Well, in preparation for today's archives searching I thought I would reread the photocopies from Inverness. In doing so I realised that I had suppressed part of what I had read and thus not given a complete account of what was therein... I stayed up 'til almost 1am this morning transcribing the photocopies so they would be portable for the days' research.
Then today I took myself off to the register office, spoke to someone in West register house on the phone to explain what I was looking for and then walked half way across town to the said house to view said documents.
So I got to West Register house, had to show my passport just to get in and get a visitor pass (in the style of an RSL club sign-in book) and then go upstairs for advice.
I spoke to the archivist on duty who I had been speaking to on the phone before so she knew what I was after and had the refernce numbers ready.
It happened that the minutes of proceeding books for high court cases from 1790 are kept there so I was in luck but it would be a page-turning exercise, real needle-in-haystack stuff.
Sitting at my assigned desk I await the book and busy myself reviewing the reading room guidelines, usual stuff no pens, food, but also no knives or cameras.
And then with the flourish of a pillow being placed before me (to rest the book on) there it is. The high court/court of justiciary cases book for Scotland 1790. Bound in degenerating cream leather which is flaking, and tied with cream string (not quite the red tape I am accustomed to).
I untie the string and carefully (with bare hands - have they not heard of good archival practice? I am amazed things are in good condition but maybe noone looks at the stuff here?) open the book.
The cases are set out in a standard format, the court was on circuit throughout the shires so the cases are grouped by locality, Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness...
I am skimming the cases that have a quite standard format, A latin introduction setting out place and justice's name then the authority for the holding of the court. Then a list of juror's, usually 15 then the details of the proceedings.
Skimming, skimming, housebreaking, child murder, whipping through the streets, transportation, banishment... And bingo! I find the case and pleas of guilt. And repetition of the information I saw in Inverness, in fact I think one or the other is a duplicate (noting of course it is all written in what is now brown ink on cream watermarked pages). And then turning the pages word for word it all sinks in and then the absolute surprise of the whole treip, the whole great ancestral seartching the researching of the family tree that has become my obsession for the last 12 months, something I could never have even dreamed of finding.
I sit in Edinburgh at a desk. The few personal possessions I am permitted to take into the room sit in a transparent plastic bag on the table next to me. In front of me an almost 220 year-old book of criminal proceedings from the Scottish Highlands. And there in the faded brown ink on the stained ancient pages the mark in ink made by my ancestor in 1790 acknowledging his plea of guilt. I am gob-smacked. I am touching the page that he touched all those years ago. In what circumstances I cannot know. Was there duress? What political motivations led to his case being heard? And who had it in for my ancestor Donald and his co-accused also Donald, both with aliases? These things will likely never be known but now I think anything is possible.
It was unbelievable, surreal and almost supernatural. I think in Scotland I have had a strong sense of the supernatural... and as I prepare to leave I have not tired of it and intend to return someday. The kindness of the people, the cleanness of the air and some other indescribable 'vibe' have made me feel at home here in spite of the weather.
In looking at the minutes I wonder what was worse, to be sentenced to transportation or short-term banishment? And in either case to be 'whipt through the streets' by the hand of the common executioner or hangman as the case may be. And if a banished person re-entered the country they would again suffer whipping and then get kicked out again and so on until they had served the term of banishment. Perhaps in the end transportation was a better outcome.
And now tomorrow England beckons, I will catch a train to York and play tourist for a few days, then to Norwich on Sunday and eventually to London by the end of the week, then Munich, Hong Kong... and I'll be home in less than two weeks...
