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At the beginning of the
century Scotland, according to Fletcher of Saltoun, swarmed with beggars.
The circumstances of dearth and famine in which he wrote were exceptional.
But owing to the depression of the first half of it the number was still
comparatively large, for the professional beggar was a legacy of former
times, despite the old laws against the "sturdy" race. In 1579 Parliament
had authorised, though it did not make compulsory, an assessment for the
poor in each parish. But the enactment remained practically a dead letter
and by the year 1740 only eight parishes had taken advantage of it. The
method in vogue was that of licensing so many indigent persons in each
parish to beg within its bounds, beyond which they were not permitted to
exercise their calling, and to grant relief from the church collections for
this object. Relief was thus dependent on the charity of the people, which
was dispensed either directly in kind, or indirectly in money, through the
agency of the Kirk Session, which distributed the collections. i( Distressed
persons," such as cripples and other sufferers, who were popularly known as
"objects," were carried in carts or barrows from house to house throughout
the parish by the inmates who, after relieving their needs, expedited them
in this fashion to their neighbours. The begging fraternity invariably
turned up at marriages, funerals, and communions to get a share of the good
things going. The collections as a rule were meagre, for the people,
especially in the early part of the century, had little to spare in the form
of dyots, bodies, groats, and bawbees of which the infinitesimal parts of
the Scots shilling consisted, the shilling being only equal in value to the
English penny, and the pound to Is. 8d. sterling. Moreover, the poor box at
the church door was the receptacle for the bad copper money in circulation
which was refused at the shop or the market. When the box was opened it was
often found to contain nearly as many bad coins as good, and Kirk Sessions
were often at their wits' end to meet the demands made on them. The weekly
dole was, therefore, small, but it at least offered no temptation, as did
the statutory relief in England, to live on the rates or undermine a healthy
spirit of self respect and independence among the people, characteristic of
Scots folk in the olden days.
The improvement in
agriculture in the second half of the century, by providing more work and
higher wages, ultimately tended to diminish pauperism in the rural
districts, except in the Highlands. The progress of commerce and industry
similarly affected the towns for the better. At the same time the change in
economic conditions, by favouring the concentration of population in the
large towns, to some of which the destitute from the Highlands drifted,
tended to increase the number of the poor, without materially increasing the
means of their relief from voluntary sources, and made the problem of
pauperism a pressing one. Moreover, if wages rose, prices also rose and
providence among the working class did not necessarily increase with them.
This fact alone made the task of relieving the poor, who from various causes
increase with the growth of population in cities, a difficult one. The civic
authorities were thus compelled to face the question of compulsory
assessment versus voluntary relief in towns like Edinburgh, Glasgow, and
Paisley. There was a strong feeling against departing from the old method as
tending to lower self respect and put a premium on poverty. The ministers
were for long almost unanimously in favour of maintaining the old method of
voluntary relief. They were, however, fain to confess the inadequacy of the
church collections to cope with the task in many parishes. In the larger
towns at all events it was becoming hopeless, and Glasgow, Paisley, and
Edinburgh were compelled in the second half of the century to have recourse
to the law of 1579 and make trial of compulsory assessment. By the year 1800
ninety-three parishes had adopted this expedient.
Witchcraft was still
accounted a crime and punished as such till well into the century. The last
victim of this horrible delusion was burned at Dornoch in 1727, but happily
the abolition of the Act against witches in 1736 rendered a repetition of
such an atrocity henceforth impossible, to the consternation of all
believers in the "traffickers with Satan," including Mr W. Forbes, professor
of law at Glasgow, who in 1733 still gravely expatiated in his lectures and
his Institutes of Scots Law on the evidence of this hellish agency. Child
murder was a common crime in the first half of the century, due in part to
the rigorous ecclesiastical discipline which subjected the mother of an
illegitimate child to the obloquy of a public penance before the
congregation. Executions from this cause were at all events common before
the more humane influence of Moderatism relaxed the old censorship of
ministers and Kirk sessions. The criminal law was, however, much less brutal
than in England, where no fewer than 164 crimes involved the death penalty.
Whilst murder, or arson, or robbery of a serious nature were punished by
death, imprisonment or banishment from the burgh, with branding and a
whipping into the bargain were as a rule the only punishment for ordinary
theft. Notorious thieves of the vagabond type, known as "sorners" or
"Egyptians" were liable to banishment from the realm, and if caught in the
act were hanged. The hereditary jurisdictions which invested the greater
barons with the power of holding criminal courts within their domains had
become a grave abuse, though interested persons might still defend them. The
juries in these courts being composed of the lord's dependents, their
verdict was naturally such as the lord or his baron bailie chose to make it.
The lord's hangman or dempster was much in evidence under this arbitrary
regime, especially in the northern parts. Transportation, though illegal,
was a common device, since it enabled the impecunious baron to turn the
administration of justice to his profit by sending the accused to the
plantations in return for a money payment by the agent of some planter, as
an alternative to the death penalty. It was not till 1748, after the second
Stuart rising, that this arbitrary and corrupt jurisdiction disappeared at a
cost to the country of £152,000, or about one-fourth of what these greedy
magnates demanded. The riddance of this oppressive system was well worth the
money. Serious crime was, however, rare in Scotland and its punishment mild
in comparison with England, and such practices as the public flogging of
criminals, especially of women, ere long came to grate on the public taste
and disappeared. The prisons or tolbooths were, however, no better than in
the southern country, and the lot of their inmates, of whom the majority
were dishonest debtors, was found by John Howard towards the end of the
century to be wretched in the extreme. |
