Innholdsfortegnelse for March-April 2020 i History Scotland

For so many of us, myself included, history is a lifelong love that begins at a young age, a theme that runs through Professor Christopher Whatley’s article on Pabay (page 42). He describes childhood fossil hunts on the island: ‘we would pocket masses of these fossils, aware that they were old, very old, but knowing little more than that…’, setting these memories into context alongside his family’s connections to this tiny Hebridean island, which has a unique role in the development of geology. The theme of discovery continues with the launch of our new, two-part series on the role of Scots in the Thirty Years’ War, and a look at how a community has been reconnected with its ancient heritage thanks to a new prehistoric trail.…

The town of Arbroath will launch a six-month-long festival programme with a horse-led procession of over 500 people marching from Arbroath abbey to Arbroath harbour, and a re-enactment of the Declaration of Arbroath sailing to France in 1320. The events programme also includes a festival concert and a display of the Arbroath tapestry. The Declaration of Arbroath will be displayed at the National Museum of Scotland from 27 March to 26 April 2020, marking its 700th anniversary. The document has not been on public display for fifteen years. History Scotland, in partnership with the Centre for Scottish Culture, is holding the fourth instalment of the History Scotland Lectures on 28 April at the University of Dundee, when Dr Fiona Watson will deliver the lecture ‘For glory, riches and honour: the…

One of the most popular classes that the Scottish Genealogy Society runs is on health board records. Although the commercial genealogy site Ancestry has registration records for Scottish nurses and also has medical directories for doctors, commercial websites such as this one do not hold the bulk of records, particularly those of patients. Scottish Indexes has a searchable index to mental health records held by National Records of Scotland: https://scot.sh/indexes. MC2 covers ‘Notices of Admissions by the Superintendent of Mental Institutions 1858–1860’, MC7 is ‘General Register of Lunatics in Asylums’ and covers those admitted to Scottish asylums between 1807 and 4 March 1893. The site also covers Kelso Dispensary patient registers from December 1777 to May 1783. Wellcome Collection has records for the Crichton Institute, Dumfries, for the period 1823-2008:…

Steve Murdoch is Professor of History at the University of St Andrews. He researches early modern Scottish interactions with northern Europe. Steve specialises in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) and the evolution of international maritime law (1513-1713). Professor Murdoch is the author of a new, two-part series on the Thirty Years’ War, beginning on page 24, as he explores the role of Scotland in this three-decade continental conflict. Denis Frize is a graduate of Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities who has taught both in the UK and overseas. An active member of both The Robert Louis Stevenson Club and the Orwell Society, he has an abiding interest in history and biography. On page 32, Denis explores the turbulent career of James Johnstone, aide-decamp to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, followed by a…

The archaeologists from ORCA Archaeology made the discovery while completing exploratory archaeological excavations connected with the development of an electrical substation on behalf of SSEN Transmission in Orkney, part of a proposed network reinforcement which is required to support renewable electricity generators across Orkney. In total, nine carved stones have been unearthed in the remains of a structure revealed at the proposed Finstown substation site, after digging through 60cm of midden deposits. Some of the objects look remarkably A selection of the finds like stylised representations of the human form, whilst others look more like stones set upright into the floor of a bronze age building excavated by EASE Archaeology at the Links of Noltland, Westray. These may have been used to tie mooring ropes onto, to help hold the…

Parasites: Battle for Survival opened at National Museums Scotland in December. The exhibition highlights contemporary Scottish research around five tropical parasitic diseases: malaria, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness and Guinea worm disease. These diseases affect one in eighteen people across the globe and thrive in rural, poor areas. Scotland is a centre for excellence in tropical parasitology and Parasites draws on over a century of Scottish parasitology research. While the exhibition highlights contemporary research going on here in Scotland to combat these diseases, the history of Scottish scientists working in the field of parasitology goes back to the late 19th century. Scottish scientists working across the globe discovered three of the diseases covered in the exhibition. Ronald Ross, William Leishman and David and Mary Bruce were all pivotal in identifying the…

Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846: Living an Antislavery Life Alasdair Pettinger Edinburgh University Press, 2018 376 pages Hardcover, £80.00 ISBN: 9781474444255 ‘I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it’. The opening lines of Frederick Douglass’s 1845 narrative encapsulate the dehumanising and exploitative foundations of the American slave system: its denial of identity and personhood to enslaved persons. Douglass’s interest in knowing when he was born never ceased. In time, the date was revealed by his former master, Captain Auld, to have been around February 1818 (Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 1881). The bicentennial of America’s most famous formerly-enslaved fugitive’s birth was commemorated in 2018-19,…

What is the reason behind the decision to change the name of the museum? For the last two years, we’ve been working on a reimagination of the museums at the University of St Andrews. MUSA (the Museum of the University of St Andrews, on the Scores) opened in 2008 and was very successful for ten years – but it had reached capacity. So, for the last two years we’ve been working on a major project to extend the museum, creating 50 per cent more space, a new temporary exhibitions space, and new displays in four thematic galleries. The new museum will take visitors inside the university and its ground-breaking research and global impact, and we wanted to recognise the transformation of the museum as well as the 600-year history of…

The project, Conservation in Action: Saving the Perth Mummy, showcases how museums look after the fragile objects in their care. A highlight of the exhibition is the museum’s ancient Egyptian mummy, Ta-Kr-Hb. The story of Ta-Kr-Hb is one that has fascinated visitors and staff since she was first presented to the Perth Museum from Alloa Museum in the 1930s. The mummy was donated to the Alloa Society of Natural Science and Archaeology in 1936 by William Bailey, who purchased it from the curator of the government museum in Cairo. It had been discovered three or four years previously, possibly in or around Thebes, and was said to be 2,800 years old and thus dating to the period of the Late New Kingdom. The Perth mummy has been kept safe in…

Archaeologists often make the point that traces of our ancient past can be found anywhere, whether in our towns or the countryside, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. Yet we are usually completely unaware of the deep history, and deeper prehistory, that lies beneath our feet. This seems to be a missed opportunity to learn more about the heritage of the places where we live, work and play. Over the past few years we have been involved in an exciting venture based at a community hub and secondary school in Crieff, drawing attention to the invisible, buried archaeological traces in and around this campus. Thanks to a team of enthusiastic collaborators and proactive support from school leaders and teachers, an archaeology trail has been created. A trail does not…

Following the invasion by the Roman emperor Claudius in 43AD, the island of Britain was to see the introduction of a different range of weapons being brought over the sea by the legions of Rome. There was one Roman tribune (officer) who was to become famous among the tribes of Britain – his name was Gnaeus Julius Agricola. Born in the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis (present-day France) in 40AD, Agricola was destined to conquer much of Britain – and become governor. It was always the aim of any emperor of Rome to advance beyond the frontiers of new lands, and so by 79AD, Agricola and his army of around 20,000 soldiers advanced into Caledonia, the Roman name given to the land north of their province Britannia. Over the next…

Not much less than a century ago, in December 1925, The Scotsman published a short article written by a popular travel writer of the day, the Edinburgh-based church of Scotland minister the Reverend Thomas Ratcliffe Barnet. With memories of the devastation wreaked by the First World War still fresh in the minds of readers who were also enduring a dreary winter, Ratcliffe Barnet’s aim was to evoke better times, and he thanked God for the ‘miracle of imagining which can dissolve a winter fog in a blaze of summer sunshine’. The mental ‘pilgrimage’ on which he took his readers was north-westward to Skye, the island that ‘has a story to tell… those who love her which no other Hebrid isle can tell’. Some sixteen months later, Ratcliffe Barnett followed up…

Many readers will know of my work to unearth more on war poet Wilfred Owen’s connections with the city of Edinburgh and the influences of Scotland on Owen’s life and literature. Owen was a shell-shock patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital between June and November 1917 and as part of my research, Owen’s Edinburgh doctor, Dr Arthur John Brock, has been a key figure in my thinking. Brock, like his mentor Patrick Geddes, was a polymath; his interests were wide-ranging and included biology, botany, geography, local history and Greek antiquaries. After the Great War Brock lived in North Queensferry, where he used his house as a surgery/cottage hospital, helping World War I veterans and others distressed by mental trauma. Brock also did much for the local community through the North Queensferry…

Insurrection: Scotland’s Famine Winter James Hunter Birlinn, 2019 304 pages Hardcover, £20.00 ISBN: 9781780276229 James Hunter Birlinn, 2019 304 pages Hardcover, £20.00 ISBN: 9781780276229 With the 1976 publication of his groundbreaking book The Making of the Crofting Community, James Hunter established his place as our foremost historian of the Scottish highlands. That reputation has been cemented over the years by books including Set Adrift on the World (2015), which chronicled the Sutherland clearances, and A Dance Called America (1994), which traced the lives of the cleared highlanders in their new homes across the Atlantic. The potato blight Phytophthora infestans arrived in western Europe in 1845. It wiped out more than one third of the crop in Ireland, and the Irish Great Hunger – an Gorta Mór – has been well…