farming and the service industries it generated, from blacksmithing to vets. Other very successful open days had broader themes, such as 1999’s ‘a hundred years of change’ in which many local organisations looked at their evolution during the past century.

More recently, the emphasis has been on talks on a diversity of subjects, from pearl fishing in the Tay to the management of local country estates.

A useful initiative by the trust was the ‘Genealogy Centre’. Based in Blairgowrie library, during the summer months a group of volunteers help visitors from all over the world to get information about their ancestors. (it’s rewarding work, but they are crying out for more volunteers. if any Friends from the area are inter- ested…)

A great achievement last year was the publication of a substantial book on the social history of the area, which we re- view here. It represented three years’ work by a dedicated team of volunteer researchers lead by its editor, Margaret Laing. (if you would like a copy, better hurry - at the time of writing only 200 copies are left out of a print run of 2,000; you could try the shop at the AK Bell Li- brary)

8 Book Review:

A SOCIAL HISTORY OF BLAIRGOWRIE AND RATTRAY

edited and compiled by Margaret Laing

This book, packed with factual information and generously illustrated, is a ‘must’ for anyone inter- ested in Perthshire's second town and for Friends of the Perth & Kinross Council Archive.

The editor and compiler, Margaret Laing, and her team of writers, have taken full advantage of the term ‘social history’ to cover almost any conceivable aspect of life in Blairgowrie and Rattray in the distant and recent past. This book includes detailed articles on schools, police, banking, medical ser- vices, all kinds of business, music and the plastic arts, churches, youth activities, sport, hotels and so- cieties of all kinds. In addition to this wealth of detail about Blairgowrie and Rattray as the Market Town, there are informative and fascinating articles on it as the Mill Town and the Berry Town.

I was particularly impressed by the article on the flax and jute industries. It is a sobering thought that a standard working day in the mid-19th century lasted from 6.30am-7pm. The earlier history of Blair- and of Rattray - separated by a then unbridged River Ericht - is also outlined in some detail, with lots of information about leading land-owning families and their origins. I was interested to learn that the distinguished Lord Provost of Edinburgh and ‘Father of the New Town’ George Drummond was a son of Blairgowrie - born at Newton, where his father was factor of the Drummond estates.

Like all good books, the Social History has something for everyone - the sad but heroic story of Don- ald Cargill; the romance of a young Swiss woman and a local man; mysteries - what did happen to the Rattray canon? - and the ghost known as the Green Lady of Newton; the glamour of concert halls and the stage; and verses and ballads composed by local poets. The book benefits from the variety re- flected in the different approaches of the team of writers.

One of the many pleasing features of the publication is the huge number of attractive, and eminently appropriate, illustrations. These are mainly photographs and copies of advertisements, but there are also sketches. Another pleasing feature is a series of ‘Did You Know?’ panels, summarising interest- ing and amusing facts. Reminiscences, many moving, some amusing and all most interesting, by older citizens of the experiences of their childhood and youth are delightful.

Although the Social History can easily be read from cover to cover, it will mainly be treasured as a reference book. It has no index, but the contents page is detailed enough to enable readers to find what they want without difficulty.

No history can claim to be comprehensive, but this one comes close. It also creates a perfect frame- work for the addition at a later date of further details, which will doubtless be supplied by the people of the burgh, and their friends and relatives. I hope that, in due course, resources will allow a second edition. In the meantime - and for the foreseeable future - this first edition can be treated as a defini- tive social history of Blairgowrie and Rattray. Congratulations to Margaret Laing on a splendid publi- cation!

Margaret Borland-Stroyan

9 The Greyfriars Burial Ground Records Project

What am I doing here? asks Jackie Hay….

When my eyes light up and I talk animatedly about the little job I am doing at the Archives Depart- ment of the AK Bell Library, my friends often look askance at me. “She’s finally lost the plot,” that look says, “why is she excited about that?” and they try to bring me back to the real world with, “You are just transferring old burial records on to computer?” Well, yes … but its so much more than that.

I am part of a Friends team which is steadily compiling a database from Perth’s burial registers, dating from 1794. My particular ledger is PE1/20/3A, the “Mortality Record” for the period August 1844 to April 1847. Each double page spread is carefully annotated in a beautiful script, but the ink is begin- ning to fade and the faint strokes crossing t’s are not always clear.

To put the ledger into its social and political context, the 1830s had witnessed the extension of the fran- chise, the rise of Chartism, and Victoria’s accession to the throne. The 1840s brought the Disruption of the Church of Scotland, the beginning of the potato famine in Ireland and, in 1848, a wave of revolu- tions shook Europe.

Can we see evidence of these interesting times in PE1/20/3A? Not really: at first sight, the document is an unemotional exercise in Victorian record-keeping. There is an alphabetical list by surname linked to the chronological record. There are columns for the name of the deceased, his profession or parentage, age, place of birth, last residence, and cause of death. The dates of death and burial are listed, while a titled, but otherwise blank, column points to the intention to record the location of the grave. All neatly pigeon-holed. But look closer, and there are things to be learned about the people of Perth at this time.

The last few columns record the charges for burials, which were evidently graded according to the opu- lence of the coffin, and included any additional fees for extra depth of grave. From this data we can guess at the relative wealth of the deceased’s family, at a time when the daily wage of a skilled artisan [such as a wright or mason] was approximately two shillings;

Large covered coffin 9s.6d Small covered coffin 6s.0d Large plain coffin 3s.6d Small plain coffin 2s. Session coffin 1s.6d

Extra depth of grave 1s., 2s. or 3s.

These charges are tallied on each page, suggesting the payments were paid to the registrar himself. The most expensive coffins were covered with a black ‘mortcloth’, but further research would be needed into other funeral rites.

A cursory scan of the ‘age’ column indicates high in- fant mortality and, at the opposite end of the scale, a

10 surprising level of longevity. ‘Old age’ was entered if there was no other obvious cause of death after the age of sixty, but there were many individuals who lived into their late eighties, a few into their nineties.

The ‘cause of death’ column contains terminology that may require some translation:

gravel …………………………….. kidney or gall stone consumption ………………………wasting disease, esp pulmonary tuberculosis dropsy …………………………… congestive heart failure mortification ……………………...gangrene rose in head ……………………….erysipelas, contagious skin disease iliac passions………………………intestinal obstruction

As the causes of many common illnesses were not fully understood, preventative action or effective treat- ment was limited. Chadwick published his Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Classes in 1842, which highlighted overcrowded housing and poor hygiene as a factor in the spread of infectious and respiratory diseases. There were repeated epidemics of typhus (spread by lice or fleas) and cholera (faecal contamination of food or water) across Scotland in the 1830s and 1840s. PE1/20/3A frequently shows ty- phus as ‘cause of death’ but, although there are many entries of dysentery and bowel hives (diarrhoea), strangely there is no mention of cholera.

It is heartbreaking to read here of Perth parents burying various of their children just weeks apart. Clusters of disease, measles in particular, can be seen sweeping through the High Street and South Street. The fre- quency with which these locations occurs suggests high population levels.

There are some other interesting features of the register. Burials and registrations took place on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. No date of death is given for the many stillbirths, and no reference made to the religion of the deceased. As might be expected, the majority of people were born in and around Perth, but the number of Irish and Highland birthplaces indicates migrant workers.

Perth’s importance as a textile town is reflected in the many entries of flax dressers, hecklers, dyers, weav- ers and warpers, bleachers and calico printers. A ‘beetler’ was a mill worker who machine-embossed fabric.

The 1840s and ‘50s was a boom time in railway construc- tion in Scotland. A railway contractor is mentioned in De- cember 1845, and the death of a labourer ‘killed at rail- way’ is recorded in August of that year. A trawl of the Perthshire Courier reveals that the man was involved in cutting a shaft for the Scottish Central Railway Tunnel through Moncrieffe Hill when he suffered a fatal blow to the head from falling equipment.

There are things we would like to know that the Victorian statisticians simply weren’t interested in recording. Most intriguing to me is the hidden history of the women of Perth at this time. Among the Margarets and Janets, you’ll find Bathia, Lilies and Euphemia, but you will be hard pressed to discover much more. Women are recorded with reference to the men in their lives. They are ‘daughter’, ‘spouse’ or ‘widow’, and the profession listed is that of the father or husband. Women’s history can only be guessed at from these pages. Consider three women whose deaths were registered on 16th December 1845:

11 Cathrine Macvicar died of chronic rheumatism, aged 46. Born in Stanley, she was the daughter of David Macvicar, manufacturer, of Marshall Place. She was buried in a cov- ered coffin, 9s.6d

Ann Bank died in childbirth at 18. Shown as neither spouse nor widow, she was presumably the unmarried daughter of Christopher Bank, tanner, of Castlegable (not far from the site of the new Horsecross Concert Hall). Plain coffin, 3s.6d.

Bell Carr died of ‘old age’ at 80. Unusually, Bell’s occupa- tion was recorded: ‘servant to Mrs Lumsdane, 6 Atholl Place’. Covered coffin, 9s.6d.

Three days later, the death is recorded of Margaret Jeffray, aged 71, of Athole Street. She was buried in a covered cof- fin, 9s.6d, and an extraordinary three shillings was paid for extra depth of grave. As a consequence of the recording for- mat, we know nothing else about her.

An unusual situation is recorded on 28th October 1845, when two identically named adult women - (females were routinely registered under their maiden name) appear to have been buried in the same coffin. Both women are initially recorded as Janet Bennet, but one forename was amended to ‘say Helen’. The first Janet, aged 54, was married to David Crow, seaman of Pomarium. Janet ‘say Helen’, aged 31, was spouse of David Glass, labourer of Pitheavlis. Both women died on the same day, of ‘water in the chest’. What does this strange string of coincidences mean - were they related or was this simply a recording error?

So much for old documents, but what about the twenty-first century aspect of this project? With a view to analysing PE1/20/3A for this article, Jan and I decided to put the Access database through its paces and see what would happen if we generated reports based on particular questions. It should be possible, for in- stance, to sort information by topic, such as occupation or cause of death, and look for any interesting pat- terns. A minor incident, in which we managed to delete the entire database (don’t tell Steve…) emphasised the importance of good housekeeping. But thanks to Christine’s regular back-ups, we were able to restore the database within minutes, though it took a little longer to regulate my pulse! As a result, I resorted to old-fashioned analysis of the primary source for this report, but resolved to learn how to structure a sensible database query in the near future.

What am I doing here? I’m having a great time, actually, and making a useful contribution to the database, which will eventually be accessible online.

If you are looking into family history, housing conditions, healthcare or industry in the Perth area, you are sure to find something of interest in this archive. It would be unsafe to generalise from particulars, of course, but the Perth Burial Register – far from being a ‘dead’ record – provides an excellent starting point for further research into your chosen subject.

Useful websites include: www.amlwchdata.co.uk/old_medicalterms.htm. and www.scotroots.com.

Jackie Hay

All the pictures of 18th Century gravestones in the Greyfriars’ burial ground are © Royal Commission on the Ancient and His- torical Monuments of Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

12 Where is it?.....

Here’s how to Navigate the Archive

The Archive has masses of interesting, informative and enlightening material. It dates back to the thir- teenth century up to the present day and can be found in volumes, bundles of papers, maps, plans and pho- tographs. But how do you find what you’re looking for?

This can be daunting for users, especially those who have never set foot in an archive before. Everyone is so used to going to a library and finding lots of different books by different authors all sitting on the same shelf together because the books are all on the same subject. But archives don’t work like that. It’s funda- mental to an archive that collections remain discrete and that the material they contain is not mixed up with the same kind of material from other collections. The whole point of archival collections is that they reflect the original activities of the collections’ creators. So one collection can contain information about lots of different topics and themes and if you want to find out about say, the railways in Perth, the likelihood is you will have to look through at least three or four separate collections to gather in all the information you need.

Actually, this is no bad thing. A book will tell you what happened and why – but all according to the au- thor’s view. But if you are doing the research and looking through all the relevant collections, you can check and cross-check the evidence you find, tease out conundrums – and the result is all your work, not somebody else’s.

So, how do you find the material you’re after? A major part of our work in the Archive is to produce find- ing aids, so our users can access the collections as easily as possible. We produce guides, indexes, source lists and the basic descriptive list - or catalogue - finding aid for each collection.

The first step to think about is where the information you are after is most likely to be held. Obviously, lo- cal archives are most likely to hold local material – but sometimes collections can be in the National Ar- chives of Scotland, particularly if they are collections of major landed families or have national signifi- cance. So the best place to start is the internet, especially if you know whose collection you’re looking for. Start with the National Register of Archives at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/default.htm, where you can search a UK wide database. You can also try SCAN’s database at http://www.scan.org.uk/ aboutus/indexonline.htm, which lists collections held by Scottish archives

Alternatively, you can contact the archive you think is most likely to hold the collection or information that you’re after. Most archives produce a general guide to their collections – as do Perth & Kinross Council Archive. Ours is a basic list of all the collections that we hold and the dates that they cover, and serves as a useful starting point. If you’re interested in family history, we also have a family history guide, which lists all our sources that are likely to be useful for genealogists. Plans are being made to produce a similar guide for people who are interested in buildings history.

We’ve also produced collection level guides. You can download these from our website at www.pkc.gov.uk/archives, or browse them in the searchroom. We have a collection level guide for all our council and other official records and one for all our gifts and deposits – those collections that come from private hands. These guides contain summaries describing the records within each collection, and can be a quick pointer to which collections are going to be most helpful. As people are so used to looking for things by subject, theme or topic, our gifts and deposits collection level guide has been themed into broad catego- ries, such as Business and Industry and People, Families and Communities. Obviously, some collections will appear in more than one category, but hopefully, if you’re interested in, say, churches, you only have to look at the ‘Churches and Philanthropy’ section to find potentially useful collections.

13 Iain MacRae 1946-2006

Many of us will have been saddened to hear of the death of Iain MacRae, who retired as Principal Librarian in August 2005. Born in Dingwall and brought up in Wester Ross he came to this area as Branch Librarian at Blairgowrie in 1971 before becoming Chief Cata- loguer at the Perth & Kinross District Library Headquarters a couple of years later.

It was his appointment as Sandeman Librarian in 1982 that brought him into regular con- tact with the archives and from that day he took an almost paternal interest in seeing the service develop. We were grateful in 2000 when he readily agreed to serve on the steering committee overseeing the inception of the Friends organisation. He served on the resulting Friends Committee as a representative of the Libraries & Lifelong Learning management team until his retirement. He gave much moral and practical support during those five years and was always a friendly and cheerful member of the committee. He had become a personal member of the Friends and intended to continue his support. I know that he was held in high regard by our first two chairmen, Donald Abbott and Jim Ferguson, and he will be sorely missed by all his former colleagues.

Similarly, the source list databases, that the Friends volunteers have been working so hard producing, are electronic themed guides. Most of them don’t just list which collections contain records to do with, say, World War 1, but also list a description of the actual record or group of records. You can browse the source list databases in the searchroom, and hopefully you’ll be able to search them via our webpages by next year.

These guides are useful starting points, but they tell you relatively little about what’s actually in the collections. This is where the descriptive list is needed. Use the guides to decide which collections may be the most useful, then the next step is to look at their descriptive lists. These lists are just what they say – descriptions of the records themselves and their arrangement within each collection. Some lists describe every single item in the collection; others describe what’s in a bundle or a volume. At the front of each list is what we call a top-level finding aid – general information about the collection such as who created it, what language it’s in, a summary of its records, whether you can reproduce parts and whether there are related collections held either by us or in another archive.

The descriptive lists are in files on the searchroom shelves: they are colour coded, to distinguish be- tween council and other official records (black) and the gifts and deposits collections (blue). You can sit down and browse these files, picking out which records you’d like to look at. You’ll notice that each collection has a unique reference number, as does each volume, bundle or item within each col- lection. When you want to see anything you need to take a note of the complete reference number so the right material can be produced – these numbers are as much our finding aids as yours! We need to be able to get the correct material for you and be able to put it back precisely where it came from.

We do have other finding aids you can use, such as card indexes to many of our building records and reference books that can guide us to collections held elsewhere. Technology is taking over though and many archives have their descriptive lists online. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re working on it and of course, the Archive staff will always help you find your way to the information you want.

Jan Merchant

14 Concluding…

BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY

In our last issue; in the depth of winter, Police Sergeant Stewart of set out on foot in obsessive pursuit of a suspected watch thief, Angus MacLean, across snowbound hills and moors to the West coast, where he eventu- ally persuaded a fisherman to carry him in an open sailing boat to Oban...

Thankfully, records of past events and incidents within Oban and Lorne are well preserved, and so we know that on the 13th of January 1848, The Dolphin paddle steamer left Oban harbour bound for Glasgow. But there was a curious addition to the waybill; though heavily smudged and blotted, with a strong magni- fying glass it was possible to read: ‘By special permission and order given by David Hutcheson, man- ager of the company, there shall be carried aboard this vessel…a uniformed police officer from the Perthshire County Constabulary’. There were no more details, but this surely can have been none other than the indefatigable Lance-Sergeant Robert Stewart from Pitlochry.

Slipping quietly from the dock, Captain McKillop followed the ‘royal route’ making a good fifteen knots past Luig, Scarba and Craignish point, making for the narrow waters of the Crinan canal. It was dark by the time they reached the Sound of Bute (making excellent progress, according to the Captain’s log ) as he steamed carefully into the Firth of Clyde towards the city of Glasgow. Finally the blackness was pierced by the glint of oil lamps as civilisation grew nearer, and they berthed at the Broomielaw Wharf in Finnie- ston.

So at 3.03 in the morning Robert Stewart, no sailor, staggered ashore after what must have been a com- fortless night’s passage. But his information, or his instinct, was clearly very good because no more than 45 minutes later, he was at the door of a notorious lodging house in the Briggait. Clambering cautiously up the uneven stone staircase, the adrenaline surging, his journey reached its climax when he burst in on the poor hungered, dozing figure of Angus MacLean. But the thief put up little resistance when a knotted length of rope was suddenly thrust around his arms, his wrists and his waist. Best of all, in a pocket the sergeant found the Blairgowrie-made watch itself, confirming that he had indeed arrested the right man!

Tugging fiercely at the rope, Sergeant Stewart led his protesting prisoner out of the gloomy lodgings and soon stumbled on a police station at the corner of South Albion Street.

15 Now, unlike the infant Perthshire County Constabulary, the City of Glasgow Police at that time was already quite a ‘big boy’. It had in fact been founded around the turn of the century, a staggering 29 years before Sir Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police.

Staring down at the pair from the sanctuary of his podium, gimlet eyes firmly fixed upon them, the Custody Sergeant could well have been forgiven for failing to distinguish between prisoner and captor. Pitiful though the Perthshire uniform may have been in its best state, the fact of the matter was that Stewart’s mili- tary coat was completely drenched and stank horribly of seaweed, his cape badly ripped, his strap torn, and as for his tile hat, it was simply missing!

Rotating his bald head slowly from side to side, the Glasgow policeman picked up a feathered quill and prepared to jot down the details in the fine leather bound scroll book on his lectern.

“May I examine the apprehension warrant which you have used to effect the arrest of your prisoner?” he demanded sourly.

There followed a pregnant pause. Too late, how Sergeant Stewart wished that he had paid just that little more attention to the weekly complaints of orderly clerk Henry MacDonald back at his Perthshire HQ.!

“Well, if you have no warrant, then we’ll have to call out the Justice of the Peace, but I warn you at this hour of the day he’ll not be best pleased,” rapped the man seated on the comfortable side of the counter, by this time plainly having gathered the measure of the matter.

Later that day, the oath of arrest duly taken, Stewart and his trussed - up prisoner were escorted away from the city by local constables, marching through the gas lit streets, their destination being the St. Rollox rail- way terminal in the north of the city. St. Rollox, even during the wee small hours, was a bustling place, its coat of soot and grime belying the fact that the curiously shaped building had only been around for approxi- mately 17 years.

At length, metal turned noisily on metal, smoke rose the morning air, and the uncomfortable carriage in which policeman and prisoner rested juddered to and fro as it snorted its way out of the bustling station. Ratatat tat! Ratatat tat! rang the wheels of the carriage, the engine beginning to gather full thrust as it waved goodbye to the grimy city, rattling its way through dense woodland and bleak winter fields to the buffers at Castle Cary.

Keen to maintain his grand rate of progress, Stewart and his harried prisoner continued their journey by horse-drawn coach to Stirling Castle and Bannockburn. From there on it was on foot again to the village of Blackford where Sergeant McArthur, the local policeman, and his wife took temporary charge of the pris- oner whilst Stewart availed himself of food and rest.

On the 15th January, the day which was surely to be the last stage of his great adventure, Stewart hit the road early, marching north towards the Lang Toon of to meet the Perth-bound mail coach. Ensuring that his prisoner was safely incarcerated in the Burgh police cells at Perth (one shilling to be paid to the City Constabulary for their use) to be dealt with by due course of law, Stewart at last turned his thoughts back to Pitlochry. The following day’s entry in his diary reads ‘Patrolled the village and vicinity of Pitlocherie (sic) and visited public houses’

This was most likely to be his staple diet from that time onwards, although the canny old highlander contin- ued to patrol the Atholl soil for only the next year or so. Then like so many others before him, he was re- placed, his name (but surely never his memory) silently slipping from the annals of the Perthshire County Constabulary like snow from the proverbial dyke. Thomas Wm MacFarlane

16