Scots slaved too

Regarding the question of a slavery museum in Greenock (Letters, 15 June), Scots should perhaps be receptive to the idea given that so many of our own ancestors were little better than slaves.

Salters and colliers were bound to their masters and had no say over where or how they worked. The Rothes Papers show some of my own ancestors in central Fife in the early 1700s being loaned out by the Earl of Rothes to neighbouring mine-owners like so many picks or shovels.

Not until 1799 did the Colliers (Scotland) Act decree that colliers were to be “free from their servitude”.

Things were little better for the fisherfolk. In 1705 a family called Cargill in Auchmithie, Angus, accepted an offer from the town council of neighbouring Arbroath to settle there, but their feudal superior, the Earl of Northesk, complained to the Privy Council and obtained a judgment that the Cargills were his “serfs” and must return to his employ forthwith.

HARRY D WATSON Braehead Grove, Edinburgh