BRECHIN: THE RAPE OF A LIBRARY

In 1840 the ancient city of Brechin was the kind of community which was ceasing to be important. It was a market town of some 6000 people set in the fertile countryside of Angus in North East Scotland. During the Age of Improvement market towns had become wealthy by selling hitherto novel and expensive goods and services to the surrounding countrypeople who purchased them with the profits of capitalistic agriculture. Now the initiative was slipping away to cities like nearby Dundee and the emergent industrial centres of the central belt of Scotland. Nevertheless the town had a flax mill, a bleachfield, several linen works and two distilleries. There was also work for nine ministers, nine lawyers and nine doctors. The ministers and lawyers were particularly important: the former propounded rival arguments about church government, the latter formalised and interpreted the resulting conflicts. Their part in this cameo of library history calls for some explanation.