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Muir and others set up the Friends of the People in 1792, but the government, fearing that the ‘terror’ in France might be exported across the English Cha
Muir returned to Scotland in August 1793 and was immediately arrested. At a sham trial, he was sentenced to 14 years of transportation to Botany Bay, Australia.
Thomas Muir had become democracy’s first martyr in Scotland. The radical movement in Scotland suffered another blow when more of its leaders were also sentenced to transportation and joined Muir on the convict transport ship
Surprise,
reaching Sydney in October 1794.
Two years later, Muir escaped onboard an American ship and returned to Europe via California, Mexico and Cuba, arriving in Spain in the spring of 1797. His entry to Spain was far from easy – a British man-of-war engaged the ship carrying him in battle, and Muir was severely wounded, with his left cheekbone blown off. From Spain, Muir made it to Paris, where he was hailed as a hero of the French Republic. But by this time, he was very weak and half-blind.
While in Paris, Muir called on the French government to intervene militarily on behalf of the Scottish people and help them establish a republic. But he didn’t live long enough to see this come to pass. Indeed, it never happened, and Muir died on 26 January 1799. However, his struggle to change the political system bore fruit in the long run. Think of him and the other political martyrs the next time you decide you can’t go out to vote because it’s raining!
Lachlan Macquarie (1762–1824)
Although Lachlan Macquarie is seen as the ‘father of Australia’, he is virtually unknown in the land of his birth. Born on the island of Ulva, off the coast of Mull, he was a crucial presence in the transition of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settlement. Before he was governor, Macquarie was a soldier, joining the British army at the age of 14, taking part in the American War of Independence and earning a commission as a lieutenant. From there, he served in India and Egypt, where he was present at the capture of Alexandria and the final expulsion of the French army from Egypt, attaining the rank of adjutant general.
Macquarie was appointed governor of New South Wales in 1807 and arrived at the end of 1809 in a colony renowned for disorderly government; indeed, there was a rebellion against his predecessor the year before he arrived.
To restore order and provide good government Macquarie set about reforming the justice system, setting up new courts and restraining the excessive use of corporal punishment by magistrates. His administration reduced the average a
Macquarie’s reforms provoked opposition from vested interests, particularly from army officers who had been ru
He also tried to improve the situation of the convict population of New South Wales. Those who had served their time or been granted a pardon were known as ‘emancipists’, and Macquarie appointed some of them to government positions: two were made magistrates! In exchange, he demanded that the ex-convicts live reformed (that is, Christian) lives.
On top of this, he encouraged greater exploration of the continent. This exploration was crucial in opening up new lands for settlement. In July 1813, the colony at last obtained a coinage in place of the notes of hand and barter previously used. At the end of 1816, despite the opposition of the British government, he encouraged the creation of the colony’s first bank.
Macquarie also flouted the British government’s ban on building expensive public buildings in the colony, overseeing the construction of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In fact, he listed 265 works of varying scale that had been carried out during his time as governor. It was clear that Macquarie had gone past viewing New South Wales as simply a dumping ground for British criminals.
Macquarie’s attitude to the Aborigines was ambiguous: he ordered punitive missions against them, but at the same time he showed sympathy for them, opening an institution for the education of Aboriginal children in 1814. In spite of some of his enlightened policies, the (free) settler community opposed his autocratic form of government. An adverse report on the ru
Since his death, Macquarie’s reputation has grown, and he is now seen as the most enlightened and progressive of the early colonial governors who sought to establish Australia as a country, rather than as a prison camp. The name of Australia was first used in an official dispatch by Macquarie in 1817. So three cheers, cobber!
Mary Somerville (1780–1872)
By any stretch of the imagination, Mary Somerville was a truly remarkable woman who proved to Victorian society that women could understand science! Born in Jedburgh, as a child she developed an interest in mathematics, but for girls of her background and age, finding a husband was considered more important than studying. Besides, the seats of higher learning were for males only. Mary married her cousin, Samuel Grieg, and when he died in 1807, she married another cousin, William Somerville, an army doctor, in 1812. (Nothing like keeping it in the family!)
It wasn’t until her late 40s that Mary embarked on a career as a science writer. Her first task was to translate a book by the French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1831. Her next task was her own work on the physical sciences, which ran to nine editions. This was followed by other publications on science and geography. She wrote her last book –
On Molecular and Microscopic Science
(1869) – when she was in her 89th year!
The press gave Somerville the title ‘the Queen of Science’ and she more than lived up to the accolade. She proved that male fears that scientific education was too much for a woman’s brain to cope with were unfounded. In 1826, she became the first woman to read a paper to the Royal Society and to have it published in its
Philosophical Transactions.
In 1835, she and Caroline Herschel became the first women members of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1869, she was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.
Somerville lived much of her later life in Italy (she died in Naples and is buried there in the English Cemetery) because of her husband’s ill health. But she was rewarded with numerous honours in Britain; perhaps the greatest of these was Somerville College in Oxford, which was opened in 1879 and named after her. Somerville did much to popularise science among women, but she also tried to improve their social and political position. Indeed, four years before her death at age 91, she signed John Stuart Mill’s unsuccessful petition for women’s suffrage.
Eliza Wigham (1820–1899)
Eliza Wigham is one of the least known but most important women of 19th-century Scotland. Her family were Quakers and had been involved in the struggles to end slavery in the British Empire. By the time Wigham reached adulthood, the focus had shifted to the United States. Anti-slavery movements sprang up both in Scotland and in America, and Eliza and her whole family were at the forefront of the struggle to free the slaves. This brought her into contact with the leading American abolitionists, including the radical William Lloyd Garrison, who also favoured promoting the rights of women. Garrison convinced Wigham and other women that they were as unfree as slaves.
This linkage of abolition and women’s rights divided the anti-slavery movement in the United States and Britain; indeed, Wigham found herself in opposition to her father, John, leader of the Edinburgh Emancipation Society, over the issue of women’s rights. But this family disagreement didn’t stop her fighting to link freedom for slaves with freedom for women.
Slavery came to an end after the American Civil War, but Wigham didn’t put her feet up and think the job done. There were other causes to attend to, and she worked tirelessly to improve the position of women in the UK. She was prominent in all the important campaigns:
She opposed the Contagious Diseases Act, which allowed for any woman to be arrested as a prostitute on the suspicion of a police officer.
She fought for women to gain access to higher education.
She was a passionate advocate of women’s right to vote.
As a Quaker, she was also fundamentally opposed to war and argued for the setting up of a High Court of Nations to settle all international disputes. On top of her international activities, Wigham worked continuously to improve the condition of poor working women in Edinburgh. If ever a person deserves a plaque or a statue, Eliza Wigham does – but you won’t find one, not even outside the house in the street in Edinburgh where she lived!
Roland Eugene Muirhead (1868–1964)
It’s hard to believe today when there is a parliament in Edinburgh that Nationalism was once a political view held by only a tiny minority of Scots. It was men like Roland Muirhead and their commitment that kept the idea of an independent Scotland alive. Without him and his fellow Nationalists, the Scottish National Party would never have emerged, far less grown into a party of government.
Muirhead was the son of a prosperous businessman in Lochwi