North Uist

Inverness

Despite being one of the most paternalistic of the Highland landlords, or perhaps, because, his huge debts were swelled with the money he spent trying to alleviate the effects of the potato famine of 1846 (although debts of £218,000 would mean an awful lot of grain), Lord Macdonald was responsible for one of the most brutal clearances, that of 600 people from Sollas, on North Uist, in 1849.

The island had been the star of the kelp industry but, by the late 1840s, there was abject poverty. Rev Finlay Macrae, writing for the new Statistical Account reported that

'It is necessary to find some proper outet for the excess of population by emigration, and thus to increase the amount of land possessed by each family. At present it is notorious that there are no less than 390 families paying no rent, but living chiefly on the produce of small spots of potato ground given to them by some of their neighbours and relatives.'

Population

Date	Population
1831	4603
1841	4428
1851	3918
1881	4264

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