Exploring the life of Robert Wood of Huntly

 This blog post is going to demonstrate how a variety of sources can be used to build a picture of a person’s life in the 19^th century. We will be using sources held by Aberdeen City & Aberdeenshire Archives, but also some online ones too.

We’re going to explore a character mentioned in a guard book of material relating to Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire prisons, policing and juvenile delinquency (reference DD2397). A guard book is similar to a scrapbook, with papers pasted onto thin strips of paper (guards) that are bound together into a volume. This was purchased by the archive back in 1991. We have little information about the book’s background, but it seems likely that these are the papers of Alexander Thomson (1792 - 1862) of Banchory House, Aberdeenshire, as several of the letters are addressed to him. Thomson was a member and sometime chair of the Aberdeen County Rural Constabulary Committee and also served on the County of Aberdeen Prison Board. He took a particular interest in juvenile crime and reformatory, ragged and industrial schools. The papers might have been pasted into the guard book by Thomson or later in the 19^th century. (The guard book is now in a quite a sorry state and we plan to have it conserved in 2022).

One of the 201 items pasted in the guard book is a List of Juvenile Prisoners 14 years old and under, compiled in 1854. We presume that the prisoners were held at Aberdeen’s West (Bridewell) Prison on Rose Street, or the East Prison on Lodge Walk. There are 61 entries, but we’ll be focusing on number 49, Robert Wood, to see what we can glean from other sources about Robert’s life.

The entry in DD2397 states:

“ Nov[embe]r 8. Robert Wood. 11 years of age. Theft of a gas fitter. 30 days. He was born in the parish of Inch. Went to Huntly with his parents about 3 years ago. His father is a Labourer. unable to work & supported by the Parochial Board. The boy was at school & can read. During the evening he was running about & playing with other boys. Two loons came & asked him to go with them to a shop in Duke Street, belonging to a Mr Russell. It was about 8 o’Clock. One of them was buying something and while he was making the bargain, he bade him nip up a Gas fitter which was lying on the Counter. He did so. They went there to Sandie Hunters and asked a sixpence for it. Sandie however took it and gave it to the Police and as it was he that went in with it, he was arrested & the other two ran away. They were older than himself. The one was a travelling loon. The other the son of a slater in town. This boy was removed to the House of Refuge, is there at the expense of the Parochial Board & behaving well.”

We’re not completely sure what the “gas fitter” Robert stole is: the 1877 Post Office Directory lists Russell’s as an Earthenware Dealers situated at 53 Duke Street in Huntly.

To try and find more information about Robert, we started with Scotland’s People. This subscription service allows you to search and view records of births, marriages and deaths in church registers (from 1553 onwards) and statutory civil registers (from the adoption of a compulsory registration system in 1855), as well as census records from 1841 to 1911 (the 1921 census is due to be released in 2022).

We found a baptism record for Robert in the parish of Insch on the 8^th September 1844, indicating that he had been born on the 4^th September to Alexander Wood and Margaret Craig in Bog. He appears to have died in Huntly aged 61, in 1904.

The first additional source held at the Aberdeen City & Aberdeenshire Archives which we can check  is the Parochial Board records for Insch (reference AS/AP/ins/1), which are referred to in the guard book entry. Parochial Boards were formed in 1845 to administer the poor relief system in individual parishes. Unfortunately only the minute books survive for Insch, so it was a case of searching through these for references to Robert and his family. If general registers or records of applications survive these are quicker to search, but the minutes normally have margin notes of the surname of cases being considered which act as a handy guide.

The family first appear in the minutes of 25 Feb 1846: the Inspector of the Poor reported that he had paid 13 shillings (about £50 in today’s money) for a boll of potatoes to Alexander Wood’s family for planting (in addition to cash paupers were often given food or goods to sustain them). The following February 1847 he was granted two bolls of meal and the Inspector was authorised to spend 30 shillings on clothing for the family.

The family were still struggling in May of that year as this entry shows:

“Compeared Margaret Craig wife of Alexander Wood Johnsleys; says that her husband is unable to maintain himself and family consisting of 8 children, himself and wife; that he earns 12/- a week but owing to the dearth of meal this is insufficient. The Board considering the hardship of the case agreed to allow them half a Boll of meal.”

This demonstrates one of the key considerations of the Board: whether applicants could work. In this instance Alexander is working, but he cannot afford enough food for his family. The size of Alexander and Margaret’s family must have made it challenging to earn sufficient money in the Hungry Forties.

Further applications in May 1849, the winter of 1851, and Feb 1853 were necessitated by illness preventing Alexander working. By this point the family had decamped to Huntly, but their poor relief claims remained the responsibility of Insch because of the settlement system. By March 1854 Alexander’s health is considered improved enough to allow him to work, and his allowance is therefore reduced.

The 1851 census (accessible through Scotland’s People) allows us to get a bit more information on the family’s make up: they were living at Church Street, Huntly on census night. Alexander was listed as a road labourer, and he and his wife were both 39 at the time of the census. With them were 10 children: Peter (17) an agricultural labourer; Jane (15) a scholar; Margaret (14) a house servant; Jessie (12), Barbara (11), Mary (9), Robert (6), and Alexander (5) all scholars; Elspet (3); and John (8 months). (Interestingly only Mary, Robert and Barbara, and her twin Janet, can be found in the baptism registers on Scotland’s People demonstrating the patchiness of the church registers as a source and the value of statutory registration when it starts in 1855).

On the 7^th November 1854, we see an entry relating to Robert:

“Robert Wood son of Alexander Wood in Huntly had been lodged in Jail for theft and … when the term of his imprisonment expired he had judge it proper to send him to the House of Refuge in Aberdeen to prevent him from returning to his old habits in Huntly and that he has been for some time in the Infirmary in bad health. The Board approved of what the Inspector had done in this case and authorized him to send the boy back to the Refuge when he leaves the Infirmary for three months.”

The House of Refuge was in the Guestrow and was first established in the 1830s to provide shelter and education to those in need, particularly children.

Given the description in DD2397 we had wondered if Robert had been led astray by the other boys mentioned, and after the shock of a spell in prison would reform his ways. Unfortunately, a search of the British Newspaper Archive (subscription service, free access via City Libraries) suggests this is not the case. A report in the Elgin Courant in March 1856 records that Robert and another boy, both aged 13, were “charged with falsehood, fraud, and wilful imposition, and also the crime of theft” at the Huntly Justices of the Peace Court. They both pled guilty and Robert was sentenced to 60 days imprisonment in Aberdeen, “this being his third conviction for theft”.

If this post has whet your appetite to explore the guard book or parochial board records further, please get in touch and arrange an appointment to visit our Old Aberdeen House.