Not wanting to sidetrack the McMurchy/MacMurchy post...
viewtopic.php?f=60&t=14227&p=124321#p124321
..., it’s just dawned on me that Shona’s remark about illicit whisky must have influenced my McArthur bakers and butchers in Campbeltown at the time. Wonder if there is a list somewhere of names of illicit manufacturers ? I'd like to find one in my family... lol !
http://www.celticmalts.com/journal.asp? ... chy=10/4/9
The whisky was disposed of throughout the bordering highland areas, which "brought profit to a few individuals ... but was ruinous to the community". The parish minister advocated a duty so punitive that it would amount to a prohibition, and he commented on the situation: "When a man may get an English pint of potent spirits or, in other words, get completely drunk for 2d. or 3d. many will not be sober".
There were other disadvantages arising from distilling in the Campbeltown area, and elsewhere in Argyll. Recurrent scarcities of grain were troublesome: for example, Pennant (A Tour of Scotland and the Western Isles, 1772) noted that despite the quantity of bere raised, there was a dearth, the inhabitants of Kintyre "being mad enough to convert their bread into poison", distilling annually six thousand bolls of grain into whisky. In 1782-3 the harvest failed and acute distress was caused among the poor of the burgh of Campbeltown. The Commissioner of Supply took steps to forbid the making of whisky, at the same time ordering all private stills throughout Argyll to be confiscated. The distilling of whisky was again prohibited from 1795 to 1797 owing to grain shortages occasioned by the Napoleonic Wars. In 1812, there was another dearth of grain in Argyll. At that time, it was estimated that 20,000 bolls were converted annually into whisky in the country, of which over 50 per cent was being made illicitly in Kintyre, and 30 per cent in Campbeltown alone.