The Curator: Thomas Bolt of Cruister, his wards and apprentices

The Curator: Thomas Bolt of Cruister, his wards and apprenticesWhile it please God to spare me I shall endeavour to manage these affairs the best I can for the Dear Child committed to my Care. I can say it with Strictest Truth, I have never or ever shall benefite my self a penny by them. Thomas Bolt, on the management of his ward Arthur Nicolson. Would we look back to what we were ourselves and what we have seen in others of her age we would not think severely of her Inclination to Play. Thomas Bolt writing about

While it please God to spare me I shall endeavour to manage these affairs the best I can for the Dear Child committed to my Care. ... I ...can say it with Strictest Truth, I have never or ever shall benefite my self a penny by them.  Thomas Bolt, on the management of his ward Arthur Nicolson.

Would we look back to what we were ourselves and what we have seen in others of her age we would not think severely ... of her ... Inclination to Play.  Thomas Bolt writing about his great-granddaughter Jessie Scott.

Thomas Bolt, best known in Shetland for his patronage of P & O co-founder Arthur Anderson, took under his wing a number of young people in the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. He arranged their education and medical care, and in some cases managed their estates until they came of age. As adults, some of them would become instrumental in the social and economic changes of the nineteenth century, yet Thomas Bolt, the force behind them, has until now remained largely unexplored.

Through these tales of how he managed his young charges and who they became, the book traces Bolt's role in shaping eighteenth and nineteenth-century society. It addresses themes such as the education of middle-class girls, the medical treatment of children, trade during the Napoleonic wars, and Shetland's connections with colonial economies involving enslavement.

Jane Coutts was born in Lincolnshire in 1958. She studied languages, sociology and anthropology, and for fifteen years she was manager of Fetlar Interpretive Centre on the island of Fetlar, Shetland. Since 2007, she and her family have lived in Extremadura, Spain where, until she retired in 2024, she worked in translation, teaching and developing educational material. She was also involved in health-related projects in Tanzania through the University of Glasgow.

This book builds on her previous work, Borrowed Time, which traced the history of the Nicolson family. Her first Shetland-related book Microbes: the life of Sir William Watson Cheyne, was shortlisted for Scottish Research Book of the Year at the 2015 Saltire Awards. 

Jane Coutts

Paperback

372 pages