Rough day down on the farm as rowdies hit many a bottle

Grass sales on the farms of Perthshire and Angus were social as well as commercial gatherings.

Cowfeeders and small dairy operators, would flood out of Perth and Dundee in the spring to buy up grass to cut for hay. Buyers would be ferried in horse-drawn buses between farms such as Nether Balgay, Menzies Hill, Wester Gourdie, Balgarthno and East and West Mylnfield.

Refreshments were served at each stop and buyers would eventually return to their towns relaxed after a day in the fresh country air.

However, the grass sales just outside Dundee in May 1878 took an unpleasant twist.

The businessmen found themselves barracked and humiliated by snarling thugs who had descended on the farms.

There were up to 60 of them who displayed behaviour of the most outrageous description, according to The Courier.

“They belonged to that element of community styled as rough,” the paper commented.

As vehicles travelled between farms, thugs followed by foot, defaming the businessmen and “hallooing, shouting and swearing” at them.

At one farm, the roughs took control of the refreshments but a fight soon broke out among the group. Two of the party stripped off and had a set to in the farm yard.

On another farm a “respectable dairyman who was serving whisky to his friends” was surrounded and relieved of his bottle. A Lochee dealer who tried to get it back was punched in the face.

The thugs were by now so high on drink and the thrill of violence that they lost all control at the final farm.

They commandeered a quantity of whisky, a huge barrel of beer and drank themselves into oblivion.

They slandered the buyers with the foulest oaths and pelted them with any object at hand.

There were a couple of police officers in attendance but they were kicked and punched.

The Courier’s report suggests a picture of a circle of thugs surrounding their stolen drink and protecting it with vicious determination.

The report concluded: “Proceedings so disgraceful have never been witnessed at any sales in this district.”

“They belonged to that element of community styled as rough