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Riots and reform: burgh authority, the languages of civic reform and the Aberdeen riot of 1785

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2016

ANDREW MACKILLOP
ANDREW MACKILLOP*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Aberdeen, Old Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, UK
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Abstract:

This article explores the understudied riots which occurred in Aberdeen in mid-October 1785. It charts the climate of politicization that characterized the burgh's civic life in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution and before the outbreak of the equivalent process in France. In doing so, it challenges interpretations of the socially exclusive nature of the Scottish reform movement, the dynamics of continuity and change between this phenomenon and later political ‘radicalism’ and the role of Aberdeen as a ‘provincial’ metropolis in the Age of Revolution.

Type
Special section: Communities, courts and Scottish towns
Information
Urban History , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 402 - 423
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 Whitehall Evening Post, 25 Oct. to 27 Oct. 1785 (no. 6000), 3. For reports of the riot in the Scottish press, see Aberdeen Journal, 24 Oct. 1785; Scots Magazine, 47 (Edinburgh, 1785), 514.

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14 Aberdonian authors took an obvious, often highly knowledgeable, pride in the city's complete and ‘ancient’ records. Skene, A., A Succinct Survey of the Famous City of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, 1685), 219 Google Scholar, 223, 237; The Statistical Accounts of Scotland: http://stat-acc-scot.edina.ac.uk/link/1791-99/Aberdeen/Aberdeen/19/164/, accessed 4 Aug. 2016.

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25 NRS, JC26/242, ‘Criminal letters HM's advocate agst Thomas Morice and others, Aberdeen, Spring 1786’, ‘Mob and riot’, Aberdeen, 7 Dec. 1785, testimony of George Pirie, journeyman wright, servant of John Smith, wright.

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28 NRS, JC26/242, ‘Criminal letters HM's advocate agst Thomas Morice and others, Aberdeen, Spring 1786’, ‘Mob and riot’, Aberdeen, 6 Dec. 1785, Roger Shand, journeyman wright in Aberdeen compared by Baillie George Adam; 5 Dec. 1785, Alexander Clerk, cutter in Aberdeen, compared by John Copland, baillie of Aberdeen.

29 Skene, A Succinct Survey, 226–8.

30 NRS, JC26/242, ‘Criminal letters HM's advocate agst Thomas Morice and others, Aberdeen, Spring 1786’, ‘Mob and riot’, Aberdeen, 7 Dec. 1785, compared David Pirie, journeyman flesher of Aberdeen.

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33 TH, incorporation of the wrights and coopers, vol. 13, minute book, 1758–1811, 194–5 (27 May 1785).

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35 The Aberdeen Almanack, for the Year 1785, 189.

36 Finlay and Murdoch, ‘Revolution to reform’, 278–80; Aberdeen Journal, 6 Jan. 1783, 28 Dec. 1782: ‘Civis to Zeno’.

37 Harris, The Scottish People, 83.

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39 Aberdeen Journal, 6 Jan. 1783, 26 Sep. 1785.

40 TH, incorporation of the weavers, vol. 31, minute book, 1728–1813 (23 Jan. 1793).

41 Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution, 15–16, 33; Harris, The Scottish People, 14–18.

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47 Pentland, ‘Patriotism, universalism’, 344.

48 ACAA, C1/1/65, fols. 68 and 111.

49 Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution, 19–21; Further Proceedings, 23; ACAA, C1/1/65, fols. 65–7.

50 ACAA, C1/1/65, fols. 70–2.

51 Aberdeen Journal, 26 Sep. 1785.

52 Ibid., 26 Sep. 1785; Further Proceedings, pp. 9–10, 33.

53 Aberdeen Journal, 3 Oct. 1785

54 Ibid., 26 Sept. 1785.

55 Further Proceedings, 33–8; Observations, By Civis of Aberdeen on a Letter under the Signature of A Cobler (Aberdeen, 1786), 17–18, 21.

56 TH, deacon convenor's court book, vol. 2, 1764–1829, 136–8 (5 and 25 Mar. 1784); TH, incorporation of the wrights and coopers, vol. 13, minute book, 1758–1811, 185 (14 Feb. 1784).

57 Harris, The Scottish People, 22–3.

58 TH, incorporation of the weavers, vol. 31, minute book, 1728–1813 (2 Mar. 1784); TH, incorporation of the wrights and coopers, vol. 13, minute book, 1758–1811, 186 (5 Mar. 1784); TH, ‘The taylior traide of Aberdeen’, vol. 5, minute book, 1694–1794, no. 31, fols. 301–2 (15 Mar. 1784).

59 TH, ‘The taylior traide of Aberdeen’, vol. 5, minute book, 1694–1794, no. 31, fols. 301–2 (15 Mar. 1784); TH, incorporation of the weavers, vol. 31, minute book, 1728–1813 (11 Mar. 1784).

60 Tyzack, R., ‘“No mean city”? The growth of civic consciousness in Aberdeen with particular reference to the work of the police commissioners’, in Brotherstone, T. and Withrington, D.J. (eds.), The City and its Worlds: Aspects of Aberdeen's History since 1794 (Glasgow, 1996), 150–2Google Scholar.

61 Further Proceedings, iii–x, 5–59; TH, incorporation of the weavers, vol. 31, minute book, 1728–1813 (25 May 1791, 23 Jan. 1793, 19 Feb. 1794).

62 The Aberdeen Almanack, for the Year 1796 (Aberdeen, 1796), 177; Tyzack, ‘“No mean city”?’, 152–3; Finlay and Murdoch, ‘Revolution to reform’, 284–5.

63 TH, ‘The taylior traide of Aberdeen’, vol. 5, minute book, 1694–1794, no. 31, fol. 302 (6 Apr. 1784); TH, incorporation of the weavers, vol. 31, minute book, 1728–1813 (19 Mar. 1784, 28 Apr. 1784); 25 May 1791, 23 Jan. 1793, 19 Feb. 1794).

64 TH, ‘The taylior traide of Aberdeen’, vol. 5, minute book, 1694–1794, no. 31, fol. 302 (6 Apr. 1784); TH, incorporation of the wrights and coopers, vol. 13, minute book, 1758–1811, 186 (14 Feb. 1784).

65 TH, incorporation of the wrights and coopers, vol. 13, minute book, 1758–1811, 186 (14 Feb. 1784), 198–9 (17 Oct. 1785); Aberdeen Almanack, for the Year 1785, 60; Aberdeen Almanack for the Year 1786 (Aberdeen, 1786), 177.

66 Warren, Speculum ruris, 43–44; Letters to the Citizens of Aberdeen, 36–37; Aberdeen Journal, 7 Nov. 1785.

67 Observations, By Civis of Aberdeen, 9; Graham, A Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt, 46.