05/08/2024
Destitution Road
The A832 is a road in the Scottish Highlands, linking Cromarty, on the east coast, to Gairloch on the west coast, and beyond Gairloch to Braemore Junction. It is 126 miles (203 km) long and runs entirely in the former county of Ross and Cromarty. The road forms part of the Wester Ross Coastal Trail. This stretch of road is one of several to be known as the Destitution Road. It was built during the Highland Potato Famine of 1846–1847, to provide employment for crofters in exchange for oatmeal rations.
Beyond Dundonnell, the A832 enters the Dundonnell Gorge and begins climbing alongside several waterfalls on the Dundonnell River. The road leaves the top of the gorge at Fain Bridge and continues across the open moors to the summit at an altitude of 332 metres (1089 ft), surrounded by the towering peaks of An Teallach, Sgurr nan Clach Geala and Beinn Dearg.
On its final stretch, the road descends alongside the Abhainn Cuileig river, then turns alongside the Corrieshalloch Gorge. There is a car park here, with footpath access to the top of the gorge and the Falls of Measach.
Shortly after passing the gorge, the A832 terminates at Braemore Junction on the A835.
The Highland Potato Famine (Scottish Gaelic: Gaiseadh a' bhuntàta) was a period of 19th-century Highland and Scottish history (1846 to roughly 1856) over which the agricultural communities of the Hebrides and the western Scottish Highlands (Gàidhealtachd) saw their potato crop (upon which they had become over-reliant) repeatedly devastated by potato blight. It was part of the wider food crisis facing Northern Europe caused by potato blight during the mid-1840s, whose most famous manifestation is the Great Irish Famine, but compared with its Irish counterpart, it was much less extensive (the population seriously at risk was never more than 200,000 – and often much less ) and took many fewer lives as prompt and major charitable efforts by the rest of the United Kingdom ensured relatively little starvation.
The terms on which charitable relief was given, however, led to destitution and malnutrition amongst its recipients. A government enquiry could suggest no short-term solution other than reduction of the population of the area at risk by emigration to Canada or Australia. Highland landlords organised and paid for the emigration of more than 16,000 of their tenants and a significant but unknown number paid for their own passage. Evidence suggests that the majority of Highlanders who permanently left the famine-struck regions emigrated, rather than moving to other parts of Scotland.
It is estimated that about a third of the population of the western Scottish Highlands emigrated between 1841 and 1861.
Over the late 18th and early 19th century, Highland society had changed greatly. On the eastern fringes of the Highlands, most arable land was divided into family farms with 20 to 50 acres (8.1 to 20.2 hectares) employing crofters (with some land held in their own right, insufficient on its own to give them an adequate living) and cottars (farm workers with no land of their own, sometimes sub-let a small patch of land by their employer or a crofter). The economy had become assimilated to that of the Lowlands, whose proximity allowed and encouraged a diverse agriculture. Proximity to the Lowlands had also led to a steady drain of population from these areas.
In the Western Isles and the adjacent mainland developments had been very different. Chieftains who had become improving landlords had found livestock-grazing (generally sheep, sometimes cattle) the most remunerative form of agriculture; to accommodate this they had moved their tenants to coastal townships where they hoped valuable industries could be developed and established an extensive crofting system (see Highland Clearances). Croft sizes were set low to encourage the tenantry to participate in the industry (e.g. fishing, kelp) the landlord wished to develop.
A contemporary writer thought that a crofter would have to do work away from his holding for 200 days a year if his family were to avoid destitution.
The various industries the crofting townships were supposed to support mostly prospered in the first quarter of the 19th century (drawing workers over and above the originally intended population of townships) but declined or collapsed over its second quarter. The crofting areas were correspondingly impoverished, but able to sustain themselves by a much greater reliance on potatoes (it was reckoned that one acre growing potatoes could support as many people as four acres growing oats).
Between 1801 and 1841 the population in the crofting area increased by over half, whereas in the eastern and southern Highlands the increase in the same period was under 10 percent.
Consequently, immediately pre-blight, whilst mainland Argyll had over 2 acres (0.8 hectares) of arable land per inhabitant, there was only 1⁄2 acre (0.2 hectares) of arable land per head in Skye and Wester Ross:
in the crofting area, as in Ireland, the population had grown to levels which only a successful potato harvest could support.
Famine and destitution
Famine (1846–1847)
In the Scottish Highlands, in 1846, there was widespread failure of potato crops as a result of potato blight. Crops failed in about three-quarters of the crofting region, putting a population of about 200,000 at risk; the following winter was especially cold and snowy and the death rate rose significantly. The Free Church of Scotland, strong in the affected areas, was prompt in raising the alarm and in organising relief, being the only body actively doing so in late 1846 and early 1847; relief was given regardless of denomination. Additionally, the Free Church organised transport for over 3,000 men from the famine-struck regions to work on the Lowland railways. This both removed people who needed to be fed from the area and provided money for their families to buy food.
The British government took early notice of the crop failure. They were approached for assistance by landowners at the end of the summer of 1846, but any direct subsidies to the landlords were ruled out, as this would have relieved them of their responsibilities to their tenants. Sir Charles Trevelyan, the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury (effectively the senior civil servant at this department) provided the lead. The government was restricted by the common attitudes of the middle of the 19th century: minimal intervention, and there was deep concern to avoid upsetting the free play of normal market forces. Despite the constraints of these ruling economic theories, Trevelyan made completely clear that "the people cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to starve" in a letter of September 1846.
The government's first action was to ensure that Highland landlord met their responsibilities to provide famine relief to their tenants. Landlord response varied. Some had both the resources and the willingness to do this.
Others, typically among the remaining hereditary landowners, were in perilous financial conditions and struggled to meet expectations, some of them being in denial about their lack of ability to do so.
The last class, those who had the means to fund relief for their tenants, but chose not to, were put under substantial pressure by the government. Senior relief officers made personal inspections of their properties (the Royal Navy had a steamer to provide transport for this). Formal exhortations were made over the winter of 1846 to those who still did not comply. Threats were added that the government would recover the costs of relief they had provided, even by selling part of the problem estates. By the summer of 1847, even the notorious Colonel John Gordon of Cluny was acknowledged by the senior relief officer, Sir Edward Pine Coffin, as having improved beyond the worst class of landlord.
The government stationed two meal depots at Portree and Tobermory in the winter of 1846-7 and based a team of relief officers in the affected areas. The depots sold meal only at market prices - any hint of a subsidy went against free market principles. However, the purpose in establishing the depots was to prevent spiralling prices due to local shortages - thereby demonstrating the dilemma in choosing practical, necessary measures that fitted with the contemporary views on political economy. Existing legislation was examined for ways of providing help. Innovative measures were shunned for fear of expanding the role of government. Discretion was allowed to Inspectors of the Poor in providing meal to recipients of casual relief for destitute families. A much larger use of current law was the active encouragement of landowners to apply for loans under the Drainage and Public Works Act. After streamlining of the cumbersome application process, this channelled money to landlords that allowed them to employ their tenantry to improve the land that they rented.
Following on from the Free Church's voluntary efforts, relief committees were set up in Edinburgh in December 1846 and Glasgow in January 1847. By February 1847, the Free Church and the Edinburgh and Glasgow groups combined to form the Central Board of Management for Highland Relief.
By the end of 1847 the Relief Committees had raised about £210,000 (roughly equivalent in purchasing power to £17m in 2018) to support relief work.
Other groups to organise relief work included the British Relief Association; its efforts were coordinated by Lord Kinnaird and the Earl of Dalhousie. News of the famine led the Scottish diaspora, including Scottish-Americans, to organise relief efforts.
The prompt response of the Lowlands (and the much smaller size of the problem) meant that famine relief programmes were better organised and more effective in Scotland than in Ireland. As in Ireland, the export of foodstuffs from Scotland was not prohibited, and in Inverness, Wick, Cromarty, and Invergordon, troops were used to quell protests about the export of grain or potatoes from local harbours.
In 1847 the crop failure was less extensive, and death rates had returned to normal; thereafter the government left famine relief to the Central Board. Crop failures continued, but at a reduced level, and the charitable relief programme only ceased upon the near-exhaustion of its funds. One modern historian summarises its evolution: "... gradually it took on the worst features of mid-Victorian philanthropy. At once autocratic and bureaucratic, the Board became a gradgrind employer, paying rock bottom wages in kind for hard labour on public works... ".
Relief was not available to those with any disposable capital (which was interpreted to include livestock).
The daily ration (of oatmeal or Indian meal) was initially set by the Central Board at 24 ounces (680 g) per man, 12 oz (340 g) per woman and 8 oz (230 g) per child.
Recipients were expected to work for their rations, leading to the building of "destitution roads" and other public works of little (if any) real value. This requirement was not rigorously enforced at first, but potato crops failed to recover to pre-blight levels, and the Central Board became concerned that long-term recipients of the rations would become "pauperised".
Eleemosynary aid… would be a curse instead of a benefit; and hence it was absolutely necessary to teach the people of the Highlands that they must depend on their resources for the future. To accomplish this object it would be requisite to instruct them in croft husbandry, in developing the treasures of the deep, and in prosecuting the manufacture of kelp.
To encourage them to stand on their own feet, the ration was reduced (e.g. to 16 ounces (450 g) per man), and it would only be given to those doing a full eight-hour day's work. This "destitution test", harsh in itself, implemented by Victorian bureaucracy, and policed by officials used to enforcing naval discipline, engendered considerable hostility.
By 1850, the relief funds were almost exhausted and, with potato blight persisting, there was a growing sense (even within the relief committees) that long-term solutions were needed; the provision of short-term aid had delayed these being adopted. The Destitution Relief Boards announced that their operations would cease at the end of September 1850. In doing so, they expressed two concerns: if the potato crop failed again things would be as bad as in 1846; on the other hand, if the 1850 crop was largely unaffected, the Highlanders would not learn the lesson that the blight should teach them and revert to their old ways, and four years' effort to diversify their sources of food and of income would have gone to waste.
There were again considerable failures of the potato crop in 1850, and the question then naturally arose as to how the distressed population were to be supported. The Scottish Poor Laws, unlike those in England, allowed relief to be given from the parish poor rates only to the sick and infirm and explicitly forbade any relief being given to the able-bodied poor unable to find work locally. As early as 1848 Sir Charles Trevelyan had advocated that the Scottish Poor Law be amended to allow the able-bodied poor to claim relief; critics countered that the scale of destitution was such that it was clearly unrealistic to expect a large number of unemployed in a distressed parish to be supported solely by rates levied on that parish.
In response to inquiries from county officials, the government indicated that it did not intend to make additional funds available now that the charitable relief effort had ended, neither to provide relief in situ nor to assist emigration from distressed areas. It suggested that a Poor Law clause giving the Poor Law authorities discretion to grant relief to those temporarily unable to work might (somewhat contrary to its wording) be used to provide relief to the able-bodied poor willing but unable to find work. It set up an enquiry under Sir John McNeill, the chairman of the Board of Supervision (of Scottish Poor Law Boards), to investigate the situation and recommend remedies.
Having carried out his enquiry from February to April 1851, Sir John made his report in July 1851.
He ascribed the current difficulties to the sub-division of crofts (or, amounting to the same thing, more than one family being supported by a single croft) in times of prosperity, and to the insularity of the Highlanders. When the kelp industry had collapsed they surely would have sought work elsewhere had they not been separated by habits and language from the majority of the population and regarded the rest of the kingdom as a foreign country. Such emigration as had taken place had been of the prosperous; in replacing them the landlords had discovered tacksmen operating large grazings to be willing to pay higher rents and more reliable in paying them. That discovery had led them to move crofters to more marginal areas to create more grazings.
There had been no known deaths by starvation since the cessation of Relief Board operations (to put those in proportion, he noted that total expenditure by the Relief Board on Skye in 1850 was less than half the value of taxed whisky sales on Skye in 1850, gratuitously going on to note that the latter was more than double the value of sales in 1846) and the predicted humanitarian crisis had not materialised. On Skye, where the parochial boards had been giving discretionary relief to the able-bodied in response to the end of Relief Board Operations even before government guidance:
the working classes, disabused of the notion that the eleemosynary aid they had been receiving for some years would be permanent, and thrown upon the local resources and their own exertions, have hitherto surmounted the danger, with an amount of relief absolutely trifling. No doubt, suffering must have been endured, the pressure upon all classes must have been severe: but to the latest date to which intelligence has been received, there is no sufficient reason to believe that one life has yet been lost in consequence of the cessation of eleemosynary relief
Consequently, he concluded that the programme of extensive relief to the able-bodied poor, although well-intentioned, had ultimately been deleterious. He made no recommendation for changes to the Scottish Poor Law to give the able-bodied poor a right to claim parish relief, but recommended all parochial boards to give discretionary relief.
Various schemes of improvement had been attempted locally to relieve destitution and had been urged upon him as deserving wider adoption. However, the areas less badly affected by destitution were not those where these schemes had been attempted, but rather those where communications with the rest of the country were relatively good, where there was greater acceptance of seasonal migration in search of work, or where there were significant other sources of income. There was widespread agreement, therefore, that in the short term, prompt and widespread emigration was necessary to the well-being of the population and to their extrication from their current difficulties. Parliament should therefore authorise loans to assist immigration as they had formerly loans to assist improvements in the distressed areas.
With the population reduced, the area could be made more resilient against future crises by giving crofters greater security of tenure (so giving them some incentive for agricultural improvement), by instruction in agriculture and the management of stock, and by better education. "Increased and improved means of education would tend to enlighten the people and to fit them for seeking their livelihood in distant places, as well as tend to break the bonds that now confine them to their native localities", but education should not simply be in the "three Rs"; it should also seek to excite a desire for knowledge in which respect education in the Highlands was currently deficient.
This led to the creation by January 1852 of the Highland and Island Emigration Society by Trevelyan and McNeill .
Blight returned year after year, but never to the same extent as in 1846. As late as 1854, the complete loss of the potato crop was being reported for local blackspots such as the Hebridean communities of Barra and Harris (where the blight was said to be more prevalent than in 1846). In subsequent years blight was usually reported in various localities, but it was always only partial and never as bad as first feared: "There is some clamour about the potato blight but ... the fear is greater than the hurt"
