32 ALE^XANDER WILSON : POET- NATURALIST 



tor's Judicial Records* tell us o£ a case, at which 

 Alexander Wilson might, perhaps, have stared from 

 some window with the wondering baby-eyes of a 

 child of four, when a woman, who was being carried 

 to jail for stealing lawn from a bleaching field, was 

 stripped to the waist and flogged with a lash by a 

 locks-man through the streets of Paisley. 



The secret of Paisley's transformation from a 

 rude little town to an important city is found in the 

 growth of its. manufacturing industries, and a great 

 deal of this progress was due to the energetic spirit 

 of the women. t Just as it was the Duchess of Gor- 

 don who helped to revolutionize the agriculture of 

 Scotland by introducing new implements of tillage, 

 so now it was Mrs. Christian Shaw Miller who be- 

 gan the improvement of the manufacturing indus- 

 tries of Paisley. With the other ladies of the house 

 of Bagarran she introduced in 1725, under the fam- 

 ily coat of arms, the Dutch process of making 

 thread. Later Mrs. Henry Fletcher of Salton went 

 into Holland, disguised as a man, with two mechan- 

 ics, learned the linen process, and introduced this 

 also into Scotland. From so small a beginning the 

 Scotch industries grew apace and soon Paisley was 

 as full of the noise of plying looms as any town of 

 Holland. 



Meanwhile the intellectual advancement of Pais- 

 ley, and indeed of all Scotland, was keeping pace 

 with the material development. As the century wore 

 on, the condition of education improved with tre- 



* Hector's "Judicial Records of Renfrewshire," p. 254. 



t See "Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century," by Henry 

 Gray Graham, II, pp. 250-251. "The LTnion of England and Scotland," 

 by James Mackinnon; and "Social England," Vol. IV, by H. D. Traill. 



