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Roy’s West End View: The day when military terror came to a small Scots town

What happens when small people get caught up in big events

My generation was never taught at school about the tragic events of the Lowland Scottish weavers’ doomed insurrection of 1820, and even the “Peterloo” massacre in Manchester in 1817 – despite Mike Leigh’s excellent film on the subject – is only vaguely recalled today.

So it’s possibly hardly surprising that the recent anniversary of the carnage visited on the East Lothian town of Tranent in the year 1797 has passed, yet again, with barely a whisper.

The Artist Andrew Hillhouse

Such events of long ago do strike a chord with people like artist Andrew Hillhouse, whose evocative works detailing Scotland’s turbulent history give a vivid impression of the strife and travails which eventually forged a modern nation.

Organisations representing Scottish miners (for example) and specialist history groups like the Society of John de Graeme also take an interest.

But while there is never any shortage of movies, drama series and documentaries about the 1815 Battle of Waterloo (a battle in fact won by the timely arrival of 40,000 Prussians) the “little” events – of the sort which devastated a small Scottish town – seem too conveniently forgotten.

In the case of the Tranent Massacre of August 29, 1797, there is one vivid local reminder of the slaughter which took place there in a stunning statue of a woman, accompanied by a child, marching boldly against oppression while beating a drum.

She is Jackie (Joan) Crookston, one of the de facto leaders of a town which rose in revolt against the diktats of an effectively unelected government.

The powder trail to catastrophe was lit with the Militia Act of 1797. It was brought in on a wave of well-founded hysteria in an attempt to raise tens of thousands of citizen troops to repel a feared French invasion.

That such an invasion could have happened is borne out by the events of the following year, when Irish rebels, supported by a depleted but effective naval incursion of French troops, rose in revolt against intolerable injustice.

Bloody murder ensued on both sides, battles were fought, and the rebels were brutally crushed.

The Massacre in Tranent

However the massacre in Tranent did not arise from such a struggle, and was primarily a revolt against the forced conscription implicit in the Militia Act.

Lists were drawn up of men who would have to draw lots to find if they would be sent to join the colours, and perhaps – it was surmised – be drafted by some other piece of legislation into the regular forces policing the colonies.

In those days a posting to somewhere like the aptly-named Fever Islands was tantamount to a death sentence. Entire battalions were all but destroyed by diseases such as Yellow Fever without ever firing a shot in anger.

In the south of England, with the French a short hop across the Channel, it made perfect sense to raise a competent militia to help meet the threat, but in places like East Lothian the rationale must have seemed hard to fathom.

A proclamation was issued by the townspeople opposing the draft. It pointed out that people forced into uniform against their will could hardly be regarded as an effective fighting force if some foreign threat really did materialise.

This galvanised the forces of Government. Yeomanry light dragoons from the Cinque Ports and Pembrokeshire were on hand to keep order and enforce the ballot, and a problem which could probably have been solved with patience and diplomacy spun rapidly out of control.

Andrew Hillhouse’s vivid depiction of the clash between armed citizens and cavalry troopers which followed is both compelling and accurate.

Met by a furious mob, pelted with sticks, stones and bottles, the horsemen tried to assert control by riding up and down firing blank charges in the air – to no effect.

Then whatever limited discipline the amateur soldiers may have had dissolved entirely. They became a ravening pack of murderers and robbers.

Swords, carbines and pistols were all used on mostly defenceless citizens, and without regard to age or sex.

For example among those to die was a 19-year-old girl, who was shot dead, while an 11-year-old boy was brutally cut down and his corpse robbed.

Most of perhaps a dozen to twenty such individuals murdered in hot blood (the exact number is not known) were attacked outside the town as the troopers’ bloody spree continued, and had no connection with the protest there.

There is no record of how many people were wounded but survived or later died of wounds.

The soldiers’ commander, Colonel Viscount Hawkesbury (later to become Prime Minister) was in Haddington at the time and had no inkling of the disaster unfolding in Tranent until it was far too late.

As an example of how a ham-fisted government was prepared to treat its own citizens it was in the premier league of atrocities. Several detailed accounts from various perspectives help to illustrate how a mob protest ended in an orgy of bloodlust, with crazed troopers randomly murdering mostly defenceless civilians.

Some have suggested the spirit of Radicalism of those days helped fuel the town’s revolt – it’s not impossible the reforming ideals of people like the shadowy United Scotsmen and the legendary reformer Thomas Muir of Hunterhill may have lent strength to a popular protest.

Another factor may have been the “foreign-ness” and inexperience of the amateur troopers, who were emphatically not (as one recent account appears to suggest) regular heavy dragoons of the Royal North British Dragoons – better known as the Royal Scots Greys.

The yeomanry klllers were from far south of the border, and in the days when communities were highly localised can have had little empathy with a hostile mob speaking broad Lowland Scots – while of course the locals would have seen the troopers as uncouth outsiders and bully-boys in the employ of an alien administration.

One account suggests a panicked Major gave the order to fire on the mob.
Far from becoming a national scandal the Tranent Massacre seems to have been swiftly glossed over, as Britain pursued a seemingly interminable war against France.

In the context of such an epic conflict the little local difficulty in East Lothian was of no consequence.

There was no Scottish equivalent of the ’98 rebellion in Ireland (fortunately, given the bloodshed and misery involved there) and the instinct to defend Britain against foreign invasion trumped all notions of democracy and public accountability.

Tranent was to be just one more violent punctuation mark in the long, weary struggle between the self-perpetuating ruling class and the ruled.

Roy Beers, August, 2022

(Image: The Tranent Massacre by Andrew Hillhouse)

For anyone interested in the detail of the Tranent Massacre the best online account  It makes harrowing but fascinating reading.

More on the work of Andrew Hillhouse

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