Foula 1884

County Buildings, Lerwick, Shetland, March 31, 1884. SIR, - Reports having appeared in your columns and in those of some of your Glasgow contemporaries, that destitution prevails in the island of Foula, I am asked to contradict them. The following extract from a letter, dated 12^th March, which I have received from the Rev. George Morrison, the Congregationalist minister of the island, will, I trust, carry conviction as to the wholly unfounded character of these statements : -

“I have just heard that the Foula people are represented in the south country papers as being in a state of destitution, and that appeals are being made for charitable relief for them. I take the liberty of writing to say that any such representations are not in accordance with facts. The long continued storms, by preventing communication, have caused the want of some necessities; but the people are in no worse condition than they usually are at this season of the year, and have no claim on the means of the charitable. Of course, there are one or two here (as elsewhere) who are necessitous every year, chiefly owing to their own thriftlessness.”

I have the best reasons for stating that the little community of Foula – the St Kilda of Shetland – numbering 267 souls, are as industrious, prosperous, well-doing, and contented as the inhabitants of any other district in the islands. They live by their fishings, and are reputed to be the best boatsmen and cragsmen in the archipelago. Of course, they have their bad years and their good years, as all communities have who get their living by the sea; and it may even be admitted that what is competence to hardy Norsemen like themselves might be considered actual poverty in other fishing districts in Scotland. But to invoke public charity on their behalf is to stigmatise them as paupers and beggars – a reflection which no honest hard-working community, however straitened in its resources, likes to have hurled at its head, and which is doubly objectionable to the inhabitants of an island which, more than any other part of Shetland, cherishes its Scandinavian origin and customs, and the manly pride and independence which lay at the root of its Scandinavian character.

There is, however, one form of assistance – I shall not call it charity – which, from those who take a kindly interest in Foula, would at all times be gratefully accepted, and that is books and newspapers. Like their brother islanders of the Fair Isle, the Foulaese have an insatiable appetite for news of the great world. I have no doubt the Rev. Mr Morrison, whose letter I have quoted, would gladly distribute any such which might be sent to him; or, if preferred, they might be sent to me, and I would forward them by the first packet going into the island. – I am, &c. CHARLES RAMPINI, Sheriff-Substitute of Caithness, Orkney, and Zetland.