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Black History Month 2024 Prior to the NHS being established, healthcare facilities and hospitals were funded by wealthy individuals or families. Our Highland hospitals have therefore had some unexpected origins, which we’ve benefited from for hundreds of years. At least eight hospitals across Highland were part-funded with the great amount of money that was brought into the region from colonising other countries, some of it profits from the slave trade. Let’s shine a light on some of the links Highland healthcare has with the spoils of empire. We’ll begin in Skye, whose first hospital, Gesto Hospital in Edinbane, opened in 1878 and was built from the profits of estates in India owned by Kenneth Macleod. He’d made his fortune there through owning tea and indigo plantations[1] worked by indentured labourers and left £10,000-£30,000[2] (equivalent to £1-3million in today’s money) to specifically build a hospital to benefit ‘his countrymen the people of Skye.’  Gesto Hospital c.1922 with doctor’s residence on left. From JC & SJ Leslie (2011) The Hospitals of Skye, courtesy of Skye & Lochalsh Archive Centre. Cultivation of indigo in Bihar, where Kenneth Macleod’s lands and plantations were, was “forced on the peasants who had to produce the material for foreign markets.”[3] Tenant farmers were subject to extreme violence in turning over their rice fields to grow indigo. Entire harvests plus additional monies had to be given to British landowners. In nearby West Bengal this exploitation led to the Indigo Rebellion, where an uprising of farmers aimed to force out the indigo plantation owners.  Loading a vat with indigo plant, c.1877 Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. From Wikimedia Commons. Colonising other countries and establishing industry there was often a family or neighbourly affair, sometimes with whole extended families or townships leaving the Highlands to settle the far reaches of empire. The personal networks were key to ‘success’ and Kenneth’s story is similar: he travelled out to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) at 16 to meet his cousin, a Mackinnon, and later brought over his nephew to work for him. He was surrounded by businessmen who were fellow Highlanders, and spoke Gaelic: Mackenzie, McInlay, Ogilvie, etc.[4] A second hospital in Skye, the Martin Memorial Hospital in Uig, was built in memory of John Martin who had travelled to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) as a coffee planter.[5] Most likely he owned or managed coffee plantations there, as the term refers to the ‘planter class’ or ‘planter aristocracy,’ Europeans who had established plantations across the empire. (The Planters’ Association of Ceylon exists to this day.)  The Highlands of Ceylon: a coffee plantation c.1920. From Wikimedia Commons. The Mackinnon Memorial Hospital in Broadford was part-funded by James Coats of Paisley, manufacturers of silk and cotton thread. Their raw materials were shipped in from across the empire, and made them one of the largest companies in the world at that time. (Coats also funded a library for the Nicholson Mackenzie hospital in Strathpeffer.[6])  Clark & Coats thread mills at Paisley, the largest thread manufacturers in the world by 1900. Image: "Paisley Mill Industry" by paisleyorguk is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Mackinnon Memorial hospital also received a donation from the Governor of Uganda.[7] A further hospital in Skye, Ross Memorial in Portree, was named after Dr. David Ross who worked in the plantations of Surinam[8] (then Dutch Guiana) providing healthcare to enslaved people – where many other Highlands men had established sugar and cotton plantations worked by enslaved Africans – before he later moved to Skye. There were at least 18 doctors from the Highlands working in the plantations of Guiana – colonies of the British and Dutch – and the West Indies, according to ongoing research work by author, historian and former NHS Highland chair David Alston. Continuing our journey to Lochaber, Glengarry Cottage Hospital was converted from a house in 1880 by the Ellice family.[9] Edward Ellice Senior was director of the Hudson’s Bay Company, a vast fur trading company which furthered French and British colonial rule in what was to become Canada. (His son, also Edward, later became deputy director of the Hudson’s Bay Company.)  A colonial view of the relationship between the HBC and First Nations. Hudson Bay Company Agent: Antique Print from The Children's Friend 1907" by peonyandthistle is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Edward Senior also co-owned eight sugar plantations in the Caribbean and what was British Guiana (now Guyana) with 300 slaves, and received government reparations of at least £7,000 (around £676,000 in today’s money) when the enslaved people were freed. Glencoe House was built by Donald Smith, Lord Strathcona, in 1895 as his home, and was later converted to a hospital in 1940 during the Second World War. He also provided funds to build Leanchoil Hospital in Forres.[10]
Despite his humble origins in Forres from a family of crofters, Donald Smith made his name and fortune by part-funding the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), a 7,000-mile railroad to fulfil the colonial vision of Canada, the new British America, as a country from coast to coast.  The Canadian Pacific Railway crossing Mountain Creek, British Columbia in c. 1885. From Library & Archives Canada. While an engineering marvel, it was essentially a land-grab from the First Nations peoples under threat of violence. Simultaneously, the railway became a way to contain and control (assimilate and segregate) the indigenous peoples, as the new Canadian government created reserves in which First Nations would now live. The railroad disrupted bison migration patterns and with it First Nations’ ways of life to survive and thrive. (They were subsequently starved as the government attempted to save money by not providing them food.) Vast inequalities persist to this day for First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples within Canada, stemming from this era. Smith was one of a number of Highlands men who were instrumental in forming Canada as a country, including his cousin George Stephen from Dufftown, who also part-funded the CPR and later built a hospital in his hometown, and also John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada who was born in Glasgow but whose family was from near Aviemore. Under his government the Indian Residential School system was begun which forcibly removed indigenous children from their families and was found by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 to amount to ‘cultural genocide.  George Stephen (Lord Mountstephen), former president of the CPR, gave £5,000 to build the Stephen Cottage Hospital in Dufftown. From Moray District Council leaflet, 1989. Moving on to the Highland capital of Inverness, around a third of the original funding for the Royal Northern Infirmary came from colonial links in Bengal as well as plantations in the Caribbean which were owned by local families and run on slave labour.[11]
Lachlan Mackintosh of Raigmore Estate contributed funds made in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta, West Bengal) not only to the Infirmary[12] but also to Inverness Royal Academy which similarly also received money from plantations and the slave trade in the West Indies. He later became a Director of Inverness Royal Academy. The Infirmary later received money from local individuals who had made their fortune in Canada,[13] Tasmania,[14] and India[15], all places where the British were expanding their colonial and economic interests.  Tasmania: Mount Wellington and Hobart Town from Kangaroo Point by John Glover, 1834. Kunanyi and nipaluna are the respective palawa/Aboriginal Tasmanian names. Despite the depiction of indigenous peoples in the foreground, they had almost all been exterminated by this point by British colonists following the Black War. From Wikipedia. Similarly the original Nairn Hospital was largely funded through many smaller donations by local ‘military men’ in Bengal.
Not only hospitals but Highland schools were funded through slavery and empire, including Inverness Royal Academy, Tain Academy, Fortrose Academy and schools in Cromarty. As a consequence of relations between Highland plantation owners and enslaved women – as ‘mulatto’ lovers, as wives or ‘country’ wives, or through sexual violence – it was said there were proportionately more mixed-race children in 19th century Inverness then there are today – listen to 25-mins of BBC Good Morning Scotland with David Alston explaining more. Hospitals of course were funded in several ways; here we aim to highlight only some of the connections to Empire. But what’s the relevance for us in Highland here and now? Knowing and understanding these connections may be a first step to realising the often complex journey of wanting to improve the lives of our families and communities – which is very relatable – but which may be at the expense of others. How does ‘do no harm’ play out today? What practices are we personally and collectively a part of which might contribute to ongoing inequality and injustice, both here in the Highlands and elsewhere? When we consider these questions and our colonial roots, we acknowledge and address how colonialism and oppression still shows up in our modern day lives – how much it may be embedded, only being noticeable to those it most impacts. How much do we notice it, or feel it? And if we don’t, what might we be missing? A postscript: This article, written in English, is a sign of colonialism. Gaelic was the dominant language of the land here in the Highlands for several thousand years, English for only several hundred. There was concerted English effort over many centuries to stamp out Gaelic – it was physically beaten out of children at school, amongst many other measures – and to restrict Gaelic cultural practices. It was largely successful. Endnotes/references: [1] HFHS-Journal-341-S.pdf (highlandfhs.org) p12 [2] History of the Macleods with genealogies of the principal families of the name (nls.uk) p198 [3] Indigo Cultivation and the Rural Crisis in North Bihar in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century on JSTOR p72 [4] Full text of "History of Behar indigo factories ; Reminiscences of Behar ; Tirhoot and its inhabitants of the past ; History of Behar light horse volunteers" (archive.org) p228-229 [5] JC & SJ Leslie (2011) The Hospitals of Skye p26 [6] Strathpeffer Hospitals (historyofhighlandhospitals.com) p13 [7] JC & SJ Leslie (2011) The Hospitals of Skye p35 [8] Ibid p44 [9] JC & SJ Leslie (2013) The Hospitals of Lochaber p46 [10] Ibid p73 [11] JC & SJ Leslie (2017) The Hospitals of Inverness p36 [12] Ibid p47 [13] Ibid p67 and p84 [14] Aberdeen Press & Journal, 13 May 1896 (accessible at https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/) [15] JC & SJ Leslie (2017) The Hospitals of Inverness p73 and p100
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