Leith Customs House Museum, Edinburgh

Scottish Fisheries Museum, Anstruther

Finely woven east coast creel made from buff willow. Highland Folk Museum

This includes information on what we know generally of these creels and a gallery of East Coast creels

Back Creel of the East Coast Fishwife

Gallery of East Coast back creels

Margaret Fairnie in working clothes. Fisherrow fishwife.

Elizabeh Ritchie in working clothes with creel.1954. Fisherrow.

Women of Fisherrow, as wives, daughters and widows of the men who fished the seas, made their own independent living selling fish house to house on the streets of Edinburgh. Fisherrow is now an integral part of the town of Musselburgh (five miles east of the City of Edinburgh) In former times it was a separate part of the town where all the fisher people lived and worked and where the harbour that was the home port of the local fishing was located.

The men were often at sea for long periods and it was the women who supported the family. It is not clear when women started taking fish to Edinburgh, but were definitely doing so by the early 1800s.

They used an east coast style creel. This was solidly woven at the sides unlike the creels of the highlands and islands. They also had a skull. This was a large circular frame basket that sat on top of the creel. This basket was also known as a head creel or cob. The thick top frame was laminated from several pieces of broad cane to make it really sturdy. Both creel and skull came to be made in the salt water resistant cane, which came as packaging from the Far East. The protruding stakes of the creel helped to set the skull and keep it stable.

Helping lift a creel. 1955. Fisherrow fishwives.

These women were strong. When fully laden with fish a creel and skull could weigh 55kg such that they required assistance to lift the baskets up onto their back on leaving the fish market. To support such a weight a head strap was used. Traditionally Musselburgh fishwives used a leather strap and Newhaven women used a canvas strap. These straps were attached by rope up through a hole in the creel and onto one of the protruding stakes. The women wore a thick serge coat that was made with double thickness around the small of the back, to help make carrying the creels more comfortable.

The women would get fish when the boats came in, either by buying them at the local market or, in some places after being landed, getting them from their husbands or fathers to sell on their behalf at the pierhead or to take to their customers. The baskets were loaded by setting any flat fish around the outside of the skull before arranging the rest of the wet fish inside. Keeping the fish whole right up to the doorstep kept the fish fresher for longer. The creel would have the various accoutrements needed for the day, including a gutting board and gutting knives, a bass bag with her knitting inside, scales, paper for wrapping the fish for the customers and for the guts and smoked fish, if she was carrying any.

Putting creels on the tram. 1940s.

To get into Edinburgh they used the (electric) tram that ran from Musselburgh to Joppa, they travelled as passengers putting their creels at the front beside the driver then, from Joppa, either took a cable car into town or walked the distance along Fishwives Causeway – an old Roman road – in to the city to sell their wares.

Those women who traversed the city centre had many steps to get up and down. In times past it was not unusual for women to walk the 5 miles to Edinburgh in relays, three of them carrying one laden basket and shifting one to the other every hundred yards or so to complete the journey in three quarters of an hour.

Each woman would have her own round, and would not readily sell to anyone coming up to her on the street. Any new customer had to wait to be added to her round and it could be a long wait. However a customer was a customer and a sale a sale. If any of her fish was not ‘spoken for’ by a customer then she’d be only too pleased to make a sale and to add another customer to her list.

Helen Hamilton (later Fairnie) in her working clothes.1910. Simon Fairnie’s grandmother.

The daughters of the women would learn the trade alongside their mothers. They would usually leave school at 14 ‘to go to the creel’. Their mothers would buy them their first creel and skull and their working clothes. Then having been given two or three customers from their mothers to start them off the girls would have to find their own customers. While the daughters were working with their mothers they would tell what they had earned that day, but once they had their own round they kept to themselves what they earned, not even telling their husbands. Once home the baskets had to be washed out. Sometimes this job was given to one of the children of the family. In the summer they may have been left outside to dry. When not being used the baskets were stored in the washhouse or the coal cellar.

This community were providing fish to the people of Edinburgh for many years. In 1791 there were 90 Fisherrow fishwives and in 1955 only 19 remained. When boats changed from sail to being motorised, the marketing and selling of fish at Fisherrow and other local ports went into abeyance the women then having to travel by bus to Newhaven market to buy their fish.

At the market the women worked together in groups of five or six with one of the women buying the fish on behalf of the others. Once the boxes of fish were delivered to the women it was divided into equal piles. To ensure that each pile was fairly and equitably allocated the women used a process called ‘kyling’ where a passer by was asked to put a personal object from each woman onto one of the piles. The Newhaven fishwives also used this process.

The women’s income often carried the family if, for some reason, their men were not bringing in money. Sometimes it was the women’s money that would help finance a new boat or when needed a new engine.

Two Fisherrow fishwives at the foot of Bush Street. 1904. Musselburgh Museum Committee
Helen Hamilton on the left and her sister Margaret Hamilton.

Both creels and skulls were made locally and in the period between the wars this was done by Robert McKelvie a local basketmaker. He would also make other baskets used by the women such as washing and shopping baskets. A traveller, carrying spare canes, came around once a year and would do repairs on the baskets.

These Fisherrow fishwives are famous for having the first women’s golf competition in recorded history. It was held on 1 January 1811 on the Musselburgh Golf Links and sponsored by the club and various local merchants. One of the prizes was a creel and skull! As today the golf course was a good place to do business…to make contacts with the gentry and sort out special requests. These physically fit women also played an annual game of football on Shrove Tuesday. This took place between the married and the single ‘fishwives’. It was usually the married ones that won. They ran races in their full costume of skirts and aprons.

A long standing tradition in some fishing communities was to put the creel on the groom’s back on his wedding day – he had to go round with it laden with rocks and stones and this was called ‘creeling’.  Once wed he put it down with a sigh of relief no doubt never to lift it again. It is not known if this happened in Fisherrow.

Most of these women stopped working carrying these loads of fish in the 1970s but some continued on. The last one plying her trade until 1988 was Betty Millar. Latterly Betty did not carry her creel but sold her fish from a van. Even now it is likely that some of the fish van routes are based on the old fishwife’s walking routes.

Other women also used creels to transport goods. Saltwives, who had less status than fishwives, would walk to Edinburgh with a creel of salt. Musselburgh also had large market gardens and women would transport vegetables to the city. Other women walked with creels of coal. Roads in and out of Musselburgh were tolled but, as people on foot were not required to pay the tolls, it was ‘cheaper’ to transport goods by creel and not by horse and cart or later by the motorised vehicles.

By Simon Fairnie, local historian, Fisherrow and Dawn Susan, basketmaker and researcher with the Woven Communities project.

With thanks to Liz Balfour, Scottish Basketmakers Circle

And with reference to

A Game of Fishy Tales in Women and Golf July/August 2011

Phemie, an east coast fishwife, selling fish in Corstophine, early 1900s. Scottish Life Archive

In areas around Arbroath and Montrose, where rips were used instead of the usual back creels, a basket with a handle was used instead of the usual top creel so that it could be carried on the arm. These arm creels, or bow creels, were also sometimes called murlins. We can speculate that arm creels were used instead of top creels because of the design of a rip. When it was put down on the ground , the top of it was lower than a normal back creel and so a basket resting on this was too low to display fish to customers. Having the basket over the arm was a better height.

by Julie Gurr

See also East Coast Fishwife’s Creel, Rips

Ceramic fishwives, National Museum of Scotland

From about 1750 until the 1930s Scotland’s potteries were producing utilitarian and decorative wares for home and foreign markets. During the 19th century there was a fashion for figurines: highlanders / pipers, soldiers, sailors, peasants, fishermen and fisherwives, adorned mantel shelves all over the country. Potters drew on local inspiration and in the Forth Littoral there was perhaps up to ten potteries producing the highly popular ceramic fishwife, including Rathbone’s of Portobello, and numerous others in Prestonpans. Unfortunately, at present, no known marked example exists so attribution is always problematic and therefore open to re-interpretation. Some of the Staffordshire potteries also took a liking to the Newhaven fishwife and set about producing their own equivalent, thus adding to the difficulties of establishing a specific maker. Further excavations of these east coast potteries may, in time, provide more answers.

It is understandable why these characterful women caught the potter’s eye; their colourful costume, distinct with multiple striped petticoats not only made them popular with their customers, but during the 1883 London Fisheries Exhibition they made a notable impression on Queen Victoria and her son, the Prince of Wales. They also became a desirable subject for pioneering photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson who regularly used the port of Newhaven as a subject matter.

One of the most discussed issues regarding the fishwives is their costumes. David Rye in his article describes the fisherwomen of the Newhaven area as wearing, ‘a long blue duffel jacket, with wide sleeves, a blue petticoat usually tucked up so as to form a pocket, and in order to show off their ample under petticoats of bright coloured woollen stripes’ (2003, 4). These were often red or yellow in colour. He also notes that by the time of the Fisheries Exhibition in 1883 the costume had ‘slimmed down… It was still a plain dress over striped petticoats, but these were fewer in number. The lace edged “mutch” caps were still present, but the cloaks and hood had replaced the stout duffel jacket’ (2003, 4). How accurate our ceramic fishwives are in terms of colour and style is debatable and certainly needs further research, however Rye’s descriptions are not dissimilar from our figures. One example clearly wears a stout blue duffel coat which according to Rye, had faded out of fashion by the 1880s and nearly all have turned up petticoats with striped versions underneath. The primary fishwife colours appear to have been blues, reds and yellows and all our ceramic ladies are painted as such, albeit the sequence may vary at times when compared against the real thing. Their baskets also appear to be accurate. The larger creel would contain the hefty loads of herring, haddock or shellfish, while the smaller rip, positioned on top, acted as the display basket while the ladies were out selling. Frequently, the ceramic figures have their creel and rip in front of them, in a prime selling stance, but it is equally common to have the baskets in a carrying position on their backs with the supporting band around their fore-head.

These little ladies are a colourful, couthy way of showing the vibrant nature of the fisherwomen of the Forth Littoral and their relationship with a bygone industry.

Bibliography

Rye, David 2003 ‘The Fishwives of Newhaven’, Supplement no.2 of ‘The Welsh Lady’, and occasional newsletter for collectors of Welsh costume postcards. Milford Haven.

Fisheries Exhibition 1883 ‘Fishwives’ and fishgirls’ costumes: a souvenir of the Fisheries Exhibition, 1883’. London.

Fleming, John Arnold 1923 ‘Scottish Pottery’. Glasgow.

Cruickshank, Graeme 2007 ‘Prestonpans Pottery: a definitive study of Scotland’s heritage’. Prestonpans.

http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/specialcollections/collectionsa-z/hilladamson/hilladamsonsiteindex/ Accessed 26/11/12

The Arbroath rip.

The Arbroath rip, Liz Balfour’s account

The Arbroath rip was used by fisherwomen, carried on their backs for selling fish. It was never used at the harbour, but on women’s fish selling rounds or in the market. Rips are bigger than women’s arm creels (sometimes called fisher lassies’ baskets), which are also frame baskets and of similar form. The strap went across the breast. Liz remarks that some people say that straps were also worn across the forehead, but suggests this would seem to be a difficult way to carry the weight. The straps could also be worn over the shoulder, with the basket resting on the hips.

The construction of the Arbroath rip is extremely fine and very identifiable, to the point that one can hypothesize that some rips, at least, were probably made by the same maker. The frame around which the basket is formed is made from several overlapping bands of sawn wood which are very evenly bent into an oval. This even bending could only be achieved by an expert, and uses quite a different technology from most basketry skills, requiring the use of a steamer to bend the wood into a specific form. Liz suggests that these skills parallel those required for boat building, so that perhaps in Arbroath, basket makers worked alongside skilled joiners.

Most east coast baskets, from Berwick, to Dundee and Aberdeen, were made from rattan rather than local materials such as willow in more recent years. Rattan’s use for work baskets probably became popular in Scotland around the end of the 19^th century. It was imported from around this period, used as a packing material around jute, in Liz’s view. It lasts much better in salt water in fishing baskets, and one can see from stored baskets in the museum that the rattan elements of a basket are much less fragile and last much longer than willow or other indigenous material. They are also much less susceptible to worm.

Even the ribs of a rip are made from rattan. One can see from the weave that they are added in pairs, one pair at a time, creating a pleasing pattern detail and finish to the frame top. The form of the basket, with two rounded ‘cheeks’, has sometimes earned them the name of ‘buttock baskets’ in the US, used there by migrants from Scotland. The detail of finishing is exquisite.

Rips made in Arboath were used by fishwives along the Angus coast, from Arbroath, to Ferry Den, Usan and Ethie Haven. They were probably in use from long before the growth of  herring fishing in the late 1800s. Fishwives also sold white fish, sea-‘bottom feeders’, the products of long-line fishing, which was practised in the region before this.

Good examples of Arbroath rips are held at the National Museum of Scotland, and the Signal Tower Museum. They can also be seen on SCRAN.

This photograph shows Betty McBay, a fisherwoman from Johnshaven, in her working clothes. She has one basket on her back and another in her left arm. She is wearing the ‘bluecoat’ skirt that was traditional on this East Coast and also wears a fringed shawl.

Johnshaven is a small village north of Montrose. It was a thriving place in the 18C, but declined later that century when people moved to Montrose. The village revived in the 19C, and in 1872 David Walker tried beam trawling. Today there is no full time commercial fishing from the harbour.