Nineteenth-century Scotland Research Articles

Changing the world one step at a time by example: Building on the New Lanark Legacy

A robust alternative “model” is presented that demonstrates how Owen’s vision of the New Lanark utopia was transformed into reality. New Lanark housed a profitable cotton mill owned by investor-owners led by Robert Owen. It was profitable whilst Owen treated employees and families with dignity in the context of his times in nineteenth century Scotland. Owen adhered to an ethical imperative that he understood would pay for itself through increasing labour productivity. I articulate the conditions under which utopia can be operationalised in the real world with privately owned business. This modelling contravenes the contemporary economic worldview where “utopia” is an impossibility since it invariably increases average cost. Employee co-operatives can have the same effect, but they remain few and far between. New Lanark exemplifies that dominant investor-owned firms can be both ethical and profitable. This can be achieved if investors who have a strong preference for being ethical understand that being ethical can be profitable. Hence, the importance of investors and potential co-operators understanding that being ethical, which is costly, is consistent with a competitive and profitable firm. Without this understanding building an ethical firm is an unrealisable utopia.

Sounds national: mediating the ballad in nineteenth-century Scotland and Transylvania

Sounds national: mediating the ballad in nineteenth-century Scotland and Transylvania

Craftworkers in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Making and Adapting in an Industrial Age

Craftworkers in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Making and Adapting in an Industrial Age

The Evolution of Haunted Space in Scotland

This article explores the popularisation of the concept of haunted space in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland. While earlier ghost stories were usually about the haunting of people, the rise of Gothic and Romantic literary aesthetics fuelled a new interest in both the Scottish landscape, and the dramatic potential of lurking spectres. Amid the upheaval of industrialisation and the Highland Clearances, and in a period when Scots were still wrestling with the implications of the 1707 Union, authors recorded stories of wandering ghosts as part of a broader movement to fashion a distinctive identity rooted in a specific cultural context. Against the frequently broad scope of academic literature on spectrality, this article draws attention to the crucial significance of contextual nuances and specific historical and social circumstances. In particular, it points to the fraught politics of loss and repossession in relation to the Highlands’ history of depopulation and modernisation, casting a fresh light on the historical events that have given shape to Scottish haunted space.

Coltman, Viccy. Art and Identity in Scotland: A Cultural History from the Jacobite Rising of 1745 to Walter Scott.

Coltman, Viccy. <i>Art and Identity in Scotland: A Cultural History from the Jacobite Rising of 1745 to Walter Scott</i>.

Frances B. Singh, Scandal and Survival in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: The Life of Jane Cumming

Frances B. Singh, <i>Scandal and Survival in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: The Life of Jane Cumming</i>

Reflections on Legal Process and Crime Scene Executions in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

Recent analysis of public executions on judicial warrant for the crime of murder in Scotland includes an assertion that the practice of carrying into effect the sentence at the place of the crime ended in 1841. That date may be open to some doubt given the locations of later public executions. Moreover, the legal aspects of these public executions suggest underlying legal requirements, practices and political tensions yet unaccounted for.

Scandal and Survival in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: The Life of Jane Cumming, by Frances B. Singh

Scandal and Survival in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: The Life of Jane Cumming, by Frances B. Singh

The mind’s magic lantern: David Brewster and the scientific imagination

ABSTRACT The imagination has always been thought to operate primarily in conjunction with the sense of vision, imagined objects and scenes being conjured up before the ‘mind’s eye’. In early nineteenth-century Scotland the natural philosopher David Brewster developed a theory of the imagination that explained its operation through a reversal of the normal processes of visual perception. These ideas were rooted in the mental philosophy of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. For Brewster the mind’s eye was also the eye of the body, and images from the memory and imagination were projected onto the retina in the same manner that images were projected onto the screen in a magic lantern show. This theory underpinned his belief that imagination played an essential role in scientific discovery. Brewster believed that this process was as essential to the discoveries of science as it was to the creation of great poetry. The writings of Brewster can tell us a great deal about the connections between science and literature in the early nineteenth century, as well as showing that the philosophy of science in contemporary Britain was far from monolithic.

In Defiance of Discipline: Antiquarianism, Archaeology and History in Late Nineteenth-Century Scotland

The nineteenth century is often seen as the period in which old-fashioned antiquarianism gave way to modern archaeological science. Whilst that is certainly the case, this article argues that in Scotland that new emphasis on material evidence and prehistory remained part of a broad antiquarian sphere until the early twentieth century. Even towards the end of the 1800s, antiquarianism continued to encompass the study of both material culture and documentary sources. It was also, for a time at least, a major influence on narrative history-writing. Throughout this period, it was primarily in Scotland's antiquarian community, rather than its academic or professional institutions, that collective understandings of the nation's history were advanced. The article thus uses the Scottish case study to question common assumptions about the decline of polymathic antiquarianism and the rise of specialist disciplinarity in the later part of the nineteenth century.

Accommodating “Imbeciles”or the “Weak-Minded”

This article foregrounds the challenges encountered by the criminal justice system in understanding the distinctiveness of individuals in nineteenth-century Scotland classified as “imbecile” or “weak-minded”. Examining cases of rape and sexual assault that came before the High Court of Justiciary, it interrogates the difficulties of prosecution. It describes how human difference came under threat from a eugenic bioethical hierarchy when social structures were transforming under industrialization. Each of these factors made Scottish communities less safe for the dependent, especially those classified as “childlike” with sexually mature bodies. Based upon precognition legal sources the article, through the retrieval of the “imbecile”, identifies a paradigmatic clash between esteemed legal conceptions of mental capacity and a more complex humanity. It demonstrates how and why public expectations that these new social groups would be accommodated were not always met within the Scottish judicial system.

David Stow: Christian educator in nineteenth century Scotland

The educational work of David Stow evolved in three phases. He established a Sabbath school and helped to introduce both infant schooling and teacher training in Glasgow, Scotland in the nineteenth century. He helped to establish the Glasgow Normal Seminary and later he joined the Free Church of Scotland Normal Seminary. Stow was a committed Presbyterian Christian, and this motivated him and was at the centre of all of the three phases of his educational work. He was dedicated to the school education of the poor, similar to other educators of his time. He understood this mission to the poor as a means to rescue them from the corrupting influences in their urban settings. The corrupting influences would be replaced, however, by social control and the promotion of Christianity. This article presents an examination of the close links between his strongly held Christian beliefs, Christian worldview and his vision of schooling and teacher preparation.

Physiology of the Haunted Mind: Naturalistic Theories of Apparitions in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland.

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a resurgence of interest in the supernatural in Scotland as elsewhere in the United Kingdom. A number of intellectual figures responded by proposing naturalistic explanations for supernatural phenomena, drawing on the legacy of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy. These included the geologist and antiquarian Samuel Hibbert and the phrenologist George Combe. This paper explores the interrelations between these theories, their roots in the troubled cultural politics of Scotland in the early nineteenth century, and the reaction of different protagonists in the cultural conflicts of the period to their ideas.

Adam Smith, Thomas Chalmers and the formation of a moral economy

This paper argues that the contemporary church needs to re-engage with the task of training individuals (both within the church and without) to become morally responsible members of commercial society. It examines practices of church involvement in the moral training of secular society advocated by Adam Smith and Thomas Chalmers in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland as potential models for this.

Religious and Industrial Education in the Nineteenth-Century Magdalene Asylums in Scotland

The Magdalene Asylums were penitentiaries for ‘fallen’ women. A high percentage of such women had been involved in sex trade in some form; others were betrayed fiancées, unmarried partners or women with drinking problems. This article explores the Magdalene Asylums’ education as a tool for reforming the inmates into women reflecting the managers’ ideals of femininity and Christian virtue in nineteenth-century Scotland. The reports of these institutions describe their aims, quoting selected letters of former inmates, their parents and new employers. They give us an insight into how these Christian philanthropists imagined and applied educational programme for this group of women and girls. The two main areas of the asylums’ education were religious teaching and instruction in a range of skills necessary for becoming a servant or a factory worker. Those who could not read and write also received basic literacy lessons. Magdalene Asylums in nineteenth-century Scotland offer a rich case study of a context in which education had a very narrow meaning and served a precisely defined purpose. They provided a broad spectrum of skills, although never at a comprehensive level. The article explores the managers’ intentions and ideals by analysing the language they used to talk about ‘successfully reformed’ women.

The Township, the Pregnant Girl and the Church: Community Dynamics, Gender and Social Control in Early Nineteenth-century Scotland

In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth. The baby died. The legal precognition permits a forensic, gendered examination of the internal dynamics of rural communities and how they responded to threats to social cohesion. In the Scottish ‘parish state’ disciplining sexual offences was a matter for church discipline. This case is situated in the early nineteenth-century Gàidhealtachd where and when church institutions were less powerful than in the post-Reformation Lowlands, the focus of most previous research. The article shows that the formal social control of kirk discipline was only part of a complex of behavioural controls, most of which were deployed within and by communities. Indeed, Scottish communities and churches were deeply entwined in terms of personnel; shared sexual prohibitions; and in the use of shaming as a primary method of social control. While there was something of a ‘female community’, this was not unconditionally supportive of all women nor was it ranged against men or patriarchal structures.

James J. Coleman, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Commemoration, Nationality and Memory

James J. Coleman, <i>Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Commemoration, Nationality and Memory</i>

Medical provision and urban-rural differences in maternal mortality in late nineteenth century Scotland

This paper examines the effect of variable reporting and coding practices on the measurement of maternal mortality in urban and rural Scotland, 1861–1901, using recorded causes of death and women who died within six weeks of childbirth. This setting provides data (n = 604 maternal deaths) to compare maternal mortality identified by cause of death with maternal mortality identified by record linkage and to contrast urban and rural settings with different certification practices. We find that underreporting was most significant for indirect causes, and that indirect causes accounted for a high proportion of maternal mortality where the infectious disease load was high. However, distinguishing between indirect and direct maternal mortality can be problematic even where cause of death reporting appears accurate. Paradoxically, underreporting of maternal deaths was higher in urban areas where deaths were routinely certified by doctors, and we argue that where there are significant differences in medical provision and reported deaths, differences in maternal mortality may reflect certification practices as much as true differences. Better health services might therefore give the impression that maternal mortality was lower than it actually was. We end with reflections on the interpretation of maternal mortality statistics and implications for the concept of the obstetric transition.

The Historical Development of Animal Welfare Law in Nineteenth Century Scotland

This paper examines the development of animal welfare in Scotland. Whilst the law developed in tandem with developments across nineteenth century Britain, the paper draws attention to the distinctive Scottish situation. By examining the development from disparate common law protections to the statutory interventions of the nineteenth century the paper charts that development, and begins to place it within nascent 'humanist' movements emerging around this time. The piece examines how the Scottish doctrinal law took a distinctive direction in decisions, and in particular considers contemporary opinion. The paper is the first to take a look at the particular Scottish development and opens up new avenues of research into the nineteenth century, and also frames developments in the modern law which I will pursue in future research.

“Ungovernable Feelings and Passions”: Common Sense Philosophy and Mental State Defences in Nineteenth Century Scotland

During the nineteenth century, changing conceptions of mental disorder had profound implications for the way that criminal responsibility was conceived. As medical writers and practitioners increasingly drew attention to the complexities of insanity, the grounds on which mentally abnormal offenders could be excused began to seem unduly restrictive. By way of a contribution to our understanding of this development, this article examines how the growing disparity unfolded in Scotland. The author argues that the requirements of the insanity defence, as set out within judicial directions, reflect core facets of Scottish Common Sense philosophical thought, including Thomas Reid's view of human agency and understanding of ‘common sense’. Building on this contention, the author suggests that Scottish Common Sense philosophy played an important role in the development of Scottish mental state defences more broadly, and can provide an original interpretation of the way the doctrines of provocation and diminished responsibility changed during this era.