70 Inheritanee of Deformity known as Split-Foot or Lobster-Claw 
great faith is to be put in the family record of the number of perfect fingers or 
toes possessed by dead or living members. The list given on pp. 74, 75 must only 
be trusted for such obvious and gross variations in the nature of the deformity 
as supernumerary digits or syndactylised fingers. The importance of the accurate 
description of each individual member, however desirable, is less, after the work 
of Messrs Lewis and Embleton ; their memoir fairly indicates the range of types 
to be expected. These types are largely represented in the members of my family 
who have been more fully examined ; there are certain additional types also. It 
is clear that what they and I are dealing with is an hereditary deformity of the 
hands and feet, with a definite, if remarkably wide, field of variation. 
Lastly, I have most heartily to thank Mr J. H. Astbury, whose intimate know- 
ledge of the district and its inhabitants has been most helpful to me in my 
inquiries. 
(2) Before turning to more definite details as to the present family, I should 
like to mention the existence of a similar family, with names Bell and Agnew, at 
Whithorn, Wigtownshire, some 50 years ago. An old man told my informant that 
a boy with deformed hands was a descendant of the " Cleppie Bells." This was a 
family, one of which had assisted as Sheriff's officer at the drowning of the 
Wigton Bay martyrs in 1085. On that occasion the officer Bell said to a young 
maid, Margaret Wilson, "Will you not say: God bless King Charlie, and get this 
rope from off your neck ? " " God bless King Charlie, if He will," she responded. 
Whereupon he said " Clep down among the partens and be drowned." Thus he 
was called " Cleppie Bell," and his descendants have ever afterwards suffered from 
a deformity of the hand, although sometimes a generation is missed over. It is 
true that the term "clepped" in Scotland refers to webbed, but the reference 
to the lobsters suggests " lobster-claw " deformity, and one phase of this, the 
syndactyly, might easily be described as fingers grown or webbed together. The 
boy referred to above became a sailor and was last seen in Glasgow 20 years ago. 
No stress whatever can be laid on such a tale as this, but it is interesting as 
pointing to the existence in Scotland* of a deformed hand inheiitance for nearly 
two hundred years, and the information might be followed up by any one coming 
across Scottish cases of either webbed hands or lobster-claw. This is the only 
case I have met with in which there is any statement that deformed offspring 
were born from undeformed parents-f*. Throughout both my family and that of 
* Messrs Lewis and Embleton state that their family originated in Scotland. 
t This follows also from the somewhat different version given in Sir Andrew Agnew's The Heredi- 
tary Sheriffs of Glasgow, Edinburgh, 1893. We read in Vol. ii. p. 142 : " Still more grotesque is 
the tradition of the ' Cleppie Bells.' A constable who was held to have carried out his orders unfeel- 
ingly, as he fastened the women to the stakes, was asked how the poor creatures behaved when the cold 
wave roared and foamed about their heads. 'Oo,' he replied jocularly, 'they just clepped roun' 
the stobs like parteus, and prayed.' — Soon after Bell's wife was brought to bed, when the howdie 
exclaimed in horror: 'The bairn is clepped!' (i.e. the fingers grew firmly together). Another child 
was born, and yet another, and as each little wretch in turn was seen to be ' clepped ' the most 
incredulous were convinced it was a judgment of Providence. — We have been gravely assured that 
within the memory of man a female descendant of the bad constable on giving birth to a child, was 
horrified by the exclamation, ' The bairn is clepped.' " 
