In Search of Beatrice Garvie (1872-1959) Part 1

Researched and Written by Guest Blogger: Fiona Sanderson

Beatrice Garvie was the doctor on North Ronaldsay in the 1930s. Unlike other doctors who came and went within a year on the ‘Highlands and Islands Scheme’, she stayed for well over a decade. She was an excellent photographer, and took many photographs and slides of island life, which show the families who lived there, at work in the fields, and on the shore, at the harbour, and with their new babies.

 Dr Garvie in her customary jodhpurs and knitted sweater.
Dr Garvie Photo Collection No. 0062

Her photographs are very natural, and not posed. I think that says something about the skill she had, and also, that the community were relatively at ease with her presence. I have a personal connection with these photographs, since my Gran, Jenny South Ness, grew up on North Ronaldsay, and the first time I came across Beatrice Garvie’s photos was in the archive on the island, where I was delighted and moved to find pictures of my Gran in her early life, and then, of course, I came to know the family pictured around her too.

Jenny South Ness tramping the blankets.
Dr. Garvie Photo Collection No. 0003

By the time Beatrice Garvie was working on North Ronaldsay, she was in her fifties. When I thought about that, I wondered if she had been one of the first women to train in medicine. 

I also thought it possible that, if she had made such a careful record of island life through her photographs, perhaps she had done the same in other places she had lived.

South Ness with Jenny, Bella, children and Jenny's parents John and Mary.
Dr. Garvie Photo Collection No.0239

Lockdown was an opportunity to start finding out more. Thanks to an amount of detail now available online, and the helpful corroboration of archivists in Scotland and England, I've put together quite a full picture of her life. The archives on North Ronaldsay, and in Kirkwall, have a collection of her photographs, and I’m very grateful to the archive for preserving these so carefully. Thanks too, to Ann Marwick, whose meticulous and sensitive recordings of memories through her sound recordings, are an immense resource for seeking detail from the past. 

As restrictions lift, I look forward to visiting North Ronaldsay and talking to folk who still hold her in living memory. This is the story so far. 

Sometimes people have told me that Beatrice Garvie had worked in India, just before she came to North Ronaldsay, and it is fairly well known that she worked there as a medical missionary. In fact, she went to India not long after she qualified. Here is a picture of her in Rajputana, where she worked in the Zenana, with women and children.

Miss Miller, Dr. B. Garvie and The Zenana Staff
The National Library of Scotland licence the use of this content under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 UK: Scotland License. manuscripts@nls.uk 

She worked alongside another doctor, Jessie Smith, although this photograph shows her with a Miss Miller. This dates from 1900.

She took the ‘Triple Qualification’ which was open to women and people from overseas seeking to gain an equivalent qualification in medicine. She had passed all her exams by 1895. This qualification was endorsed jointly by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Royal Colleges. When you look at the list of other names in the exam rolls, hers is usually the singular female. Martha Florence Armitage was another woman to take this qualification at around the same time. 

I now know that Beatrice Garvie worked in Glasgow and in Islington, Stirlingshire, Paisley and Sheffield and Rotherham. She worked in ‘Fever Hospitals’ and specialised in tuberculosis. She gained promotions as an officer of public health, as well as studying, when she was in the Sheffield area, for a further qualification in public health. She considered the effects of poverty on public health in a report that she wrote. She had to deal with an amount of prejudice, most likely throughout her career.

She was an active supporter of suffrage, at least as far as making and collecting donations to the NUWSS (National Union of Women Suffrage Societies), in particular to the NUWSS field hospitals for Russian refugees, which were an important and very well organised relief effort for these refugees, although they are little recognised in the history of this time. 

Here are some intriguing details from her career in the early 1920s that may illustrate how it was to be a woman working in public health just after the end of the 1st World War. 

In 1920, Beatrice Garvie was the Tuberculosis Officer in Fife, having worked as the Assistant Tuberculosis Officer in Tayside just previously. There are records of council committee meetings from her time in Fife. In early 1920, she draws notice to the time being wasted, as she travelled to visit men in their homes, to inspect them for TB, after their return from the war. She explained that men were rarely in, despite having been notified of the time and date of the appointment. She asks that a change in practice might call the men to visit a clinic, and therefore save all the hours of her wasted travel, over a large geographical area. A committee member points out that this would necessitate the men traveling instead, and risking loss of a day’s wages. This is questioned by another committee member. 

Then at another committee meeting, Beatrice Garvie relates that the ‘civilian’ community are suffering from TB, through insufficient inspection, as so much time is taken with the men who have returned from war. There is no record of any action being discussed, or having been taken. 

Shortly after this, Beatrice Garvie takes a month’s sick leave. At the end of that, a medical officer ‘intimates’ to the committee that she needs a further 6 months sick leave. This is refused, and she is given a month’s notice. Then there is discussion of the need to appoint a man to the role, and that this role, with other responsibilities included, could be advertised at a salary of £1000 pa. I haven’t found much detail on Beatrice Garvie’s salary, what I have found was in the area of £400 pa.

She began work in North Ronaldsay in 1929. Sydney Scott tells Ann Marwick, in an Orkney Sound Archive oral history interview, that “she was very….. you ken what I mean?” when asked how she fitted in with the folk on the island. He says that women were “frightened of her”, although Tia, his wife, quickly responds “I wasnae afraid of her”. They do not agree in the interview on how folk felt about her. Tia is more ready to say she was a good doctor, and that she became better liked as time went on. Both agree that she was friendly with everyone on the island. A newspaper report notes that she and John Tulloch of Upper Linnay won the Hogmanay wheelbarrow race, in 1943, ‘to great appreciation’. 

Dr. Garvie Photo Collection No. 0139

She was given gifts during her time on the island and when she left. These included a jade dressing case and a wallet of notes on her retirement. 

Ann Marwick expressed a feeling that taking the photographs and giving them to people would have been appreciated by the community. 

Dr. Garvie Photo Collection No. 0431

In 1946, she retired. When she left the island, she had a big ‘roup’, selling off her possessions. Mary Ann Thomson, of South Ness, still remembers it, despite being very young at the time. When she left the island, Charlotte Scott, who had lived with her on North Ronaldsay, as her housekeeper, also went with her. 

I next find a record of her, after the Second World War, living at Castlebrae, in Auchterarder. This was set up as a private hotel by Helen and Stanley Kudelski after the Second World War. Helen Kerr had worked as a transport secretary in the services during the war. Stanley Kudelski was a Captain in a Polish regiment stationed in Auchterarder, and they married after the war. 

There was an internment camp for Polish people in Auchterarder, in fact there were a number of these in Scotland, and they were considered sovereign Polish soil, administered by the Polish government in exile. There are records of abuse in the camp at Rothesay, where it seems that Polish Jews, communists and gay people were kept out of the way by the government, in exile. I haven’t had the time yet to investigate what the camp was like at Auchterarder. 

At the end of the war, there was a large Polish community in Auchterarder, with no chance of returning home. An agricultural school was set up by another Polish captain.. Contact with members of an online group called ‘Auchterarder Memories’ revealed that Castlebrae had extensive grounds, in which there was a small farm, and vegetable gardens. People in the group had memories, years after the war, of elderly Polish men still employed to work in the grounds, and of Polish staff in the kitchen and carrying out domestic roles in the hotel. Beatrice Garvie lived here until her death, in 1959. I hope to find more links to Castlebrae, and the other people who lived and worked there. There was a Mary Lunn, who had been a music teacher in Edinburgh, and retired to Castlebrae at about the same time as Beatrice Garvie did, and who lived there for over twenty years. 

It is tempting to wonder whether a social network of some kind existed to link these single women, perhaps from the early days of degrees being awarded to women, or through the suffrage campaign, or some other link. It is also tempting to wonder what it was about this strong and purposeful community, that chimed with Beatrice Garvie. 

There is a lot more to find out, and equally, a lot more that I could have included already, but will return to another time. Perhaps you have a memory of Beatrice Garvie, or know something more about her. Maybe you’ve come across a set of photos in another archive that were taken by a woman doctor, between 1900 and 1950, and this will turn out to be another set of pictures that she took. Any detail, no matter how slight it may seem, can add a great deal to a picture of a person, and I’d be very grateful to hear from you!

Fiona Sanderson, March 2021. Please get in touch at Fiona.Sanderson@mac.com or post a comment below. 

The Dr Garvie Photo Collection is part of the Orkney Archive and consists of over 500 photographs of people and places across North Ronaldsay.  

OSA/180 - Orkney Sound Archive Interview with Sidney and Tia Scott, 12 Feb 1988. Interviewer Ann Marwick

Click here for Part Two

A Pharay Inventory 1694

A new post written by The Balfour Blogger:

The Balfour papers contain many documents from the 17th century, dating back well over 300 years, and largely unexplored. This is exciting territory for anyone with an interest in Orkney's history. Most are documents retained by Balfours over the centuries, to demonstrate ownership of land, but there is much more than that to be picked over.

These 17th century documents are written in archaic script, in secretary hand and thus difficult to decipher. Many are also legal documents, again making them tricky to understand. Finally they use language, whether it's old Orcadian, Scots or English with which we are no longer familiar. These are the reasons why they are unexplored - they take time and careful study to understand, but it's never time badly spent.

Box 23 of the Balfour papers is now being catalogued fully for the first time.

A brief catalogue of its contents exists but a full description is now in progress which will take many hours of work especially if lots of 17th century deciphering is needed. Secretary hand is full of unfamiliar versions of letters, flourishes, dashes, dots with meaning, and letters no longer part of our alphabet. Numbers are another worry, and of course some of the documents are in poor shape where damp and repeated folding and unfolding have left actual gaps in the paper, where information has been lost.

Several people who work or volunteer in the Orkney Archive have some training in secretary hand; Jennifer Thomson is particularly adept and it was Jennifer who deciphered the inventory, dated 22 November 1694, which this blog is about. Both Jennifer and I are indebted to Alexander Fenton's book, The Northern Isles: Orkney and Shetland, for its encyclopaedic information which has made both translation and this blog possible.

Also most useful have been The Scots Dictionary and William P. L. Thomson's Orkney Land and People and his New History of Orkney.

The inventory is a steillbow inventory made by George Balfour of Pharay to William Craigie of Gairsay of the ground and lands of the island of Pharay. A steillbow or steelbow rental was one which included all livestock, equipment and the land itself. Pharay is the modern island of Faray, lying between Westray and Eday, recently in the news, having been bought by Orkney Islands Council in November 2018. Pharay was inhabited until 1946, the population having become simply too few for life to be sustainable there any longer. It was however a fertile little island, only about 2 miles in length and in 1694 it belonged to George Balfour, who rented land out to William Craigie.

The inventory is of the horse, kyne or cattle (modern Orcadian - kye), seed and servants bolls. Bollmen or bowmen were paid in grain or oatmeal rather than cash.

1. Imprimis [first] ane horse called Burger [i.e. one horse called Burger, perhaps named after its original owner, or the man it was bought from, or the place it came from? And then more horses called] Smithie, Starniebroun, Corrigall all four comprised to tweintie [twenty] six pound Scots money. [Starniebroun translates as starry brown. I wonder if here, the broun should read brow? Starry brow makes for a lovely name.

2. Three more horses follow, being Sinclair, Barnie and Steinson, value in 24 pound Scots.

3. One black mare and a brown mare, combined value of 11 pound Scots.

Alexander Fenton says that Orkney tended not to breed horses at this time, but to buy in stallions, which were small but valued for their strength. mares were deemed much lesser creatures, emphasised here by the lack of the naming of the black and brown mares, and by the lesser monetary value.
There is a total of 7 male and 2 female horses and they would have been hard-worked, to plough and harrow, and as pack animals carrying all sorts of burdens, least of which was probably people, on the small island. Note that there are no oxen in the inventory, and oxen were often a plough animal in Orkney.

4. Four bulled kyne, two kyne unbulled and two bulled quoyocks

5. Ane young bull of thrie years
This translates as four cows which have been serviced by the bull and are therefore, hopefully, in calf (pregnant); two cows not yet been serviced by the bull and therefore not in calf; and two heifers which may be in calf. Heifers, young cows yet to have their first calf, until recently were called quoys in Orkney rather than heifers, but here they are an older terminology again, being quoyocks. And at item five, we have the bull, but he is young, so may or may not be the father of the expected calves. No value is given of the cattle, surprisingly - perhaps an error by the clerk?

6. Beer seed and servants bolls fourtie four meills which translates as being bere barley seed, saved from that year's harvest, and the bere intended for the servants in payment for their labour - in total 44 meills/meils of bere grain. With weights and measures, we hit another difficulty in understanding old documents; weights vary across time and standards change, as does the relationship of Scots currency to Sterling, or the value of a pound Sterling at one date against another date. William P. L. Thomson states that in 1806, a meil was standardised at 177lbs and 12 ounces (roughly 80kg) but also "weights had increased over the years and in earlier times had been very much less." Tricky then to know how much bere was in the Pharay barn that November (which is by the Julian Calendar, not our Georgian Calendar, so in modern terms is early rather than late November - another pitfall for the reader of early documents). Of course, bere also needs explanation outside of Orkney - it is a form of barley, Hordeum vulgare, still grown in Orkney, but rarely now elsewhere. It was a staple of the Orcadian diet until well into the 19th century, being used still today in whisky, beer, shortbread, biscuits and as the main flour in a staple which has never left the Orkney table, bere bannocks. The bear seed in this inventory would have been dried and ground to make bere-meal/flour for ubiquitous use.

7. Twenty eight meils of oats for seed No mention of oats for the servants, so perhaps the harvested oats of 1694 had all been distributed for the use of either the landowner or tenant, perhaps to sell on, or to the servants, again to be milled for various uses. From this weight of oats for seed, we might calculate the area to be sown by George Craigie, if we could establish what the meil weighed...

8. Two furnished ploughs which given the lack of any further plough-parts (see Fenton Chapter 38) in the inventory, likely means two ploughs and all their ancillary pieces. Thrie forks and ane ware pyck with two harras, being three forks and two harrows (toothed implements pulled over ploughed land to break it down to a tilth for sowing) and a ware pick which was a two-pronged fork with which harvesters of the ware/seaweed pulled the seaweed in from the sea. The first harvest/manufacture of kelp in Orkney was in 1722, therefore the Pharay pyck/pick was used to gather ware to be used as fertiliser on the land.

Next is a fold in the paper and an indecipherable item, but followed by ane kirne, ane old stoup, ane cea. A kirn is a butter churn made of wooden staves and into which a plunger is manually worked to turn the butter to milk; and old stoup was a container for liquid, and a cea or sae was a wooden tub often used to hold water, which stood frequently on a sae-bink, a stone bench.

Then there are ane malt pundlar and ane pundlar stone. Pundlars were beams upon which goods were weighed, in this case malt for ale brewing, and the pundlar stone being the weight against which the malt was weighed. Quarrels arose over the efficiency and correctness of beams and stones - were they weighing under? Or over? And in whose favour?

Following on from the pundlar, we get ten clibbers which are wooden pack-saddles onto which were attached to whatever the horse was to carry (illustrated Fenton p249). Then ten pair of maise which are triangular nets made of straw or bent grass/marram grass (Ammophilia Arenaria) into which goods are put, to carry them (particularly peats), then attached to the clibber - all of which would have been hand-made on Pharay. And twentie treaves of bent, twenty sheaves (bundles) of bent grass. Treaves is possibly another error of the clerk: Fenton and the Scots Dictionary want the word to be threaves, more recently known as sheaves.

Also part of item 8, are ane yoall with four oars. A yoall/yole is an open boat, clinker built, about 15 feet (4.5 metres) long, rowed by two men and in 1694 unlikely to have a sail. She may have come flat-packed from Norway (nothing new in flat-packing from Scandinavia) as boats often did to treeless Orkney and Shetland. She was the inter-island work-horse, used for cargo and passengers and fishing, a vital element of the islanders diet.

And finally ane scoop, worth eighteen pound, two speads, two corne forks, ane riddle, eight corne hooks and ane pynt pott, which are one scoop, two spades, two corn forks, one riddle, eight corn hooks and one pint pot. The scoop was for measuring out dry goods and probably made of wood. It may have served as an actual measure, its contents heaped or flat, giving a consistent and equal measure to each recipient. It is here that the clerk slips up again - the eighteen pound value (which should also read eighteen pound Scots) will not be for the scoop alone, but for all of the items in this eighth section of the inventory, so should follow after ane pynt pott. The corne forks were made of wood, possibly part of the harvesting process, or for barn/byre work. The riddle was used to clean up grain and made of wood and pierced animal skin. The corne hooks were sickles, the means by which the grain was cut by hand, then bound into bundles/sheaves. The pynt pott, like the scoop and the pundlar and pundlar stone, may have been an important measure, part of a landlord's equal distribution of liquids or dry goods, or his calculation of rent paid in kind.

*************************************************

This short inventory, dating from November 1694, gives an insight into what life on Pharay was about. The inventory relates to a small island, the land division of which was very different from modern farm division (refer to Fenton and Thomson): it has work-horses; a small number of cattle; it grows bere and oats on land ploughed and harrowed and fertilised with seaweed; the landlord pays his workers in bere and. probably oats, making ale from malt weighed on a malt pundlar; milk from the cows is churned into butter and cheese; bent grass is gathered from the shore to make nets and baskets and ropes (probably supplemented by oat and bere straw); there is a boat to cross to Westray and Eday and further afield, rowed by two men, and to fish from, and probably to shoot seals and seabirds (flesh, skin, feathers, oil all invaluable). The doling out of consistent measures of malt and liquids and dry goods is marked by the pundlar and the scoop and the pint pot. The various tools and equipment all relate to the work of the place which is done without electricity, without carboniferous oil-based technologies, without easy imports of fertilisers and seed, with well-water only and all done on a diet of barley and oats, fish, cheese and butter and probably kale. Food, shelter, warmth, light are all derived from the island of Pharay itself - little comes in from further afield, other than clothing and footwear and both are probably infrequently renewed in an economy driven by in-kind exchange rather than cash. Of course George Balfour and William Craigie had access to silver and gold and lived well as men of trade and property, but not so their servants or tenants.

Life in the 1690s was particularly harsh and for much of Scotland serious famine was a feature of the latter half of the decade. Orkney and Shetland were already experiencing famine by 1694. The Little Ice Age had reached its coldest trough of cold and wet, and three massive volcanic eruptions in Iceland and Indonesia had made things even worse, with dust particles reducing sunlight. Perhaps the lack of oats for the servants, above, is nothing to do with prior distribution, and everything to do with shortage and poor harvest.

Also Orkney was beset by privateers at this point, sent out from France to plunder North Sea shipping and in June 1694, two French ships looted the storehouse at St Mary's village in Holm and remained on Lamb Holm island for a week, leaving with the looted store and possessions of the islanders.

These were hard and dangerous times, all a long way from our world in 2018 and marvellous that 324 years after the inventory was set down, we can share its contents and its meaning, and ponder the future of Pharay/Faray as it moves from private hands to those of Orkney islands Council, and hope that its future is bright and important to all of Orkney.

by The Balfour Blogger, 6 Dec 2018

 

Sources used:
Archive item: Inventory, 1694 from bundle D2/23/1 ;
Reference Book: The Northern Isles: Orkney and Shetland by Alexander Fenton, 1978, John Donald Publishers Ltd. ISBN 0859760197, Orkney Room reference: 301.4 YZ
Reference Book: The New History of Orkney by William P. L. Thomson, 2008 edition, Birlinn Ltd., ISBN 9781841586960; Orkney Room reference: 941 Y
Reference Book: Orkney Land and People by William P.L. Thomson, 2008, The Orcadian Ltd (Kirkwall Press). ISBN 9781902957319; Orkney Room reference: 630 Y
Website: The Scots Dictionary http://www.dsl.ac.uk
Website: Scottish Handwriting www.scottishhandwriting.com