This month’s featured document is from the Wick Parochial Board Minutes of 2 March 1847 (reference CC/7/10/1). It reads as follows:
“Application for William Hogston for himself having got his right hand shattered and completely disabled by a shot from the Military on Wednesday last, and has a wife and five children. The Board allow him Twenty Shillings per month.”
The story of how William Hogston came to be shot on that cold February night is a dramatic one. In the winter of 1847 the Highland potato crop was suffering from the same blight as caused the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1852). Here in Caithness crofters were starving, while the landowners shipped grain out of the county to be sold abroad. Tension grew, until the ill-feeling erupted in a series of riots in Castlehill, Thurso, and Wick: in early February an angry crowd blockaded the bridge to Wick harbour and drove off a group of special constables with snowballs.
Then on the night of Friday/Saturday 19/20 February word spread that another shipment of grain was to leave Wick harbour. The crowd blockaded the harbour entrance and filled the boat that was to take the grain with stones. The Riot Act was read, but the crowd refused to disperse. There was a standoff over the weekend, and then on the following Monday a company of over 100 soldiers arrived by steamer from Aberdeen. Under the protection of their rifles the boat was loaded with grain late on the afternoon of Wednesday 24th, and a squad of soldiers was stationed to guard the quay overnight.
A crowd gathered and began to taunt the soldiers, some throwing stones, until the guard called for reinforcements and the streets were cleared in a bayonet charge. Three people were arrested, and the soldiers marched them off to gaol. Their route took them along Union Street, at the foot of the brae that runs along Sinclair Terrace where the Library stands today; another jeering crowd collected along the top of the brae and soon started throwing stones down into the soldiers as they passed below.
The Sheriff ordered the soldiers to open fire up the brae and into the crowd. A young woman whose name was Macgregor was hit on the arm, but not seriously, while William Hogston had his hand shattered by a musket ball.
The John O’Groat Journal reported that William, a cooper by trade, had been making his way quietly home when he was caught in the firing; his hand was so mutilated that the fingers had to be amputated. With his means of earning a living gone, he had no alternative other than to throw himself on the parish and ask for poor relief, which as the minutes tell us, was granted at a rate of five shillings a week.
