This has been fun getting me back to my books and dredging up memories.

The trades holiday in Glasgow is still caled the Glasgow Fair the last vestige of the hiring fair which started it was still to be seen in the funfair which came to Glasgow Green at that time. I remember one year seing a bucket filled with knives and other small weapons that had fallen out of pockets or been hurrildly dropped through the boards of the rides when the polis unexpectedly turned up.

The night watch was set up in Aberdeen City in if I remember rightly 1816 although there had been Toun Gaurds since the middle of the 16th century. That was in the city, way out in the country law was less formal and situations could arise between feuding families. An example of that led to a murder in the street in Kirkwall in 1726 when Sir James Stewart and his brother Alexander murdered Captain James Moodie in the open street in front of witnesses yet were never aprehended or brought to trial.