Looking Back – news from the John O'Groat Journal of yesteryear
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Concern at hospital upgrade delay
From the Groat of December 7, 1923
Three members of the "honorary staff" at the Bignold Cottage Hospital in Wick had written to the John O'Groat Journal bemoaning the apparent delay in starting work to improve the facilities there.
It had previously been agreed that the hospital was inadequate, with the operating theatre too close to the bathrooms and lavatories, while the accommodation for the reception and treatment of "outdoor patients" was nil.
Patients requiring an operation were having to wait too long and it was "practically an impossibility to secure the admission to the Bignold Cottage Hospital of even the most acute medical cases".
Hospital trustees had agreed in April to "proceed with the work of extension and alteration", but so far no progress had been made.
Charles G Rae, A Dingwall Kennedy and James Leask maintained that against the improvement scheme there was "an undercurrent of opinion, emanating from those who should know better, based on financial grounds".
They maintained that the money for the upgrade was available as the Bignold was "unique among hospitals of similar size in that 70 per cent of its income is derived from invested funds".
They wrote: "Considering that the hospital caters for practically the whole county, we think it is time we had a building that would meet the requirements of the county and justify its purpose."
Leaving age reduction urged
From the Groat of December 7, 1973
Members of Caithness Education Committee called for the decision to raise the school leaving age to 16 to be reconsidered.
At a meeting in Wick they unanimously agreed to send a resolution for the leaving age to be reduced back to 15 to the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Their call came against a background of staff and accommodation shortages and fears that youngsters staying a year longer at school would make the problems worse.
The meeting heard that over the past two years the percentage of Caithness pupils had risen but there had been no corresponding increase in teaching staff.
The Rev R R Sinclair described the raising of the leaving age as a "complete disaster" and said that he thought "the whole business should be rescinded".
He added: "That children should be kept in school to the age of 16 has put the whole teaching system and the teaching profession under a burden that is too heavy to be borne. I think we should abandon the whole thing and get back to the status quo."
George Bruce, Thurso, agreed, saying there was no point keeping children in school until the age of 16 if the authorities were "unable to give them full education". It would be better, he said, for them to leave at 15 "and educate them well".
Fragment of cloth hero's shroud?
From the Groat of December 11, 1998
A fragment of the shroud that was thought to have covered the body of Robert the Bruce, one of Scotland's greatest heroes, had been found in Caithness.
The item, which if genuine would have "immense importance", had been uncovered by the Wick Society when some of members were undertaking a cataloguing exercise at their Bank Row premises.
The triangular-shaped piece of cloth, measuring some three inches in length and about one-and-a-quarter inches wide at the base, was encased in a frame.
Inscribed on it were the words "Small piece of the shroud of King Robert the Bruce from the collection of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, framed". A similar fragment was in the National Museum of Antiquities.
Wick Society chairman Iain Sutherland said the item had been donated anonymously around 15 years previously, adding that "we merely accepted it at the time and put it aside for future reference".
Four society members had been cataloguing the 40,000 items in the museum over the past three months and had come across the item "between two boxes of documents".
It had been stored in dark conditions and there was a dehumidifier in the room "so it was fine", Mr Sutherland said.
He said that the society would now try to find out whether the fragment was authentic, either by carrying out DNA tests and comparing the results with samples previously taken from Bruce's body, or by carbon dating and comparing it to the piece held in Edinburgh.
