Learance: part 8
helpful, and the tributes paid in the press to the officers of the various Departments of State had been in his opinion very well deserved indeed. His commendations, however, did not cover the inventor of the story that the Scottish Office had got four hundred applications for small holdings in St Kilda (laughter).
‘Mr Johnston recalled that the Secretary of State for Scotland got a petition signed on May 10 of this year from every adult inhabitant in St Kilda asking the Government to assist them to leave the island this year and to find homes and occupations for them on the mainland. He (Mr Johnston) volunteered to go and make inquiry. He found that last winter the people of the island had been three months without milk. They were suffering from poverty and hardship. One family with 10 to feed had a total income of £30 per annum to do it. They could not buy syrup, treacle, margarine or butter. Potatoes had rotted with the spray from the sea. Children suffered from the perpetual died of salted fulmar and mutton. The government agreed to assist in the evacuation, and that step had been approved by everybody except a small group of literary poseurs who worked the back-to-St-Columba stunt. Poverty was so picturesque to some
To be continued.
Far left, Larachbeg – a terrace of six houses built in 1875 where several families from St Kilda were housed when they were resettled in Morvern.
and left, Mr Tom Johnston, Under Secretary of State for Scotland, responsible for clearing St Kilda and who made a speech at Corson’s Mart, Oban, when the St Kilda sheep were sold.
people so long as it was the other fellow who was undergoing the poverty.
‘The government has succeeded in getting every islander a job and a decent house, and he desired to express his personal thanks to Sir John Stirling-Maxwell and his fellow-members of the Board of Afforestation for the very active and enthusiastic way in which they had assisted the islanders. A very useful precedent had been created. The State had shouldered the responsibility of finding an economic employment and opportunities for those in need, and this generation would live to see the principal established and made of much more general application.
‘The auctioneer of the sale was Mr D MacInnes, and the total number put up for disposal was 1,060. The sum realised was £788. A large consignment was bought for transporting to England by Mr Sanderson, Lancashire, and the general trend of prices ranged from 10s to £1. The highest price obtained was 25s 3d. Miss Dudgeon of Penmore, Mull was among the purchasers. St Kilda’s oldest inhabitant, Finlay Gillies, and his daughter, Mrs Ferguson, followed the sale of the sheep with every attention.’