Ballachulish Part 4 - Doctors & and legal battles

 

Looking north over Ballachulish village and quarry to Loch Leven. Picture credit: MM0HLQ

 

We ended Part 3 in 1862 when "from pecuniary difficulties" Dugald, the 7th Stewart laird of Ballachulish, sold the estate after it had been in his family for more than 300 years. 

The purchaser was a Yorkshireman, Captain Robert Tennant. This was part of a common pattern for Highland estates in the mid 19th century - families who had owned them for generations succumbed to debt and had to sell them to non-resident outsiders, often Victorian nouveaux riches. Captain Tennant seems to have been more than usually non-resident, though, in that he only ever visited his new property once, for two weeks in the autumn of 1865. The rest of the time Ballachulish House was the residence of his factor (Scottish word for estate manager). Tennant's ownership was brief, however. In in 1871 he sold the estate to an Irish baronet, Sir George Beresford. His tenure as owner was even shorter, though, for he died two years later in 1873 leaving the estate in his will to trustees to hold it for Lady Beresford's lifetime use and then on her death to pass to their only surviving child, Mrs Marcia Drummond.

The Beresfords' ownership of Ballachulish Estate in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was punctuated by a bewildering succession of litigations involving the estate and its slate quarry. These are interesting as preserving snippets of historical detail which might otherwise have been lost but at the same time they can be frustrating. That's because the law reports only narrate such of the facts as are necessary for the decision of the legal point in issue. That's good for lawyers but annoying for historians as it leaves some of the story untold. But with that caveat, here's the tale of the legal entanglements of the owners of Ballachulish Estate and their quarrymaster tenants.

 

Looking east from Ballachulish village and quarry towards Glen Coe. Picture by kind permission of Neil Barr

 

Despite his noble connections (he was a cousin of the Marquess of Waterford), Sir George Beresford appears to have been heavily in debt. When he died, Ballachulish Estate was mortgaged for £48,000 (about £5 million in today's money) and his creditors pressed his trustees (his widow and her brothers) for payment. Help appeared to be at hand, however, in the form of their solicitor in Glasgow, one George Gardner. Also their factor, he arranged new loans but the Beresfords were still not clear and required a further £6,500. Gardner obtained this from his father, James, who also appeared to do them a big favour by taking on the lease of the slate quarry when it was given up by the previous tenant, Alexander Pitcairn, in 1874. Prior to taking on the quarry in 1863, Pitcairn had the track record of having been the manager at the Easdale slate quarries but James Gardner's background was as a butcher! He also proposed to take into business with him at the quarry his younger son John, hitherto a lard and tallow merchant, so it was perhaps as well that he continued the employment of Pitcairn's quarry manager, John Ferguson, to guide them (at an annual salary of £200: about £23,000 in today's money) . 

The rent paid by the quarry tenant was obviously the Beresfords' biggest source of income but it was paid by James Gardner to his older son, George, the solicitor, as the estate factor. But by 1875 it appears that George had become neglectful of his factorial duties. The Beresfords put pressure on him through his father who agreed to take over George's role as factor. That meant that James Gardner as quarry tenant was now paying the rent to himself as his landlords' factor and if you think that sounds like a situation loaded with the potential for trouble then you'd be right. Relations between the Beresfords and the Gardners deteriorated and they were sacked as factors in March 1876. Then, in September that year, James Gardner, possibly as a diversionary tactic because the new factors were on the point of uncovering the extent of his malfeasance, precipitated a crisis by demanding repayment of his £6,500 loan. When the Beresfords refused to pay, Gardner threatened to enforce his mortgage on the estate and sell it to recoup his debt.

 

Looking across to Ballachulish from the north shore of Loch Leven: the less well known West Quarry is clearly visible on the right.

 

At this point, the Beresfords - who claimed (somewhat naively, perhaps) to be unaware of having signed any mortgage giving Gardner power of sale - went to court to obtain an interdict (Scottish equivalent of an injunction) to prevent him selling, at least until it had been ascertained in a proper accounting what, if any, money was left owing to him after the Beresfords had been credited with the quarry rents he was due them. The Court was of opinion that the terms of Gardner's mortgage over the estate were unusually draconian (probably as a result of the Beresfords' lawyer, George Gardner, having a conflict of interest due to the creditor being his father) and consequently the interdict was granted. Meanwhile, the Beresfords (having presumably engaged a new lawyer) had discovered another nasty surprise in the various contracts they'd signed with the Gardners, this time in the lease of the slate quarry. 

Before they fell out, Lady Beresford had agreed that James Gardner might have a fifteen year lease but when the lease which had been signed was checked, it was found to be for 35 years. The Beresfords therefore raised a court action to have it declared null and void. The court decided that Gardner had fraudulently procured the signature of a 35 year lease but when the Beresfords moved the court for an order evicting him, he responded with the audacious defence that, although the 35 year lease had been cancelled, that still left him entitled to a 15 year one in terms of his agreement with Lady Beresford! Gardner fought that case all the way to the House of Lords before he was finally evicted but however disreputably he may have behaved didn't alter the fact that the Beresfords still owed him repayment of his £6,500 loan. He also made a claim for compensation for upwards of £10,000 he claimed he'd spent on improvements to the quarry including a railway a mile long, new levels and inclines and a pier and buildings. The Beresfords therefore needed to raise money to buy Gardner off and a new tenant for the slate quarries.

This time their plight came to the attention of the local doctor, Donald Campbell. As well being a medical man, Campbell had a coaching business and he did a deal with a business acquaintance in Glasgow, Alexander McKinlay, with whom he dealt in horses in connection with his coaches. In terms of this agreement, Campbell would take the tenancy of the quarry, McKinlay would lend the Beresfords the money they needed to buy off George Gardner and they (Campbell & McKinlay) would share the profits of the quarries. Now, having had their fingers so badly burnt borrowing money from and renting their quarry to a butcher and his lard and tallow merchant son, you wonder if the Beresfords weren't taking something of a risk by doing the same thing again with a doctor turned coachman and his horse dealer friend! I wonder if it was to limit their exposure that they very quickly paid McKinlay back the money he'd lent them to buy Gardner off (£10,000) by borrowing that amount from Lady Beresford's brother, Admiral Lucas. If so, it didn't keep them out of trouble because thirteen years later, in 1892, we find the Admiral's marriage contract trustees (to whom he'd assigned the debt) suing the Beresfords for payment! Sadly, the law reports don't reveal why relations within the family had apparently soured to the extent of litigating amongst themselves but the Beresfords must have managed to refinance once again because Ballachulish Estate remained in their ownership for many more decades.

 

The entrance to the East Quarry is on the left. The houses in the foreground have all now been demolished and the main A82 road now passes over their site beside where the Isles of Glen Coe Hotel is now.

 

Meanwhile, the lease of the quarries to Donald Campbell, the doctor turned coach proprietor, was going without a hitch as far as the Beresfords concerned. But that didn't prevent Campbell falling out with his partner McKinlay over the final division of profits when the lease ended as scheduled in 1893. Remember that Dr. Campbell was the tenant of the quarry but had a deal with McKinlay to pay him half the profits. Campbell also ran a store at the quarry from which he sold goods to the workers and McKinlay claimed that Campbell should have been paying him half of the profits of this store as part of the overall quarry operation. Campbell denied this and claimed it was a separate business McKinlay had no concern with. The ensuing litigation reveals a lot of interesting detail about the operation of the quarry in the last quarter of the 19th century and I can do no better than simply to quote from the judgement:-

“In conformity with the practice of the estate the quarry was wrought by piecework. The men worked in squads of six, and to each squad was assigned a certain breadth of rock, which they quarried and worked into slates. The haulage of these slates from the quarry to the quay was provided by the tenant, who stored them in separate sheds belonging to the respective squads, and each squad looked after the loading and stowing of its own slates on board the ships chartered for the purpose. 

The men had to provide their own quarrying materials, including gunpowder, iron tools, hammer handles, and rope. They were at liberty to supply themselves with these materials as they pleased; but practically, in pursuance of a custom which had prevailed before [Dr. Campbell] became tenant, they bought them at a store carried on by [Campbell] as a separate business, with separate books, and to a certain extent separate clerks. These materials were sold to the men, not at cost price, but at a profit. This business was, however, carried on, and the materials kept in stock, within the [land rented from the Beresfords along with the quarries themselves] with this exception, that the powder was stored in a magazine which was outside [that land], and which does not appear to have been expressly taken on lease by [Campbell]. 

Besides the materials required by the men who were on piecework, the quarry itself required supplies of material for its general working. These were chiefly (1) coals for the locomotive and stationary engines, (2) forage for the horses, and (3) tools for making or repairing the quarry roads and the like. These also were provided by [Dr. Campbell] through the medium of his general business, but they were (subject to a trifling exception) charged to the quarry at cost price.

The [business of the store] further extended to supplying household coal at a profit to the quarry workers at their homes as well as to the general public, and also (to a small extent) supplying the forage. [Campbell] arranged for these supplies being brought to Ballachulish by sea. This was sometimes done by chartering vessels, and sometimes by a steamer belonging to himself, which brought coal and took away slates. This steamer was run as part of the general business, and yielded a considerable profit, but the pursuer does not claim to share in it. 

The quarrymen were paid eight times in the year—every six or seven weeks. At each pay-day those who got supplies of household coal in the interval were debited with it at market prices (and not at cost price), and received the balance of their wages in cash. A considerable profit resulted to [Dr Campbell] upon the coals so supplied during the currency of the lease."

 

A rather grainy picture clearly shows the galleries (levels) in which the East Quarry was worked. Picture by kind permission of Glencoe Folk Museum

 

Other interesting snippets from the court case included that the quarry workers had their tools repaired and sharpened by quarry smiths for which a weekly charge was made. And although no details were given, Campbell had also been convicted of an offence under the Truck Acts (the legislation that requires employees to be paid in money rather than in kind on which the employer might be profiteering). But that said, it's noteworthy that the workers were now, in the 1890s, employees - fifty years earlier, they'd been self employed, paying the estate for the privilege of working in the quarry and selling to it the slates they made.

The case also contains some interesting financial details. In 1878, when Campbell took over the tenancy, the quarry plant (chiefly, the infrastructure - tramways and steam engines etc. - to haul the rock from the quarry face to the shore where it was worked into slates) was valued at £7,584:16s (about £900,000 in today's money). And the rent Campbell paid the Beresford Trustees was £1,000 per year (£120k today) or a half of his annual profits, whichever was higher. The profits in 1892 were £2,605:9s:5d (£330k).

Incidentally, McKinlay lost his case for a share of the profits of the store. The court laid emphasis on the fact that there was no suggestion that the Beresfords were entitled to any of these profits as part of their rent. It also a highlighted a meeting in 1884 at which Dr Campbell had told McKinlay that he had no share of the store profits. There's the delicious snippet that the meeting took place in the back parlour of McKinlay's house in Pollokshields - then as now one of Glasgow's most opulent suburbs - and one can easily picture the pair - whom the judge characterised as "shrewd businessmen" - in a cigar smoke filled room!

 

Dr Lachlan Grant. Photo by kind permission of Glencoe Folk Museum

 

 

 

 

No discussion of Ballachulish doctors in the courts would be complete without a mention of Lachlan Grant pictured above. When Dr Campbell's lease ended in 1893, the quarry was taken over by a company called The Ballachulish Slate Quarries Ltd (BSQL) which soon acquired its principal competitor, the Easdale slate quarries. In 1900, BSQL appointed a local doctor, the 29 year old Lachlan Grant, as medical officer to their 600 employees (and retired workers) at Ballachulish and their families. As well as an annual salary of £270 (about £33,000 in today's money), Grant was permitted in terms of his contract to have his own separate private practice for local patients other than the quarriers and to hold other medical appointments in the locality but, in both cases, only for so long as he was employed by BSQL. If not, he would have to withdraw from local practice and the rationale behind that was that BSQL would only be able to secure a decent successor if they were able to hold out the prospect of a monopoly on the local medical practice outside the quarry.

But the young doctor quickly turned into something of a thorn in BSQL's side. He sided with the men against their employer and raised concerns about the state of the company's houses - those same cottages which had been so lauded in the Second Statistical Account (page 250) half a century before. In July 1902, just two years after they'd employed him, BSQL decided to dispense with Grant's services but the quarry workers didn't take this lying down. At this point, it's worth quoting verbatim again from the pleadings in the ensuing court case:-

"After it became known in the district that [BSQL's] directors had terminated [Dr Grant's] appointment there was general and widespread indignation, and on 8th July a mass meeting of [BSQL's] employees and others was held at Ballachulish, when resolutions were unanimously adopted expressing regret at the dismissal of [Dr Grant], respectfully requesting the directors to reconsider their decision, and expressing regret that the workmen had had no voice in the matter. 

As the directors adhered to their resolution another mass meeting was held on 15th July, which was attended not only by the quarry workers but by practically the entire population, including landed proprietors, clergymen, and other influential residenters in the district. [Dr Grant] was unanimously requested by this meeting to remain in the district, and a medical committee of the quarrymen, which had been reconstituted at said meeting, passed the following resolution, which was also unanimously approved of by the said mass meeting, and signed by all the members of committee and communicated to [BSQL]—‘We, the medical committee unanimously elected at a mass meeting of the employees of the Ballachulish Slate Quarries, Limited, on 15th July 1902, having learned with extreme surprise and regret that the petition signed by over 400 names, and the resolution of the employees in favour of Dr Grant, have been ignored by the directors, and that they still insist in terminating his agreement, do hereby reserve to ourselves the right of appointing our own medical officer, and hereby give notice on behalf of the employees that they will not allow any deductions to be made from their wages on behalf of any doctor who is not appointed by us.’ At the same meeting the committee nominated [Dr Grant] as their medical adviser. 

[Dr Grant] decided to accept the said appointment, and to accede to the unanimous public demand that he should continue to practice his profession in Ballachulish and district. Moreover, he holds many public appointments in the district, including those of medical officer appointed by the Government under the Factory Acts, Poor-law medical officer under the Parish Council, medical officer to the Lettermore Granite Quarries, medical officer to the Foresters' Friendly Society, Ancient Shepherds' Friendly Society, Friendly Society of Rechabites, and others. It was impossible for [Dr Grant] to terminate his contracts with all these public bodies without occasioning much public inconvenience and incurring considerable pecuniary obligations. 

The directors of [BSQL] are all non-resident. For a long time past [BSQL] have persuaded their employees to sign an agreement authorising [them] to make a deduction from the weekly pay of each employee for ‘the sums to be paid by you (i.e., [BSQL]) on our behalf for medicine and medical attendance.’ ... [BSQL] have no mandate from the workmen to employ any medical adviser whomsoever on their behalf, or to prevent defender practising in the district, and no obligation rests on [BSQL] to provide medical attendance for their workmen. Even if [BSQL] appoint a medical officer they cannot compel their employees to consult him."

 

Looking over the Ballachulish narrows (where the bridge is today) up Loch Leven towards Ballachulish village and Glen Coe. The East Quarry is clearly visible on the hillside in the middle distance.

 

BSQL were infuriated at their rebellious workforce. On 31st July, they had appointed a new medical officer but he couldn't take up his position so long as Lachlan Grant refused to step aside. They therefore went to court to seek an interdict against Grant to prevent him from "carrying on the practice of a doctor of medicine in the said village or district of Ballachulish, and in particular from acting as a medical practitioner or surgeon in any manner of way to the employees of [BSQL] and their families, and the old men who had previously been employees of [BSQL], and their families, in said village or district of Ballachulish."

Dr Grant defended the action but it's important to understand that the court wasn't being asked to arbitrate the dispute or decide whether it was morally right that he be allowed to continue to minister to the quarriers of Ballachulish (nor to reverse his dismissal). The court's job was to decide whether the clause in the contract he had signed whereby he undertook not to practice in the area if he ceased to be employed by BSQL was legally valid or not. It was an example of what's called a "non-compete clause" nowadays and these are legally enforceable provided they're not unduly restrictive in terms of the time and/or area for which they apply: in other words, a clause preventing someone from practising anywhere in Scotland in perpetuity is not enforceable but one preventing someone from practising in a narrower area and/or for a finite period like two or three years could be.

Dr Grant lost the first round of his court battle so he appealed to the Inner House of the Court of Session (Scottish equivalent of the Court of Appeal) where four senior judges headed by the Lord Justice Clerk re-heard his case. But by a majority of three to one they were also against him. In upholding the validity of his non-compete clause, emphasis was laid on the fact that, although it was not limited in time, it was spatially restricted to a very small area, namely, the immediate locality of Ballachulish. (The judge in the minority thought the clause invalid because practically everyone within that small area was known to be clamouring for Dr Grant's services which made the case an unusual one where non-compete clauses were concerned.)

Slates being worked up at the East Quarry. Photo by kind permission of Glencoe Folk Museum

 

The appeal judgement in BSQL's favour was not delivered until June 1903, almost a year after the dispute had broken out. And while the wheels of the law had been grinding slowly in Edinburgh, more dramatic events had been taking place in Ballachulish. BSQL had instituted a lock out at the quarry (the reverse of a strike involving the employer preventing the workforce from working). With no union to provide strike pay, this hurt the quarriers badly and many drifted away to find work in slate quarries elsewhere including at Toberonochy and Balvicar on the islands of, respectively, Luing and Seil south of Oban (but not, presumably, at Easdale which also belonged to BSQL). Others found work building an artificial loch in the hills above Glen Creran to the south of Ballachulish on Fasnacloich Estate which belonged to a sympathetic landowner, the wealthy and philanthropic Tom Bullough. (He was the cousin of Sir George Bullough, the owner of Rum and who also indulged in hydro-engineering there as I described in this post.) Meanwhile, scab labour hired by BSQL to remove unsold stock from the quarry was pelted by the women and children of Ballachulish with broken slates, something of which there was an abundant supply around the village.  

Following his second legal setback, Dr Grant was considering appealing again to the highest court in the land at that time, the House of Lords. The Court of Session agreed to suspend the interdict it had granted preventing him practicing in Ballachulish for two months in order to give him time to arrange his affairs on the assumption that the Lords would also refuse his appeal. And there the record so far as revealed by the law reports abruptly stops. It seems, however, that the appeal to the Lords never happened and that, later in 1903, sense prevailed and the dispute was defused by Dr Grant being re-hired by BSQL. He remained in practice at Ballachulish until he died in 1945, constantly active in the pursuit of social justice. Amongst the causes he championed were the Highlands & Islands Medical Service, established in 1913 and a sort of local forerunner of the NHS (which I touched on this post), and then the NHS itself. You can read a bit more about Lachlan Grant here. There are also two books about him - here and here.

In a final post about Ballachulish, I will describe the decline and fall of the slate quarries but will conclude this one with a final legal curiosty: one of the legal precedents BSQL cited in support of their argument that the non-compete clause in Lachlan Grant's contract was valid was the 1867 case of Macintyre v Macraild. By coincidence, it also involved the contract of employment of a doctor. And by an even more extraordinary coincidence, it was the doctor who attended the Ballachulish slate quarries! Just what was it about the place that turned its medical men into such litigious maniacs? 

 

The East Quarry with the mountains of Glen Coe in the background. Picture credit tanxiaolian91