Maggie Craig's Blog: Maggie Craig Scottish Writer, page 3

The Great Fire of Edinburgh of 1824

The Great Fire of Edinburgh of 1824 broke out on 15th November of that year and raged over the next four days and nights. It’s thought to have been started by a candle someone forgot to blow out when they left their business premises late in the afternoon. Thirteen people died, hundreds had to flee their homes and great swathes of the Old Town were devastated. Of the 13 who died, three were killed by falling masonry.

Courtesy of Edinburgh City Libraries Capital Collections

 

This drawing of the Great Fire is by someone called W. Turner, a view ‘taken’ (which we said even before we had the ability to take a photo) while the fire was still raging. It was reproduced and sold by Robertson & Ballantine’s Lithographic Printers, whose premises were at Greenside Place and not affected by the fire. A black and white print cost 2 shillings, a coloured one 4 shillings. 

If you’d like to see more drawings of the Great Fire and much more, check out Edinburgh’s Capital Collections. 

One of the good things to come out of the horror of the fire was the establishment of the modern fire service. The man at the helm was James Braidwood, who was 24 years old at the time. He is known now as the father of modern firefighting and there’s a statue to his memory in Edinburgh’s Parliament Square. When I visited not long after it was put there, I met a firefighter from the New York Fire Department, who had come specially to make a pilgrimage to James Braidwood’s native city. He was deeply moved by seeing the statue.

James Braidwood, the father of modern firefighting.

My novel One Sweet Moment is a love story, a coming-of-age story and a love letter to old Edinburgh. It’s dramatic highpoint is the Great Fire of 1824, preceded by the state visit to Scotland in 1822 by George IV. It’s available as a paperback and ebook and soon, I hope, as an audiobook. As a Glaswegian who loves both the Dear Green Place and Edinburgh – it’s not always a given! – One Sweet Moment is very dear to my heart. You can read the first chapter here. 

One Sweet Moment by Maggie Craig, cover by Cathy Helms of Avalon Graphics.

 

If you’d like to know more about the Great Fire of Edinburgh of 1824, here’s an article I wrote about it based on the research I did for my novels. The article was first published in the Scots Magazine. 

THE-GREAT-FIRE-OF-EDINBURGH-of-1824

 

 

“I die a martyr to the cause of truth and Justice” – The Execution of Baird & Hardie

Two hundred years ago this month, on 8th September 1820, two men were hanged and then beheaded in Broad Street, Stirling. They were John Baird, aged 38, and Andrew Hardie, aged 28. Found guilty of treason at what can only be called a show trial, their crime had been their involvement in the Scottish Radical Rising of 1820.

Both men were weavers to trade and had also served in the British army. It was this military experience and also their own leadership qualities which led to them being at the front of a small Radical army. This band marched out of Glasgow and Condorrat at Cumbernauld through a very wet night, heading for the Carron Ironworks at Falkirk. They planned to seize cannon there. Although they were sincere in their aims and their passionate support for political and social reform, it seems certain they had been tricked into this action by government agents provocateurs.

Plaque on John Baird’s House at Condorrat

Intercepted by a unit from the regular British army and the local Stirlingshire Yeomanry, there was a short skirmish at Bonnymuir near Falkirk. Although the men and boys of the Radical army fought bravely, they were soon overpowered. Some managed to escape. Most were taken to imprisonment at Stirling Castle.

Battle of Bonnymuir Memorial

 

 

Stirling Castle

 

Tried under English Law in Stirling a few months later, Andrew Hardie and John Baird were sentenced to death. Nineteen of their comrades were sentenced to be transported to Australia. Shortly before he died, standing on a scaffold erected in Broad Street, Andrew Hardie declared: ‘I die a martyr to the cause of truth and justice.’ John Baird said the same. The two men were buried in pauper’s graves in the graveyard of Stirling’s Church of the Holy Rude.

Plaque in Broad Street Stirling in Memory of Baird and Hardie

 

Decades later, their bodies were exhumed and brought to Glasgow, where they were re-interred at Sighthill Cemetery in the north of the city. The monument above their last resting place also honours James Wilson of Strathaven. He was another Radical weaver, hanged and then beheaded on Glasgow Green on 30th August 1820.

Sighthill Memorial to the Radicals of 1820

If you would like to know more about Scotland’s Radical Rising of 1820, here’s an online talk I gave about it as part of the Tuesday Talks Series of the National Galleries of Scotland.

 

 

 

Scotland’s Radical Martyrs – James ‘Purlie’ Wilson

‘Did ye ever see sic a crowd, Tammas?’

 

James Wilson of Strathaven (Courtesy of the National Galleries of Scotland, artist unknown.)

James Wilson, a weaver from Strathaven, a man who had harmed nobody, was put to death on Glasgow Green on Wednesday 30 August 1820 for his short-lived participation in the Scottish Radical Rising of that year. As the Glasgow Herald reported, it was a fine summer’s day and a large crowd gathered to witness the hanging and subsequent beheading. The gallows were set up just across from the High Court where Purlie Wilson had been tried and found guilty of high treason. He had acquired his nickname because of his adaptation of the purl stitch to make the knee-length knitted stockings of the time easier and quicker to weave. In April 1820 he was one of the men who marched out of Strathaven under a flag which bore the legend ‘Scotland Free or Scotland a Desart’ [sic]. This was an accepted alternative spelling of the word at the time.

James Wilson said his farewells to his family the day before his execution, telling his grandson he had no parting gift for him except his tobacco pouch. Wilson said he hoped John would keep this homely object for the sake of his unfortunate grandfather. After a pause, he added a few poignant words. ‘I hope that my countrymen will at least do my memory justice.’

Shortly after two o’clock on Wednesday 30 August, Glasgow’s Lord Provost, magistrates and sheriff took their places on the bench of the court room where Wilson had been tried. He followed them in, walking with ‘a firm step and an undaunted countenance’ to the chair that had been placed for him in front of the magistrates’ bench. He was dressed in white, his clothes trimmed with black. This was the prison uniform. He’d been offered the choice to be hanged wearing his own coat but declined, declaring this to be the waste of a good coat. Definitely a weaver’s point of view.

James Wilson’s behaviour in his final days and hours was, the newspaper wrote, ‘very decent.’ At the religious service which preceded his execution, he was observed to be more composed than many others in the court room. The condemned man was offered and drank a glass of wine. Once the religious service was over, the public benches were cleared before Wilson was escorted outside, where his executioner was waiting for him, his face shielded by a mask. In his right hand the headsman held a large axe, in his left a knife.

He and Wilson were drawn together by horses to the scaffold in a hurdle, usually a cart without wheels which had to be dragged along. This had been usual at public hangings for centuries. Being dragged to your death served to underline the humiliation of what you were about to undergo. The tension must have been mounting to an almost unbearable level. Yet Purlie Wilson showed no fear. He addressed a comment to the man carrying the axe and the knife. ‘Did ye ever see sic a crowd, Tammas?’ For there were thousands of people waiting there on this lovely late August afternoon to see him die.

The executioner was Thomas Young and he was 20 years old. Since James Wilson addressed him by an affectionate Scottish diminutive of his first name, he must have previously been introduced to him. It was traditional for hangmen and the man who struck the blow to ask forgiveness from the man whose life they were about to end. It was a long time since anyone in Scotland had been beheaded. Young may have been a medical student who’d been asked to do the job because of his knowledge of the human body.

James Wilson mounted the scaffold a few minutes before three o’clock. The noose was placed around his neck, a black hood put over his head and a cambric handkerchief put into his hand. This was for him to drop as a signal that he was ready, composed before he met his death. As he held the square of white cloth, the crowd began to hiss and call out. ‘Murder,’ they cried. ‘He is a murdered man!’

James Wilson gave the signal and the trap door beneath his feet fell open. The Glasgow Herald might have called his execution ‘this horrid business’ but it supplied a comprehensive word picture of exactly what happened, including the observation that ‘upon the whole he appeared to die very easily.’ After hanging for half an hour, the body was lowered onto spokes above the mouth of his coffin and his head laid on the block. The young headsman appeared calm as he severed the head from the body. He then held the head up, calling out, ‘This is the head of a traitor.’ The crowd disagreed. ‘It is false,’ they called back in impassioned and sorrowful response, ‘he has bled for his country.’

Purlie Wilson was buried in common ground at Glasgow Cathedral. That night his daughter and his niece exhumed his body, possibly with the connivance of those who were supposed to be guarding the grave. He had expressed a wish to be ‘buried in the dust of his fathers.’ The two women lifted the coffin up onto the wall of the burial ground. On the other side of that a farmer local to Strathaven was waiting with a horse and cart. James Wilson’s body was brought home and buried in the graveyard at the back of his house. The house is no longer there but a monument in his memory marks its location, where Strathaven’s Castle Street gives way to North Street.

Strathaven Memorial to James Wilson with replica flag

On the morning of the execution, more placards had appeared in Glasgow. ‘May the ghost of butchered Wilson ever haunt the relentless pillows of his jurors. Murder! Murder! Murder!’ An advocate of much-needed political reform all his adult life, it’s seems clear that the powers-that-be had decided to make an example of this well-respected and much-liked man. James Wilson was put to death a few days before his sixtieth birthday.

The foregoing is an abridged extract from One Week in April: The Scottish Radical Rising of 1820 by Maggie Craig, published by Birlinn Books.

At Last – A Date for my Diary! (Not to mention my poor, neglected year planner.)

Events must be like buses. You wait ages for one and then two come along at the same time. Date for the second event is to be confirmed but the first one takes place online on Saturday 8th August at 7pm. Hosted by The Sassenach Stitcher, @sassenachstitch, details and tickets for the Covid Ceilidh can be found here.

I’ll be talking informally about two of the women I researched and wrote about in Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45. The book is widely available through High Street bookshops or online.

Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45.

 

When the Lights Come on Again is re-issued with a brand new cover!

Eighty years ago this month, on 10th June 1940, Italy entered the war on the side of Germany, declaring war on Britain and France. Italian men living and working in Britain were promptly interned as ‘enemy aliens’. As Churchill said when told most of them would be innocent of any fascist loyalties, “Collar the lot!” Sadly, a few people used Mussolini’s decision as an excuse to attack Italian cafés, chip shops, ice cream parlours, restaurants and specialist grocery shops in Britain. In Edinburgh, the famous and much-loved Valvona & Crolla’s was one target.

When I wrote When the Lights Come on Again, I gave my Scottish leading lady an Italian boyfriend, Mario Rossi. I told my then-agent of my plans.

“An Italian?” came the query, accompanied by raised eyebrows. “A foreigner?”

To which I replied, “Glasgow-Italians aren’t foreigners!”

My questioner  persisted. “Couldn’t you make the boyfriend Irish? They’re a more acceptable kind of foreigner.”

When the Lights Come on Again has just been re-issued, with a lovely new cover designed by Debbie Clement.

The café in this book was inspired by the real University Café, seen here in a print by Adrian B McMurchie.

The University Café, print by Adrian B McMurchie.

 

I bought a copy of this lovely image a year or so ago, having very fond memories of the place from when I worked as a medical secretary at the nearby Western Infirmary, at which the main characters in When the Lights Come on Again are doing their medical training. Read an excerpt from the book here, a couple of scenes dealing with a mob attack on the (fictional) café run by Mario’s father Aldo Rossi:  Excerpt from When the Lights Come on Again by Maggie Craig

If you’d like to buy the ebook or the audiobook, click here.

 

Dance to the Storm is now available as an audiobook!

 

I’m beyond excited that the latest instalment of the life and adventures of Captain Robert Catto and Miss Christian Rankeillor is now available as an audiobook, evocatively read by the multi-talented Mr Steven Worsley. Steve is very much in demand as a narrator.  He has read many novels, including  by tartan noir authors such as Stuart MacBride, Christopher Brookmyre and Margaret Kirk. I’m thrilled that he is the narrator for Dance to the Storm.

Steve, your bio describes you as a ‘professional actor, singer, improviser and voice-over artist’, so you have a lot of strings to your bow. Did you know from an early age that you wanted to be an actor and singer or is it something which developed as you were growing up?

I knew from a very young age that acting was what I wanted to do. From the age of about 7 I performed on stage in school shows and loved the experience. But I was always encouraged to get a “proper” career first. Eventually went to drama college after realising there was really nothing else that I wanted to do. Returned home to Aberdeen after college and fell into a cycle of just having to do jobs I didn’t enjoy just to get by until I landed my first paid roll in a professional touring musical called Closer Than Ever. From that day on I decided to take the plunge and pursue acting work full time. Eventually moved to central Scotland, where things took off even more. Never looked back. Been a professional actor for over 15 years now.

  Is there a particular actor, movie, stage or TV drama which inspired or continues to inspire you?

I think I find inspiration from all facets of the arts, and indeed the world around me. I love all genres of movies, and I love lots of different actors for different reasons. Always been a huge Tom Hanks fan. Whatever he does he delivers and then some. Breaking Bad is one of my favourite TV dramas. Such a perfect blend of great acting and perfect writing. Love how you get pulled in all directions with the characters. They make the heroes do really awful things and give some of the antagonists redeeming qualties. My all time favourite movie is The Fisher King. The whole cast give masterful performances and the story is so beautiful. A tale of true love in the gutter.

You trained at Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh. Can you tell us a little about the experience?

Drama college was a mixed experience for me and one that I was not really ready for at the time. It was my first time away from home and suddenly I found myself living in Edinburgh and surrounded by new temptations. Studies pretty much went out of the window in favour of night life and as a result I fell behind and sadly had to leave after 1styear. I learned many great skills there but overall the syllabus wasn’t really what I was looking for. To this day I still consider myself self-taught.

When did you begin to do improvisation and what brought that about?

I started improvising about 7 years ago. My wife spotted an advert in Creative Scotland looking for people to audition for a new improv show called Transylvanian Nights. She said that I would be great at it so with much trepidation I applied. I nearly didn’t go to the audition, thinking that it would be full of experienced improvisers and I’d just end up making a fool of myself. But I went along, got the gig and have been having a love affair with improv ever since.

Who are the intriguingly-named ‘Men with Coconuts’ and what do they get up to?

After Transylvanian Nights had ran it’s short but fairly successful run, some of us in the group still wanted to keep improvising, and we were keen to do something in the Edinburgh Fringe. We put our heads together and came up with a fun format which combined improv games with radio style sound effects. We had a table full of silly noise producing props like horns, squeaky toys, children’s musical instuments and … coconut shells. And thus the Men With Coconuts were born. The show came and went, but we decided to keep the name. Like Monty Python, it didn’t really mean anything but just sounded funny. Our popularity grew at the Edinburgh Fringe. We got great reviews, and our audiences grew. We then took the show to the Prague Fringe where we won the Spirit of the Fringe Award and became an audience favourite. Last year we embarked on an epic journey and perfomed at the Adelaide Fringe in Australia (where we won the Weekly Award for Best Comedy Show) and the New Zealand Fringe in Wellington. We returned to Adelaide this year, which was good timing as the quarantine started just a couple of weeks after we got home! When not performing we also teach improv classes and host guest improv teachers from around the world.

 

Can you tell us about your singing career?

I just love to sing. I have performed on stage in musicals for many many years. Played lead roles in shows like Calamity Jane, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, The Sound of Music, Into the Woods, Company, The Last 5 Years, Rent and Little Shop of Horrors. I also sing in a Rat Pack style vocal trio called Ocean’s 3 which I formed with two friends when I lived in Aberdeen. We still perform together around the country at various events. We were once lucky enough to perform on a National Trust For Scotland cruise to Iceland.

Ocean’s 3 Looking Suave in Aberdeen

 

How did you get into book narration?

Audiobooks happened to me quite by accident. When I lived in Aberdeen I did lots of role play work (training doctors, police, social workers,etc) and the guy who owned the company also is a very prolific Scottish voice over actor. He was telling me about an audiobook job he had just been offered, narrating a Stuart MacBride book. He wasn’t keen on doing it as he is Glaswegian and the MacBride book was set in Aberdeen. I jokingly raised my hand and said “I’ll do it if you don’t want to”. He took me up on my offer and helped me record a sample paragraph to send to the publisher. They approved it and before I knew it I was off to a studio in Manchester to record my first ever audiobook. It was utterly terrifying as Stuart MacBride is a top 10 best selling author and I was given absolutely no training or advice. I just had to show up and do it. By some miracle it turned out that I had an aptitude for audiobook narration and the jobs just rolled in from then. I live by the philosophy that if someone offers you a new opportunity you just say yes, then figure out how to do it after! Fake it till you make it!  

You have an impressive range of accents at your command and they all sound completely authentic. Is this a natural aptitude or something you’ve specifically studied?

Thank you. You could argue that some are better than other! It’s nothing I’ve ever studied. I just always enjoyed doing voices when I was young. I was never sporty as a child so most of my play revolved around pretending. Running around the neighbourhood with my friends playing armies or pretending to be The A Team. I’ve been very lucky that things I played at as a child have become skills I would get to use in my career. When Stuart MacBride writes a new book I’m never asked if I can do particular accents. Whatever he writes I just have to do! It’s a real challenge. One of my most recent audiobooks is called The Island by Ben McPherson. The entire book is set in Norway! We will see how successful my Norwegian accent is when it comes out later this year! 

You can follow Steve on Twitter @steveworsley03 and find out more about Ocean’s 3 and Men with Coconuts on their websites and Facebook pages. 

Listen to an extract from Dance to the Storm here. Buy the audiobook in digital download here. The paperback edition will be published later this year. 

 

Online Event – All Welcome

JOIN IN ON YOUTUBE FROM THURSDAY 30TH APRIL AT 6 pm.

 

The Greenock Massacre – Saturday 8th April 1820

On Saturday 8th April 1820, the last bloody act of Scotland’s short-lived Radical War took place, although more blood was to be spilled later that year. On the Saturday, the men of the Port Glasgow militia were escorting five Radical prisoners from the overcrowded gaol at Paisley to the gaol or bridewell, as it was then called, at Greenock, farther down the river Clyde.

Part of the harbour at Greenock around 1820

The militia and their prisoners reached Greenock around 5 o’clock in the afternoon. They found a hostile crowd waiting for them. One woman stepped in front of Adam McLeish, telling him he and his fellow volunteers were all ‘ill-looking blackguards. If there is any spirit in Greenock not one of you will return home this night.’ He told her to get out of his way. The militia delivered their prisoners to the bridewell and were starting for home but the crowd pursued them and starting throwing stones. The militia retaliated with lethal force, shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. Eight people died, including an 8-year-old boy, and more were wounded.

Greenock Dead and Injured (Courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive)

Incensed, and shouting ‘Remember Manchester’, the crowd stormed the bridewell and freed the five Radical prisoners, who were never re-captured. A public inquiry was held, at the end of which the Port Glasgow Militia was fully exonerated.

Memorials in Greenock remember the dead and wounded of the Greenock Massacre.

Names of the dead

 

Greenock Helping Hand Memorial (Sculpted by Angela Hunter)
Greenock Massacre Memorial Riverside Players

Scotland’s Radical Rising of 1820 – The Strathaven Pioneers

On Thursday 6th April 1820, a group of weavers set off from their home town of Strathaven in Lanarkshire, thinking they were going to join a French army. They’d been told this was encamped on the Cathkin Braes south of Glasgow, ready to mount a Radical attack on the city. The Strathaven Pioneers, as they called themselves, marched under a flag which bore the legend: ‘Scotland Free or Scotland a Desart [sic]. This was an accepted alternative spelling of the word at the time. One of their number was James Wilson, a well-respected man in his late 50s. He was a hosier to trade, weaving the knee-length stockings of the time on a frame. He had developed a quicker way of working by adapting the purl stitch and was nicknamed Purlie (sometimes Pearlie) Wilson as a result. He was a man who could turn his hand to many things and, like so many weavers, he also wrote poetry. Unfortunately none of his verses have survived.

 

Strathaven Memorial to James Wilson with replica flag

Although Purlie Wilson thought better of it and turned back for home before his fellow weavers reached the Cathkin Braes, he was arrested shortly afterwards. He was tried and found guilty of high treason at the High Court in Glasgow later that summer and was publicly hanged and then beheaded in front of a huge crowd, estimated at 20,000, on Glasgow Green. As reported in the Glasgow Herald the following day, Wilson was overheard to remark to the executioner, ‘Did ye ever see sic a crowd, Tammas?’ He was a young man by the name of Thomas Young, thought to have been a medical student. Young was also the headsman at Stirling a week later, when Andrew Hardie and John Baird were put to death. Young was paid £40 for his work at Stirling, although he had to write several reminder letters before he got his fee.

Jamie Wilson was buried in common ground at Glasgow Cathedral but that same night, his daughter and his niece exhumed his body and brought him home to Strathaven, where he had wanted to be buried. He lies in the kirk yard above the spot where his house was, the site of his grave pinpointed and marked by the 1820 Society. There is a memorial to him where his house once stood.

James Wilson of Strathaven (Courtesy of the National Galleries of Scotland, artist unknown.)

 

He has recently inspired this song, written and sung by Martin Coffield.

Martin is a member of Lanarkshire Songwriters. Check out their FB page for his song and more.

The Battle of Bonnymuir

On the 6th of April 1820, during the course of Scotland’s brief but intense Radical War, a small army of weavers clashed with troops from the regular army and the local Stirlingshire Yeomanry, one of the many volunteer government militias of the time. The Radicals were led by Andrew Hardie of Townhead in Glasgow and John Baird of Condorrat at Cumbernauld. Almost certainly lured into it by government agents provocateurs, Hardie and Baird were heading for the Carron Iron Works at Falkirk, aiming to seize cannons. Realizing before they got there that the promised recruits to their band were not going to turn up, they went up onto a grassy hill near Bonnybridge, west of Falkirk. Although they had a few guns, most of the Radicals were armed with pikes, the easiest and cheapest weapons for working men to make.

 

Pikes picked up off the field after the Battle of Bonnymuir (Courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland)

 

The Radicals had walked through a rainy night from Glasgow and Condorrat and as they were resting, sitting and lying on the grass, they spotted hussars riding towards them. The soldiers clearly knew where to find them. A skirmish ensued. The little Radical army fought bravely, the action taking place around a dry stone wall known ever since as the Radical Dyke. Defeated, they were taken to imprisonment at Stirling Castle.

The Radical Dyke

Retaliation was brutal. Later that year, Andrew Hardie and John Baird were tried and found guilty of high treason, for ‘levying war against the king.’ They were hanged and then beheaded in public in Broad Street in Stirling. Nineteen of the men and boys who had marched with them were transported to Australia. A memorial, placed there in recent years by the 1820 Society, marks the site of the battle.

Battle of Bonnymuir Memorial

 

My history of the events, One Week in April, the Scottish Radical Rising of 1820, has now been published by Birlinn. It is available to buy from them and from online and High Street booksellers. The striking cover illustration is by Astrid Jaekel and depicts the hussars at the top and the pikes and the hands of the Radicals at the bottom.

 

One Week in April cover illustration

The book has garnered quite a lot of press coverage over the last few day, including this excellent article in the Sunday Post, published on the bicentenary of the Battle of Bonnymuir.