| Administrative History | William Waiters was aged 46 in 1836 and was an army pensioner, having formerly served 29 years in the 30th Regiment of Foot. Discharged from the army in 1828 because of chronic rheumatism, he came to live at Kirk in Bower parish. In 1836 he was accused of committing an act of forgery against George Dunbar of Ackergill Tower, by forging signatures of two of his acquaintances and requesting payment from George Dunbar. He was arrested and tried at the Inverness Circuit Court on 22 or 23 September 1836, convicted, and sentenced to transportation for life.
In November 1836 he was granted a royal pardon, by which his sentence was reduced to transportation for 7 years. A request for further clemency was rejected by Lord Russell in March 1837, but an appeal was signed by 36 prominent men of the county including the Minister of Bower, the provost and magistrates and councillors of Wick and other inhabitants of Caithness, and on 31 October 1837 William Waiters received a full pardon.
The grounds for the appeal were that the prisoner had no intention to defraud, that he was subject to temporray fits of insanity owing to a head injury received on military service, that he had a wife and 4 children under six years to support, and that his health had deteriorated while in prison. |