Tales and Travels of a School Inspector

The 1872 Education Act created a system of state-funded schools in Scotland overseen by local School Boards. Long before Ofsted, school inspectors were sent around the country to check that schools were doing their job properly and that therefore that they were entitled to continue to receive funding . John Wilson, who was born in Dufftown in Banffshire and had been a headteacher in Morayshire, joined the inspectorate in 1882 and continued as an inspector until the 1920s, with his patch covering parts of the Highlands and many of the Islands - including Islay, Jura, Colonsay, Lewis and Orkney, among others. Shortly after his retirement he wrote 'Tales and Travels of a School Inspector' looking back on his long career (republished by Acair in 1998).

His account provides lots of interesting details of the social history of that period. He describes the poverty, including a visit to Lewis where 'children were vomiting water' during an examination as a result of being desperately hungry and gorging on water to try and fill themselves up. He mentions religious controversies, including Free Church ministers in some areas attempting to ban the teaching of singing in schools. And he remarks sadly on the decline of Gaelic - a fact partly explained by the fact that most teaching was in English.

Some children lived too far away to attend school, and the inspector was also required to check that they were being taught properly at home. He describes an occasion on Jura where 'A girl twelve years of age, daughter of a gamekeeper, who lived fully twelve miles from the nearest school' was late to meet him for examination as a result of stormy weather. So as not to miss the boat back to Islay, the inspector put the girl through her maths and other tests in a farmer's cart on the way to the ferry

Travelling around the islands in all seasons was not without its risks and he describes a hair raising journey in a storm from Colonsay to Port Askaig, where on finally getting off his boat at 2:30 am he was harangued by a parent complaining about his child's school!

In a chapter on hospitality he mentiond 'staying for a few nights in Bridgend Hotel in Islay' one winter, where 'The wife of the proprietor of Dunlossit in the north end of the island was entertaining a number of the leading natives'.  Seeing that Wilson was all alone, the inspector was invited to join the party as a result of which he 'spent a most enjoyable evening'.

Also in relation to Islay he talks of the 'exquisite crosses at Kildalton in Islay' and says that  'I never visited the small school of Kintour in this neighbourhood without having another look at it and other crosses within two hundred yards of the public road'.

Wilson was in Islay during the First World War, and recalls one of its great tragedies: 'When I think of Islay I see Port Ellen, where I had occasion to be during the Great War when the Tuscania, with thousands of American soldiers, had just been torpedoed by a German submarine off the south coast with terrible consequences. Two rafts of curious construction lay stranded on the sandy beach in front of the hotel. A series of loops of rope with small globular wooden floats was attached to each side. A soldier clutching one of these could keep himself afloat till rescued/ The bodies washed ashore were collected and buried in a fenced piece of grassy sward about a mile to the west of the village' (this burial ground was at Kilnaughton - see previous post on Tuscania burials).



Portnahaven School in 1915 with teacher Jean Currie on left -
Wilson would almost certainly have visited this school during this period
(photo from Betsy West's Photo Gallery)



1930s Islay Adverts

The following images are reproduced from the 1936 'Guide to Islay' published by Archibald Sinclair, Celtic Press, Glasgow. The author was L.MacNeill Weir, MP for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire. The book had been revised from a 1924 edition of the guide 'Under the guidance of Dr. A. N. Currie', with new photographs as well as other new and revised content. 

Lauchlin MacNeill Weir (1877-1939) was a Labour MP from 1922 to 1939, with a gap from 1931 to 1935. According to a 1939 obituary he was 'the son of the late Mr Robert Weir of Port Ellen'. Trained as a teacher, he was the first Labour candidate to stand for Argyll in 1919, though he was unsuccessful. 'During his life Mr Weir delighted to visit Islay. He was for long a member of the Glasgow-Islay Association, serving for a time as one of its directors. In 1931 he presided at the annual gathering of the association. He rendered useful service to Islay with his pen in a well-informed guide book, extolling the beauties of the island and inaugurating what was a form of "Come to Islay" movement'. His funeral took place in Port Ellen (Glasgow Herald, 19 August 1939).

I will try and find out some more about Weir, and will return to this book again. But for now here are some of the adverts, which in themselves tell us about life on Islay in the 1930s.

Two hotels in Port Ellen - Quintin's Hotel ('Commercial Gentlemen and Tourists will find every comfort and attention') and The Commercial Temperance Hotel in Port Ellen. I believe that in the same period there was a Temperance Hotel in Port Charlotte (now Temperance House), and the Lochside Hotel in Bowmore was also once a Temperance hotel (no whisky bar in those day):

More Bowmore Hotels - the Seaview Hotel ('Car meets steamer on request... Walter Weir, Proprietor') and the Imperial Hotel ('Mrs Cameron, Proprietrix'). The latter is now the Harbour Inn. Also an advert for James R. & M. Anderson - 'Bakers, Butchers and General Merchants'.

Archibald Cameron, Douglas House, Bowmore - 'Stationer, Printer, Confectioner, Tobacconist':

Bridged Hotel ('long famous for its home comforts'); Malcolm M'Arthur ('car hirer, engineer and haulage contractor') of Bridgend; John A. Bell, Ballygrant butcher:

Alexander Currie & Sons 'established 1850', 'Bread, biscuit and pastry bakers' of Bowmore and Port Ellen:

Machrie Hotel and The Islay Wool Mills near Bridgend (J.T. Christie and sons) - the latter was established in 1863 and is still going strong (see current website)

Also a couple of photographs from the same book - Kilnaughton Bay, photo by Robert MacDonald, Port Charlotte.

Geisgeir Sands, Port Ellen - photo by Archibald Cameron, Bowmore. Not sure how common that name is for that bit of shore by Port Ellen distillery, but Islay Blog has previously featured a 1929 postcard with that name.I know that Geisgeir Golf Club was the name of the golf club in Port Ellen shortly before the First World War and that there is also a Geisgeir on Tiree - sounds like a Norse name, but no idea what it means.

John Murdoch - 'Land and Labour Pioneer'

Sad to hear of the recent death (June 23rd) of Scottish radical historian, James D. Young at the age of 81. Young, who taught history for many years at Stirling University, was the author of books including The Rousing of the Scottish Working Class and a biography of Clydeside socialist John MacLean. It was Young who rediscovered the unpublished manuscript of the autobiography of John Murdoch, the Islay-raised campaigner on behalf of crofters. Here are some excerpts from an article Young wrote in 1969 in the Society for the Study of Labour History Bulletin (Vol.xix):

John Murdoch: A Land and Labour Pioneer

'In 1925 the unpublished manuscript Autobiography of John Murdoch was deposited in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, by Professor Magnus MacLean. This Autobiography was not entered in the manuscript catalogue, and Scottish historians have been hitherto unaware of its existence. I located it in the Mitchell Library after I had found a scrap of paper in the in the manuscript catalogue referring to a pamphlet by John Murdoch in the small safe.

John Murdoch, who was to play a key role in the Highland land agitations in the 1870s and 1880s, was born on 15 January 1818 at Lynemore, Ardchloch, Nairnshire. He lived to be 86, and his life was filled with many-sided activity, whose significance has not received the attention it deserves...

His father was John Murdoch, and his mother was Mary Macpherson, the daughter of a sea captain: and both families had roots which stretched far back into Scottish history. In 1827 the family moved to the Island of Islay, and John Murdoch lived there until 1838. His ‘agricultural education’ was inaugurated on ‘the little farm which had been selected and conferred on my father’. Moreover, he imbibed the rich folklore, customs and culture of the Highlanders among whom he lived and grew to manhood. In later life he was to become an associate of Michael Davitt, Henry George, Joseph Ashby, Patrick Ford, the editor of the New York Irish World, J. Shaw Maxwell, Keir Hardie, and other land and labour agitators.

Islay in the 1820s and 1830s was geographically remote and culturally alien from industrial society, with its rigid social stratification and class conflict, which had emerged in the Scottish Lowlands and the north of England. Murdoch’s life in Islay was happy, exciting and satisfying: and the social structure and the wholeness of a common culture, shared by all ‘classes’ from the Highland aristocrats down to the small farmers, had a profound influence on his subsequent social and political thought. His experiences there were in the fullness of time, to turn him into a left-wing radical rather than a class-conscious socialist; and his hatred of the squalor and ugliness of industrial society inhibited him from making common cause with the industrial workers before the early 1880s.

In 1838 he went to ‘serve in the shop of Mr William Boyd, a grocer in the High Street, Paisley’. Mr Boyd was ‘an earnest and prominent Radical’. But within six weeks of his arrival in Paisley ‘there was a letter from my father stating that he had been favoured with an appointment for me in the Excise’. He reluctantly decided to accept a job in the Excise service; and he began and completed his training in Edinburgh under ‘an English gentleman who had strong Highland sentiments from his serving some time when a young man in Islay’. Then he worked in Kilsyth, where coal-mining was in its infancy, and in Middletown, Ireland, as an Excise officer. He was already very critical of the drink trade (his only real criticism of Islay was that the island’s prosperity depended on whisky); but he was not above taking the occasional glas of whisky...

In 1845 John Murdoch’s father was killed in a shooting accident, and ‘the factor’ took advantage of the situation to evict his mother and her children from their farm. He was not embittered by this experience. A short time later he returned to ‘a Ride’ in Islay, and he was soon involved with a group of fellow radicals in discussing ‘science, history, poetry, theology and politics’. Before long, however, he was destined for service in Dublin, Shetland and Inverness. While engaged in Dublin as an Excise officer, he was active in an agitation for improvements in the pay and conditions of his fellow officers. In Dublin, too, he contributed articles to such newspapers as the Nation on a wide variety of agricultural topics. He was a practical land improver as well as a political agitator. While working in Inverness in 1873 as an Excise officer, he announced his retirement. Then he became founder and editor of The Highlander.

The Highlander was published in Inverness between 1873 and 1882. It was a very radical paper in which Murdoch ‘advocated the cause of the people, and particularly the right of the Gaelic people to their native soil’. (Glasgow Weekly) Through The Highlander and Murdoch’s personal intervention in disputes between crofters and landlords the way was prepared for the successful speaking tours – and the rise of the Crofters Party – of Henry George and Michael Davitt in the 1880s.

In the 1870s John Murdoch agitated through the columns of the The Highlander for the setting up of a royal commission on the Highlands. In 1883 he gave valuable evidence before the commission, of which Lord Napier was chairman. In 1884 Michael Davitt toured the Scottish coalfields advocating the nationalisation of the land and minerals. John Murdoch simultaneously made his first efforts to win support among the industrial workers for land reform. By this time he was living in the Scottish Lowlands; and there is evidence to suggest that he was still evolving towards the left. When the miners of Lanarkshire founded a Scottish Anti-Royalty and labour League, he tried to get them to affiliate to the Scottish Land Restoration League. In the general election of 1885 he was a parliamentary nominee of the Scottish Land Restoration League; and he stood as a Land and Labour candidate in the Patrick constituency of Glasgow.

During the by-election in Mid-Lanark in April 1888, John Murdoch, who was now seventy years old, campaigned on behalf of Keir Hardie. A few weeks later he took the lead, together with Hardie, in helping to initiate the Scottish Labour Party. This was probably the last major act of his political career, but he toured the southern counties of England with Joseph Ashby in 1891 on behalf of the English Land League. Then he settled down to complete the autobiography he had begun in 1889 and to observe in the Scottish Labour Party the alliance of Scottish land and labour reformers he had striven to create in 1884.

John Murdoch’s political evolution was unusual: in his sixty-sixth year, he moved left, not right. He was an active temperance reformer, a land reformer, a journalist, a champion of the Gaelic language, a collector of Highland folklore, and a foundation member of the Scottish Labour Party'.  

  

John Murdoch (1818–1903)

Some year's after Young's article, John Murdoch’s autobiography was edited by the historian Dr James Hunter and published in For the People’s Cause, HMSO, Edinburgh, 1986. 

The farm where the Murdoch family lived in the 1830s was Claggan Farm, near Bridgend. We will return to Murdoch and Islay  later at this blog.