Last month we looked at the (somewhat unsavoury) life of ‘Cripple Matthew’ – this month we turn to ‘Hairy Matthew’. ‘Hairy Matthew’ is a much more elusive character. He makes a brief appearance at the Fastern’s E’en Ball Game in 1859 (see extract from the Kelso Chronicle, 11th March 1859, shown above): ‘The next attraction is “Hairy Matthew”, who has spent a life of 77 seasons, and been an actor in many a scene and fray. He looks almost like a wild aborigine, or man of the woods.’ He is referred to in a report of the same event two years later: ‘”Old Hairy Matthew,” having lost his beloved Jeanie, did not grace the assembly, but solaced himself by making a lamentation over her in the expressive terms – “ She’s now awa; mony a gude glass we have had thegether”.' ‘Hairy Matthew” was, more properly, Matthew Douglas. In the 1851 census he is living with his wife Jane Douglass in Kirk Yetholm, aged 70, born in Kirk Yetholm and described as a ‘Hawker of earthenware’. In 1861 he is living in the same place, a widower, with his son William and his age is given as 78 – ‘Pauper, formerly hawker’. He must, therefore, have been born in the first half of the 1780s, however he does not appear to have been baptised. His death, too, is unrecorded, though it probably occurred soon after the 1861 census. By that date all deaths were meant to be officially registered, but this does not seem to have happened in his case. He seems to have lived a regular gipsy life. In many ways, though, his wife’s life story is the most intriguing of the two. She is living in Yetholm in the 1841 census, aged 40, a hawker – her name is given as Jean Clerk, ‘not born in the county’. Matthew is not present and she is the first named and head. Also in the house are her sons David (15), William (6) and Andrew (28), along with Andrew’s wife and their four children. In 1851 she (‘Jane Douglas’, aged 68) and Matthew are living together in Kirk Yetholm, without any children present, but her birth place is given as ‘West Indies’. She died in February 9th 1861 – shortly before the 1861 Fastern’s E’en Ball Game. Unlike her husband, her death was officially recorded (see below) and her parents are listed as John Clark, Soldier, ‘Regiment and Rank not known’ and Betty Clark [maiden surname] Armstrong. Her age is given as 67. These various documents give wildly various, and clearly inaccurate, ages – she could have been born at any time between 1780 and 1800. However, given that her youngest son William was born in 1835 it may be that the age on her death certificate is the most accurate and that she was born in c.1794. Apart from their names, her parents are otherwise unknown. It seems likely, though, that they were poor and uneducated – typical members of the rough-and-ready hoi polloi, whose toil and blood helped forge the British Empire. Was her father one of the several thousand troops who helped supress the ‘Maroon Slave Rebellion’ in Jamaica in 1795 - ? What might Jane Clerk, who died a gipsy in Kirk Yetholm, have remembered of her exotic – and violent – place of birth? As has been noted, Matthew was not present in Kirk Yetholm in the 1841 census. Where was he? Travelling? Or possibly in jail - ? A ‘Matthew Douglas’ of Kirk Yetholm appears several times in prison records during the 1820s and 1830s. Unfortunately, there was another Matthew Douglas in the village at that time, almost an exact contemporary, baptised in 1785, son of Andrew Douglas and Rachel Baillie, who died in 1863. This person was married first to Alison Douglas and then to Margaret Gourlay. In the 1841 census Jane Clark is living next door to this alternative ‘Matthew Douglas’ and his family. It is not known if and how the two men with the same name were related, though it seems likely that they were. Whatever the case, some or all of these prison records may relate to the alternative ‘Matthew Douglas’. By the end of the nineteenth century the surname Douglas is by far the most common ‘gipsy’ name in Kirk Yetholm – Faa/Fall had long since gone and Blythe was going the same way – and the genealogical entanglements of the clan are difficult to unravel. No images have, of course, survived of ‘Hairy Matthew’, so it is no longer possible to tell if he really did look like a ‘wild aborigine’. After his wife died he is glimpsed, in 1861, living with his daughter Agnes who, predictably but confusingly, had married a ‘William Douglas’. One of this couple’s children was named after his hirsute grandfather and this younger Matthew (born 1844 – died 1927) married Elizabeth Tait. This last couple’s children included Skaffy and Croxy Douglas, whose photographs have survived. Both look rather grizzled, but neither of them sport large and shaggy beards. One wonders, though, whether some of Hairy Matthew’s physiognomy might have been passed down and may be glimpsed in their features? Croxy, ‘Hairy Matthew’s’ great-grandson, is shown on the right.
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