Transported - Edinburgh's Political Martyrs

Last summer I visited for the first time the Old Carlton Burial Ground in Edinburgh  and took the  atmospheric photograph below  as rain clouds were gathering at midday.  Dominating the Burial Ground was  this striking  obelisk commemorating five Political Martyrs who were transported in to Botany Bay in Australia for crimes of sedition. 

Despite my  interest in history and politics, their names were new to me, and I set out to discover more.   

The foundation stone of the 90 foot obelisk was laid  on 21 August 1844, with 3,000 people gathered for the occasion.  It is inscribed 

To the Memory of
Thomas Muir
Thomas Fyshe Palmer
William Skirving
Maurice Margarot 
Joseph Gerrald 

Erected by the Friends of Parliamentary Reform in England and Scotland 1844.  

Also featured are  two quotations  from men commemorated on the monument

• Speech of Thomas Muir in the Court of Judiciary on the 30th August 1793:

"I have devoted myself to the cause of The People. It is a good cause —
it shall ultimately prevail — it shall finally triumph." 

• Speech of William Skirging in the Court of Judiciary on 7th January 1894:
  
  
  "I know that what has been done these two days will be Re-judged".

The Political Martyrs were early campaigners for  universal suffrage  and were charged with treason and sedition for writing and publishing pamphlets on parliamentary reform and for   corresponding with the French (at the time of the French Revolution) and with the rebel group United Irishmen in Ireland.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Muir_of_Huntershill]

Thomas Muir, their leader, has since been described as the "Founder of Scottish Democracy", but is little  known in his own country.  He grew up at Bishopbriggs near Glasgow and  became an advocate at the young age of 22,  quickly acquiring a reputation as a man of principle. He  was instrumental in encouraging the establishment of parliamentary reform societies in Scotland.  This culminated in 1792, when,  with  William Skirving, a Fife farmer, he founded the Scottish Association of the Friends of the People to campaign for parliamentary reform.   Over 150 delegates representing 150 societies from 35 towns and villages attended  the first convention,.

But  in the aftermath of the American and French Revolutions, Muir's activities. which included a visit to France,  were  increasingly regarded as a threat to public order.  The five men were accused of sedition in a series of trials and transported to Australia  in  1794 and 1795, with varying sentences.  

At his trial, Thomas Muir asked:

“What has been my crime? … for having dared to be a strenuous and active advocate for an equal representation of the people, in the House of the people.”

 
The men were transported on the convict ship "Surprise" for the 13,000 mile journey to Botany Bay - as recorded  in Australian Convict Transportation Registers.  

Once in the penal colony, they were given, as political prisoners,  far greater freedom of movement than ordinary convicts.  In 1796 Gerrald died from tuberculosis and Skirving from dysentery. Fyshe Palmer and Margarot survived their sentences of 14 years but Fyshe Palmer died of fever while attempting a trading voyage back to England. Only Margarot returned to Great Britain. 

Muir,  escaped on an American ship, but had some disastrous experiences before finally making his way to revolutionary France. He took part in revolutionary intrigue but died in 1799 of illness and injuries received in his travels to France.  

The  significance of the five Scottish martyrs in advancing the cause of democracy is little known, but Muir is remembered in:  

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Australian Dictionary of Biography
• Thomas Muir Heritage Trail which links places in Dunbartonshire  connected with his life and work.
• The ideals of the Political Martyrs lived on and the Reform Act of 1832 marked the fist step towards universal suffrage.
• The men were pardoned in 1839 with the Edinburgh Monument erected some 50 years after their stance. 
• In 1793 Robert Burns penned "Scots Whae Hae", believed to have been inspired by Thomas Muir and his radical colleagues.  

The Old Calton Burial Ground commemorates other fighters for political freedom. 

A view (left)  from, the burial ground up to the  turreted Governor's House - the only remains of the notorious Old Calton Jail.  It   received its first prisoners in 1817 and was closed in 1925.

In 1913 three women suffragettes  were sent to Calton Jail from the Scottish Borders having been found guilty of attempting to destroy the new stand at Kelso Racecourse - events well reported in the local press. They were sentenced to nine  months' imprisonment  However they were liberated within a week having gone on hunger strike.  The terms of their temporary release  stated that they must return after a stipulated number of days - an instance of the infamous "cat and mouse"  policy.

Did you know that, thought to be the only monument to the American Civil War outside the USA,  is in Edinburgh?  

 It was erected in 1898 in memory of the Scottish soldiers who fought  in the American Civil War on the side of the Union.   It features a freed slave and   one of Lincoln’s famous quotations "To preserve the jewel of liberty in the framework of freedom". A bronze shield bears the old US flag, and is wreathed in thistles to the left, and cotton to the right to signify the two countries. 

If you think you may have ancestors buried in Old Calton Burial Ground, Edinburgh,  there is an excellent  website listing all the names - click HERE to find out more. 

[Developed from a August 2013 posting on my personal blog at Family History Fun]

Copyright © 2014 · Susan Donaldson.