Dundee and the Jacobite Rising of 1745-1746

Life in Dundee after Culloden.

By late February 1746, after the Jacobites had left Dundee, and, as they retreated back up towards Inverness. The minute book of the council tells us of a Dundee administration getting back to normal. The Council on 1st March suspend the Town Jailor, James Gib, who, ‘had not behaved in this rebellion as he aught to have done’, possibly he had Jacobite sympathies, he is deprived of his office, his keys to the jail and the ‘profits and emoluments of his office’.

The council are also concerned regarding the number of ‘State’ prisoners that they are holding, and ‘there being no military’ in the town. The council agree ‘that there be a guard of the inhabitants kept in the town house every night and until they be relieved by the military’.
According to the lists drawn up after the uprising about 46 men where being held in the Dundee prison, mostly men from the Dundee area. Three, Charles Jackson & David Salter, maltmen and Alexander Kininmond, mason, present a petition to the council to be sett at liberty upon bail, these were refused.

The Dundee prison was contained within the new Town House. There was the thief’s hole in the cellars, a place horrible and small, where the most notorious criminals were put. Also the second story of the lofting area was divided into 6 vaulted rooms, four as prison cells for debtors etc, the fifth as the iron house where notorious offenders were put and the sixth room was used as a court to the rest. It was probably in these prison rooms that the Jacobite prisoners were kept.

Those held prisoner in Dundee

The council treasurer reports that during the occupation he had to make payments of £194 14s 6d Scots to the rebels and he wants this to be taken into consideration in his accounts, and that he will not be held personally responsible for this money and there would be no prosecution against him as Treasurer.
Also in the accounts for 1746 there is mention of £207 18s being expended for repairing damage done by the rebels to the Town House.

What happened to Dundee men.

Seven men from the Town have been recorded as being transported after capture.

By Iain D. McIntosh, Friends of Dundee City Archives

Iain D. McIntosh, 2020