Orkney Image Library

Nearly everyone wearing hats. Can anyone say whether there were any hat makers in Orkney or would these hats have been imported to Orkney? Plenty of tailors around then.

I have heard that there was a shoe maker in Brims who taught 13 apprentices and had 5 at one time.
There would have been other shoe makers on Hoy and Waas forbye, so yes there was a lot o local industry in days gone by and am sure the hats and claes in the photo above wid hiv been made local.
There was not the likes o Next or Littlewoods in them times!!!.

All the Kirkpatrick's who live in orkney and Shetland are decendants of four brothers who came up from the Borders as tailors, three settled in Orkney and the fourth went on to Shetland.

Now someone is going to tell me Im wrong!!anyway that is as I was told by a very reliable lady decendant sadly no longer alive to verify this.

Sudenly I realise I am wrong they were not tailors, they were weavers, oh my I am a knit wit!!.

Don't know about hat makers but my Granny Grieve neé Lyon was a trained dressmaker with Croy's in the early 1900's.

There were plenty of tailors and dressmakers in Orkney over the years but I haven't come across an occupation involving making hats on any of the Orkney Censuses over the years so presumably hats were "imported" to the islands?

I have just browsed the Rousay census returns and have come up with the following info: In 1841 Julia Mainland (25), Nethermill, Sourin earned a living as a bonnetmaker, as did Ann Gibson (35), Brendale. 29-year-old Margaret Marwick who lived at Hullion was a straw hat maker, and in the latter years of the 19th century Mary Catherine Reid, Wasdale, was a 24-year-old milliner's shopwoman.

When I was doing my family tree and spending lots of time looking at the Census I noticed several women were employed as straw plaiters. I wondered what that would be, and eventually discovered that they used very fine good-quality straw, plaiting it into strips, which were then made into hats and bonnets.

I meant what about those caps the men were wearing?