Chapter 5.
INSTITUTIONS AND RECREATIONS.
A. Church and Library.
Various institutions and organisations played a major role in the miners' lives; offering them the opportunity to express themselves and to meet with neighbours. They also reflected the influence of the Establishment, and the anxiety of the mining companies to keep the men always occupied. This tempered with the belief that any gathering of working men might allow them to "review their grievances and hatch plots"; so all communal activities had to be monitored and controlled.
Among the institutions, the Church exerted the greatest influence. In 1603 Bevis Bulmer was exhorted to erect a chapel f or his men so that "the workes of theire hands will come to a good end and the King's profitt". And a century later those at Lead-hills were obliged to attend a preaching station which had been licensed to provide occasional services. This church-going among miners was not unusual. In the early seventeenth century the Myddletons built a chapel for their lead miners in Wales, and the coal-master, Humphrey Mackworth, fined his colliers one shilling (5p) if they "neglected Divine Service".
Sir James Hope presented a petition to the High Court of the Scottish Parliament in 1649 to establish a permanent minister at Leadhills. But it was 1736 before a Chapel of Ease was incorporated in the house his grandson, the 1st Earl, maintained in the village. The Earl and the mining companies contributed to the minister's salary, and in 1790 this amounted to £50 pa, of which the Earl and the Scots Mines Company each gave £20, and the smaller Leadhills Mining Company £10. Such arrangements could prove uncertain. In 1732, the chaplain at Allenheads resigned, claiming he had been "wronged" of £70 which the agent had "refused to secure" for him; and in 1831, Thomas Anderson, the minister at Leadhills, was trying to obtain £52 owed to him by the Leadhills Mining Company.
The Leadhills chapel was given Quoad Sacra status within the parish of Crawford in 1738, providing a limited control of its own affairs but with the necessity of the congregation making a journey of 10 Km.to Crawford for the annual Communion services, and it was not disjoined until 1867. The chapel occupied one wing of the Earl's house. It may have been altered in 1773 and provided 500 sittings.
James Stirling's Jacobite upbringing would have set him apart from the established church, and he had a private chapel at the Company's house. Whether this was resented by the Presbyterian villagers is not known, but the presence of Quakers at Wanlockhead and of other English overseers and miners at Leadhills, must have supported various forms of worship and perhaps a degree of tolerance which encouraged the immigration of those who suffered religious oppression elsewhere.
There was a long tradition of religious dissent among the communities around the Lowther Hills. In 1680 and again in 1685 groups of Covenanters met in Sanquhar to make public declarations, one of which included "tyranny in matters civil" among its oppositions. In 1689 they met in Crawfordjohn and, in 1712, it was there that the Cameronians re-affirmed a Declaration of Principals. As previously remarked one of the Leadhills miners was hanged for his support of the Covenanters, and it was "at the Lead Hills" that James Renwick replied to his accusers with his Informatory Vindication etc.
In the late eighteenth century there were Cameronians and Macmillanites in both villages, and it is probable that some of the lead miners were among the great crowd who gathered at Loudin Hill in June 1815 to "commemorate the victory of the Covenanters over the King's Troops", and to mark their support for "democracy". In 1836 the Rev. Peter Carmichael, Cameronian and minister of the Reformed Presbyterian church in Penpoint, preached in the library at Leadhills. Demonstrating the way some villagers sympathised with those who denied any place in religious affairs to secular authority and opposed "every unjust rule".
In 1841 the established minister at Leadhills sought to play down the place of the dissidents by claiming they were "very few" in numbers. However there were those among his own congregation who left to form a Free Church Association during in 1843. In that year an evangelical faction, whose origins lay with the Covenanters, sought for a greater democracy in the management of the Scottish church and seceded to form the Free Church.
The Hopes were totally opposed to any movement which threatened their influence in parochial affairs, and after the Leadhills Association had tried in vain to find a place to worship, its members joined the Free Church congregation at Wanlockhead. It was 1883 before a Free Church was built at Leadhills. The village then had two churches until 1937 when the congregations merged to worship in the Free Church building and the fine house which incorporated the "Old Kirk" was subsequently demolished.
Wanlockhead was in the parish of Sanquhar and there were services for the miners by the early eighteenth century. But even by 1835 the minister of Sanquhar was asserting that Wanlockhead was no more than a preaching station. Perhaps for this reason the miners had to contribute to the minister's salary, each giving 4/- (20p) pa. and the mining company making up the balance.
The Duke of Buccleuch was another who was opposed to the Free Church, and when the Rev. Thomas Hastings, one of the signatories to the Statement of Separation, led some of his flock from the Wanlockhead kirk, they, and those who joined them from Leadhills, had to worship in the open air, or piecemeal in miners' cottages. In 1849 the Duke relented and a wooden building was put up to house the dissidents.
The Established Church at Wanlockhead was disjoined from Sanquhar in 1861, when the Duke conveyed two of his farms for an endowment, and the two congregations later combined to worship in it. After falling into disrepair, the Free Church building was pulled down in 1953.
Holidays were discouraged, but down the years the miners were allowed time to attend services on the Day of Fasting: the Thursday prior to the Communion, and on the occasional Thanksgiving day - also a Thursday. This demonstrated the way the companies saw the Church as contributing to the disciplined social climate they sought to establish. The view was by no means a universal one in Scotland. Robert Owen seems to have seen no place for church-going in his schemes for the moral improvement of his mill workers at New Lanark and, although a Dundee shipyard closed for the Fast Days in the 1830s, there is little evidence that urban Scottish industrialists allowed time for the devotions of their employees.
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That schooling should be available to all was a tenet of the early Scottish church and by the end of the seventeenth century many Scots could read. In 1738 there was a school at Leadhills, endowed by the Earl; and in 1803 Dorothy Wordsworth's party remarked that some of the children they met were learning Virgil and Homer. Their surprise was echoed by the investigator for the 1842 Children's Commission who reported that those at the Leadhills school showed a degree of "intellectual activity that it would be impossible to find in the same class in England".
But the bargain records show that some Leadhills' miners in the 1740s and 50s could only make their marks. Each bargain was signed by one of the partners, nominally the "taker", and an examination of 32 partnerships who took bargains in 1742 shows that the taker signed 19 of them, made his mark on 2, and of the other 11 the signatory was a partner other than the taker, suggesting the latter was more skilled with a pick than a pen. In fact the teaching of reading took precedence to writing, so many of those who could not write would have had some reading ability.
Schooling was not free, and in 1841 the parents of the younger children, who might begin school at 4 years of age, paid 1/6 (7.5p) a quarter. Schooling for the older ones cost 3/- (15p); a fee that included French, Latin, and Greek if required. Education was greatly sought after, and the mining companies regarded it as an important factor in improving the moral character of the community. Those families who could not afford the fees might apply for charitable aid, but it was admitted that children from the poorest families got little schooling.
Girls fared less well than the boys and it was said few could write when they left school. At Wanlockhead in the 1840s some girls were only at the school for a few weeks in the winter and, as with all country schools, attendance was in any event largely seasonal. When Harriet Martineau, social observer, feminist, and friend of Charles Dickens, visited Leadhills in 1852, she was told that there were about one hundred children at the school in the winter, compared with eighty in summer.
Much use was made of the bible as a reader but by 1841 Archibald Russell, the teacher at Leadhills, had introduced Chambers Introduction to the Sciences as part of the course. The Children's Commission recorded its favourable impression of the report on the high standards in the school, but the teachers in country schools in Scotland were usually much better qualified than their English counterparts. The investigator for the Commission also remarked that the Sunday school played no significant role in the education of the Leadhills children, but noted that all went to church. However, Wanlockhead did have classes on a Sunday for young people, and where girls attended to learn to write prior to going on to domestic service.
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At parish level the power of the church lay with the Kirk Session, a court comprising the minister and elders. In 1845 those at Leadhills included the Scots Mines Company's overseer, Thomas Weir, and the cashier, Thomas Boyd; as well as the village baker and a miner, John Marr. Like other kirk sessions, that at Leadhills was much concerned with illegitimacy. When the child was born as the result of some casual affair, then the couple could be summoned before the Crawford Parish Session and subjected to a prolonged and harrowing process of trial and moral correction. However, most such births were seen as the result of what the session clerk termed "pre-nuptial fornication", and in such cases the couples were merely rebuked and then absolved.
In 1841 Weir complained of a "decline in morals" and remarked that two out of every three brides were "in the family way", but this was not peculiar to his times. In 1780 the Minister had complained to the Earl about the number of bastard children he had baptised, and Hastings wrote of a tradition that a "silken gown" was offered to any girl who was married for nine months before the birth of her first child. The matter was a constant pre-occupation of the Crawford Session, and in 1808 its Elders met in Leadhills to discuss what action to take towards "putting a stop to fornication in this place". However, T.C.Smout points out that this practice of bridal pregnancy was a common one in rural communities, and was largely condoned since it was seen as ensuring the continuity of the family as an economic entity.
At one time the instrument of civil authority was the Burgh Baillie. The office dated from the medieval feudal courts, and the Leadhills baillie was appointed by the Earl and was his representative in the village. The post was held by the Martins, Robert and then his son James, until 1867, at which time the village got a police station and a constable. There is little record of serious crimes. In 1750 tools and timber were stolen, and in 1768 a man was killed during a drunken brawl. As already noted, miners were gaoled in 1839 for the fraudulent up-grading of ore, and it was said that this was the first and only instance of "judicial punishment".
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The secular institutions encouraged at Leadhills were primarily aimed at providing acceptable recreations which would fill the men's leisure hours, and strengthen the influence of the mining companies. Work, or at least activity, was seen as part of an ordered society. Inactivity verged on sinfulness, so leisure hours had to be filled or "Satan would find mischief for idle hands". James Stirling promoted the concept of the total involvement by an employer in the community's life; creating a social management which allied work disciplines to moral attitudes. It was a system which had its origins in medieval Europe, and by the eighteenth century was seen as necessary to produce the sort of orderly and industrious work force required for the mills and factories.
The miners' library at Leadhills, now the Allan Ramsay Library, was founded in November, 1741, and was the oldest community subscription library, and the first working class library in Britain. It ceased to function as a lending library in 1966, but it was a unique institution for it was managed by the miners themselves and it was they who chose the books. Although Scotland had older libraries; Dundee once had a Burgh library which dated from the 16th Century; they were not maintained by working people but reflected the attitudes of a landed or burgh elite.
The circumstances of the founding of the library are unclear. Writing of his visit to Leadhills in 1790, John Ramsay of Ochtertyre remarked that the miners had once been "thoughtless and dissipated", and as a social reform "Mr Stirling suggested the expediency of a library". These views were echoed a few years later by Robert Forsyth, the author of the Beauties of Scotland. He wrote that the "library was originally established by a manager named Mr Stirling who prevailed upon the workmen to unite for that purpose", and, he went on, it "produced feelings of decency; pride of spirit; and the desire for education for their children". All visitors were greatly impressed by the library's perceived role in social improvement, and the investigator for the 1842 Commission on the Employment of Children went so far as to include its Articles and Laws in an appendix to his Report.
The comments of Ramsay and Forsyth were repeated by the Rev. Moir Porteous in his book God's Treasure House. They all believed that James Stirling, scholar and confidant of Sir Isaac Newton, was the instigator of the library. All perhaps thought the founding of such an institution could only have been by an acknowledged literati and was beyond the capability of men seen as "thoughtless and dissipated".
But the twenty five founding subscribers gave no credit to others and in the preface to their Articles they announced:
"We, Subscribers, (have) agreed to form ourselves into
a Society, in order to Purchase a Collection of Books
for our Mutual Improvement ... "
The Rev. William Peterkin, who was the Minister at Leadhills in the 1780s and a member of the library, supported this statement for in his note for the Statistical Account he wrote the miners "employ themselves in reading and for this purpose have fitted up a library". This claim was repeated by the Rev. John Hope, who stated in his evidence to the Children's Commission that the library had been "instituted entirely by the miners and wholly at their suggestion"; and Dr John Brown, local historian and honorary member of the library, wrote in his book The Enterkin that the library had been "founded by the worthy miners". Those chro-niclers who were closely concerned with the library make no mention of Stirling.
In any event, the library was begun by a Reading Society whose ethos must have had much to do with that of the bargain system. Thomas Sopwith, the Victorian mining engineer, remarked how the lead miner was "acquainted with the appearance of strata and veins" and this "spirit of enquiry extended into other subjects". There was then not only a hierarchy of skill, but also of intellectual ability.
Not all could write, but there were those who could be described as men of learning, and in his research on Scottish community libraries, John Crawford finds that, in 1737, six Leadhills men were among the subscribers to a Scottish edition of Prima Media and Ultima by Isaac Ambrose. Ambrose was an English Presbyterian, known in his day as "the painfull priest of Preston", so the support for his book pointed not only to an active literacy among the Leadhills men, but also to an active interest in radical religion. In his address at the centenary dinner in 1841, the Preses, William Gibson, referred to "our pious forefathers" who founded the library; and religious sentiment, with a leaning towards extreme Presbyterianism, seems to have been a constant thread through the library committees.
At the same time, the library could not have been instituted without Stirling's help and the consent of the landlord, the Earl of Hopetoun. The extremists at Leadhills may well have opposed Stirling's Episcopalian beliefs, remembering their fathers' tales of the killing times and of the execution of Andrew Clark. On the other hand there were perhaps those who saw Stirling's support as a response to their own intellectual aspirations, and he probably saw the promotion of the library as a feature of his programme of social control. But if he saw it as the intellectual part of his social reforms, Stirling may have been disappointed for library membership never reflected a majority of the miners.
* * *
A strong village tradition associates the institution of the library with the poet, Allan Ramsay, who was born in Leadhills and who began a circulating library in Edinburgh circa 1726. In fact Ramsay had retired to his "goosepie" house by 1741, and A.M.Kinghorn points out there is no evidence he took any interest in Leadhills much less its library.
It is particularly significant that his name is not among the early honorary members, and Kaufman dismisses the tradition as a "fantastic fiction". But the association should not be lightly put aside. Harvey Wood has drawn attention to the way Ramsay originated and enterprised much of the cultural life of Scotland; via his own circulating library, his Academy of St. Luke, and his ill fated theatre. The poet saw his country's status being expanded not with strife but with "Arts less rude", and in his Gentle Shepherd one of the characters asserts "by education I was taught to speak and act above their common thought". The arts were to be for the "profit and delight" of ordinary people, and Ramsay's liberal attitudes were well expressed when he wrote of his theatre that it would "mend the follies of the age".
That the ethos of the Leadhills library reflected this attitude of liberal education must be more than coincidence. The transport of lead to Leith must have meant a cultural as well as a commercial communication between Leadhills and Edinburgh. The men who subscribed to Ambrose's book may well have known Ramsay and known of the opportunities offered by his circulating library. James Stirling was no stranger to Edinburgh society and his biographer, C.Tweedie, suggests Stirling and Ramsay were acquainted. If so, then Stirling was perhaps influenced by Ramsay's liberal ideas. The latter was concerned about the devitalising effect of the English literati, but both he and Stirling were no doubt conscious of the social improvements offered by English scholarship.
Although men like Allan Ramsay might have encouraged the lead miners to improve themselves in what was seen as a corrupt world, the Establishment believed they were not to be encouraged to think too much, for working people were not regarded as being naturally virtuous or infinite in intellectual capacity. The human child was born ignorant, not innocent. Learning had to be tightly controlled and directed, and any broadening of education could threaten those social differentials which were seen as essential to public order.
The radical potential of Ramsay's circulating library can be measured by the strength of the opposition to it. The novelty of lending books to ordinary people was loudly condemned by the Rev. Wodrow, self-appointed guardian of the country's morals, and Ramsay's shop was twice raided. Although such repression was particularly aimed at works of imaginative fiction, it did not encourage ventures into working class literacy. The founding of the library at Leadhills in 1741 was not only a remarkable example of working-class culture, but also a radical step, and Crawford and James aptly describe it, and the library at neighbouring Wanlockhead, as "abnormal phenomena". The Earl of Hopetoun in particular must have needed assurance that the library would not become a repository for inflammatory literature and subversive pamphlets, before he agreed to give it his support.
The administration of the library lay with the Reading Society, which was founded in January 1741, ten months before the library. Library members were always referred to as "Members of the Reading Society", but it was the founding of the library, not the society, which was celebrated in 1841, so no doubt it was seen as the tangible institution.
Who were the founding members ? There were twenty five of them and they included the surgeon, James Wells, who was the Preses, and the schoolmaster, William Wright, who was the Clerk or secretary. Probably most of the others worked about the mines, and the names of four can be identified in the Scots Mines Company records. The two overseers, Bagshaw and Whigham, were not members, but Robert Taylor, the son of the centenarian and later an overseer, was there, and another founder was William Otto the washing master.
In 1841 it was said that "the miners belonging to the Scots Mines Company established and created the great majority of (the Reading Society's) members". The wealth of record left by the Company tends to confirm that its employees played a definitive part in setting up the Society and the library, but there is no reason to think individuals in other companies did not have an important role.
The preacher at the Leadhills chapel in 1741, Robert Hunter, was not a member, and it was not until 1784 that the Kirk were represented. The Rev. William Peterkin, the first ordained minister at Leadhills, became the 192nd member of the Reading Society on the 4th October of that year, and by the next century it seems to have been almost mandatory that the minister of the day was on the committee.
The minister and the schoolmaster perhaps had their role, but the Reading Society was to assert its independence. In 1792 John Ramsay wrote that the members "breathed somewhat of a republican spirit". After the arrangements for the centenary dinner led to divisions among the members, it was "re-stated .. (that) no person not belonging to the status (of miners) shall be competent to hold office"; and in 1845 the committee were to specifically exclude "overseers and grieves". But this anti-establishment attitude does not seem to have been a precept of the founders.
James Stirling was not a member of the Reading Society. A circumstance which perhaps confirms the view that he saw the Society as no more than a part of his programme of social control. Those managers who came after him in the nineteenth century were elected. This was no sinecure for the Minutes record managers being fined for failing to attend the Society's meetings.
Membership was expensive. In 1841 the entrance fee was 7/6 (37p) and the annual subscription, 2/6 (12p), the total as much as most miners earned in a week. It was also exclusive. Applications were "put to the ball"; and even at best the members were always a minority of the workforce. Unlike many clubs, the Reading Society offered no obvious social cachet or economic advantage, and its members were perhaps regarded as a bookish elite.
All members received a printed certificate, the plates for which are still extant, and certificates could be passed on to a members' sons. And for those who supported the library with gifts of cash or books there was an honorary membership with a special certificate.
All the books in the library's stock have a serial number em-bossed on the spine, and are also identified by a bookplate pasted inside. Its motif depicts mining tools about a pillar, surmounted with a dove and the motto "Leave the rest to Heaven". The plate was cut by an Edinburgh engraver, Andrew Bell, who worked in the late eighteenth century and who was a proprietor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The origins of the plate are unknown, but the dove is from the Foulis crest and the motto from the tragedy, Horace, by Pierre Corneille.
The line in its entirety is "Do your duty and leave the rest to Heaven". In the play, three brothers, the Horatii, fight for Rome, apparently sacrificing all personal interests to that of the State. Were the miners then to put the interest of the mine before all else ? On the other hand, Corneille denied the basis of Greek tragedies which lamented the impotence of man in the face of destiny; and the ethos of his plays was that man was free to fashion his own future.
The choice for the bookplate perhaps signified the way the library could enable its members to rise, at least in spirit, above the dirt and darkness of the mines. If so, the notion echoed Ramsay's concepts of the benefits of literature to working people.
* * *
The Society was managed by an elected Committee who paid their Clerk 7/6 (37p) annually for "his trouble". Its members were concerned with proper moral precepts and proper procedures, and they drew up a complex regime of Articles and Rules, which were frequently amended and which echoed that strictness found in the running of the mines. Any matters deemed of particular importance required a meeting of the full membership. Members were expected to agree to election as office bearers, and in 1874 one was fined for a refusal.
The members met once a month for the exchange of books. These meetings were obligatory, and all the returned books had to be examined before being put back on the shelves. There was then a procedure where each of those present could chose six. Members who failed to return books on time, or who were adjudged by the elected "inspectors" to have allowed books to be damaged, were fined. As well as scrutinising the returned books, the inspectors were empowered to examine those in members' homes, and failure to allow entry incurred a fine of 5/- (25p). The Rules not only reflected the exacting mine regime but also its punishments, and show the way the miners saw self discipline and a severe authority as a part of life.
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To begin with it was not "within the regulation (of the Society) to admit females", although a widow might be allowed to take over her late husband's membership. In March 1828 a Betty Haliday asked that the committee would "indulge her" in this respect, but in 1850 a motion for a Janet McLeod, to become a full member was turned down. There is no record of women becoming members until 1881 when the names of Elizabeth Scott and Marion Dobie appear. This apparent lack of consideration for the village women reflected not only the fact that few girls could read, but also the attitude to women and literacy at that time. When he complained of Ramsay's circulating library, Robert Wodrow asserted that the books were being read by "servant women" to the detriment of their morals, and Robert Burns urged the "Mauchline belles" to leave novels aside since "witching books are baited hooks for rakish rooks". But it has to be said there were few novels in the library at Leadhills.
The library had a "new house" in 1791 and that site may now be marked as "The Library Brae". It moved into the present building in 1821, for a celebration in 1906 referred to the growth of the library from "1821 to the present". The move seems to have been into an existing cottage since a new roof and other repairs were required the following year.
Most of the books were in accord with the Presbyterian concept that life was a preparation for eternity, and the notion that imaginative literature might savour of falsehoods. Both the Rev. Peterkin and John Ramsay noted that "some trash" had been allowed into the library, but there is no record of the purchase of any books of a radical content at that time. The leaders of the 1836 strike met the Depute Sheriff, Daniel Vere, in the library, but there is no evidence that any of its members saw it as an institution with a potential for reform.
Dorothy Wordsworth was impressed to find the library had a set of Shakespeare's works, but Harriet Martineau wrote after her visit in 1852, "what a blessing it would be if some kind person would send a good assortment of works of fiction". The books were the choice of the members and whether Miss Martineau had reason to think the miners at large would have preferred more fiction can be only a matter for conjecture. In any event reading not confined to library members. Many villagers had books of their own. In 1777 a list of the possessions of a Wanlockhead overseer included 26 books in addition to 3 bibles. There were no novels among them but in 1841 it was noted that even the "poorest cottages" at Leadhills were not without books, of which many were "productions of the popular press".
By then even some of the washer boys were said to read for "enjoyment", and there was a juvenile library in the school of books published by the "Irish Society". This was a pseudonym for the "Society for the Education of the Poor of Ireland", who marketed simple texts with an almost missionary zeal from an office in Kildare Street, Dublin. Its books were found in many parishes in the West of Scotland, for example in 1835 Dalserf had "two sets of the Kildare Street library".
In 1833 Charles Black, the Edinburgh book seller, wrote that the library had "sprung from yourselves .. free of .. The Arm of Power, the care of Patronage". But not all were so enthusiastic and in 1853 "ABG", a correspondent to the Gentleman's Magazine, criticised the way books were being chosen by "persons far from competent" to judge their value, and in particular the way members advocated the "purchase of works of controversial theology".
That the Leadhills library was managed by the miners can be applauded, but its organisation meant a lack of sophistication and there is perhaps some substance in "ABG"s criticism. The library was to become imprisoned by the destiny it had chosen. The committee became over concerned with administration and seem to have been disinclined to seek outside advice. For example, a "List of Titles" printed in 1904 is no more than that; suggesting there was no understanding of any need for classification. It was not until recent years that a proper catalogue of the books was compiled.
All the books were bound, and often rebound, in plain brown leather, and there is no evidence of the artistry of Scottish book-binders. The library shelving was made by the mine carpenter, and the interior was sparsely furnished. Its drab and utilitarian appearance contrasts with bright ornament of libraries like Inverpeffary and Dunblane.
A library was founded at Wanlockhead in November, 1756, and seems to have been closely modelled on Leadhills except that farmers and rural labourers were made welcome. Although this provided for a wider membership, the library's moral attitudes were perhaps more severe. A rule empowered the committee to expel members accused of maintaining "erroneous tenets", and in 1837 a copy of Combe's Constitution of Man was deemed to be heretical and was burned.
The heyday of the two libraries was an age of intensive reading. Books were read and re-read, and the need for the repair and re-binding of the stock was a constant drain on finances. The library at Leadhills therefore made great use of a charitable fund, the Glasgow based Ferguson Bequest, which, from about 1860, provided the committee with about £5 or £6 per annum.
As remarked, religion was a major subject area. A survey of the extant titles published prior to 1750 shows that nearly one half dealt with religious subjects, and a breakdown of subject areas made in 1885 shows such books comprised about one third of the stock. The presence of the works of such non conformists as Ebinezer Erskine and Thomas Boston point to what ABG called "zealous partizans" among the library members. However, their attitudes do not seem wholly bigoted and narrow minded. There was an early edition of Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ; a copy the History of Ignatious Loyola; and an 1818 edition of Edward Burke's An Inquiry into .. Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.
The Origin of Species is not on the shelves but a copy of Darwin's Journal of Researches .. was purchased circa 1860, and a previous generation of miners had read William Paley's Natural Theology. The Reverend Paley found evidence of the Creation in natural phenomena, and went on to attack the concept of private property.
Harriet Martineau remarked there were few volumes of fiction. Had she looked at them she would have found they included John Galt's Annals of the Parish and The Ayrshire Legatees. Although Galt's writings avoided any social stance, his novels nevertheless showed how the doings of ordinary people, and incidents which were not extreme, could have a place in literature.
There was also an edition of Samuel Richardson's Pamela. Its heroine was a servant girl who narrowly escaped threats to her virtue, and the book combined a moral message with a measure of titillation. Although Pamela was not the first heroine to defend her virginity, she was the first such who worked for a living; and the book has been described as being something of a cult novel in its day. Richardson was a near contemporary of Allan Ramsay, and like the latter, was sneered at by the critics for writing for the "lower classes".
About one fifth of the early stock comprised books on mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry; and included such works as Barba's Treatises on Metals and Cramer's Art of Assaying. In 1885 the proportion was down to 1/10th and research shows that few of the titles at that time related to the business of mining. In 1875 the author of a mining textbook complained that "miners look with contempt on that kind of knowledge not learnt within the mine". Nevertheless there seems to have been an ongoing interest at Leadhills in geology, and the later books in the library included those of Hugh Miller, self taught geologist and evolutionist, and an ardent advocate of the Disruption.
The choice of titles must reflect the attitudes of particular committees at particular times, but it would clearly be wrong to think the views of any committee was representative of the whole community, or that their convictions did not change over the years. The works of religious radicals are on the shelves but, that the works of political radicals were not in the library need not mean none were read in the village.
The total bookstock must have amounted to over 4800 volumes of which perhaps one half remain. The sequence of Accession Numbers suggest that a thousand books had been acquired by 1800, and perhaps 2600 more in the next century. By the present century, island cases provided additional shelves.
From the first the Library provided a variety of magazines and periodicals, such as the Spectator, Glasgow Mechanics Magazine, and that critical voice the Edinburgh Review, but no newspapers. This omission was constantly raised at the Society's meetings but it was not until 1896, when the Countess of Hopetoun made a gift of subscriptions, that some "papers and periodicals" were regularly provided, necessitating having the Library open for longer hours.
Papers were however always read in the villages. In 1745 Matthew Wilson perused the London Magazine, and a century later the miner William Gibson occasionally got copies of The Guardian, The News of the World, and The Register. He was reading the former in October, 1843. It had been founded on the first of that month and carried a report of a "riot" at the Highland church of Ruskeen; an event seen as one of the triggers of the Disruption. Gibson remarked the Register was a "good paper", perhaps implying a criticism of the News of the World which even then was seen as being of a "sensational character".
In his letters, Gibson complained of the difficulty in getting newspapers, but, in her reminiscences, Miss Goldie claimed they were available in the smithy at Wanlockhead. No doubt the Countess ensured her subscriptions would be limited to "acceptable" periodicals, but the move to a reading room meant a wide range of publications became available to the miners.
When living in London, James Stirling had given lectures on Natural Philosophy in the Bedford Coffee House, and Matthew Wilson refers to evenings spent discussing such various topics as "Scots versus English measures", and "the flight of projectiles". But there is no reference that Stirling made any attempt to formalise such discussions, or to extend them to the library. Neither is there reference that the library encouraged the formation of village societies with an interest in literature or the arts.
Winter lectures were held at Wanlockhead in the 1870s, and a Debating Society was meeting there in the 90s, but it was 1896 before there was any record of winter lectures being arranged at Leadhills.