Scotfamtree book store

We have a vast selection of books for sale
via our wee shop.A few examples are
shown here.

About the Author
After graduating from St Andrews University
with an honours degree in history in 1970,
Elspeth Wills has spent her career as a
researcher, interpreter and writer within
advertising, marketing, economic development
and visitor attraction environments. She has
written over a dozen books on subjects as
varied as natural history, new town development
and Scottish innovation.

About the Author
Alistair Moffat was born and raised in Kelso.
He took degrees at the universities of St
Andrews, Edinburgh and London and played
rugby for Kelso and his universities. In 1976
he took charge of the Edinburgh Festival
Fringe as it grew into the largest arts
festival in the world.

About the Author
Samuel Johnson became famous as a
poet and a moral essayist before completing
his most famous project, The Dictionary of
the English Language. James Boswell met
Samuel Johnson in 1763, when the two
began their trip around the Hebrides, and is
celebrated not only as Johnson's biographer
but also for the disarming honesty of his
personal diaries. Formerly a lecturer in Celtic
in Glasgow and Edinburgh universities, Ronald
Black is Gaelic Editor of The
and a columnist in the West Highland Free Press.
In addition to numerous academic articles he is
author or editor of: Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair:
The Ardnamurchan Years, An Tuil: Anthology
of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse,
An Lasair: Anthology of 18th Century Scottish
Gaelic Verse, Eilein na h-Oige: The Poems of
Fr Allan McDonald and The Gaelic Otherworld.


Our Bookstore

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/scotlanfamily-21

Beggars

An Act for the Punishments of ‘Randy Beggars, Thiggars and
Egyptian Sorners’ was passed in 1698 which permitted beggars,
vagabonds or vagrants after conviction to be whipped,
then burned through the ear-lobe with a needle or a hot
iron about one inch in diameter and sent to another county.
Magistrates began sentencing those convicted to be
transported to the West Indies.Their numbers increased
during the ‘seven ill years’ of 1695-1701. The harvests
were ruined by poor weather and food prices rose
causing a parallelrise in poverty, begging and thieving.


Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun reckoned that there were ‘around
100,000-200,000’ vagrants in Scotland; he advocated making
them free slave labour and seized on transportation as a
means of disposing them. He decided to make an example of
the worst elements of them, called ']ockies’, and he
persuaded the Government to present 300-400 men to the
state of Venice to serve in their galleys against the
‘common enemies of Christendom’ - the Moors. Fifteen
hundred Scots soldiers, taken as prisoners at the
Battle of Worcester ln 1687, were transported to Guinea
to work in the gold mines.

Thirty- two women convicted of a variety of crimes at the
Magistrates Court in Edinburgh in March 1695, chose banishment
without trial to the plantations in America rather than be
put in prison. In ]une of the same year, ]anet Cook of Leith
also agreed to This punishment and promised never to return
under penalty of death. In January 1696, Elizabeth
Waterstone was also banished, without trial but with her
own consent, to the plantations.

This situation occurred on a number of occasions over a wide
period of time. A horse—stealer, Robert Alexander in 1698, and
William Baillie, a gipsy, in 1699, received a stay of execution and
Were put ‘under pain of death’ should they attempt to return.

Four boys, notorious thieves, and eight women who were
that and worse, were called before the magistrates of
Edinburgh, and ‘interrogat whether or not they would
consent freely to their own banishment furth this kingdom,
and go to his majesty’s plantations in America...’


Extract from:Domestic Annals of Scotland, (first edition)
by Robert Chambers, 1874.The entire book is being
digitised (over the coming winter)
for the benefit of our members.We have approx
200, 19th Century(Scottish)Historical books ,100 of
which ,have already been digitised.