Slavery in Modern Scotland

[Russell Lynn Drysdale]

   

After reading  William Douglas blog titled ''The white child slaves from Aberdeen''  made me think  about a passage I had read about  branding ''beggaris'' [beggars]  although  the below wasn't the same source as what I had originally read , it does cover beggars, children as well as men between jobs Colliers etc , and the Enablers of these practices of Scots enslaving Scots- BTW- no Political/Social statement  being made here, Just food for thought. 

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=llxKAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&...  

1899                                                        Slavery in Modern Scotland                                                                                                                                               127 

...... And as the plague of tramps continued to increase in spite of all done to check it Government sought to supplement the efforts of the public authorities by enlisting in the work of suppression the more interested and therefore presumably more energetic exertions of the employers of labour Hitherto the power of apprehending vagrants and the power of enslaving them were both entrusted to public hands alone but now first the right of apprehending and presently thereafter the right of summarily enslaving the apprehended without any public trial were conferred on members of the employing class This new policy was inaugurated in June 1605 when the Convention of Estates which that year took the place of a Parliament that had been prorogued without transacting business passed the following Act which it may be mentioned was afterwards cited with approbation by the Parliament itself in the Act 1641 c 100 That all maisterfull and strong beggaris fund efter the twentie day of August nixt may be tane be any man and being broght to any sheref bailyie of regalitie or burgh and gettand thame declairit maisterfull beggaris may set his burning irne upon thame and reteane thame as slaves and gif any of thame thairefter escaipe the awner may have repetition of thame as of uther gudes f By this Act to which thirteen Protestant prelates were privy any man in need of labour could seize the first tramp he found hale him to a sheriff or bailie and in the event of conviction as an able bodied beggar brand him with his branding iron as he branded his cattle and recover him if he strayed as he recovered them his other goods The slavery contemplated is manifestly perpetual Next year 1606 as we have seen the Scots Parliament went a step further and endowed coalmasters and saltmasters with the power of apprehending and enslaving tramps without asking the sanction of a magistrate and in the year following 1607 these new powers of the coalmasters were conferred by the Privy Council on the owners or lessees of the metal mines of the kingdom in an Act authorising them to apprehend all masterless vagabonds and sturdy beggars and put them to work and hold them to the same after sic manner as they shall find convenient Act 1600 c 28 f Register of Privy Council vii 56 3 Ibid vii 434 

                                                                 Slavery in Modern Scotland page

                                                                                  128

Not only able bodied beggars but merely masterless men out of work and in search of it were by these two Acts made liable to apprehension and compulsory servitude and the length of service the kind of work and the means of compulsion seem to have been all left to the absolute discretion of the owners of the mines The privileges which the Privy Council conferred here on all metal mine owners were afterwards repeatedly conferred by Parliament on individual owners as for example on Sir James Hope in special Acts in 1649 and 1661 for his lead mines in Clydesdale The prospect of the King's visit to Scotland in 1617 accompanied by English courtiers gave the Scottish authorities much concern to clear their borders of the beggars who had become their national reproach and one of the fresh measures which this concern spurred them to take for the more effectual diminution of beggary was an Act of Parliament passed in 1617 for enabling orphans and the children of poor and indigent parents to be taken into slavery till they reached the age of thirty Beggary says the Act was largely due to such children acquiring the mendicant habit in their tender years and never abandoning it afterwards and it was believed that they might be turned into profitable members of the Commonwealth if they were taken off the hands of their parents by some of his Majesty's well educated subjects in particular or by any of the incorpora tions or burghs within his Majesty's kingdom in common and employed in some calling or vocation that might tend to the good of the realm The children to be taken were to be such as shall be found and tried to be poore and indigent and to have no means for their entertainment and this was to be attested by a declaration of the Provost and bailies or of the Kirk Session of the place where they reside These authorities could then deliver such a child with its own consent if it were fourteen with its parents consent if under fourteen to any of the King's subjects to be kept at service in his family or in any calling or craft he might choose for the child till it was thirty It was bound to do whatever work its master liked anything it might earn belonged to him and it was to be subject to his discipline in all sorts of punishment short of torture and death The servitude of children of begging parents under the previous Act was perpetual but this servitude of the children of poor but unoffending parents Act 1617 c 10 

1889                                                        Slavery in Modern Scotland                                                                                                                                                129

 

 was only for a prolonged term running in most cases probably from fifteen to twenty five years The Act recommended all the King's subjects to take in hand one or more of this class of children according to their respective abilities and requirements and it was evidently expected that they would avail themselves extensively of their new privilege We have only observed one case of the kind however in any of the records that have been as yet published That case occurred immediately after the Act came into force A girl named Elizabeth Walker was in the presence of two male witnesses and sundry women formally delivered over to Dr David Kinloch of Aberbothrie Physician to the King by her mother Isbell Allain sitting on her knees with her blessing and Dr Kinloch on his part engaged to bring her up in his house and service as required The transaction seems to have taken place in the Doctor's own close and it is recorded in his Accompt book in a very formal entry subscribed D Kinloch with my hand One cannot help asking whether the colliers custom of arling their children at their baptism to the coalmaster did not arise out of this Act That arling or sale of the future labour of the child for a sum of money was a formal transaction in which the coalmaster on his side also undertook certain responsibilities and of which a written record was kept f And as it took place at the baptism it took place in the presence of the minister and other witnesses either in church or elsewhere The collier might easily be counted poor and indigent enough to answer the requirements of the Act and the whole transaction bears a strong resemblance to the transaction with Dr David Kinloch If the arling of colliers children was done in execution of the provisions of this Act then its effect would be to make the child the slave of the coalmaster till it reached the age of thirty and thus at once to prevent it claiming freedom on attaining its majority for it would have been expressly bound to serve till the age of thirty and to prevent it again from claiming freedom at the age of thirty because it would have then been more than a year and a day in the service of a coalmaster after the age of discretion The statute of 1617 would thus clinch the work of the statute of 1606 and make the slavery of the colliers 

                             Reliquiae Antiquae Scoticae p 80 Children's Employment Commission 1842 

                  Appendix to First Report of Commissioners Mines part ip 386 WOL CLXXXIX NO CCCLXXXVII K 

Source:  Slavery in Modern Scotland

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