Talk:Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland

Untitled

There should be more information on her and her cruelty. 24.42.68.193 (talk) 05:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Regimental

'Lady Sutherland twice raised a volunteer regiment, the "Sutherlandshire Fencibles"'

Could we clarify whether it was this regiment that became the 93rd of foot, or the Duke of Sutherland's Regiment, later merged with the 91st (Argyllshire Highlanders), to form the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders? People often wonder about the Sutherland connection, since that regiment (still extant, even in its new shrunk-down form) never did recruit from Sutherland, which was in Seaforth Highlanders country. Valetude (talk) 00:27, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

The phrase was as it was put in my source, The Complete Peerage. 'Twice raised' to me suggests an interval the regiment was disbanded then revived. It is unlikely the Fencibles would have been the future Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders - Fencibles were cavalry, the Highlanders infantry.Cloptonson (talk) 11:26, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Just read about the Highland Fencible regiments in the wiki article. I concur that former members of the Fencibles, following the disbanding of their regiment, did go on to join the 93rd although I would not really class that as a continuation of the Fencibles. It was not a case of merging but that the Fencibles had been disbanded.Cloptonson (talk) 19:58, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

"reputation for being especially cruel and insensitive"

I have added a verification needed tag to the comment that Lady Sutherland, along with Sellar and James Loch had a "reputation for being especially cruel and insensitive".

Firstly, despite using various searches of an electronic copy of the reference, I can find nowhere that this statement is applied to any of these three people.

Secondly, Prebble is, these days, a largely outdated source on the subject. He was not a historian, so this source would fail on WP:HISTRS.

Thirdly, whilst Sellar was accused of being cruel in the case brought against him in 1816 (on which he was acquitted), he had witnesses to say otherwise - if he was a living person I don't think Wikipedia would get away with using the word. Lady Sutherland said that "he is exceedingly greedy and harsh with the people" . I think there is an extensive case across a range of sources that Sellar had inept people skills, was over-rigorous in interpreting law, and dug himself into a dangerous conflict of interest by becoming the tenant on one of the areas that is was his job, as factor, to clear. He also was totally signed up to the idea that the clearances were a good thing, relying on his own family history and the works of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus. But because he was sacked by Lady Sutherland and James Loch, he became their scapegoat for a cruel process. So this is a complex issue which cannot be glossed over with a word that is not supported by the cited reference. Whether or not Sellar was, specifically, cruel (among all his other failings) becomes a matter of opinion which could be addressed as a detailed analysis of his character, citing different opinions of him - but in the context of this article it might be best left alone.

Fourthly, lumping Lady Sutherland and Loch in with this umbrella statement of being cruel has similar failings. Lady Sutherland seems to have been poorly advised, unaware of the effect of her actions on her tenants (note that Richards states in his Highland Clearances: "The Countess of Sutherland and her advisers were genuinely astonished at this response to plans which they regarded as wise and benevolent.") - but she sacked Sellar and was keen that his replacement did a better job, especially in his relationship with the tenants. Again, an accusation of cruelty is complex and needs justification.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:02, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

References

Scottish clearances section

Here is is a list of the problems with this section:

(1) The section title - the usual term is "Highland Clearances". Whilst there are some who wish (quite validly) to highlight the fact that there were clearances in the Lowlands too, it seems that the reader would be better served by sticking to the normal terminology.

(2)

....so that by the 1820s they owned well over two-thirds of the county.

This is not a fair representation of what the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (the cited source) says about the proportion of Sutherland that was owned by the Sutherland Estate. The ODNB says

....so that by 1816 two-thirds of the county of Sutherland was in the hands of the Sutherland family

and goes on to say that further land was bought up to 1833. Eric Richard's source for his ODNB article is R. J. Adam, ed., Papers on Sutherland estate management, 1802–1816, 2 vols., Scottish History Society, 4th ser., 8–9 (1972), which states that by 1816, based on the valued rent in the county, the Sutherland Estate was 63% of the whole.. So, as it currently stands, the article has inflated the proportion of the county owned by Lady Sutherland's family from an amount greater than 63% to "well over two thirds". Mathematically, the proportion may not even be as much as two thirds (66.66%), and it certainly seems to be a reckless use of the cited source to say that it is well above this amount.
(3)

.... but as the techniques proved to be financially beneficial for her family, she accelerated and intensified the process

This is not what the cited reference says. The reference talks about the process accelerating, but does not link this to it being proved to be financially beneficial to the family. In fact, the opposite is true: the vast wealth of her husband was needed to support it and Richards has said (elsewhere)

His brilliant wife persuaded him to pour a very large part of this extraordinary fortune into her Highland territories in the belief that this would bring great improvements to the people and to the proprietor alike. It would be an intelligent investment, the more sensible because the opportunities were so ripe. In retrospect the Sutherland estate seems like a sump into which some of the richest profits of English industrialisation were lost in Highland bogs. Eventually the loss to the nation at large was appalling and rarely accounted in the balance sheet of the clearances.

Whilst there was a demonstrable increase in income as the process was carried out, there was also an enormous investment (which had a habit of running substantially over budget due to inaccurate costings), the acceleration of the clearances was more to do with capital becoming available and the right people being hired - the estate factor (Cosmo Falconer) was fired on 9th August 1810 (with a leaving date of Whitsunday 1811) in favour of William Young, assisted by Patrick Sellar. with the intention of speeding the process. Both had substantial credentials in agricultural improvement (though Young was later shown deficient in financial management, and Sellar had disastrous people management skills - both were dismissed for these respective reasons in 1816/17).
(4)

....instigated the eviction of tenant farmers and crofters....

Especially on the Sutherland Estate, crofting communities were the creation of clearance. The vast majority of people who were evicted in the large Sutherland Clearances were tenant farmers and cottars (people without any significant agricultural land) - others were squatters (those with no right to be there) and people who served the communities, such as teachers and clergymen. It is misleading to say that crofters were evicted, because that follows the belief that the Highland Clearances is all about "the eviction of the poor crofter". This is a serious misrepresentation of fact: many of the farming tenants who were cleared were substantial farmers (as judged by the number of cattle they had). There were some later clearances of crofting tenants on the Sutherland Estate at the time of the potato famine, but in such a brief description of events it is misleading to try and mention them - as they were a small part of the whole. (They had presumably also been cleared from farms in the interior at some earlier point!!)

(5) The use of electricscotland.com as a reference is highly questionable - this blog cannot reasonably be considered a reliable source. They will accept pieces written by anyone - e.g. Janet Mackay. When I contacted them about their content, (a) they said that they use anything that is not in copyright (hence all the outdated historical work) and (b) said I could offer them some content if I wished. The passage supported by this reference is misleading about depopulation of the estate: it is a complex subject, but most of the empty landscapes of the Highlands are due to voluntary emigration that occurred after the period of the clearances.

(6) The extensive quote from Karl Marx destroys any semblance of balance in the article and is demonstrably wrong in many cases.

So, overall, I think a big rewrite is needed of this section.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:36, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

References

Reversion

I have reverted the edit[1] by User:Wentwort12. This reinstates the removal of an edit previously described as "not an improvement". It seems necessary to list the reasons why that is the case.

(1) The sentence

He was known as Earl Gower from 1786 he would become the richest man in England, in 1803, he succeeded to his father's title of Marquess of Stafford.

(a) This seems to be a sentence with another sentence dropped into the middle of it.
(b) The wealth inherited by her husband is dealt with elsewhere in the article. (There should be some mention of this early in the article. The ideal place for that would be in the lead, which is over-short.)
(c) An event that occurred some time after her marriage does not reasonably fit into a section headed "Childhood and marriage".

(2) The mention of Stafford House (later Lancaster House) is completely unreferenced. It is in a section titled "Other interests". This increases the need for references, as, though it is possible to verify that Lady Sutherland lived in Stafford House, there is nothing to say the house was a particular interest of hers.

It is probably worth asking Wentwort12 to take a look at WP:ATWV and WP:VANDAL before they throw around any more accusations of vandalism. The edit summary "not an improvement" means what it says. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 07:55, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

my bad, I thought it was vandalism, thanks for the addition Wentwort12 (talk) 13:57, 21 May 2023 (UTC)