Description
Book SynopsisCo-published with the European Ethnological Research Centre in the Flashbacks series. Andrew Ramage was the son of a farm servant and he himself worked on the land in the Lothians and Berwickshire, in Scotland. Subsequently he became a dock worker, lorry driver and railwayman. Of the diary he kept over many years only three notebooks remain. The first covers Andrew's early life from 1884 until the mid 1870s and the period from November 1888 until April 1889. The last two cover July 1914 to June 1917. In his account the uncertain realities of rural employment and dwelling are revealed and they dispel the bucolic image often attached to descriptions of 19th-century country life. We learn of the travails of a young man making his way in the world at a time of great social and economic change and, later, of the concerns of parenthood and aging at a time of war-time strife.
Trade Review'Local historians often find it difficult to locate narratives prepared by ordinary working people of past generations, ... Accordingly the joint publishers of the "Flashbacks" series are to be congratulated for their efforts to find suitable texts of this kind for publication. ... In the 1914-17 diaries some of the entries are interesting for the way that the juxtapose news from the War Front, information about troop trains on the railway, and searches for infiltrating spies, with everyday local or personal news ... ' Scottish Local History
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Editorial Notes
Introduction
FROM LAND TO RAIL Life and Times of Andrew Ramage 1854-1917
MEMOIR: Note Book belonging to Andrew Ramage Gateman at Stenton Level crossing, East Linton (2 November 1888)
DIARY: Part 1 (1888-1889)
DIARY: Part II (1914-1917)
DIARY: ENTRIES EXTRACTED FROM PARTS I AND II
Notes
biographical Notes
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
