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The
Journal of Scottish Historical Studies (formerly Scottish
Economic and Social History) is published by Edinburgh University
Press on behalf of the Economic and Social History Society of
Scotland. It is a fully double-blind peer-reviewed outlet for the
best research in social, economic and cultural history, in
historical geography and anthropology, and in historical theory. It
includes regular research and review articles, news and book
reviews, and also has occasional interviews, symposia on key books,
and appreciations of incidents, sources and ideas in the writing of
Scotland’s history.
Here is a little from
one article that is currently available to read for free...
Women at Work: Innkeeping in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland
1790–1840
Between 1790 and 1840 Scotland's Highlands and Islands saw a rise in
the number of travellers due to transportation changes, war on the
Continent, and popular fiction. Consequently, the number of inns
increased in response to this shift in local travel patterns and
influx of visitors. By examining where the growth in inns happened,
who managed them, and what services were offered, this article
argues that the Highlands and Islands economy was both complex and
commercial. It establishes that rural women were innkeepers of
multifaceted hospitality operations responding to market demands and
enabling economic diversity in their communities, the result of
which was the hospitality infrastructure for tourism.
In 1834 Janet McLaren
was the sole innkeeper at Amulree Inn. Managing a business that was
a hub of activity, her long days were spent juggling the competing
demands of guests, suppliers, and locals stopping in for
refreshment. If not providing overnight accommodation or renting
horses to travellers, she was hiring men to work her hay fields,
buying bread from the local baker, or selling bottles of whisky to
road construction workers.2 Janet was innkeeping in Scotland's
Highland Perthshire when people were increasingly travelling into
and throughout the Highlands and Islands. Between 1790 and 1840,
global developments, literature, and transportation improvements
affected travel decisions. English gentry, fascinated by
Macpherson's Ossian or the works of Sir Walter Scott, ventured
north, away from a warring Continent in search of the Romantic and
sublime. New public transportation options, such as steam ships,
stagecoaches, and mail-coaches, and the construction of Thomas
Telford's roads and canals, eased the journey and improved access.3
This influx of visitors and greater movement of locals within the
Highlands and Islands led to an increase in accommodation provision
and related services. Women, like Janet, were innkeepers throughout
the Highlands and Islands responding to the opportunity by
commercialising their domestic responsibilities and either opening
their own doors or renting and managing the inns being built by
landowners.
Historians position the Highlands and Islands at this time as having
a subsistence economy, but this research on innkeeping will
demonstrate that it was far more commercialised. Reinforcing the
work of David Taylor, Marianne McLean, Adamson et al and others,
this paper argues that there was a thriving cash economy in the
Highlands and Islands and that inns, through the exchange of money,
services and ideas, were centres of commercial activity.4 This
presents an opportunity to argue against historiography that
positions the rural Highlands and Islands as a ‘backward economic
region’, as suggested by Martin Rackwitz, and Highlanders, and
especially women, as uninterested in, or incapable of, identifying
economic opportunities and managing successful businesses without
assistance from outsiders.5 Like their urban counterparts, both male
and female innkeepers in the rural Highlands and Islands developed
trade networks to support servicing their customers and operating
their establishments. Innkeepers played a primary role in connecting
locals to commercial opportunities and as a result were influential
business leaders, a position that elevated the status of women in
these roles. The hospitality businesses and supporting frameworks
that resulted from the efforts of innkeepers in this commercialised
economy became the infrastructure for tourism in the Highlands and
Islands.
The experience of the tourist in the Highlands and Islands attracts
the attention of historians, as do urban inns, as a backdrop for
research on related topics, such as whisky and the development of
public buildings. The rural innkeeper, and especially women doing
this work, is neglected. Rather than take Kevin James' path of
focussing on the male travel writer and their tourist rituals, this
paper centres the discussion on the person delivering, rather than
receiving, the service.6 Specifically, it takes us into the life of
rural female innkeepers in the Highlands and Islands, re-positioning
women from drink-selling curiosities, as suggested to some degree by
Anthony Cooke, to strategic businesswomen.7 It draws parallels to
Bob Harris' and Charles McKean's work on inns as gathering places
for economic and social interactions, but considers the services
delivered and the business generated from the perspective of the
female innkeeper, rather than the meeting attendee. In contrast to
Harris and McKean, the research demonstrates that not all Scottish
inns were ‘something … to be shunned or endured’ and that female
innkeepers took an entrepreneurial approach to their business.8
Whether opening their own doors or managing a landowner's inn,
female innkeepers acted on changing circumstances and enabled
commercial opportunity. This paper focuses on women at work as
innkeepers in the rural Highlands and Islands, thus addressing this
neglected area of research.
Information on female innkeepers and observations on lodging
operations are primarily found in sources produced by observers and
outsiders. Diaries written by gentry provide colourful detail as
seen through the traveller lens, whereas travel guidebooks and
newspaper articles, some clearly dictated by the women themselves,
are often more pragmatic. Adding to this, the first and second
Statistical Account of Scotland provides a bookended perspective of
inns in the period under study, while including data from maps and
post office directories serves to corroborate and expand the
research in terms of numbers.9 Only occasionally do we find primary
sources from a woman's hand in the form of receipts or accounting
notes, so other sources are included, such as archaeological
evidence. Building on the work of Donald Beck Adamson and Warren
Bailieaza and the excavation of the drovers' inn, Tigh Caol, in
Strathlachan, this article incorporates the material culture
findings into the discussion on work environment.10 This connects
inns to landscape and provides material evidence of objects used by
innkeepers in the spaces in which they worked. Together
archaeological and archival sources suggest a more comprehensive
picture when evidence from female innkeepers' hands is lacking.
Addressing leisure tourists, as discussed by Alastair J. Durie, this
research also considers other income sources for an inn, including
locals, people who travelled for their work, such as drovers, and
ancillary services, such as horse and cart rentals.11 This builds on
discussions by Richard Edward Lowden, and A. R. B. Haldane on
drovers, and establishes that inns in the Highlands and Islands had
multiple revenue sources.12 Available archival information has
resulted in a sample of inns and related housing from across the
area, including some Hebridean islands, the western seaboard, the
southern and central Highlands, and the far north. Examples from the
Highland/Lowland border area are included, particularly places near
tourist draws such as Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. The discussion
excludes the Northern Isles.
This paper will first identify the types and locations of lodgings
in the Highlands and Islands and then analyse how and why numbers
increased. It will argue that the response by locals and landowners
to the increase in travellers resulted in a hospitality
infrastructure and in related services for travellers that supported
tourism, the rural economy and presented opportunities for women.
Building on the knowledge of urban female innkeepers from England
and Aberdeen as discussed by Leonore Davidoff, Catherine Hall, and
Deborah Simonton, the prevalence of female innkeepers in rural areas
will then be considered, particularly their options for income
generation and how they commercialised domestic tasks in response to
market demands.13 It will become apparent that a woman's status
increased when she became an innkeeper due to her social and
economic power and connection to the cash economy. The final section
will consider an innkeeper's work environment and use Amulree
innkeeper, Janet McLaren, as a case study to take a close look at
the daily life of women in this role. It will discuss inn
operations, types of customers, the provision of credit, revenue
sources, waged workers and the hiring and firing of suppliers. It
will demonstrate that female innkeepers went beyond domestic tasks
in their service delivery and experienced unique operational
challenges due to distance from urban centres. In addition, it will
argue that female innkeepers were entrepreneurial businesswomen who
had agency, enabling economic diversity in their communities. This
paper will argue that female innkeepers in the Highlands and
Islands, like Janet McLaren, played an active role in the
increasingly commercialised and cash economy, creating diversified
hospitality businesses that benefitted locals and the burgeoning
tourism industry.
You can read more of this article at:
https://euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/jshs.2017.0218 and
there are many other free articles to read on their site. |
