Down the rabbit-holes with GGEL volunteers: poisoned porridge, pits, puzzling symbols and a pippin.
Recording the lost gardens and designed landscapes of East Lothian has taken us down many ‘rabbit-holes’ which were sometimes amusing, sometimes shocking, always interesting but invariably irrelevant to the report in hand and, therefore, ditched. Here we share some of these stories.
Estate histories occasionally turn up nefarious deeds – murder by poisoned porridge, as Chris Alcorn discovered when researching Ormiston Hall, or shocking 19th century social conditions experienced by colliers and their wives and children as Judy Riley uncovered when searching for information on the pits at Fountainhall.
Déja vue? That’s what Chris Alcorn found when he requested an apple tree as part of the local ‘Neighbouring Orchards Project’.
Arsenic in porridge – Murder at Ormiston Hall
The daughter of an Ormiston Hall Forrester was accused of murdering her husband and mother-in-law by arsenic poisoning in their porridge! She was hung – though not burned at the stake.
While researching Ormiston Hall as part of the Glorious Gardens: East Lothian project, I came across this reference in the National Library of Scotland on-line catalogue from 1754.
“Nicolas Cockburn, daughter of the deceast Alexander Cockburn forrester at Ormiston-hall, and relict or widow of the also deceast James Kid or Kiddie labourer or workman in Newton, in the parish of Newton and shire of Edinburgh, now prisoner in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, you are indicted and accused, at the instance of William Grant of Prestongrange, Esq; his Majesty’s Advocate … for that whereas … all wilful homicide or murder … is a crime of the most heinous nature … yet true it is, and of verity, that you … did, upon Monday the 18th day of March last, in this present year 1754, or upon one or other of the days of that month, or of the month of February immediately preceeding, or of April immediately following … prepare and administrate to your said husband, as for his dinner, a dish … into which you had put or mixed a quantity of arsenick, or some other deadly poison …”
(NLS Shelf mark – CRAWFORD.MB.1404(1-2)
On further exploration down the ‘rabbit-hole’, more was revealed:
“In 1754 Nicolas Cockburn was executed in Edinburgh for the murder of her husband James Kid and her step-mother Susan Craig after she laced their porridge with arsenic. Neighbours had told the court that Nicholas and her husband “did not live well together as man and wife ought to” and on the day of his death she had shown no “natural concern.” Similarly, Nicholas was described as harbouring ill feeling towards Susan due to her belief that she would obtain her father’s money upon his death. Although she had not initially been suspected of her husband’s murder, when the cause of Susan’s death was discovered, her neighbours raised their suspicions due to the couple’s strained relationship and a quantity of arsenic was discovered in her home.
When addressing Nicholas to sentence her to death and order that her body would be sent for dissection as per the stipulations of the Murder Act, the Lord Justice Clerk lamented the shocking nature of the crime. He noted that the punishment she received was a mild one in comparison to those inflicted upon offenders in other countries.
He was likely referring to the fact that in England the crime of a wife murdering her husband was categorised as a form of petty treason punishable by burning at the stake. The executions were often mitigated in practice by the second half of the eighteenth century as the executioner could strangle the women before they were burnt, although there were examples where this did not happen. This form of punishment was not formally abolished until 1790. Despite the extension of the English laws regarding full treason to Scotland in 1708, the crime of petty treason was not extended north of the border.”
At the time, arsenic was easily acquired as it was regularly used to combat vermin. This case prompted a national debate concerning its availability and the judges ordered local sheriffs to implement stricter controls on its sale.
(‘Scottish Women and the Hangman’s Noose’, Rachel E. Bennett, December 2017)
(https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-62018-3_4 )
Chris Alcorn
February 2024
Coal mining conditions in East Lothian in the early 19c.
Fountainhall estate by Pencaitland, East Lothian, sits on the south-eastern edge of the Lothians coalfield, though no evidence of any coal mining exists today – apart from some memorial stones and storyboards on the Pencaitland Railway Walk. Site recording revealed several pits marked on plans and maps from 1782; others, known as ‘bell pits’, were only revealed by LiDAR. Bell pits were primitive forms of mining where the seam was near the surface: a shaft was dug into the coal seam and this was then widened at the bottom, making a bell shape. As few timber props were used, they were in danger of collapsing so when the roof was considered unsafe, they were abandoned and another sunk close by. There are about twenty such abandoned bell pits in the Big Wood, north of Fountainhall House.
While researching on the John Gray Centre website (East Lothian’s Local History, Archive and Archaeology Service) I came across the transcriptions of two reports on the conditions of miners and their families in East Lothian around 1840. As I used to live in this area I was intrigued. Both reports sprang from the growing concern for miners’ welfare and particularly the condition of colliers’ wives and children in the first half of the nineteenth century. They were instrumental in bringing about the Mines and Collieries Act 1842, which regulated the working conditions of women and children.
The first report was published in 1841, titled: On the Diseases, Conditions, and Habits of the Collier Population of East Lothian. It was written by S. Scott Alison M.D. who was the Hon. Sec. of the Medical Society of London. He had been born in Edinburgh, studied medicine at the University and later in Paris and London. His first practice was in Tranent where he was surrounded by collieries and able to observe the conditions of their workers at first hand. In 1841 he moved to London where his chief study became diseases of the heart and lungs.
He compared the colliers’ babies with those of farm labourers and found them inferior. He noted that colliers’ infants were, ‘thin, skinny, and wasted, and indicate by their contracted features and sickly dirty-white, or faint-yellowish aspect, their early participation in a deteriorated physical condition.’ He put this down to the absence of the mother who was working in the colliery, unable to feed the babies sufficiently and who was herself the ‘victim of disease or intemperate habits’, and their filthy condition.
From infancy to the seventh or eighth year, Alison observed much sickness in these children. Their homes were dirty, Their mothers were absent much of the time and did not feed them properly, even giving them whisky ‘raw or diluted with warm water’, inadequate clothes which did not keep them warm ‘and by the various impurities which are almost constantly found in the abodes of this class of persons, proceeding from the inmates, which not infrequently include horses, pigs, fowls, dogs, and cats.’ He also noted that the infants were often in the care of a young girl perhaps eight to ten years old, while the parents worked.
At age seven or eight most colliers’ children started working an eight to twelve-hour day, below ground, day or night. ‘I have seldom walked or ridden through the coal villages at any hour during the night, summer, and winter, without seeing little boys and girls going to and from the collieries, with their oil lamps in their hands or stuck in their caps, lighting them on their weary way.’ Again, he observed that their physical condition was inferior to that of their peers working in farms or trades or who were at home. Their development was stunted physically and mentally: ‘The nervous system, including the various parts of the brain, are comparatively little exercised, while that of the muscles is inordinately overworked; and thus, the collier becomes more a mining or working animal than a thinking being – more a machine than a rational creature.’ Inevitably their death rate was high. For those who survived, many were maimed or crippled, their eyesight was damaged by the coal dust and difficulty in breathing was common.
By the time, and if, they reached the age of twenty, few were in perfect health. Most had breathing difficulties with coughs and expectoration, known as ‘the black spittle’.
Alison goes into some detail describing the different medical conditions that affected the men, women and children as this was primarily a medical report. He ended with his own advice for the improvement of a situation he found to be intolerable.
The second report, by R.F.Franks, was for the Children’s Employment Commission on the East of Scotland District, 1842. He interviewed managers, ministers, inn-keepers, school-teachers, colliery workers and occasionally, the owners. These are a few quotations from men, women and children working close to Fountainhall at Pencaitland and Penston Collieries. Their accounts are recorded almost verbatim.
Janet Cumming, 11 years old, Sheriff Hall. Coal-Bearer, c.1842. Courtesy of the National Mining Museum
Fountainhall estate by Pencaitland, East Lothian, sits on the south-eastern edge of the Lothians coalfield, though no evidence of any coal mining exists today – apart from some memorial stones and storyboards on the Pencaitland Railway Walk. Site recording revealed several pits marked on plans and maps from 1782; others, known as ‘bell pits’, were only revealed by LiDAR. Bell pits were primitive forms of mining where the seam was near the surface: a shaft was dug into the coal seam and this was then widened at the bottom, making a bell shape. As few timber props were used, they were in danger of collapsing so when the roof was considered unsafe, they were abandoned and another sunk close by. There are about twenty such abandoned bell pits in the Big Wood, north of Fountainhall House.
While researching on the John Gray Centre website (East Lothian’s Local History, Archive and Archaeology Service) I came across the transcriptions of two reports on the conditions of miners and their families in East Lothian around 1840. As I used to live in this area I was intrigued. Both reports sprang from the growing concern for miners’ welfare and particularly the condition of colliers’ wives and children in the first half of the nineteenth century. They were instrumental in bringing about the Mines and Collieries Act 1842, which regulated the working conditions of women and children.
The first report was published in 1841, titled: On the Diseases, Conditions, and Habits of the Collier Population of East Lothian. It was written by S. Scott Alison M.D. who was the Hon. Sec. of the Medical Society of London. He had been born in Edinburgh, studied medicine at the University and later in Paris and London. His first practice was in Tranent where he was surrounded by collieries and able to observe the conditions of their workers at first hand. In 1841 he moved to London where his chief study became diseases of the heart and lungs.
He compared the colliers’ babies with those of farm labourers and found them inferior. He noted that colliers’ infants were, ‘thin, skinny, and wasted, and indicate by their contracted features and sickly dirty-white, or faint-yellowish aspect, their early participation in a deteriorated physical condition.’ He put this down to the absence of the mother who was working in the colliery, unable to feed the babies sufficiently and who was herself the ‘victim of disease or intemperate habits’, and their filthy condition.
From infancy to the seventh or eighth year, Alison observed much sickness in these children. Their homes were dirty, Their mothers were absent much of the time and did not feed them properly, even giving them whisky ‘raw or diluted with warm water’, inadequate clothes which did not keep them warm ‘and by the various impurities which are almost constantly found in the abodes of this class of persons, proceeding from the inmates, which not infrequently include horses, pigs, fowls, dogs, and cats.’ He also noted that the infants were often in the care of a young girl perhaps eight to ten years old, while the parents worked.
At age seven or eight most colliers’ children started working an eight to twelve-hour day, below ground, day or night. ‘I have seldom walked or ridden through the coal villages at any hour during the night, summer, and winter, without seeing little boys and girls going to and from the collieries, with their oil lamps in their hands or stuck in their caps, lighting them on their weary way.’ Again, he observed that their physical condition was inferior to that of their peers working in farms or trades or who were at home. Their development was stunted physically and mentally: ‘The nervous system, including the various parts of the brain, are comparatively little exercised, while that of the muscles is inordinately overworked; and thus, the collier becomes more a mining or working animal than a thinking being – more a machine than a rational creature.’ Inevitably their death rate was high. For those who survived, many were maimed or crippled, their eyesight was damaged by the coal dust and difficulty in breathing was common.
By the time, and if, they reached the age of twenty, few were in perfect health. Most had breathing difficulties with coughs and expectoration, known as ‘the black spittle’.
Alison goes into some detail describing the different medical conditions that affected the men, women and children as this was primarily a medical report. He ended with his own advice for the improvement of a situation he found to be intolerable.
The second report, by R.F.Franks, was for the Children’s Employment Commission on the East of Scotland District, 1842. He interviewed managers, ministers, inn-keepers, school-teachers, colliery workers and occasionally, the owners. These are a few quotations from men, women and children working close to Fountainhall at Pencaitland and Penston Collieries. Their accounts are recorded almost verbatim.
Illustration Courtesy of the National Mining Museum
Note: A ‘putter’ drags carts from the coal wall (face) to pit bottom. The weight varies from 3-10 cwt. (152.5 – 508 kilos).
‘Coal-bearers’ were women and children who carried coal on their backs. Their burdens weighed from ¾ cwt – 3 cwt. (38- 152.5 kilos)
Penston colliery
William Adams, 10 years old, putter: Began to work when eight years old; came down as mother got her neck knocked out of joint, two years since, and no been able to gang (go) since. I get my licks (beating, whipping) when the work is o’er sair, (painful) and no able to draw. Knows the letters: canna get to school, it is far away. Never go kirk, as have no clothes; would if I had. We were all laid idle with typhus short time since. [Destitute and very ignorant]
Esther Peacock, 12 years old, putter: I think that I work 10 to 12 hours; have done so for eighteen months. I draw my brother’s work; mother used to assist me, but she is nearly blind from sore work and canna gang. I never got hurt by the waggons, but I get my licks sometimes. I went to school to learn the letters when father was in life, but he died three years gone with bad breath. Would like other work, has no choice; mother has seven of us, and all live and sleep in one kitchen; cannot go to kirk, as have no clothes. [Cannot read; very destitute and ignorant; no religious knowledge whatever.]
Mary Hogg, 15 years old, coal-putter: I have wrought (worked) below five years. During the summer I work out by [in the fields] as I prefer doing so to hanging on the pit as many lassies do; coal-work being no certain in summer. I much like to work above and could make as much money in the fields; I get 8d. and 10d. a-day – below is 1s.; but when I deduct what it costs me for oil and cotton, and pit clothes, the field wages go the same length, nor is it sair work. The crushing work below is only fit for horses, and most of the lassies are getting hurts of one kind or other. I frequently get my fingers crushed and my nails torn out. [Very quick, intelligent lassie. Reads very badly, has not been to any school since below; very desirous to learn. Says she would go, but there is no night-school nearer than two miles.]
Isabel Hogg, 53 years of age, was a coal-bearer: Been married 37 years; it was the practice to marry early, when the coals were all carried on women’s backs, men needed us; from the great sore labour false births are frequent and very dangerous. I have four daughters married, and all work below till they bear their bairns – one is very badly now from working while pregnant, which brought on a miscarriage from which she is not expected to recover. Collier-people suffer much more than others – my guid man died nine years since with bad breath; he lingered some years and was entirely off work 11 years before he died. You must just tell the Queen Victoria that we are guid loyal subjects; women- people here don’t mind work, but they object to horse-work; and that she would have the blessings of all the Scotch coal-women if she would get them out of the pits and send them to other labour. [Mrs. Hogg is one of the most respectable coal-wives in Penston, her rooms are all well- furnished, and the house the cleanest I have seen in East Lothian.]
Pencaitland Colliery
Andrew Gray, 11 years old, draws coal:- Was nine years old when first taken down to wheel the tubs; the drawing is difficult where there is much slush and there is plenty of that in the pit. I go to work at three in the morning; get my porridge at nine and come up at two and three, sometimes one, in the day. Been laid aside with crushes from stone falling from roof more than a month. Have just commenced the reading at Mr. Keat’s school at New Pencaitland.
John Duncan, age 11 years, coal-bearer:- Began to work at drawing coal two years since. Has only been a coal-carrier three weeks; can’t do much at it yet: it takes me 30 journeys; bring up 8 cwt. (407 kilos) or half a ton (508 kilos). The shaft is 60 feet deep and the panwood (coal waste) which I bring up 300 feet from the bottom. Father put me to this work, as the other pits were full but I do not like it; it is so very sore. Does not read or write.
David Wood, 15 years old, coal-hewer:- Began to work at nine years of age. Did work on night-shift: went below at two afternoon, returned six following morning. Pit has been very wet for some time, which had caused me to have cold sweats and fever. Have been confined five weeks; cannot move at present. When I can use my hands can write some and read very well.
George Hogg, 32 years of age, coal-hewer:- Unable to labour much now, as am fashed (troubled) with bad breath: the air below is very bad; until lately no ventilation existed. My wife did work below till she met with a serious accident last year. The cage which brings the coals up the shaft suddenly descended and crushed her almost to death. She was then four months gone in the family-way; is now quite disabled from work and no hopes given of her ever being able to return.
Agnes Grey, 14 years old, draws coals:- I work with three sisters below for support of parents: my father’s affliction is bad breath The work is very sore from bending, as the seams are so low. Not very strong; had typhus not long since. Sister is just laid by; has been so six weeks, from a severe fall on the iron rail, which cut her knee open. Have one sister deaf and dumb, learning the straw trade in Edinburgh. Mother, who has been off work two years, is going to try again next week.
You can read the full reports here:
Alison, S. Scott, ‘On the Diseases, conditions, and Habits of the collier population of East Lothian’,
Franks, R.F., ‘Children’s Employment Commission 1842’, https://www.johngraycentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Childrens-Employment-Commission-1842.pdf
Stack yards
In 1813 John Leslie of Haddington surveyed the Seacliff estate for the then owner John Hamilton Colt. (This lovely plan can be found in the NLS, in the collections of the Sligo-Smith family of Inzievar’, shelf mark: Acc.8287/189.)
Plan of the Sea Cliff Estate, by John Leslie for John Hamilton Colt, 1813, NLS
Smith/Sligo Collections, Acc.8287/189
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
In 2024 as a Glorious Gardens East Lothian volunteer, I was scrutinising Leslie’s plan trying to match up features from 1813 with features on the ground now. There was one symbol on the plan I didn’t recognise, a cross between a beehive and a well-risen muffin.
Symbols from 1813 estate plan
Reproduced with the permission of the NLS
There are three small groups of these symbols near the farm buildings of the three hamlets, Seacliff, Scoughall, and Auldhame. See extracts of the estate plans below.
Seacliff (top): the symbols appear in an area labelled as ‘Garden and outer border’ in the key
Scoughall (middle): the symbols appear in an area labelled as ‘Offices and barnyard’ in the key
Auldhame (bottom): the symbols appear in an area labelled as ‘Onstead and gardens’ in the key
Reproduced with the permission of the NLS
Having drawn a blank I contacted Chris Fleet, maps curator at the NLS, confident that if he hadn’t come across the symbols before, he would know a man who had, and indeed, he did. Archie McConnel from Dumfries Archival Mapping Project identified them as stackyards and he provided links to other stackyards appearing on estate plans.
The estate plan, from Keir parish in 1820 and 1825, shows a number of neighbouring farms with stackyards, identified using the same symbol as the Seacliff estate plan. All the stackyards, like those at Seacliff, are very near the farmhouses and cottages. See: https://maps.nls.uk/view/129392986
Extract from: Plan of the farms Porterstown, Penmurtie and Beuchan in the Parish of Keir, 1825, https://maps.nls.uk/view/129392986 reproduced with permission of NLS
Archie McConnel explained that stacks are made from the hay and straw of the various crops that the farm produced. Sometimes, the stacks could be bigger than the workers’ cottages or other farm buildings. They were generally temporary structures; this might explain why they did not appear on many plans. He found a photo from 1956 showing a row of stacks on a farm at Milton of Finavon. They looked very like the shape of the stacks on the 1813 plan.
https://newsquest.newsprints.co.uk/31790917-milton-of-finavon-stackyard-june-1956jun-1956-1/
A drawing from 1948, by William Wilson (1905 – 1972), held in the National Gallery of Scotland, shows four stacks in a farmyard, and in the foreground round stone bases which I discovered from another source, see below, were used to raise the stacks off the ground. Iron pillars could also be used for this purpose.
National Galleries. George and Isobel Neillands Collection: presented 1987, Accession. No. GMA 3328.
Googling, I found a very interesting history of stacks by Heather Holmes. Her focus is on historical agricultural implements, and she showed stacks in the making at a relatively recent agricultural show in Strathnairn.
https://blog.scottishagriculturalimplementmakers.co.uk/a-feature-of-the-stack-yard-stack-pillars/
Display at Strathnairn Farmers Association Vintage Rally and Display in 2014 showing a stack being built on iron stack pillars. Photo by Heather Holmes
The mystery is solved, and the explanation opens a window on agricultural practices which remained virtually unchanged over two centuries, and maybe much longer.
Heather Holme’s website provides many fascinating options for further burrowing down rural rabbit holes.
Marion Shawcross, March 2024
200-year-old apple tree discovered and planted
Ribston Pippin from The Book of Apples, J. Morgan and A. Richards. Photograph Judy Riley
When I visited my local Library at Piershill in Edinburgh in late 2023, I picked up a postcard offering free fruit trees. It related to the ‘Neighbouring Orchards Project’ (NOP), which is “a living artwork by artist Annie Lord of 160 apple trees planted across coastal Edinburgh and East Lothian and commissioned by Art Walk Projects. It began in 2021 involving the planting of apple trees in local front and shared gardens across Portobello, Craigmillar and Musselburgh, with plans to extend into Craigentinny in 2024”, near where I live.
https://www.artwalkporty.co.uk/project/the-neighbouring-orchard/
Each of the varieties grown has links to the area having either been cultivated or grown there in the past. The postcard from the Library offered a free fruit tree if you lived or worked in the area.
Intrigued, I applied.
This concurred with my research into Ormiston Hall as part of the Glorious Gardens East Lothian project. Earlier in the year, I had been to the Hopetoun Estate Archive and uncovered several 1816 sketches of the Ormiston Walled Garden and its younger neighbour, Belsis Walled Garden, that showed the various varieties of fruit trees around the walls c.200 year ago.
From the beautiful, but spidery handwriting on the sketches, while I could make out the usual apples, pears, plumbs, cherries, apricots and nectarines, I was a bit flummoxed as to the actual varieties of fruit trees that were described.
I had contacted the Neighbouring Orchards Project for a free fruit tree for my garden. It already has a 90-100-year-old pear tree in the back garden that related to the nearby 1823 Southfield Farm which was removed after WW2 (although the B-Listed Farmhouse remains), to make way for the Southfield Estate, near Duddingston crossroads in East Edinburgh.
On the off-chance, I also asked the NOP administrator if they knew of anybody who had horticultural knowledge of heritage fruit tree varieties and she put me in touch with Annie Lord, the project artist. Annie very helpfully reviewed the sketches and was able to discern almost all the specific fruit tree species at Ormiston Hall, one of which – Ribston pippins – was still available 200 years later and she had used it in her Neighbouring Orchards Project in East Edinburgh. If you fancy a walk around either Portobello or Craigentinny to view the planted trees, there are free printed maps available: https://www.artwalkporty.co.uk/publication/walking-maps/
So that felt like a natural completed circle from some ‘rabbit-hole’ research!
I hope to plant out my free fruit tree in spring this year and link a little bit of Ormiston Hall and its wonderful landscape heritage, into my back garden.
Chris Alcorn, February 2024