A Stranger on the Bars: the memoirs of Christian Watt Marshall of Broadsea, Fraserburgh

This is the memoir of Christian Watt Mitchell, who lived her whole life in Broadsea, a tight-knit fishing community in Fraserburgh, forty miles north of Aberdeen.

Mitchell grew up in a large fishing family where money was scarce. In those days working class girls left school at 14, and their only options were herring gutting, domestic service or factory work. Christian, like most of her friends, chose the herring, largely because the work offered the chance of adventure, and escape from the close supervision of her parents. As soon as they were 13 years old, the girls went to the sheds on Saturdays to learn their trade, and once they were out of school they worked long hours in very poor conditions - but they also travelled, following the fleets as they in turn followed the herring, from Fraserburgh to Shetland, where the Balta Sound was filled with boats and the shore lined with sheds, and then to Yarmouth. 

When the season ended, the girls went into service for the winter. They hated every minute of it, and could not wait to be back in the sheds once more. When the boats came to Fraserburgh, every house in Broadsea provided board and lodging for other transient workers - people slept in outhouses, sheds and lofts, and indeed some of these tiny spaces ended up becoming permanent residences. 

At the outbreak of the 1914-18 war the fishing had to stop, the girls were rushed back from Shetland to Broadsea, and Christian worked for a while in Keiller's sweet factory in Dundee. Christian lost most of the men in her family, and also her fiance, in the war, and is scathing about the promise of 'a country fit for heroes.' 

'A telegram arrived one morning, another real shocker. My brother Peter, who had gone all through the Dardanelles, had been killed at the Somme on November 13th, 1916. His arm had been almost severed and was due to be amputated but Peter died on his way to the dressing station. Four years later a small package arrived from the War Office. It was Peter's wallet. The army had been searching for bodies for reburial and had found my brother. The note with it said that it had been "found on a fallen comrade".

Even in old age Christian remained fiercely anti-war and had no time for the posturing of politicians. All wars are, she says, pointless and wicked, and benefit only a few rich and self-important men. Similarly, although she enjoyed working in the fishing, she is well aware that the girls were slaving away - sometimes 18 hours a day in peak season - for pennies, while the shed owners were living in relative luxury. Disease was often rife in Broadsea; Christian's older sister died of meningitis the night before she was to leave for Shetland, and this was not unusual. First Aid sheds had to be set up at each end of Balta Sound to treat, amongst other things, the girls' shredded hands. 

Christian with her friend 'Bengie's Kirsten' in Dundee in 1916

The title of the book refers to a local superstition that sparks on the fire were a sign that a stranger would come to the house:

'One day my niece Maggie came to me and said 'Auntie Kirsten, there's a stranger on the bars!' The next day two university lads came to my door asking about the fishing...they said I should write a memoir.'

Christian's account was taken down verbatim by these two researchers, so it's occasionally slightly incoherent, and the reader doesn't always recognise the names that crop up, especially as, in true Aberdeenshire style, most have nicknames - 'Bengie's Kirsten', 'Jeannie's Elsie', 'Jock's Mary' - but if you just keep reading, the book gives a wonderful flavour of working class life on the Broch a hundred years ago.  There are also some excellent photos. 

Incidentally, Christian was the grandaughter of the famous Christian Watt, who was born in Broadsea in 1833. 

Christian was one of eight children and the only girl in the family; when five of her brothers died in 1854 she travelled to North America to claim an inheritance from one of their estates. There she worked as a table maid for Winston Churchill's grandmother. In 1858, back in Broadsea, she married and subsequently had ten children. When her son was drowned at sea in 1877 (four of her brothers and her husband were also lost at sea), Christian was admitted to Aberdeen Royal Asylum (now Cornhill Hospital) with a diagnosis of  'mania', 

Over the next two years Christian was discharged and re-admitted twice. She then spent the rest of her life in the asylum (though she was still able to work and travel), where, in 1947, she was eventually encouraged to write her memoirs, later edited by David Fraser (a descendant of Christian) and published as The Christian Watt Papers. The anger at social injustice, hatred of war and profound religious faith shown in her writing are echoed in the memoirs of her grandaughter.

The Papers were made into a play and documentary, and Allan Beveridge (Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline) and Fiona Watson (Northern Health Services Archives, Aberdeen) have written a paper, The Psychiatrist, the Historian and the Christian Watt Papers, discussing a comparison of (and the discrepancies between) historical records and Watt's own account of her life. Christian Watt died at Cornhill in 1923.

A Stranger on the Bars: the memoir of Christian Watt Marshall of Broadsea, edited by Gavin Sutherland, was published by Banff and Buchan District Council Department of Leisure and Recreation in 1994 and republished by Aberdeenshire Council Leisure & Recreation Department in 1999.

The Christian Watt Papers by Christian Watt, edited by David Fraser, were published by Birlinn in 2012.