Whisky, Wars, Riots and Murder

by Malcolm Archibald

  Following similar disturbances at Thurso that same year, a company of the 76th Foot marched into the town and took over the Masons Hall. The authorities called up 100 Special Constables to escort carts to the Shore to load grain. By that time the people had taken an open boat and moored it across the entrance to the river so that the grain ship could not leave. The Specials moved the boat away and marched beside the grain carts, as a crowd of women and boys gathered at the Braehead and voiced their displeasure. The prospect of possible starvation angered the crowd so they began to throw stones and abuse. The sheriff tried to talk them into submission but when they responded with hisses and more stones, he read the Riot Act and sent for the 76th. The soldiers fixed bayonets and slowly advanced on the crowd until they backed far enough away for the grain to be loaded. The people could only watch as the ship sailed away.

  However, all these instances were one-offs and these towns soon reverted to their normal peaceful existence. But there was one northern town where riots seemed almost routine.

  Riot Town

  Situated nearly at the furthest extremity of north-east Scotland, Wick may seem an unlikely place for a riot, but within a period of thirty-two years Wick experienced four major riots, had the army called out and created questions in Parliament. That is not bad for an isolated town of just a few thousand souls.

  The first riot was about politics.

  At Inverness Circuit Court of April 1827 David Mackay, William Corbett and the shipbuilder William Bremner were accused of mobbing and rioting to obstruct the freeholders of Caithness from attending a meeting to elect a Member of Parliament. The elections were on 5 July 1826 and in those days before the 1832 Reform Act there was no idea of a secret ballot. Two candidates contested the Caithness seat, George Sinclair and Captain James Sinclair. There had been rumours that there was to be a protest against those who chose to vote for the Honourable Captain Sinclair, and wild stories of taking those who supported him out to sea until after the election, but nobody expected anything to happen.

  That morning, people packed the streets of Wick, some on their way to vote, but most just supporters or onlookers, as there was no concept of democracy at the time.

  When Sheriff William Horne of Stirkoke, about three miles outside the town, left Murray’s Inn to go to the courthouse to vote for Captain James Sinclair, a section of the crowd recognised him. ‘There’s Sheriff Horne,’ somebody shouted. ‘Seize him!’ Horne yelled out, ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ turned and fled back to the inn, where some of his friends had gathered. Somebody snatched at his watch chain, somebody else tried to knock off his hat.

  He joined the other supporters of Sinclair and they tried to get to the courthouse to vote but the crowd prevented them, shouting loudly. There were about 3,000 people in the crowd and the knot of Sinclair supporters huddled together at the outer staircase of the inn, wielding sticks and whips and hoping for a chance to ease through. Instead, the mob grew more violent; some carried sticks and they threatened to attack James Sinclair’s supporters, with Sheriff Horne being particularly singled out. The James Sinclair supporters retreated inside the inn and the mob remained outside, shouting and firing pistols.

  About one in the afternoon the voters decided to force their way to the courthouse but the mob outside had increased in size and noise so the voters did not leave the inn. Instead they tried to send a message to the courthouse to delay the election; that failed as well. The sheriff officers grabbed a man from the crowd – that was probably William Corbett, who later appeared in court – but the arrest infuriated the crowd so the threats of violence increased and the prisoner was released.

  About half past two Horne attempted again to get to the courthouse, with an escort of gentlemen and constables. This time the mob had decreased, and although they still shouted and waved flags supporting George Sinclair, Horne succeeded in getting through and casting his vote.

  Apart from William Bremner, who was a shipbuilder and a respectable gentleman despite his alleged involvement in the riot, the rest they found guilty and sentenced to three months in jail in Tain. Wick was deemed too insecure to hold them. James Sinclair lost the vote; George was the Member of Parliament.

  A Supposed Bodysnatcher

  The second riot occurred in 1832 and was very much specific to the period. It was in that year that Asiatic cholera first appeared in Britain. People had watched its progress across Europe and waited for it with dread. Nobody knew how cholera spread and there were all sorts of theories, from it coming in dark clouds to the disease being a judgement from God. There was a call for a day of prayer, and some believed that it was a disease that would only affect the lower classes. The suddenness of a cholera attack and the horrible manner in which it killed its victims terrified the often still-superstitious population.

  Cholera arrived in Wick in July 1832, bringing the usual quota of terrible sickness and a number of deaths. As nobody yet understood the cause of the disease, it was not surprising that people cast around for some logical explanation. Wick was at the centre of the herring industry and each summer thousands of fishermen packed the town while the fisher girls worked at the herring gutting and packing. However, the local people did not blame these strangers for the deaths. At that time Scotland was still raw from the murders of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh, who killed people and sold the bodies for medical research. Ill feeling against Dr Knox, who had bought the corpses from the body snatchers-come-killers, ran high in Edinburgh but was less strong in the north. Dr Allison, also from Edinburgh, ran the local hospital in Wick, and he seemed to have settled in nicely when an influx of fishermen from the Lothian ports of Fisherrow and Musselburgh arrived. These men recounted tales of resurrection men and murder.

  Now that the men from Wick were faced with unexplained deaths from cholera, they may be excused for blaming an Edinburgh doctor who had recently come to live amongst them. The Lothian men wondered if the dead men had both been patients of Allison, and wild tales spread that the doctor hoped to send regular consignments of bodies south to Edinburgh to be dissected. The rumours spread and grew in the telling; soon some of the more credulous believed that Allison had poisoned the local drinking wells and would murder all his patients. The crowd that gathered outside the hospital, however, was not comprised of local men, but of fishermen from the Lothians and Fife. They roared their suspicions, shouted down Allison’s attempts to plead his innocence and shouted out, ‘Murder him! Off with the murderer!’

  As the crowd grew, some men tried to attack the doctor, and when the chairman of the board of health stepped in he also became another target of the mob, which now was over 1,500 strong. They invaded the quarantine hospital and carried the contents off to the cholera hospital as Special Constables were hastily enrolled and sworn in. The Specials mounted patrols to guard the doctor and the chairman of the health board through the dark hours of the Highland night. Apart from some idle stone throwing that smashed a few windows, there was no damage done, and Dr Allison very sensibly tendered his resignation and fled Wick for the south in the morning mail coach.

  That small episode led to a question being asked in Parliament with the Lord Advocate saying that measures were being taken to prevent any similar riots taking place. But Wick was to see more and worse.

  Rioting Fishermen

  The 1840s were bad years. A succession of bad summers meant poor crops and in the Highlands, where much of the land was marginal at best, that meant destitution or starvation. In the midst of this, merchants still exported grain from the east to the cities of the south. In some instances, the people in east coast ports took direct action to try and prevent grain ships leaving, while there were families starving in the north.

  Castletown, on the northern coast near Wick, was one of those ports. Fisher, a Leith vessel, had come into Castletown to load up with grain. People from the surrounding district gathered together to try and prevent this food from being exported. George Traill, the local MP, together with Sheriff Greig,
rushed to Castletown to try and prevent any violence. Although they tried to shout out what they considered reason to the crowd and ordered them back to their homes, it is unlikely that they were even heard above the general hubbub. Some of the crowd grabbed whatever weapons they could and made a rush to board the vessel and prevent her leaving. The mate drew a knife and tried to force them off, but somebody thumped him with a stick and he fell to the deck and lay there, still and bleeding.

  Seeing the mate lying prone, the crowd thought he had been killed and promptly fled. That gave George Traill time to organise the less volatile people in the area to try and defend Fisher and called for reinforcements from Wick. He had the mate carried ashore to be looked after.

  The next day a man toured the area, sounding a horn in the age-old way to gather the crowd. They marched across the Sands of Dunnet under a banner as the horn blared to the arc of the sky and echoed to the wind. Nevertheless, they did not attack anybody on the ship, but instead filled her hold with ballast so no grain could be loaded and they tried again to block her from leaving the harbour.

  But of all the ports, perhaps Wick had the greatest uproar. There as well there was a vessel waiting at the quay at neighbouring Pulteneytown for the shipment of grain. On Friday, 24 February 1847, a piper stood on Bridge Street, summoning the people around him. A crowd gathered, growing all the time as they marched through Pulteneytown to the North Quay. They blocked access to the quay with a barricade of boats and, job done, marched back to Wick proper. They held a meeting at the Market Cross to decide on their next step before returning to the quay, where they filled the hold of the ship with rocks and stones to prevent grain being loaded.

  Perhaps wisely, the authorities did not interfere, but late that night two sheriffs, Greig and Thomson, together with Mr Henderson, the Procurator Fiscal, ventured to the quay. By that time the crowds had dissipated and there were only a few stragglers hanging about.

  The weekend passed quietly, but the forces of the law had not been idle. They had alerted the garrison at Fort George and on the Monday evening a body of 106 men from the 76th Regiment embarked on the Lighthouse Steamer Pharos. They crossed the Moray Firth but as there was a big sea running in Wick Bay, Pharos anchored off Ackergill, a couple of miles north where today a luxury hotel sits.

  An officer braved the surf to come ashore and consult with Henderson, the Procurator Fiscal. The infantry remained on board, impotent and possibly seasick as they waited until there were small boats to take them ashore. However, the local fishermen refused to help. Henderson and the sheriffs scoured the local harbours for suitable boats, found two, crewed them from the local coastguard and some hands off Pharos and brought the men ashore in small groups.

  The men of the 76th formed up on Ackergill beach with the waves crashing behind them and Pharos swinging to her anchor in the bay. Captain Evans Gordon led them on the march south to Wick, with fixed bayonets to overawe the civilian population who had dared to try and feed their families. Instead of being scared into submission, the population of Wick were probably irritated by the presence of armed men in their town. The soldiers halted in front of the courthouse and stayed the night in the Temperance Hall.

  To augment the military, the sheriff called on the respectable men of the town to enrol as Special Constables. There were around 200 volunteers, complete with the long staffs that went with the job. On Wednesday afternoon the sheriff and magistrates led the combined force of military and Specials to the grain store in Pulteneytown. They acted as escort as a cart was loaded with grain and trundled slowly to the quay. A couple hundred local men watched as the heavily escorted cart arrived at the ship. The spectators may have smiled as the ship’s master confessed he was not yet ready to load up, and the Specials began to get restless and demanded permission to go back to their occupations.

  When the Specials melted away, Lieutenant Brett and twenty men of the 76th remained to guard the ship as night fell, but now the crowd gathered again. Men, women and children formed opposite and around the small party of soldiers. Around seven in the evening one of the 76th fired his musket as a signal for help, and the remainder of the company formed up and marched to the quay. Sheriff Thompson and his officers joined the crowd and read the Riot Act. This Act ordered any gathering of twelve or more people to disperse within the hour or the forces of the law could be turned on them. It is unlikely that many of the crowd actually heard the Act being read, and just as unlikely that those who did hear actually completely understood the implications. However, the sheriff may have been alarmed by the mob.

  Splitting into small parties, the soldiers advanced on the crowd with bayonets levelled, injuring a few as they forced them back. Three of the crowd were arrested, the remainder withdrew and the majority of the soldiers marched back to their makeshift barracks. There seems to have been some resistance from the people as the soldiers retreated, or perhaps when the army was dispersing the crowd. There were various stone-throwing episodes and one woman attacked an officer with a stick. He slashed her with his sword.

  The Provost, Josiah Rhind, was heavily involved on the side of law and order. He was in his mid-forties, was the agent for the Commercial Bank and had bought the local Sibster Estate. He and Sheriff Thompson were part of a group that were passing the academy where a portion of the crowd had reassembled. Immediately the crowd saw the military, or perhaps the provost; they began heaving stones down the brae towards them. There were some skilled stone-throwers among the crowd, for both the sheriff and the provost were struck in the first volley. That personal assault seems to have unbalanced the sheriff, for he ordered the soldiers to open fire and in the half-light of the Caithness evening a volley of musketry cracked out. There would be jets of red flame and thick white powder smoke in the streets, and cries rang out.

  Two people were wounded, William Hougston, a foreman cooper who was so severely wounded in the wrist and hand that his fingers had to be amputated, and a girl named MacGregor, who had a flesh wound on her arm. Hougston had not been part of the crowd, but was passing by on his way home from work. Hougston and MacGregor were some 200 metres apart at the time, which suggests that the 76th were pretty poor shots if they used the volley fire that was normal at the time. Two other men were hit in the boots as they sat watching the fun; neither had taken part in the attack and neither were injured. Not surprisingly, the musketry caused panic throughout the town as mothers ran shrieking for their children, husbands for their wives and people ran to escape the army.

  Duty done, most of the 76th returned to barracks, a small guard remained at the ship but the rest of the night passed quietly. On the following Thursday the electors, the respectable people of the community, met in the Town Hall and protested against ‘the reckless step’ taken by Sheriff Thompson when he called ‘out the military when not the least symptoms of any outbreak were manifested’. They also said they would support the authorities, and they asked for the military to be withdrawn. Then they moved the barriers from the quay so the boat could be loaded with grain.

  Again the disturbances in Wick caused questions to be asked in Parliament. The Lord Advocate said that the military had been ‘distinguished by the greatest patience and humanity’ and the provost and sheriff believed the grain ship would be scuttled in harbour and the crew thrown overboard. The Lord Advocate added ‘that information turned out to be but too true’ and the sheriff was a man of ‘firmness and humanity’. Hansard, the official record of Parliament, reported that the House applauded and approved his words. Mr Hougston may not have agreed.

  Of the two men arrested, Lord Moncrieff and Lord Cockburn sentenced one, John Nicholson, to ten years’ transportation while the other, John Shearer, was sentenced to ten months in prison for being on the street after the Riot Act was read.

  In France, where there were far more serious grain riots, over 400 people were arrested, but King Louis Philippe pardoned them all and blamed ‘the badness of the times’ rather than the individuals. Clemency from the Sc
ottish authorities was rather less generous. However, in November Sir George Grey reduced Nicholson’s sentence to two years in jail on the condition he pledged to keep out of trouble for two more years on his release.

  Fishermen on the Rampage

  Eleven years later Wick was again rocked by riots, which this time were occasioned perhaps by a culture clash and rivalry between people from the east coast and those from the Hebrides. Wick was an old established town with a Norse name, but it blossomed with the Scottish herring boom of the nineteenth century. In 1828 there had been encounters in the town between Hebridean and local fishermen, but that paled into nothing beside the furore of 1859. By that year each summer brought thousands of fishermen to the town from many ports of the north. Many came from the Hebrides, and their Gaelic language and island culture were not always welcomed in Wick. At the end of July and beginning of August there were days of bad weather which kept the fishing fleet – mostly open boats – in harbour and the crews idle. Having thousands of men and boys hanging about a small town with nothing much to do, on top of local and cultural rivalries, is a recipe for trouble.

  The figures are formidable. In the first week of August that year there were on average over a thousand boats out every day after herring, with six men and boys manning each boat.

  The nearly inevitable outcome started over what was a trivial incident as two boys argued over a piece of fruit. One boy was from Lewis, the other from Pulteneytown. Even what fruit it was is disputed between the Hebridean and the Wick men; the Hebrideans claim it was an apple, while Iain Sutherland gives the Wick version in his pamphlet ‘The War of the Orange’. It seems that the two young lads disputed the fruit in Market Square on the first Saturday in August, but as the Pulteneytown boy got the upper hand, a couple of Hebridean men joined in against him. Naturally, some Wick men backed their young lad and the argument turned into a free fight that wrecked the peddlers’ stalls in Market Square and ended with the crowd surging toward Bridge Street.