Mackinnon

The author of the present item is the last in a line that stretched for around two hundred years. After the passing in 1754 of Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, which prevented minors from marrying without their parents’ consent, English couples would take advantage of laxer Scottish laws. As one of the nearest parishes to England, Gretna Green became the destination of choice, and the marriage was usually conducted before two witnesses by a village blacksmith, who became known as an ‘anvil priest’.

A watercolour drawing in ink, coloured in yellow, blue and red, against a sepia ground. The drawing is on a 24.5 x 18.5 cm piece of thick white paper, laid down on a 28.5 x 29.5 cm piece of grey paper. In good condition, with light signs of age. In pencil in a contemporary hand on the grey-paper mount: 'Mrs Mackinnon - hanged | done by Charles K. Sharpe Esq | She had been a great beauty | murdered a man'. The drawing is not signed, but is in much the same style as other examples of his watercolours (for example those in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London).