Jeanie Laing: a Victorian Single Mother in the Rhins of Galloway

When I was no but sweet sixteen

With beauty just a-blooming-o

It’s little little did I think

At nineteen I'd be greeting-o

         

For the ploughboy lads they're gey braw lads

But they're false and they're deceiving-o

For they'll take your all and they'll gang awa

And leave their lasses grieving-o

(Scottish Folk Song)

Last year, our cottage in Colonel Street, Portpatrick celebrated (if that’s the right word) 50 years as a holiday home, having been bought for that purpose by my Aunt in 1966. Before then, however, it was a real home to many people for nearly 150 years. In this article, I will tell the tale of Jane (Jeanie) Laing, who lived in the cottage for over 10 years in the 1890s and 1900s. It is a notable story of a woman making her way in the very different environment of 19^th century rural Scotland.

Jeanie was born Jane Stewart, sometime around 1844 at High Ardwell farm, Stoneykirk parish. There is no official record of her birthdate; prior to 1855, recording births was optional in Scotland and many parents did not do so. Jeanie's parents, Andrew and Jane Stewart, were agricultural workers, living in a cottage on the farm. If the records can be believed, Andrew was 74 when Jeanie was born. Her mother was Andrew’s second wife; he had had six children by his late first wife and had survived most of them. Jeanie’s mother, who was around 34 when Jane was born, had another daughter by Andrew: Mary, who was three years older than Jeanie.

Andrew Stewart had been born in Portpatrick parish but had lived for over 40 years in Stoneykirk. As a long established and experienced farm worker, Andrew is likely to have been a “benefit man”, better paid and more secure than a day labourer (who on the Rhinns were often Irish immigrants), but lower in the hierarchy than ploughmen or shepherds. The author of the 1845 New Statistical Account for the neighbouring parish of Kirkmaiden listed the annual rewards that a married benefit man received:

“L9 of money; 5 Galloway bolls of potatoes and two bushels planted; 52 stones of 17lb oatmeal; 2 tons or 48 cwt of coals, with house and garden”.

Andrew’s wife also worked on the farm as an “in and out worker”, carrying out tasks in the farmhouse or outdoors as needed. Then as now, mixed farming was practiced in the area, with wheat, oats, potatoes and turnips grown alongside the pasturing of livestock. Jeanie and Mary would have also been called upon to help out from a young age.

High Ardwell farm, where Jeanie Laing was born in 1844

High Ardwell farm is now a rather isolated place, largely off the tourist track. When Jeanie was growing up, however, the population in the area was higher than today and there would have been a thriving local community. The village of Clachanmore was half a mile away and in the 19^th century had a school, general store, smithy and joiner’s shop (all long gone).

 

Clachanmore isn't very village-like today as its shops and facilities are gone and the school (on the left of the picture) is a private house. Jeanie wouldn't have gone to school in this building, as it wasn't built until the 1870s. However, there had previously been an estate school established by the Laird of Ardwell and Jeanie learnt to read and write there

Andrew Stewart died in 1855, apparently at the age of 85; again there is no record of his birth to confirm his age. Several of the characters in this story and in my other accounts of the Rhins in the19^th century lived, like Andrew, to a ripe old age. At that time, longevity was largely a matter of surviving childhood (and for women surviving childbirth) and in adulthood avoiding infections and accidents. The Rhinns lifestyle, with a diet based on oats and herrings and plenty of physical exercise, may well have protected people from modern “degenerative” conditions such as cancer and cardio-vascular disease.

Sometime after Andrew Stewart’s death, his widow and daughter Jeanie went to work at the Logan estate, the country residence of the local landowners, the McDouall family (Jeanie’s elder sister Mary had left home and was a domestic servant in Stoneykirk village). Jane Stewart became the Logan estate’s hen keeper and Jeanie a laundrymaid at Logan House. They lived together in Hen Knowe, a cottage in the grounds of the estate.

 

Logan House, where Jeanie worked in the 1860s and where she married Peter Laing

The McDouall family had been Lairds of that part of the Rhins since the 13^th century. The Laird at the time was Colonel James McDouall. Like many 19^th century country houses, Logan estate was a virtually self-sufficient community, with the adjacent Mains farm providing the big house with food. In 1861, when Jeanie and her mother were living on the estate, the staff at Logan House included a butler, housekeeper, coachman and a lady’s companion for the Laird’s 82 year old mother, along with a number of domestic servants. On the Mains, overseen by the Laird’s Landservant, lived a gamekeeper, blacksmiths, gardeners, ploughmen and dairymaids and a troop of agricultural labourers. While many who lived on the estate were born locally, not all were and there was likely to be a continual level of turnover of staff.

In this rather campus-like environment it was inevitable that relationships were formed and in 1864, at the age of 20, Jeanie Stewart fell pregnant. Her daughter Annie was born on 19^th December. Jeanie may well have known who Annie’s father was and may well have wanted his name to be recorded on her birth certificate, but the law prevented this from happening. In a classic example of male-centredness, in 19^th century Scotland the name of the father of an illegitimate child could only be recorded if the father agreed and signed the register in person, or if he was named in a paternity suit. Unsurprisingly, the majority of illegitimate children at that time had no father named.

Jeanie was by no means unique in rural Galloway in having an illegitimate child. In the 19^th century, Galloway had one of the highest illegitimacy rates in Scotland, close to the highest in Europe (a distinction shared with north-east Scotland, a similar mixed-farming area). Illegitimacy was most common among farm workers and domestic servants, who, like the lads and lassies on Logan estate, were often young and working away from home. Whether Annie’s father was a “ploughboy lad” as in the song we will never know, but Jeanie had another characteristic of local mothers of illegitimate children: her own mother, with whom she still lived, was available to help bring Annie up. Many a Galloway household listed “grandchildren” on census returns, youngsters being brought up by older grandparents while their single mothers returned to domestic service.

For middle and upper class women during the Victorian era, an illegitimate child almost invariably meant social ruin and it would be rare for the mother to subsequently marry. It was of course different for middle-class men, who were allowed to be sexually experienced at marriage and would sometimes, if available, resort to prostitutes to achieve this (Stranraer was at the time one of the few country towns in Scotland to have a substantial number of prostitutes, due to its status as a transit port for Ireland). Different attitudes tended to prevail among the rural working class and in 1867, Jeanie, now 22, married Peter Laing, an 18 year old groom at Logan House. Jeanie was, however, four months pregnant with Peter’s child.

The ceremony was conducted at Logan House and one of the witnesses was James McDouall, possibly the Laird himself, but more likely his son, who was to inherit the estate on his father’s death. The younger James’s wife Agnes, whom he married in 1869, greatly modernised both the house and the grounds and their sons, Kenneth and Douglas, established the exotic gardens that are now a tourist attraction.

Jeanie and Peter’s first son John was born at Logan House in 1868 and two years later they had another son, William. By the time of William’s birth, however, their marriage had effectively ended, as Jeanie and her mother had returned without Peter to High Ardwell farm, where William was born on 31^st December 1870. Peter had not been born locally and he left the district before William’s birth. I have not been able to trace his subsequent movements, but it seems that he continued to work as a gentleman’s servant and apparently supported Jeanie and his sons financially, as in several subsequent census entries Jeanie did not have an occupation but called herself “a domestic servant’s wife”.

By 1871, Jeanie, her mother and Jeanie’s three young children had moved down the road to Low Ardwell farm, near Clachanmore village. In practice, it is likely that Jeanie and her mother raised the children between them while both carrying out farm work. This arrangement continued until Jane Stewart’s death at the age of 79 at Kirkmabreck, another local farm, in 1879.

 

Low Ardwell farm, on the edge of Clachanmore village

Following her mother’s death, Jeanie moved to Portpatrick. In 1881 she was living in a flat in Colonel Street (not at our cottage at this stage), with John, 13 and William, 10, Annie having left home. She described herself as a “valet’s wife”. She was living in this flat when, in 1882, at the age of 40, she became pregnant again, her fourth child Maggie being born on 18^th March 1883. Peter Laing was named as Jeanie’s husband on Maggie’s birth certificate, but the registrar blandly wrote that Jeanie, “declares that he is not the father of the child, and farther, that she has had no personal communication with him for several years past”. The identity of Maggie’s father was not recorded.

Sometime after this, Jeanie took on her first paid occupation since her days at Logan House, as by 1891 she had moved into our cottage and was working as a laundress. Maggie, 8 years old, was with her, but John and William had now moved away. We can only speculate as to why, in her 40s, she needed to earn her own living. She still described herself as married in the 1891 census return, but perhaps her supply of money from Peter had run dry – could the arrival of Maggie have been a factor?

Her choice of occupation was understandable given her circumstances. Laundry work was one of the few occupations open to working-class women in the Victorian era and it had the advantage for a single mother that it could be carried out at home. It was not, however an easy option. The reason why those who could afford to paid others to do their washing was that in the era before automatic washing machines, laundry was time consuming, strenuous and took up a lot of space. A large load of washing could take several days to wash, rinse, dry, starch and iron. Our cottage was however an ideal home for a professional laundress, as it had a separate scullery to keep the washing equipment in and a small garden for drying clothes and linen.

 

This rusty old flatiron has served as a doorstop in our cottage for many years - could it have been there since Jeanie's time?

In Victorian England, laundresses were often married women, supplementing their husbands’ income (or providing an income that feckless husbands did not), but in Portpatrick, laundresses, like Jeanie, tended to be single. Married or single, laundresses did not have a high reputation. They were often portrayed as dishevelled, rough in habits, uneducated and poor. Did Jeanie conform to this stereotype?

It is not clear who her customers were. Portpatrick did not have an extensive middle class, but hard-pressed poor families, often living in one or two rooms, would sometimes save themselves further trouble by paying others to do their washing. It is also possible that Jeanie got business from the “boarding houses” (guest houses) that were appearing in Portpatrick as it began to become a holiday resort. Whoever her customers were, Jeanie would not have made a lot of money from her labours as laundry work was notoriously ill-paid.

Prior to Jeanie moving in, as I have related in another article, our cottage had been home for some 18 years to its owner Agnes Shearer, who inherited it from her mason father. She shared the cottage with her niece Margaret Cosh and Margaret’s daughter, Margaret junior, who like Maggie Laing, was illegitimate. It is interesting to know that our holiday home was formerly a haven for fallen women! Following Agnes’s death in 1887, Margaret Cosh, now joint owner of the cottage with her Irish-based sisters, moved to Ireland herself, renting the cottage to Jeanie Laing.

Jeanie and Maggie were still living in the cottage in 1901, Jeanie continuing to work as a laundress and Maggie presumably assisting her. A few years after, they moved to South Crescent and then to the former lighthouse keeper’s cottage on the pier (now a holiday home next to the Lighthouse Pottery), where Jeanie spent the rest of her life. In 1907 Maggie married Robert Mochan, a journeyman mason from Ayrshire and moved there with him. Sadly, she was to die before her mother, succumbing to tuberculosis in 1922, aged 39. On her death certificate, Peter Laing was named as her father.

Lighthouse Cottage (the whitewashed building on the right), where Jeannie Laing lived for the final 25 years of her long life

Peter Laing had himself died by 1911, having apparently reached the rank of butler. Jeanie lived on in Lighthouse Cottage for another 18 years until her death in 1929 at the age of 85.

So ended Jeanie Laing’s long and remarkable life. However, this is not yet the end of our story, or of the Laings’ connection with our cottage in Colonel Street. Jeannie’s second son, William had done well for himself. He had moved to Glasgow and worked as a telegraph lineman on the railways. He married Margaret Hamilton from Stranraer in 1911 and by the time of his mother’s death they were living in Perth with their three daughters and William had risen to be a railway telegraph inspector. Then in 1930, the year after Jeanie’s death, Margaret Hamilton Laing made a “buy to let” purchase of a cottage in Portpatrick – none other than 3 Colonel Street, Jeanie’s former base for her laundry work and now our holiday home. And she had a specific tenant in mind: Annie McMurray, the 64 year old widow of Samuel McMurray, a marine engineer. She had been born Annie Stewart – Jeanie’s eldest daughter and Margaret Hamilton Laing’s sister-in-law.

If Margaret thought that this would be a short-term arrangement she was mistaken, for Annie McMurray lived in the cottage for 24 years, until her death in 1954 at the age of 88. William Laing died that same year, aged 84 and Margaret Hamilton Laing, now living in retirement in Largs, sold the cottage. Two years later it first came into my family, bought by my great aunt Elsie Dicks (I have told the tale of the Dicks family in another article).

So Jeanie Laing and her family had links with our cottage for a total of at least 35 years. But, with her colourful history, what kind of a person was Jeanie? Was she a feckless good-time girl, the epitome of the rough and uncivilised washer woman (in the 19th century, laundry work was sometimes a cover for prostitution, and Stranraer had a thriving red light district due to being a port for Ireland), or a strong and independent woman who lived life her own way and did the best for her children? I suspect the latter. Her long life and its relative comfort in her later years suggests that she looked after herself and her money. Her younger son made a good career and her daughters made good marriages (I don’t know what became of her older son, John). And her family seem to have regarded her fondly. In Portpatrick cemetery there is a memorial to Jeanie, William and Margaret and Annie McMurray, presumably erected after Margaret’s death in 1966 by William and Margaret’s children. The legend reads, “The Lord is my Shepherd” – perhaps an unconscious reference to Jeanie’s beginnings on a windswept farm in Ardwell, 120 years previously.

Sources & Further Reading

Census returns, valuation rolls and birth, marriage and death certificates available at Scotland’s People

The New Statistical Account ofKirkmaiden, by the Rev. John Lamb

Dumfries & Galloway Libraries, Information & Archives (1998) Through the lens: Glimpses of old South Rhinns.

Griffiths T & Morton G (eds) (2010) A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1800 – 1900. Edinburgh University Press.

Malcolmson P (1986) English Laundresses, a Social History 1850 -1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Smout TC (1986) A Century of the Scottish People, 1830 – 1950. London: Collins.