SCOTTISH POOR LAW RECORDS

Former Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman was reduced to tears when he heard the sad tale of his maternal great grandmother, Mary Jane Nicholas, the wife of Royal Artillery soldier John McKay.

John died in 1894, leaving his wife a destitute widow with nine children to look after. Mary had to survive in a one-bedroom tenement house with her entire family after being denied poor relief by the local authorities. Although she initially received the money, it was subsequently refused after the authorities discovered her “misconduct” at having an illegitimate child.

We learned Mary’s sad fate by delving into extant Scottish Poor Law relief records. From 1845, relief was administered by parochial boards (previously the local kirks and heritors were responsible). These records are mostly found in local archives, details of which can be found by visiting Peter Higginbotham’s excellent Workhouses website (workhouses.org.uk/records/scotland.shtml).

However, some records are held centrally at the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh ( bit.ly/NRSpoor), while the Mitchell Library has one of the largest collections of records for Glasgow and other vicinities

( bit.ly/OldPoorLaw). Information about the Poor Law system can also be found by visiting the Scottish Archive Network’s Virtual Vault: bit.ly/ SCANpoor.