Whisky, Wars, Riots and Murder

by Malcolm Archibald

  It was the time of Communion in the church, but only those parishioners with a Communion token were permitted to sit at the Communion table. Although he lacked the necessary token, Hugh Fraser sat down with some force among the Godly. The minister, Reverend Alexander Fraser, reminded him he should not be there and asked him to leave. When Hugh Fraser remained just where he was, two of the elders, William Campbell and Alexander Sinclair, tried to persuade him to go, but still he remained. When Campbell and Sinclair repeated their demands, Hugh Fraser said he would stay and would fight back if they tried to use force.

  The minister and the elders tried to hold Holy Communion as normal, but as the cup of wine was being passed around, Hugh Fraser lunged at it while the congregation recoiled in horror. What made it worse was that Hugh Fraser had performed exactly the same actions the previous two years, and each time the elders had forcibly hustled him away. He was charged with breach of the peace, profanity and illegally disturbing the congregation.

  At the circuit court of September 1839 he was found not guilty of the first two charges but guilty of the third, and the judge, Lord Medwyn, ordered that his moveable possessions be escheat to the Crown: the law allowed no other course of action.

  Accusing the Minister

  Christina Thomson was a domestic servant by profession. In May 1884 she became the cook for the Reverend James McHardy, Church of Scotland minister at Latheronwheel in Caithness. About three months later, McHardy began to take physical liberties with her. Despite that, or because of it, Thomson remained as his cook for the next three years. From May 1887 to May 1889 she lived at home with her father, but McHardy had not forgotten her. He passed her in the village and surreptitiously passed small messages to her, informing her when she could visit him in the manse. When she obeyed the summons, McHardy always let her in himself and brought her into the study to continue their relationship.

  In 1889 Thomson re-entered McHardy’s service as a housemaid. As McHardy continued to be more than friendly, it was nearly inevitable that she should become pregnant. However, when she informed the minister of her condition he suddenly lost interest in her, ordered her back to her father’s house and told her not to say who the father was. Thomson said she was not inclined to go back home, but she would like to go to America to hide her condition. McHardy gave her a generous £13 to cover her expenses for the trip, but Thomson’s brother persuaded her not to emigrate, so she remained in Latheronwheel.

  At least, that was the tale that Thomson spread around.

  McHardy had another version of the story, and written proof to back him up. As well as strongly denying the charges of an intimate relationship, he produced a couple of letters, one from his wife to Thomson that read:

  December 26, 1890

  Dear Tina, I am very sorry to hear of your condition. I suppose you will have heard from home that there is a fearful suspicion that it is Mr McHardy that has put you wrong and that it is likely to ruin him, if it has not done so already. Would you write by return to say who the father is, or if you will not, to clear Mr McHardy.

  Yours Sincerely,

  E. McHardy.

  The second, purported to be Thomson’s reply to Mrs McHardy, read:

  Orwell Place, Edinburgh

  December 28, 1890

  Mrs McHardy, Madam, I had your letter last night and was very much surprised. My people never mentioned such a thing to me. There is no doubt that I am bad enough, but the very idea of a married man. It was in terror of Mr McHardy that I left the place. I thought that if I escaped his knowing I was all right, because I know how desperate he was at any girl who went wrong. I am not compelled to give up the father, but I am quite prepared at any time to go to any Court in Scotland and clear Mr McHardy. I never told my own people the real father so I decline to tell you.

  I am your humble and obedient servant,

  Teanie Thomson

  Thomson added to her claims. She said that on one occasion the governess of the house, Miss Spence, had come into the room and found her sitting on the minister’s knee, with him pressing his face to her breasts. However, the governess gave a less colourful version of the incident, when she came across Thomson and McHardy together in the parlour. According to Spence, the minister was listening to Thomson’s heart after she had been in bed with influenza.

  The case was heard before the sheriff court at Wick at the beginning of January 1892. William Henderson, a servant of the McHardy’s, said that Thomson had always behaved with ‘perfect propriety’ at the manse, while another witness claimed to have seen her out with a man. Worse for Thomson, Dr Burn of Latheron stated that in the summer of 1895, when Thomson said McHardy had become intimate with her, the minister was actually seriously ill. The minister’s financial affairs were also examined and there appeared no cheque for £13. When two young men appeared as witnesses and admitted they had been sexually intimate with Thomson, and there was talk about an abortion, the case was virtually decided.

  Sheriff Mackenzie ruled that Thomson had not proved that McHardy had fathered her child. He thought that the story was improbable and that Thomson had lied frequently and contradicted herself throughout the hearing. The minister won that case.

  The Disruption Disruption

  The Church of Scotland has an interesting history. Born in the turbulent sixteenth century, it was heavily involved in the civil wars of the seventeenth and was riven by disputes in the eighteenth. In the nineteenth the worst troubles occurred in 1843, when there was a major schism over the issue of patronage. The crux of the matter was whether the landowners should appoint their own minister into the local church, or whether the congregation should select the minister they wanted: autocracy or democracy.

  The issue came to a head at a meeting in Tanfield in Edinburgh, when over 600 ministers left the meeting in protest and founded their own church, the Free Church of Scotland, which was perhaps stricter in Presbyterian practices but was also free from interference from the landlord class. This incident was known as the Disruption. However, the labour pains for the birth of this baby Church were painful, and even after the event there were troubles and grief. One case in point was the riots that rocked the church and parish of Resolis, on the north coast of the Black Isle, in September 1843.

  When the incumbent minister, the Reverend Sage, had seceded to join the Free Church, the Presbytery of the Church of Scotland decided that the Reverend John Mackenzie should be the new minister. However, many of the parishioners and others from the surrounding area did not agree with a Minister of the Established Church. Being Highland and of strong opinions where religion was concerned, they decided to show their displeasure in the old-fashioned way, with loud words, stones and sticks. There was no secret about their desire to prevent the Church from placing their preferred man in position, and on Thursday, 28 September 1843, around 300 of them picked up whatever weapons they could and prepared for battle.

  However, the Presbytery was quite determined in their choice and took strong steps to defend it. Colonel Hugh Baillie, MP, the Lord Lieutenant of Ross, sent messages to the local Justices of the Peace requesting their presence at the inauguration of the new minister. He also ordered the Cromarty-based coastguard to prevent the ferries from Invergordon, Alness and Fowlis carrying Free Kirk supporters to help the Resolis protesters. All these precautions proved fruitless.

  About eleven in the morning, a group of young men scrambled up a ladder and began to ring the bell of the simple church. As a crowd of mainly young men and women gathered on the slopes of the small hill on which the church stood, Sheriff Jardine, Andrew Shaw McKenzie of Newhall, the main landowner, Hugh Fraser, another local landowner and Colonel Baillie, George Gillanders, Provost of Fortrose and a host of supporters of the established church rolled up in their carriages. The crowd had been busy heaping up piles of stones of various sizes, ready to repel any advance by the Established Church supporters.

  The Sheriff Clerk of Cromarty, John Taylor, bravely stepped forward and tried to
soft talk the crowd, but the reaction was less than favourable. A woman named Eppy Aird indicated the stones she held in her apron. ‘If you try and put in that minister,’ she said, ‘we’ll find a use for these.’

  The newcomers tried to push through but failed to make any impression against the crowd. As the forces of authority withdrew, the parishioners celebrated by tolling the bell. When Mr Innes Cameron, the Procurator Fiscal and a supporter of the Free Church, arrived in a two-horse phaeton, accompanied by a sheriff officer and tried again, a shout of ‘Moderates!’ came from the Free Kirkers, and it was not long before the first stones began to sail through the air.

  Leaving the women safe in the carriages, the Lord Lieutenant led an entourage of about 100 of the great and the good towards the church, but the stone-throwing increased, volley after volley pelting down upon them. Somebody felled Provost Gillanders with a stick, and others who went to his help were also downed by Andrew Holm and some other Free Churchmen. Gillanders told Holm he would be marked, to which Holm remarked, ‘I will mark you, you bastard.’

  The Lord Lieutenant asked what the trouble was all about, and was bluntly told that the crowd would ‘not let yon man’ into the church. Deciding that discretion was safer than bruised valour, the Lord Lieutenant and Sheriff Jardine withdrew from the church and sent for help. Lieutenant Thomson and a party of men from the Coast Guard Preventative Service hurried over from their base at Cromarty. They were armed with pistols and cutlasses, while those men who supported the Lord Lieutenant had one double-barrelled musket and a few pistols for defence, plus whatever sticks and staffs they could find locally. The sight of weapons only served to aggravate the crowd. Stones flew in increased volleys.

  Still determined to position the minister in the church, the forces of law and authority formed an orderly body, placed the revenue men in front with drawn cutlasses and prominent pistols, and marched steadfastly towards the crowd. The Free Kirkers responded with their own tactics: the women, or possibly men dressed as women, were at the front of the crowd, baying for blood, and the men were behind, throwing stones in an incessant hail.

  The Established Churchmen tried to outflank the multitude by going through a field of stubble at the side, but the Free Church crowd again repelled them with volleys of stones. The Lord Lieutenant tried to intervene personally and lunged into the crowd to try and arrest one of the most active of the protesters, but when somebody struck him a savage blow on the arm, he retired. A stone crashed against the sheriff’s thigh, while stones bounced from the carriage of Mr Cameron, the Procurator Fiscal. The carriage windows were broken and one of the panels was dented and battered. When Cameron tried to remonstrate with the crowd they replied with a heavy volley of stones that sent him scurrying for cover.

  At that point the sheriff decided that enough was enough and read out the Riot Act to try and calm the crowd down. Once it was read, he tried to explain its purpose and meaning. He had just said, ‘God save the Queen’ when a large stone whizzed past his head. It was ten to three in the afternoon.

  The coast guard drew their pistols and fired a volley over the heads of the crowd, but then hastily reloaded as the crowd surged towards them. The shots must have been badly aimed, or perhaps intended only to warn, for there was only one minor injury when a man was struck in the leg. Thomson led a desperate charge at the Free Church people, but was felled by a large stone that broke a rib, and a second tore open the back of his neck. Special Constable Munro from Fortrose was also injured. Some of the members of the Establishment party also resorted to stone throwing, so at times the missiles crossed and re-crossed the air between the two opposing parties.

  Despite his own injuries and the numbers of the crowd, Lieutenant Thomson and the sheriff decided not to continue firing in case somebody was seriously hurt or even killed. One of the leaders of the crowd was a woman named Margaret Cameron. She was a tall, active, well-made women with a powerful voice and even more powerful arms, with which she threw a fusillade of stones. Margaret Cameron had a personal reason to be involved in the riot as she was the dairymaid to the Reverend Mr Sage, the minister who had seceded to join the Free Church.

  The authorities waited on the fringes of the crowd for some time, and then withdrew from the church without having achieved their objective. There were rumours of more Free Church supporters waiting in the woods that the church backed onto. Margaret Cameron led the pursuit of the retreating authorities. As she was cheering on the others, Provost Cameron saw his chance to make an arrest. He grabbed hold of the woman and both overbalanced and tumbled into a ditch.

  As the crowd and the coastguard watched, quite amused, a man named Watson rushed up and between them they managed to subdue Margaret Cameron and drag her away, despite a spirited rescue attempt from the crowd. When the woman was securely held, Watson and Cameron bundled her into a gig, where a sheriff officer named Dingwall arrested her, the driver whipped up and they rattled away to the jail at Cromarty.

  Dingwall was a brave man, but the crowd had him in their sights. When Dingwall slipped into a house at the village of Jemimaville, the crowd rushed forward to get revenge, but he slithered through a back window and fled into the woods of Poyntzfield. As he ran to the safety of Avoch on the south of the Black Isle, the crowd took howling revenge on his gig instead. They smashed it to fragments. In the meantime, the Reverend Mackenzie was inducted at the inn at Fortrose rather than at the church in Resolis.

  Having repelled the Lord Lieutenant, the sheriff and all his men, the crowd at Resolis enjoyed a noisy party. They spent the night in cheering and singing, clattering the bell and laughing. However, they had not forgotten Margaret Cameron. A large group marched to the jail in Cromarty, alarming the jailer and the local authorities. The Lord Lieutenant was aware that there was the distinct possibility of similar scenes at Knockbain, also in the Black Isle, where the minister had also seceded. He sought military support from Sir Neville Douglas, who commanded the military forces in Scotland. However, even that was not easy. Although the nearest garrison was at Fort George, there was only a skeleton force there.

  Resolis Church, Black Isle

  © Author’s Collection

  At about four on Friday afternoon, 29 September, around 100 people marched to Cromarty, brandishing staves and other weapons. They tramped in by the western road, camped around the jail, and two spokesmen demanded the release of Margaret Cameron. Naturally, the magistrates refused. The Free Church supporters stated that the people inside the jail had five minutes to change their minds, or they were coming in to get her. The magistrates still refused, but sent for the Reverend Stewart, a Free Church minister, who tried to persuade the crowd to go home. They listened politely, nodded and then proceeded to rescue Margaret Cameron.

  Led by two men named Murray and a Free Kirk elder named Andrew Holm, the men rushed into the courtyard into which the prison door opened. They used huge rocks to splinter a panel of the front door, finished the business with clubs and hammers and surged into the lobby of the jail. However, there were two further doors between them and the prisoner. Margaret Cameron was held in a small cell, twelve foot by eleven, with a wooden floor. This cell was known as the Black Hole and had a single, barred but unglazed window at the level of the ground. The crowd spent less than ten minutes in breaking through to Cameron, using a log as a battering ram to crash through the door of the cell. They snatched the prisoner and carried her shoulder high through the streets before they returned to Resolis. Although the mob also smashed open other cell doors, the three prisoners preferred to remain where they were.

  On the next day, Saturday, 30 September, a crowd gathered outside the house of Mr Mackintosh, the most prominent person in Resolis and a man who had refused to switch his allegiance to the Free Church. Rather than wait for the assault, Mackintosh and his wife fled, with Mrs Mackintosh in disguise. The mob rampaged through their home. The Mackintoshes ran to Braelangwell, the house of Sir Hugh Fraser, but Sir Hugh also had his troubles. He had sent his
carriage away to pick up a lady guest, but a crowd intercepted it and pelted the coachman with stones.

  In the meantime, the Reverend Mackenzie tried to preach at Logie, but once again a hostile crowd confronted him. They had barricaded the entrance to the church and a crowd seethed outside. When Lady Ross of Balnagown drove up in her carriage, the mob closed ranks to deny her access. They repelled her with foul language and when Lady Ross came out of her carriage and tried to speak, a woman lifted a stick and whacked her across the arm. Her Ladyship retreated to loud abuse and the expected volley of stones. The church bell was tolling all the time, a clattering background to the pandemonium.

  A gentleman by the name of Ross was next to try to get to church, and when he was chased away he drove to Tain and fetched Sheriff Cameron. By the time they reached Logie the Reverend Mackenzie had already departed. Cameron spoke to the crowd, some of whom told him that all they wanted was a site to build their own church, and then they all drifted away.

  The authorities offered a reward for information about other anti-Established Church actions, such as the people who cut off the rope for the bell at Tongue church and filled the keyhole of the church door with gravel. The insurrection against the landlords’ intrusion into the religion of the people was spreading all across the north. There were injurious remarks scrawled on walls, coal tar smeared on the homes of Kirk Elders and other petty acts of vandalism that showed the deep feelings of the Free Church people.

  There was further trouble at Rosskeen, five miles north of Alness, on Sunday, 1 October, when a rumour spread that the Reverend Mackenzie was due to preach there. A crowd waited to bar his entrance to the church, and when he did not turn up they turned their spleen on Donald Fraser, the precenter of the Established Church, instead. They were chasing him through the churchyard when a soldier, Lieutenant MacLeod stepped in and saved him.