By Tim Porteus

THE harvest was cut late in the fields around Tranent in 1797. When the corn was eventually gathered in early September, it is said decaying corpses were discovered. They had lain in the fields since August 29, a day of barbaric infamy in Tranent’s history. The dead were victims of the Tranent Massacre, and one of the bodies may have been that of Jackie Crookston or Crookstone.

I say ‘may’ for there is ironically so little known about this well-known woman. A statue by David Annand of Jackie on Tranent High Street shows her beating her drum with a clenched fist, defiantly leading the protest against the Militia Act. The plaque by the statue calls her a “resolute woman” who joined the protest, and states she was one of those killed by the cavalry.

Her heroic reputation is well established in local lore. The 19th-century historian John Martine called her “a Tranent virago”. This word describes a woman of brave, fearless qualities, but it has a sting in its tail. It can also be used to mean a woman who has overstepped her mark, broken cultural rules in relation to her role as defined by gender.

And by leading the protest against the Militia Act she most certainly did this.

Another 19th-century historian and collector of traditions, P. M’Neill, was clear on her role: “Jackie indeed was the prime mover in the whole affair,” he states.

We have accounts of her beating her drum and leading the protest with chants of “nae militia”. She is said to have threatened a captain of the cavalry and declared defiantly that “she didna care a pin though she were cut in halves, she wad hae nae militia”. Another account has her telling a member of the yeomanry to leave or she would “thraw his neck”, at which he duly rode off.

If these accounts are true, she was indeed resolute on that day in defending her family, her neighbours and her community. Jackie was not the only woman on the streets that day, for women took a leading role in defending their families. But she was the most prominent, it seems.

The Militia Act aimed to conscript young men into a militia by means of a ballot. It was resisted for a number of reasons, but for the poverty-stricken mining and farming communities of Tranent and the surrounding area, it was seen as an imposition which would take young men of working age away and potentially cripple their families economically.

There is no space here to recount the details of the massacre, but much of what happened on that day remains hidden behind a mist of cover-up and official indifference.

And somewhere in the bloody carnage of August 29, 1797, Jackie Crookston was killed, along with many others. Yet despite her leading role, her name was not included in the original list of people killed. Eleven deaths were recorded, but no mention of Jackie. “How her death escaped recording is difficult to explain,” reflected P. M’Neill in his book Tranent and its Surroundings.

Perhaps an explanation can be found in an eyewitness account written immediately after the massacre. It was a letter from Archibald Roger to his wife in Edinburgh.

It begins: “Dear wife, this comes to acquaint you that you need not weary for my returning home, for my sister is to be buried this afternoon at four o’clock, and I cannot come away till I see her decently interred. I am sorry to inform you of the cruelties that were committed here yesterday; there were six persons shot dead on the spot, of which my sister was one… the number of wounded is not yet ascertained, but I am just now informed that 15 dead corpses were this morning found in the corn-fields; and it is not known how many more may be found when the corn is cut.”

Was Jackie one of those lying undiscovered in a field? It seems so by some accounts. Is that why her death was not on the list? Sandy Mullay in his book The Tranent Massacre says she was shot in the streets, but there is also a tradition which states her body was found well away from Tranent much later in a field, with stab as well as gunshot wounds.

Was she initially wounded and then a victim of later retribution? Was she hunted down in an unrecorded atrocity because of her role as ring leader, and a woman who didn’t know her place? She will have been easy to identify because of her prominence in the protest.

Her death, just like her life, is unrecorded by history. Despite her leadership in the events, she was a woman and she was poor, and history lacks interest in such characters. A tax on the registration of births and deaths at this time meant many poor people lived and died unregistered even in parish records.

So who was Jackie? We know she was born in Gladsmuir in June 1768 and was a mother. Perhaps not all her children were registered because of the tax, but it seems she had at least four surviving at the time of the massacre. She was only 29 when she died, but how do we imagine her life? What was behind her passion in defending her community?

When I spoke of her to artist Mags Nisbet-Macfarlane, she was inspired to use art to search for the woman behind the historical glimpses.

“I felt connected to this woman I did not know,” she told me, “she will have had a life that explains her defiance that day; she had so little, but was protecting what was important to her.” Mags’ image of Jackie tells a story without the need of words.

The plaque by the statue in Tranent says there were 12 killed in the massacre, as Jackie’s name has been added to the original 11. But in truth we will never know for sure how many were really killed and maimed that day.

There was no prosecution of those responsible, no investigation and no interest by those in authority to allow the truth to be told.