Part 125 (2/2)

4632. Do you generally get all the articles you want at the Boddam shop?-Yes.

4633. Would you like to have a greater number of things to choose from than there are there?-No. We do not take anything there except what we cannot do without. We wish rather to take it at another place.

4634. Only you cannot always get credit at another place?-I never was refused credit, only I did not like to run a heavy account with another man who was having no profit but upon his goods.

4635. Would you have been more ready to deal with Henderson if you had been at liberty to sell your fish to him too?-Yes.

4636. Is there a fair price charged for soap at the Boddam shop?- There is not very much difference of price upon it. The soap generally is pretty fair at Boddam.

4637. I see here an entry of 11/2 lines, 3s. 5d.: are these lines for your fis.h.i.+ngs?-Yes.

4638. Is the price of lines there as moderate as at other places?- The lines differ in quality. Sometimes we have them as good there as in other places, and at other times not so good.

4639. But what about the price of them? Are they as cheap there as at other places?-If the quality is as good, they are. [Produces another pa.s.s-book.]

4640. Is this the book in which you enter the fish as they are delivered?-Yes.

4641. Who enters them there?-Myself. It is example of how we mark down the fish. That book contained an account which I had running with Gavin Henderson in 1867, and I afterwards used it as a fish book with Mr. Bruce.

4642. You enter the fish in this book, and Mr. Bruce's factor enters them in a book of his own besides?-Yes.

4643. Do all the boats' crews keep books in which they enter their fish in the same way?-So far as I know they do.

[Page 115]

4644. Is that the only way you have of checking the amount of fish you get?-Yes.

4645. At the end of the year you see the quant.i.ty you have delivered as it is entered in the landlord's book, and you see that you get credit for it in your account with Mr. Bruce?-Yes.

Lerwick, January 9, 1872, ROBERT HALCROW, examined.

4646. You are a fisherman at Lasettar, in Dunrossness, and you hold land from Mr. Bruce of Sumburgh?-Yes.

4647. You are bound to deliver your fish to his factor, and you settle at the end of the year in the same way as William Goudie and the other men have described?-Yes.

4648. You have heard all their evidence?-Yes.

4649. Is there anything you wish to add to it or correct in it?- Nothing.

4650. Do you know anything about the knitting which is done by the women in Dunrossness?-There is a little knitting done in my family. It might be more agreeable to some people to be paid in cash than in goods; but others again say that if they did not get the same price in cash for their hosiery as they get in truck, they would not be gainers.

4651. Do they want the goods they get for the hosiery?-Yes; and they might not get the same price for their knitting in money as they get for it in barter.

4652. Do you know the price which they get in goods from the merchants in Lerwick?-Yes.

4653. Would they not get the same goods at a lower price in money, at any of the shops in your neighbourhood?-I am not aware of that.

<script>