Foyster E., Whatley C.A. A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600-1800

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152 Stana Nenadic

So little wheat bread was used in the town of Wigton, about 40 years ago, that one

baker could not ﬁ nd sufﬁ cient employment; whereas the use of it is now become

so general, that there are four or ﬁ ve bakers in town, by each of whom a consider-

able quantity is sold.

Yet the commercialisation of food supply also had negative conse-

quences, for it meant that among the very poor there was pressure to sell the

little luxuries that they might previously have consumed at home, to make

much needed cash to purchase other commodities and pay their rents. In

many areas, including Dunlop in Ayrshire, specialised high quality cheese

production evolved among cottagers who never tasted their own produce,

but sent it all to market. This was one of the reasons why for some there was

an increase in the regularity of food consumption, but a decline in the range

of foods and in the nutritional value.

Behind the following description by

Pennant of an Inverness fair in 1769, there were many Highland families with

increasingly dreary diets:

The commodities [at the fair] were skins, various necessaries brought in by the

Peddlers, coarse country cloths, cheese, butter and meal: the last in goat-skin bags;

the butter lapped in cawls, or leaves of the broad alga or tan . . .

One of principal sources of evidence about the impact of new prosperity

and fashion on the food and clothing of the ordinary people was the OSA,

penned in the 1790s on a parish-by-parish basis by Church of Scotland

ministers in response to questions posed by the editor. Inevitably reﬂ ect-

ing the preoccupations of clergymen, some of the changes were reported in

moralising terms, while others were exaggerated to reﬂ ect well on the parish.

Among the many trends that were widely reported were changes in the

wages received by servants, which now routinely included one or two pairs

of shoes per year rather than oatmeal. Another was seen in the gradual shift

in the diet of the poor from grains to potatoes. The following budget for an

ordinary labouring family with four small children in the parish of Gaitney,

Dumfriesshire, offers an insight to modestly comfortable clothing, including

the notion of Sunday clothes, and a growing range of foods. But oatmeal was

still the largest single expenditure, comprising about a third of the annual

budget.

£ s d

House rent, including a small garden and potato-ground 1 9 0

1½ stones of oat meal a week, at 1s. 8d. the stone 6 10 0

Milk and butter a week, 1s. 2 12 0

Tea and sugar a year 0 15 0

Soap, candles and salt, etc. 0 15 0

Tear and wear of Sunday clothes 1 0 0

A working jacket, vest, breeches, shirts, stockings, clogs

handkerchief, and hat, for the man 1 12 0

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Food and Clothing 153

A bed gown, petticoats, shirt, stockings, clogs,

handkerchief, and cap for his wife 1 0 0

A new vest, breeches, etc. for each of the four

children at at 10s. each suit 2 0 0

School wages for two of the children 0 12 0

Total annual expenses £18 14s.

The minister who recorded this budget went on to remark:

The annual expenses exceed the man’s annual earning [by] £1 16s.; but the deﬁ -

ciency may be made up by the wife’s industry, as she generally works in hay time

and harvest, by which she may earn about £1, at an average, and by spinning the

remainder of the year, may earn about 1s. a week, besides doing the business of

her family. When potatoes are a good crop, there will be a saving in the article

of oat-meal, which is generally expended in purchasing better clothes or a little

butchers meat.

Another budget for a labouring family with a similar income in Perthshire,

made no reference to tea or sugar, but included ‘cheese, bacon, or other meat’

as a regular, if small, expenditure. It also noted that ‘the garden, dressed by

the man in the mornings and evenings, affords them cabbages, greens and

potatoes’.

These budgets clearly represented the ordinary working popula-

tion in the most favourable situations. For the sick, the elderly and widows

– and most working people encountered such circumstances at some stage in

their life – a capacity to furnish the basic necessities of life was diminished.

IMPACT OF THE EMPIRE

The integration of modern Scotland into a growing British empire, and the

movement of people back and forth to far-ﬂ ung places deﬁ ned the identity

of Scots and shaped their food and clothing cultures.

The rise in the use of

cotton for the clothing of ordinary men and women was as important as the

impact of cotton manufacturing processes on their experience of work. In all

parts of Scotland by the 1790s, ministers reported that women wore printed

cotton gowns along with cotton thread stockings and muslin aprons and men

wore cotton shirts and stockings. Even wealthy women, like Mrs Margaret

Colville, widow of a merchant who died in Edinburgh’s New Town in 1801,

owned cotton clothing alongside their costly silks (see Appendix). Cotton

was cheap, colourful, easy to wash and maintain and easily mixed with other

ﬁ bres such as wool and silk. It represented a revolution in the dress and

hygiene of ordinary Scots.

Another impact of empire on the clothing of the Scots was seen in the for-

malisation of clan tartans, which evolved in conjunction with the militarisa-

tion of the Highlands post-1745 and the empire service of so many Highland

regiments. Regimental tartans with their clan associations had become

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154 Stana Nenadic

fashion fabrics by the later eighteenth century, worn by men and women

alike and spawning a modern manufacturing industry. This was signalled by

Donald McPherson, tailor in Inverness, when he wrote to Messrs William

Wilson of Bannockburn, a notable ﬁ rm of tartan weavers, ‘send me good

quality ﬁ ne tartan as it is intended for the wear of Ladies who are desirous

to dress in the uniform plaids of their husbands’.

Highland regimental garb

was even said by one well informed contemporary, David Stewart of Garth,

writing in the 1820s, to have inﬂ uenced women to abandon the cloth pocket,

a detachable pouch, worn among the petticoats for keeping money and other

valuables, in favour of the leather purse, worn on the wrist or a belt, which

was modelled on the sporran.

The inﬂ uence of empire on the ‘nabobs’, wealthy East India ofﬁ cials

who returned to Scotland with exotic clothing and cuisine, was commonly

satirised in Scottish novels of the early nineteenth century.

The colonial

merchants of Glasgow, who imported the foods and textiles of empire, were

famously brash and extravagant in their dress, as revealed in the following

description of the scene in Glasgow’s Exchange Coffee House in the early

nineteenth century:

Here was to be seen the counting-house blood, dressed in a box-coat, Belcher

handkerchief, and top boots, or leather gaiters, discoursing . . . about brown sugar

and genseng! Here was to be seen the counting house dandy, with whalebone

stays, stiff neckcloth, surtout, Cossacks, a spur on his heel, a gold-headed cane

on his wrist, and a Kent on his head, mincing primly to his brother dandy some

question about pullicat handkerchiefs . . .

One cannot help but feel that William Alexander, a young merchant’s clerk,

who died in Edinburgh in 1792, with his ‘cassimir yellow breeches’ and ‘silk

tartan waistcoat’, as detailed in the Appendix, was another ‘counting house

dandy’.

Glasgow’s colonial merchants were also famous for their vast dinners

and elaborate hospitality. J. G. Lockhart described one such occasion: ‘The

dinner was excellent, although calculated, apparently, for forty people rather

than for sixteen, which last number sat down.’ The meal included ‘fowls in

curry; everything washed down by delicious old West India Madeira’. After

the meal the serious masculine drinking was of rum punch, made in ‘the

china’, a decorated porcelain bowl, out of sugar, lemons and limes, rum and

hot water.

But this conspicuous inﬂ uence of empire on the food ways of

the rich was nothing new. As early as the 1720s, the agricultural reformer,

William Macintosh of Borlum, reﬂ ected with regret on changing dining

habits:

Where I saw the table served in Scots clean ﬁ ne linen, I see now Flemish and

Dutch diaper and damask. And where with two or three substantial dishes of beef,

mutton and fowl, garnished with their own wholesome gravy, I see now served

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Food and Clothing 155

up several services of little expensive ashets, with English pickles, yea Indian

mangoes, and catch-up [ketchup] or anchovy sauces . . .

Even in the remote Highlands the store cupboard of a minor laird in 1752

included dried raisins, bottled fruit, anchovies, sugared almonds, spices,

sugar and tea, along with great quantities of claret, port, rum and brandy, not

to mention the locally produced whisky, cider and ale.

And James Boswell

in 1773 was impressed by a meal he was served at Coirechatachan on Skye,

the home of an elderly tacksman:

We had for supper a large dish of minced beef collops, a large dish of fricassee

of fowl, I believe a dish called fried chicken . . ., a dish of ham or tongue, some

excellent haddocks, some herrings, a large bowl of rich milk, frothed, as good a

bread-pudding as I ever tasted, full of raisins and lemon or orange peel, and sil-

labubs made with port wine and in sillabub glasses. There was a good table-cloth

with napkins; china, silver spoons, porter if we chose it, and a large bowl of very

good [rum] punch.

Exotic imported foods were often used in elaborate household displays

alongside ﬁ ne glass and tableware.

Sugar with lemons or limes were ingre-

dients in the distinct puddings and pastries that featured in contemporary

cook books, and the sweet tooth of modern Scots can probably be traced to

Glasgow where there was a relatively prosperous labouring population who

adopted sugary foods because they were locally fashionable and available

cheaply in the city. Fashionable drinking habits also impacted on ordinary

men and women. The most important was tea, which was encouraged by

government because it was easily taxed. Adopted in rich households from the

later seventeenth century, it was a drink for all classes, and particularly for

women, by the mid-nineteenth century. Even in remote parts of the Highlands

in the ﬁ rst half of the eighteenth century, peddlers carried small packs of tea,

along with imported tobacco and snuff, for sale to the locals.

The popular-

ity of tea initially caused controversy in Scotland, not only because of the

cost and the fashionable English associations, but also because of its feminine

and leisured connections and the impact on more masculine, indigenous

drinking habits. To quote William Macintosh of Borlum in 1729:

When I came to my friend’s house of a morning I used to be asked if I had my

morning draught yet? I am now asked if I have had my tea? And in lieu of the

big quaigh with strong ale and toast, and after a dram of good, wholesome Scots

spirits, there is now the tea-kettle put to the ﬁ re, the tea-table and silver and china

equipage brought in, and marmalade and cream.

The tea party was the most important female-directed occasion for

sociability and hospitality in eighteenth-century genteel and middle rank

households.

Light food, particularly sweet pastry, was often offered with

tea, valuable household objects such as tea china were put on display and

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poets, including Allan Ramsay in the 1720s, wrote poetry for reading and

discussion over tea.

Tea drinking could take place at any time of the day

and became the form of hospitality most likely to be offered to unexpected

visitors. Gentlewomen also served tea to females of lesser status than them-

selves, such as their dressmaker, the wives of tenant farmers or trusted

servants.

Tea has limited nutritional value, but it offered a little domestic luxury

and it is not surprising that it was widely adopted as the beverage of choice

by working-class housewives. Many ministers writing for the OSA in the

1790s highlighted the new role of tea in the changing budgets and social prac-

tices of ordinary Scots. But they were also critical of the ‘debilitating’ impact

where it replaced ‘pottage’ for breakfast.

Even some ordinary men and

women had their doubts about tea drinking. In Gargunnock near Stirling

the following was noted: ‘Tea is universally used. Even the poorest families

have it occasionally, and the last cup is qualiﬁ ed with a little whisky, which

is supposed to correct all the bad effects of the tea.’

In tea drinking, as in

all aspects of food and clothing, the necessities of life were shaped by social

practices of sometimes surprising complexity.

APPENDIX

Clothing inventories recorded at death

(1) James Mork, Candlemaker in Edinburgh, died in 1720 (National Archives

of Scotland: Edinburgh Commissary Court Register of Testaments, 1 May

1718–22 February 1721: C8/8/87, p. 361):

2 coats

1 vest

1 pair of breeches

a big coat and tartan geron

a hatt and wigg

2 pairs of stockings

1 pair of shoes

1 pair of silver buckles.

(2) James Lawrie, Flesher in Edinburgh, died in 1740 (National Archives

of Scotland: Edinburgh Commissary Court Register of Testaments, 24

December 1739–18 November 1840: CC8/8/103, p. 149):

3 suits of cloathes

5 shirts

5 stocks and 6 cravats

2 pairs of shoes and pair of silver buckles

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Food and Clothing 157

3 pairs of stockings

hatt and wigg.

(3) James Baird, Painter in Edinburgh, died in 1780 (National Archives of

Scotland: Edinburgh Commissary Court Register of Testaments, 5 January.

1780–27 December 1780: CC8/8/125/1, p. 1):

thread suit of body clothes

great coat much used

round hat

6 shirts and 6 stocks

6 pairs of stockings

2 pairs of shoes

1 pair of shoe and knee metal buckles

pinchbeck watch.

(4) William Alexander, sometime clerk to George Leslie, Merchant in

Edinburgh, died in Nicholson Street, Edinburgh, 1792 (National Archives of

Scotland: Edinburgh Commissary Court Register of Testaments, 3 January

1792–19 June 1793: CC8/8/129/1, p. 14):

great coat much wore

coat, green, in good order

coat, drab

stripped waistcoat

silk tartan waistcoat

white cotton waistcoat

light stripped waistcoat

pair of cassimir yellow breeches

pair of black breeches

2 pair of nankeen breeches with drawers to one

2 ﬂ annel under waistcoats

4 plain shirts

11 rufﬂ ed shirts

6 stocks

2 new neck cloths

4 ﬂ annel foot socks

red worsted night cap

4 pairs of white silk stockings

1 pair of coloured silk stockings

6 pairs of thread and cotton stockings

3 pairs of worsted stockings

1 pair of blue cotton stockings

old hat

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158 Stana Nenadic

pair of boots

silver watch and seal

pinchbeck oval ring.

(5) Sophia Petticrew, relict of Thomas Caddell, Vintner in Edinburgh, died

1718 (National Archives of Scotland: Edinburgh Commissary Court Register

of Testaments, 1 May 1718–22 February 1722: CC8/8/87, p. 52):

twilted black killimankie petticoat

light coloured silk and worsted gown with lemon coloured persian lining

stripped and ﬂ owered killimankie petticoat

Glasgow plaid, the best

black serge apron

blue and red serge petticoat

another Glasgow plaid, the worst

masquered gown lined with black serge

black masquered petticoat

black killimankie apron

ﬁ ne black cloth petticoat

old dark coloured rocolar

blue and white apron

pair of stays and stammagor

pair of shoes

night cap

21 coarse clothes, laced and plain

black short rufﬂ ed silk apron

4 laced mutches

2 musline pinnons with lace

plain muslin hood

suite of damask head cloathes

½ muslin napkin with lace

cambrick napkin

stripped muslin hood

another plain muslin hood.

(6) Agnes Wilson, relict of Andrew Matheson, Flesher in Canongate,

Edinburgh, died 1740 (National Archives of Scotland: Edinburgh Commissary

Court Register of Testaments, 24 December 1739–18 November 1840:

CC8/8/103, p. 35):

old silk gown

2 silk and worsted gowns

3 washing gowns

1 druggat and 1 manky gown

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Food and Clothing 159

a ﬂ aming gown and apron

4 twilted petticoats

2 smock petticoats

2 rocolas

1 silk and 1 worsted plaid

shirts, headcloths, handkerchiefs

3 pairs of stockings

2 pairs of shoes

3 pairs of clogs

6 plain rings, 2 stone rings, gold locket with beads.

(7) Joan Robins, wife of Robert Nivisson, weaver in Glasgow, died in 1760

(National Archives of Scotland: Glasgow Commissary Court Register of

Testaments, 7 July 1757–19 February 1761: CC9/7/63, p. 220):

3 silk gowns

scarlet cloak

silk cloak

2 dozen shirts

2 pairs of stays

2 silk hats

fur typpet

2 twilted coats

12 mutches

1 pair of rufﬂ es

10 aprons

10 napkins

2 pairs of shoes

2 rings

silver broach

silver breast and shoe buckles.

(8) Jean Scott, widow of John Cleghorn, Brewer in Edinburgh, died 1792

(National Archives of Scotland: Edinburgh Commissary Court Register of

Testaments, 3 January 1792–19 June 1793: CC8/8/129/1, p. 17):

3 silk gowns

1 printed gown [cotton]

13 petticoats

12 small jackets

10 shirts

5 aprons

34 caps

6 pairs of stockings

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6 handkerchiefs

13 napkins

4 pairs of pockets

4 cloaks

6 fans

2 ribbons.

(9) Mrs Margaret Colville, relict of Andrew Colville, Merchant, of 43 George

Street, Edinburgh, died 1801 (National Archives of Scotland: Edinburgh

Commissary Court Register of Testaments, 2 January 1801–30 December

1801: CC8/8/132, p. 83):

black bombazene gown and petticoat

2 black cotton gowns

1 black satin quilted petticoat

4 white dimity petticoats

2 pairs of pockets

12 shifts

10 pairs of stockings, some thread and some worsted

12 neck handkerchiefs

black silk handkerchief

black silk apron with crape

12 white pocket handkerchiefs

8 coloured pocket handkerchiefs

12 night caps

3 white bed gowns

black silk bonnet and cloak with crape

black satin cloak lined with fur

English shawl

clasped gold watch and jewel.

Notes

1. R. E. Tyson, ‘Famine in Aberdeenshire, 1695–1699: anatomy of a crisis’, in

David Stevenson (ed.), From Lairds to Louns: Country and Burgh Life in Aberdeen,

1600–1800 (Aberdeen, 1986), pp. 32–51.

2. M. Flinn (ed.), Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s

(Cambridge, 1977).

3. R. Floud, K. Wachter and A. Gregory, Height, Health and History; Nutritional

Status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1890 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 73.

4. John Sinclair (ed.), The Statistical Account of Scotland (OSA), 21 vols (Edinburgh,

1791–9), vol. 2, p. 494, Kinnell, County of Forfar.

5. A. J. S. Gibson and T. C. Smout, Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland, 1550–1780

(Cambridge, 1995).

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Food and Clothing 161

6. Alastair J. Durie, The Scottish Linen Industry in the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh,

1979).

7. For background to this approach, see, Amy de la Haye and Elizabeth Wilson

(eds), Deﬁ ning Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning and Identity (Manchester, 1999).

8. John Telfer Dunbar, A History of Highland Dress (Edinburgh, 1962), ch. 4.

9. Christopher A. Whatley, The Scots and the Union (Edinburgh, 2006), ch. 9.

10. Dunbar, Highland Dress, pp. 98–9.

11. James Currie, The Works of Robert Burns, 4 vols (Montrose, 1816), vol. 3, p. 166.

12. Gibson and Smout, Prices, table 7.1.

13. Gibson and Smout Prices, p. 227.

14. Edmund Burt, Letters from the North of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1998), p. 49.

15. Stana Nenadic, Lairds and Luxury: the Highland Gentry in Eighteenth Century

Scotland (Edinburgh, 2007), ch. 6.

16. National Library of Scotland (NLS), MS.15913.

17. William Croft Dickinson, Two Students at St. Andrews, 1711–1716: Edited from the

Delvine Papers (Edinburgh, 1952), pp. lzvi–lxvii.

18. Gibson and Smout, Prices, table 7.2.

19. Burt, Letters, p. 65.

20. Gibson and Smout, Prices, ch. 7.

21. Allan Ramsay, The Gentle Shepherd, a Pastoral Comedy, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1808),

vol. 2. p. 539.

22. Susan Ferrier, Marriage, a Novel (Edinburgh, 1818), p. 287.

23. Burt, Letters, p. 119.

24. Burt, Letters, p. 119.

25. David Kuchta, The Three Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity (Berkeley, CA, 2002).

26. Avril Hart, ‘The mantua: its evolution and fashionable signiﬁ cance in the seven-

teenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Hay and Wilson (eds), Deﬁ ning Dress.

27. Dunbar, Highland Dress, ch. 6.

28. Burt, Letters, p. 48.

29. Dunbar, Highland Dress, p. 95.

30. Lewis Walpole Library Digital Collection.

31. A. J. Youngson, Beyond the Highland Line: Three Journals of Travel in Eighteenth

Century Scotland. Burt, Pennant, Thornton (London, 1974), p. 151.

32. Burt, Letters, p. 48.

33. Nenadic, Lairds and Luxury, ch. 7.

34. E. C. Sanderson, ‘Nearly new: the second-hand clothing trade in eighteenth-

century Edinburgh’, Costume, 31 (1997), 38–48. John Styles, ‘Clothing the North:

the supply of non-elite clothing in the eighteenth-century North of England’,

Textile History, 25:2 (1994), 139–66.

35. John Styles, ‘Custom or consumption? Plebian fashion in eighteenth century

England’, in Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (eds), Luxury in the Eighteenth Century:

Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 103–18.

36. William Mackay (ed.), Letter Book of Bailie John Steuart of Inverness

(Edinburgh,

1915).

37.

Engraving, Shetland Museum. SCRAN Image: 000-000-563-921-C.

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