So let's have a brief (Honest! True dinks! Rewly trewly!), cut down look at the lead-up to Caroline's arrival and why she found a heap of work to do.
From 1787 to 1839, the year Caroline arrived in Sydney, the population of the colony of New South Wales who did not have a known skerrick of First Australian heritage had grown from 0 to some 114,000 (London Quarterly Review [LQR], June 1841, p. 56 - the writer is unnamed, at least in our copy).
Having established a population of slaves, work was needed to occupy them, and, perhaps more to the point, make them too worn and broken to rebel.
Initially, convicts were put to work building colonial infrastructure and working on farms owned by corrupt military officers and the few free settlers.
As the years passed, convicts began to complete their sentences. It was government policy to prevent former convicts returning to Britain, and although some managed it (some even to end up being transported a second time!), most remained in Australia. To help some convicts with their compulsory exile, the government sometimes freely transported at least some of their family to Australia.
The First Fleet, for example, brought some free children whose parent/s were convicts, and some convicts' wives. However, the very great majority of convicts were either single or only too happy to leave their family behind. And as the great majority of convicts were male, the gender disparity for the first five or six decades of white settlement was substantial.
In this regard, the gender of convict transportees was approximately 12 men to 1 woman. This does not, however, mean 1 of every 12 male convicts was able to gain a female partner. Some women managed to marry free settlers or adult sons of former convicts, specifically chose not to marry for various reasons, including finding life as a single woman, single mother, or prostitute preferable to marrying some of the significantly less savoury male offerings coming out of Britain's male criminal underworld. And, of course, some formerly convict men married adult or almost (!) adult daughters of former convicts, and some chose not to marry.
On top of this male dominated group of former convicts, the great majority of free settlers were also male. And single! Among the reasons for single women and families with young children being reluctant to travel to the great unknown on the other side of the world was the little the Brits believed they knew. That little included the irrational belief Australia swarmed with drunken rapists and murderers, the more irrational fear of people with a completely different culture (the First Australians, if you're wondering), and the ongoing bizarre (and, again, irrational) belief they're at risk of their lives from poisonous spiders and snakes. And yet signiicantly more people were killed in their African colonies by hippopotamuses!
And, of course, considering most rapists and murderers who were caught were hanged in the homeland, and as a considerable number of unhanged (?) rapists and murderers were unhanged because they were never caught, let alone transported, especially the wealthy ones, they were probably at much greater risk if they stayed in Britain. What's more, Australia doesn't have scorpions. Yeah, well, Lex knows England's scorpions aren't particularly poisonous, but he hates scorpions, even more than he's frightened by spiders and snakes!
But, there were risks. For example, if blokes live in an environment without women, or whose only contact with women is the brief period for which they can pay, the results are almost inevitable. Since every human society of which we have any knowledge is completely or almost completely male dominated, largely or totally misogynistic, and mostly or entirely designed to serve the interests of at least a group of men, although all men are better off than most women, it would perhaps appear reasonable to assume women have no impact on the nature of a society.
That is, however, far from the truth, even though females have suffered significantly more from prejudice throughout the known history of human societies than has any male, or at least the great majority of males. Even those males on the bottom rung of almost every known human society have always known that somewhere there are females on all the rungs below him. Of course, most societies have individuals and smaller groups far down the social ladder. LGBTI folk come immediately to mind. But numerically, our above statement still stands, except in the minds of historically ignorant, self-serving bigots.
So, what's our point? An almost totally male society suffers a number of problems, apart from its inability to breed, its members having to cook all their own meals and do their own washing and all the other domestic chores women do that most men don't know about, having to find a compliant fellow member of the society who will ignore the fact they're both heterosexual males and will help satisfy their sexual urges, or a compliant animal likewise. Australia's much-vaunted concept of "mateship" has many aspects, at least some of which our society has chosen to ignore.
But apart from these types of issue, there are three extremes that created the virtual inevitability, the almost predictable outcome of the first years of white settlement in the Australian colonies. Or, indeed, anywhere else, any other time. Outcomes, of course, have no capacity for thought, or planning. They are no more than the consequence of whatever has gone before. This includes, to a very substantial degree, the influence of human input.
The three extremes of particular importance in Australia's outcome, the major causes and results of its human input were:
Into the hodge podge of horribility to which the colonies were descending, around the 1830s the British government began various attempts to migrate young single women into the Australian colonies in an attempt to even up the gender numbers, and introduce the female influence believed essential to reducing the impacts of the three extremes.
On the other end, the free whites, especially those in the upper reaches of society, were campaigning against the continued transportation of British criminals. Why? Wouldn't this cause them problems by minimising their access to the almost free labour available from the convict system? Of course, but things were changing in New South Wales, which then included the areas that later became Queensland and Victoria. Convict labour and the presence of convicts and their chain gangs was now regarded negatively. Further, and importantly to the growing colonial economy, the convicts' skill levels were low, if not non-existent, and were rarely in the kinds of work needed.
Thus, the aim to make New South Wales more attractive for free settlers, preferably young married couples, with or without children, with the required work skills. Ultimately, it was probable the idea of the wealthy drivers of the policy change intended to make up for the loss of cheap convict labour by making New South Wales so attractive to immigrants that the labour pool would increase to a level which would enable the creation of a pool of competing appropriately skilled workers who would have to accept lower wages or remain unemployed in the years before any idea of welfare support.
Or maybe, as some historians represent, the employers' wives just wanted house servants they could trust more than former convicts and their children. Or not!
Whatever, and the truth is usually more complex than simple sentences can represent without multiple ifs, buts, and maybes over hundreds of pages, the transportation of convicts to New South Wales stopped in 1841. As they completed their sentences the number of convicts dropped dramatically, and as time went on the proportion of the population who arrived as convicts began to die off.
So, what does all this have to do with Caroline Chisholm? Well, she arrived in Sydney in 1839, in the middle of the appalling schemozzle the British government and the New South Wales pressure groups made of the various 1830s immigration programs. Neither government nor pressure groups appeared to remember that the subjects of the immigration program were human, or that as such they required certain types of assistance, rather than putting them on a boat for several months and dumping them on a Sydney wharf.
Of course, the truth (or, at least, Lex's "truth"!) is policy implementation at the time was effectively sociopathic, the human impacts of government programs were of no great concern to either policy promoters, policy developers, or policy implementers. The exceptions to this general rule were rarely involved in direct oversight of the actual implementation, and so the inhumane aspects were not generally overseen by anyone who cared.
Even less so, of course (!), if the subjects of the program were women. Or, of course, any minority group you would care to name which has suffered at the hands of oppressive scum. You'll note we did not refer to "other" minority groups, as under what we would regard as "proper" circumstances, being those we are approaching in 21st century Australia, male births are in a higher proportion than female births, but female survival rates are greater than for males. The outcome marginally "favours" females, leading to a slight majority of females in the overall population.
In the 19th century, howeverordinarily women are in an almost or actual majority. Under normal circumstances, as hopefully exist at the time of writing (2018), women are in the majority, largely because the rates of miscarriage of male foetuses, and the death of male babies and young men is higher than that of females of the same stages of development and ages. And, of relevance to our times, of course, is the comparatively recent great reduction in the death of women in or as a consequence of childbirth and/or pregnancy.
In the 19th century, and every other damned century, no-one in power cared much about the impacts of anything on women. But in 1839, Caroline Chisholm began to undertake that role in their place. For this work, the anglican christian sect has made her their equivalent of a saint. Caroline's own religious sect, the roman catholic christians, have not seen fit to so acknowledge her. One wonders if this has anything to do with the fact the anglicans are generally more open to female participation in the church hierarchy, albeit incompletely and later than most other christian sects, than the roman catholics, whose hierarchy is still completely male.
Some took up farms, others established businesses of various kinds, including whaling and sealing. The former employed convicts, much cheaper than free workers.
Added to them were the soldiers, responsible for guarding convicts and the colony, who had served their time, or if they were officers had bought their way out of the army, or were in the process of corruptly enriching themselves with bogus land grants.
So, the numbers of free settlers very gradually increased, despite occasional efforts by London to keep the colony as a prison. Along the way, the colony began to make a profit, principally, but not only, from the sheep's back, led by the Australian version of Spain's merino sheep developed principally by Elizabeth Macarthur and her violently aggressive, mentally ill husband. And as private profit potential grew, so did the demand for workers.
As time went on, and the convict population grew, the British government realised they didn't have enough people to make use of them.
Initially, the cheap labour available from the convict pens filled the need left by a shortage of free workers. But as settlement spread, and the various industries grew, especially the wool industry, demand outstripped the convict supply. In response, free workers were increasingly shipped in, and in the 1830s various immigration programs were set in place.
A writer in the London Quarterly Review of June, 1841 (p. 56, the writer is unnamed, at least in our copy) stated that in 1838 the population of New South Wales (which at that time included what are now Victoria and Queensland) was in the order of 77,000 - well, 77,000 people without a skerrick of known First Australian heritage. Of these around 28,000 were convicts and 49,000 free folk, around a third of whom were convicts who had completed their sentences, generally known as emancipists. So, by this time, free settlers were well on the way to doubling the convict population, and would thoroughly pass it in the next few years.
But, almost inevitably considering the folk in London didn't really give a stuff about a joint full of the scum of Britain, as the governing class mostly thought of them, at the arse end of the earth - or, rather, at the other arse end of the earth to England! Despite some worthy mouthings and occasionally, rarely for the rulers of Britain, some good intentions, little they said had much impact in New South Wales. And such good intentions as did exist tended to fall apart when it came to their implementation, with which, of course, those doing the mouthing rarely, if ever, actually bothered to oversee.
From 1787 to 1839, the year Caroline arrived in Sydney, the population of the colony of New South Wales who did not have a known skerrick of First Australian heritage had grown from 0 to some 114,000 (London Quarterly Review [LQR], June 1841, p. 56 - the writer is unnamed, at least in our copy).
Having established a population of slaves, work was needed to occupy them, and, perhaps more to the point, make them too worn and broken to rebel.
Initially, convicts were put to work building colonial infrastructure and working on farms owned by corrupt military officers and the few free settlers.
As the years passed, convicts began to complete their sentences. It was government policy to prevent former convicts returning to Britain, and although some managed it (some even to end up being transported a second time!), most remained in Australia. To help some convicts with their compulsory exile, the government sometimes freely transported at least some of their family to Australia.
The First Fleet, for example, brought some free children whose parent/s were convicts, and some convicts' wives. However, the very great majority of convicts were either single or only too happy to leave their family behind. And as the great majority of convicts were male, the gender disparity for the first five or six decades of white settlement was substantial.
In this regard, the gender of convict transportees was approximately 12 men to 1 woman. This does not, however, mean 1 of every 12 male convicts was able to gain a female partner. Some women managed to marry free settlers or adult sons of former convicts, specifically chose not to marry for various reasons, including finding life as a single woman, single mother, or prostitute preferable to marrying some of the significantly less savoury male offerings coming out of Britain's male criminal underworld. And, of course, some formerly convict men married adult or almost (!) adult daughters of former convicts, and some chose not to marry.
On top of this male dominated group of former convicts, the great majority of free settlers were also male. And single! Among the reasons for single women and families with young children being reluctant to travel to the great unknown on the other side of the world was the little the Brits believed they knew. That little included the irrational belief Australia swarmed with drunken rapists and murderers, the more irrational fear of people with a completely different culture (the First Australians, if you're wondering), and the ongoing bizarre (and, again, irrational) belief they're at risk of their lives from poisonous spiders and snakes. And yet signiicantly more people were killed in their African colonies by hippopotamuses!
And, of course, considering most rapists and murderers who were caught were hanged in the homeland, and as a considerable number of unhanged (?) rapists and murderers were unhanged because they were never caught, let alone transported, especially the wealthy ones, they were probably at much greater risk if they stayed in Britain. What's more, Australia doesn't have scorpions. Yeah, well, Lex knows England's scorpions aren't particularly poisonous, but he hates scorpions, even more than he's frightened by spiders and snakes!
But, there were risks. For example, if blokes live in an environment without women, or whose only contact with women is the brief period for which they can pay, the results are almost inevitable. Since every human society of which we have any knowledge is completely or almost completely male dominated, largely or totally misogynistic, and mostly or entirely designed to serve the interests of at least a group of men, although all men are better off than most women, it would perhaps appear reasonable to assume women have no impact on the nature of a society.
That is, however, far from the truth, even though females have suffered significantly more from prejudice throughout the known history of human societies than has any male, or at least the great majority of males. Even those males on the bottom rung of almost every known human society have always known that somewhere there are females on all the rungs below him. Of course, most societies have individuals and smaller groups far down the social ladder. LGBTI folk come immediately to mind. But numerically, our above statement still stands, except in the minds of historically ignorant, self-serving bigots.
So, what's our point? An almost totally male society suffers a number of problems, apart from its inability to breed, its members having to cook all their own meals and do their own washing and all the other domestic chores women do that most men don't know about, having to find a compliant fellow member of the society who will ignore the fact they're both heterosexual males and will help satisfy their sexual urges, or a compliant animal likewise. Australia's much-vaunted concept of "mateship" has many aspects, at least some of which our society has chosen to ignore.
But apart from these types of issue, there are three extremes that created the virtual inevitability, the almost predictable outcome of the first years of white settlement in the Australian colonies. Or, indeed, anywhere else, any other time. Outcomes, of course, have no capacity for thought, or planning. They are no more than the consequence of whatever has gone before. This includes, to a very substantial degree, the influence of human input.
The three extremes of particular importance in Australia's outcome, the major causes and results of its human input were:
- First up is extreme overuse of alcohol.
- Second is extreme testosterone driven violence.
- Finally are the all-too-often extremely appalling results of the combination of both extreme alcohol and extreme violence.
Into the hodge podge of horribility to which the colonies were descending, around the 1830s the British government began various attempts to migrate young single women into the Australian colonies in an attempt to even up the gender numbers, and introduce the female influence believed essential to reducing the impacts of the three extremes.
On the other end, the free whites, especially those in the upper reaches of society, were campaigning against the continued transportation of British criminals. Why? Wouldn't this cause them problems by minimising their access to the almost free labour available from the convict system? Of course, but things were changing in New South Wales, which then included the areas that later became Queensland and Victoria. Convict labour and the presence of convicts and their chain gangs was now regarded negatively. Further, and importantly to the growing colonial economy, the convicts' skill levels were low, if not non-existent, and were rarely in the kinds of work needed.
Thus, the aim to make New South Wales more attractive for free settlers, preferably young married couples, with or without children, with the required work skills. Ultimately, it was probable the idea of the wealthy drivers of the policy change intended to make up for the loss of cheap convict labour by making New South Wales so attractive to immigrants that the labour pool would increase to a level which would enable the creation of a pool of competing appropriately skilled workers who would have to accept lower wages or remain unemployed in the years before any idea of welfare support.
Or maybe, as some historians represent, the employers' wives just wanted house servants they could trust more than former convicts and their children. Or not!
Whatever, and the truth is usually more complex than simple sentences can represent without multiple ifs, buts, and maybes over hundreds of pages, the transportation of convicts to New South Wales stopped in 1841. As they completed their sentences the number of convicts dropped dramatically, and as time went on the proportion of the population who arrived as convicts began to die off.
So, what does all this have to do with Caroline Chisholm? Well, she arrived in Sydney in 1839, in the middle of the appalling schemozzle the British government and the New South Wales pressure groups made of the various 1830s immigration programs. Neither government nor pressure groups appeared to remember that the subjects of the immigration program were human, or that as such they required certain types of assistance, rather than putting them on a boat for several months and dumping them on a Sydney wharf.
Of course, the truth (or, at least, Lex's "truth"!) is policy implementation at the time was effectively sociopathic, the human impacts of government programs were of no great concern to either policy promoters, policy developers, or policy implementers. The exceptions to this general rule were rarely involved in direct oversight of the actual implementation, and so the inhumane aspects were not generally overseen by anyone who cared.
Even less so, of course (!), if the subjects of the program were women. Or, of course, any minority group you would care to name which has suffered at the hands of oppressive scum. You'll note we did not refer to "other" minority groups, as under what we would regard as "proper" circumstances, being those we are approaching in 21st century Australia, male births are in a higher proportion than female births, but female survival rates are greater than for males. The outcome marginally "favours" females, leading to a slight majority of females in the overall population.
In the 19th century, howeverordinarily women are in an almost or actual majority. Under normal circumstances, as hopefully exist at the time of writing (2018), women are in the majority, largely because the rates of miscarriage of male foetuses, and the death of male babies and young men is higher than that of females of the same stages of development and ages. And, of relevance to our times, of course, is the comparatively recent great reduction in the death of women in or as a consequence of childbirth and/or pregnancy.
In the 19th century, and every other damned century, no-one in power cared much about the impacts of anything on women. But in 1839, Caroline Chisholm began to undertake that role in their place. For this work, the anglican christian sect has made her their equivalent of a saint. Caroline's own religious sect, the roman catholic christians, have not seen fit to so acknowledge her. One wonders if this has anything to do with the fact the anglicans are generally more open to female participation in the church hierarchy, albeit incompletely and later than most other christian sects, than the roman catholics, whose hierarchy is still completely male.
Some took up farms, others established businesses of various kinds, including whaling and sealing. The former employed convicts, much cheaper than free workers.
Added to them were the soldiers, responsible for guarding convicts and the colony, who had served their time, or if they were officers had bought their way out of the army, or were in the process of corruptly enriching themselves with bogus land grants.
So, the numbers of free settlers very gradually increased, despite occasional efforts by London to keep the colony as a prison. Along the way, the colony began to make a profit, principally, but not only, from the sheep's back, led by the Australian version of Spain's merino sheep developed principally by Elizabeth Macarthur and her violently aggressive, mentally ill husband. And as private profit potential grew, so did the demand for workers.
As time went on, and the convict population grew, the British government realised they didn't have enough people to make use of them.
Initially, the cheap labour available from the convict pens filled the need left by a shortage of free workers. But as settlement spread, and the various industries grew, especially the wool industry, demand outstripped the convict supply. In response, free workers were increasingly shipped in, and in the 1830s various immigration programs were set in place.
A writer in the London Quarterly Review of June, 1841 (p. 56, the writer is unnamed, at least in our copy) stated that in 1838 the population of New South Wales (which at that time included what are now Victoria and Queensland) was in the order of 77,000 - well, 77,000 people without a skerrick of known First Australian heritage. Of these around 28,000 were convicts and 49,000 free folk, around a third of whom were convicts who had completed their sentences, generally known as emancipists. So, by this time, free settlers were well on the way to doubling the convict population, and would thoroughly pass it in the next few years.
But, almost inevitably considering the folk in London didn't really give a stuff about a joint full of the scum of Britain, as the governing class mostly thought of them, at the arse end of the earth - or, rather, at the other arse end of the earth to England! Despite some worthy mouthings and occasionally, rarely for the rulers of Britain, some good intentions, little they said had much impact in New South Wales. And such good intentions as did exist tended to fall apart when it came to their implementation, with which, of course, those doing the mouthing rarely, if ever, actually bothered to oversee.
By the time Caroline Chisholm arrived in Sydney in 1839, the population of New South Wales (which at that time included what are now Victoria and Queensland) was in the order of 114,000. This was an increase on the population on 1 January, 1838 of some 38,000, and on the population in 1835 of around 74,000. This substantial rate of increase was being led by the immigration of these free settlers.
Problematically, most of the free immigrants were men, doing little to improve the colony's gender disparity, which among convicts was around 12:1, males to females (LQR, op cit), and among the free settlers 11:4 (LQR, op cit). Of course, around one third of the latter included freed convicts (or "emancipists") (LQR, op cit), among whom the disparity would be around that for convicts. But it also included the growing number of Australian-born, whose gender disparity would be much as our own - that is slightly more males born, but a slightly higher proportion of females survive, leading to a slightly higher proportion of females to males.
The LQR writer rather hits the nail on the head regarding this gender disparity:
"The consequence of this may well be imagined ..."
He goes on to provide his solution:
Problematically, most of the free immigrants were men, doing little to improve the colony's gender disparity, which among convicts was around 12:1, males to females (LQR, op cit), and among the free settlers 11:4 (LQR, op cit). Of course, around one third of the latter included freed convicts (or "emancipists") (LQR, op cit), among whom the disparity would be around that for convicts. But it also included the growing number of Australian-born, whose gender disparity would be much as our own - that is slightly more males born, but a slightly higher proportion of females survive, leading to a slightly higher proportion of females to males.
The LQR writer rather hits the nail on the head regarding this gender disparity:
"The consequence of this may well be imagined ..."
He goes on to provide his solution:
The situation in the Highlands and Islands was unbelievably terrible. Most people know about the highland clearances. For those who don't, in a nutshell (?! Well, perhaps a couple of coconuts!) the social structure in those lands was tribal. We know these tribes as clans. Each tribe controlled land, fought for it, defended it, died for it. They were centred around a warlord who fulfilled a patriarchal role - recognising that some were good men, others were scum. But, the warlord owned neither the land nor the tribal members.
As time went on, ideas percolated up from south of the border. Surnames were the least of them, needed for the taxation concepts the anglicised lowland kings brought up from the comparatively wealthy England. The taxation, of course, was necessary to pay for the lowland kings' and their lords' needs.
The kings had primarily been warlords, a strongman the other tribal warlords allowed to lead their combined tribal armies into battle. The following is arguable, but in our belief more likely a history than that described by Shakespeare! The documentary evidence is vague, extremely limited, and sometimes contradictory.
The last highlander to be king was probably a bloke called Macbeth. Well, actually, it was his stepson Lulach, Macbeth's wife's son by a previous marriage, the husband of whom had beden challenged by and killed by Macbeth. At that time, Macbeth was a major lord. The king of Scotland was a weak scumbag called Duncan. The king had made his way up his lords' noses with his taxation demands and weak rule, so he was killed by Macbeth, who was accepted as Duncan's replacement.
Macbeth was apparently a good king, and seems to have ruled for around 12 years. He trusted his sidekicks enough, apparently, to go on a visit to Rome. But Duncan's grandson, yes, a bloke called Malcolm, who had hidden out in England, and been raised by the English. Eventually, he returned at the head of an English army he used to overthrow and kill Macbeth, and then Macbeth's unfortunate teenaged stepson Lulach, who had been declared king by Macbeth's remaining highland supporters.
Malcolm had little or no interest in the gaelic culture or language. He took the opportunity to introduce the Norman-style feudalism being gradually introduced by the Norman-raised, Norman-mothered, roman catholic King Edward, and later by the Norman Duke William the Bastard. One of the lesser claimants for the English throne after Edward's death in 1066 was Edgar, the Saxo-Norman Aetheling, or Crown Prince, who was probably born and raised in exile in what is today called Hungary. Edgar was only teenaged, and was chased out of England easily by the Normans, having been betrayed by understandably lying Saxon lords trying to suck up to the brutal and truly scary Norman William who reduced many of the northern English to starvation and, allegedly, cannibalism.
Edgar escaped into Scotland with his sister, Margaret, along with, allegedly, the progenitor of Scotland's Borthwick family. Malcolm, attracted to Margaret, married her. Margaret, often known as "Saint" Margaret, is held responsible for the replacement of the Celtic form of christianity with roman catholicism. It is possible/probable Malcolm had a first wife, but little, or next-to-nothing is known about her.
One rumour is Malcolm's first wife had been Macbeth's wife, even having the same name, but the Macbeth connection seems unlikely as her age would probably not fit. Another rumour is Malcolm had her murdered to enable his marriage to Margaret. While this seems more possible, there's no currently provable evidence of any kind. Not even of her existence, let alone her death.
Malcolm was known, among other things, as Malcolm Canmore. "Canmore", in one possible meaning, is "big head", although it's normally translated along the lines of "great chief". We had a good laugh at the "big head" option, but wonder if "head" could, in those days, mean something the same as one of the ways we use it, as "head" of something. Whatever, if not a joke about his hat size, "number one chief", an equal among equals, is probably a good translation, and would be closest to the role and status of a traditional Scottish leader.
But, Malcolm introduced the feudal idea of a leader being a king, rather than chief of chiefs - superior, not the leader of equals. As such, he drove forwards the idea he owned all of Scotland, and controlled who was lord of which areas. He was assisted in this by having some Normans to replace especially some lowland lords distrusted by the king, (among them, for example, the father of the bloke known as Robert "the" Bruce, who was really Robert, pronounced "Robair", de Brus).
This feudal social disease gradually spread its way into the highlands and islands, and the people lost any say in who their warlord was, and perhaps more devastatingly, any absolute right to profit or even sustenance obtained from what had been their clan lands. And as the lord could give, he could also take away. And, of course, so could the king, meaning if their current lord peeved the king, they could find themselves under the control of someone completely unconnected with their clan, and even possibly a long term clan enemy. If quick, the prior lord could at least do a runner, but the great majority of the clan had no such option.
As more time passed, the lords were anglicised, educated in English schools, and began to speak English as their first and eventually only language, losing the Gaelic spoken by their people and with it their understanding of highland culture and tradition, eventually leaving the common highlanders and islanders speaking Gaelic, a language not understood and regarded as savage and primitive by the other Scots. The lords' lives began to be spent more in Edinburgh, and later London, than on their lands, and the cost of their lives began to stretch beyond their lands' capacity to pay.
By then it suited the lords, whose people still naively regarded as their clan chiefs, to do what the kings had done, that is, use the idea of feudalism, backed by god's desires, as the pope authorised, to claim the lands the kings awarded them as theirs, capable of being used for the profit of the lord alone, so long as the lord paid the king's taxes. In other words, the idea the clan chief managed the land in trust for the clan members no longer suited the lords.
Thus, in essence, the lords stole the land, with the assistance of the king and his concept of feudalism, and the encouragement and authorisation of their peers and "superiors" in the feudal and religious systems, completely dispossessing the people of the clan. The lord moved from being clan patriarch, the father of the clan, responsible to and at least theoretically appointed and replaceable by the clan members, to the clan members' landlord.
Eventually, this led to the clearances, as the lords realised they could only pay their increasing bills by replacing the people living on "their" (the lords') land with four-legged, woolly money-makers shaking their shitty-tailed booties around the population-deserted highlands. The people were forced into areas it was impossible to farm, or to areas where they had to survive by fishing, something most knew nothing about. On the tiny island of Iona, the island on which Lachlan Macquarie was born, some were allowed to stay on the island, but they had no land to grow food, the fishing was next-to-impossible, so they were reduced to eating seaweed, and gradually, under the eyes of the then owner of the part of the island on which they had once lived, starved to death.
In the mid-1830s, the situation was so bad even the London government and its English overlords took notice, and recognised something had to be done. And thank goodness for small mercies, because not long afterwards they chose to ignore the even worse situation in Ireland and the Scottish highlands and islands, making a consciously genocidal decision to commit what today we would call "genocide", by potato blight.
But back to the mid-1830s. The harvests, such as they were, failed, the fishing failed, and even the poor buggers depending on the collection of seaweed found their seaweed industry failing as cheaper alternatives were found. Not that the gatherers and processors were responsible for the cost of the seaweed. They were paid bugger all for appalling workloads. A small proportion of the seaweed was used in cooking, but as the starving folk on Mull were to prove, it was not suitable as the sole food. The rest was processed for use as fertiliser, and as a source of various minerals and products such as soda, potash, and iodine used in a wide range of industrial processes.
The sociopathically corrupt bastards who sat on their stolen land showed their true nature, and history records them and their names, but those of few of their victims. This is the wrong way around. We choose not to name these criminals, creatures of a system that specialised in corrupting those not already sociopathic, as they deserve nothing less than to be forgotten, forever. But their deeds must be remembered.
So, some few Scots observed this situation with a sense of guilt, or maybe humanity. These included several senior members of the Presbyterian church, who were receiving a string of appalling reports from their ministers in the field. This is but one, from Coll Macdonald, minister for Portree, Isle of Skye, in a letter dated 18 February, 1837 (Donaldson, p 61):
As time went on, ideas percolated up from south of the border. Surnames were the least of them, needed for the taxation concepts the anglicised lowland kings brought up from the comparatively wealthy England. The taxation, of course, was necessary to pay for the lowland kings' and their lords' needs.
The kings had primarily been warlords, a strongman the other tribal warlords allowed to lead their combined tribal armies into battle. The following is arguable, but in our belief more likely a history than that described by Shakespeare! The documentary evidence is vague, extremely limited, and sometimes contradictory.
The last highlander to be king was probably a bloke called Macbeth. Well, actually, it was his stepson Lulach, Macbeth's wife's son by a previous marriage, the husband of whom had beden challenged by and killed by Macbeth. At that time, Macbeth was a major lord. The king of Scotland was a weak scumbag called Duncan. The king had made his way up his lords' noses with his taxation demands and weak rule, so he was killed by Macbeth, who was accepted as Duncan's replacement.
Macbeth was apparently a good king, and seems to have ruled for around 12 years. He trusted his sidekicks enough, apparently, to go on a visit to Rome. But Duncan's grandson, yes, a bloke called Malcolm, who had hidden out in England, and been raised by the English. Eventually, he returned at the head of an English army he used to overthrow and kill Macbeth, and then Macbeth's unfortunate teenaged stepson Lulach, who had been declared king by Macbeth's remaining highland supporters.
Malcolm had little or no interest in the gaelic culture or language. He took the opportunity to introduce the Norman-style feudalism being gradually introduced by the Norman-raised, Norman-mothered, roman catholic King Edward, and later by the Norman Duke William the Bastard. One of the lesser claimants for the English throne after Edward's death in 1066 was Edgar, the Saxo-Norman Aetheling, or Crown Prince, who was probably born and raised in exile in what is today called Hungary. Edgar was only teenaged, and was chased out of England easily by the Normans, having been betrayed by understandably lying Saxon lords trying to suck up to the brutal and truly scary Norman William who reduced many of the northern English to starvation and, allegedly, cannibalism.
Edgar escaped into Scotland with his sister, Margaret, along with, allegedly, the progenitor of Scotland's Borthwick family. Malcolm, attracted to Margaret, married her. Margaret, often known as "Saint" Margaret, is held responsible for the replacement of the Celtic form of christianity with roman catholicism. It is possible/probable Malcolm had a first wife, but little, or next-to-nothing is known about her.
One rumour is Malcolm's first wife had been Macbeth's wife, even having the same name, but the Macbeth connection seems unlikely as her age would probably not fit. Another rumour is Malcolm had her murdered to enable his marriage to Margaret. While this seems more possible, there's no currently provable evidence of any kind. Not even of her existence, let alone her death.
Malcolm was known, among other things, as Malcolm Canmore. "Canmore", in one possible meaning, is "big head", although it's normally translated along the lines of "great chief". We had a good laugh at the "big head" option, but wonder if "head" could, in those days, mean something the same as one of the ways we use it, as "head" of something. Whatever, if not a joke about his hat size, "number one chief", an equal among equals, is probably a good translation, and would be closest to the role and status of a traditional Scottish leader.
But, Malcolm introduced the feudal idea of a leader being a king, rather than chief of chiefs - superior, not the leader of equals. As such, he drove forwards the idea he owned all of Scotland, and controlled who was lord of which areas. He was assisted in this by having some Normans to replace especially some lowland lords distrusted by the king, (among them, for example, the father of the bloke known as Robert "the" Bruce, who was really Robert, pronounced "Robair", de Brus).
This feudal social disease gradually spread its way into the highlands and islands, and the people lost any say in who their warlord was, and perhaps more devastatingly, any absolute right to profit or even sustenance obtained from what had been their clan lands. And as the lord could give, he could also take away. And, of course, so could the king, meaning if their current lord peeved the king, they could find themselves under the control of someone completely unconnected with their clan, and even possibly a long term clan enemy. If quick, the prior lord could at least do a runner, but the great majority of the clan had no such option.
As more time passed, the lords were anglicised, educated in English schools, and began to speak English as their first and eventually only language, losing the Gaelic spoken by their people and with it their understanding of highland culture and tradition, eventually leaving the common highlanders and islanders speaking Gaelic, a language not understood and regarded as savage and primitive by the other Scots. The lords' lives began to be spent more in Edinburgh, and later London, than on their lands, and the cost of their lives began to stretch beyond their lands' capacity to pay.
By then it suited the lords, whose people still naively regarded as their clan chiefs, to do what the kings had done, that is, use the idea of feudalism, backed by god's desires, as the pope authorised, to claim the lands the kings awarded them as theirs, capable of being used for the profit of the lord alone, so long as the lord paid the king's taxes. In other words, the idea the clan chief managed the land in trust for the clan members no longer suited the lords.
Thus, in essence, the lords stole the land, with the assistance of the king and his concept of feudalism, and the encouragement and authorisation of their peers and "superiors" in the feudal and religious systems, completely dispossessing the people of the clan. The lord moved from being clan patriarch, the father of the clan, responsible to and at least theoretically appointed and replaceable by the clan members, to the clan members' landlord.
Eventually, this led to the clearances, as the lords realised they could only pay their increasing bills by replacing the people living on "their" (the lords') land with four-legged, woolly money-makers shaking their shitty-tailed booties around the population-deserted highlands. The people were forced into areas it was impossible to farm, or to areas where they had to survive by fishing, something most knew nothing about. On the tiny island of Iona, the island on which Lachlan Macquarie was born, some were allowed to stay on the island, but they had no land to grow food, the fishing was next-to-impossible, so they were reduced to eating seaweed, and gradually, under the eyes of the then owner of the part of the island on which they had once lived, starved to death.
In the mid-1830s, the situation was so bad even the London government and its English overlords took notice, and recognised something had to be done. And thank goodness for small mercies, because not long afterwards they chose to ignore the even worse situation in Ireland and the Scottish highlands and islands, making a consciously genocidal decision to commit what today we would call "genocide", by potato blight.
But back to the mid-1830s. The harvests, such as they were, failed, the fishing failed, and even the poor buggers depending on the collection of seaweed found their seaweed industry failing as cheaper alternatives were found. Not that the gatherers and processors were responsible for the cost of the seaweed. They were paid bugger all for appalling workloads. A small proportion of the seaweed was used in cooking, but as the starving folk on Mull were to prove, it was not suitable as the sole food. The rest was processed for use as fertiliser, and as a source of various minerals and products such as soda, potash, and iodine used in a wide range of industrial processes.
The sociopathically corrupt bastards who sat on their stolen land showed their true nature, and history records them and their names, but those of few of their victims. This is the wrong way around. We choose not to name these criminals, creatures of a system that specialised in corrupting those not already sociopathic, as they deserve nothing less than to be forgotten, forever. But their deeds must be remembered.
So, some few Scots observed this situation with a sense of guilt, or maybe humanity. These included several senior members of the Presbyterian church, who were receiving a string of appalling reports from their ministers in the field. This is but one, from Coll Macdonald, minister for Portree, Isle of Skye, in a letter dated 18 February, 1837 (Donaldson, p 61):