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Nobody pursued the clearance policy with more vigour and cruel thoroughness
than Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, and her name is still reviled
in many homes with Highland connections across the world to this day.
Her husband
was George Levenson-Gower, Marquis of Stafford who was made 1st Duke
of Sutherland in 1832. Both usually lived in London, rarely visited
the Sutherland estate and neither of them spoke Gaelic.
The income from their Stafford estates alone brought in the huge sum
of 300,000 pounds annually, but despite this enormous wealth, which
is equivalent to several million pounds at today's values, they rushed
through an "Improvement" program for their remote Sutherland
estate. |
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They employed a lawyer called Patrick Sellar and a factor called James
Lock to carry out the actual "Improvements" or, as the tenants
would have it, "To Clear" them. Both of these men hated the
Gaels and they are still remembered in the Highlands to this day due to
their cruelty and barbarity towards the tenant farmers.
The estate records
show that evictions at the rate of 2,000 families in one day were not
uncommon.
With no shelter
remaining for the cleared families many starved and froze to death where
their homes had once been.
| The Duchess
of Sutherland, on seeing the starving tenants on her husband's
estate, remarked in a letter to a friend in England,
"Scotch people are of happier constitution, and do not fatten
like the larger breed of animals." |
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