Say hello to forensic analysis.
Thirty-five years of Scottish charters, on the bench.
Ronald MacDonald · Forensic Document Analyser · Edinburgh, Scotland
I started out at the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh, working with documents, checking materials, comparing handwriting, that kind of thing. It is fairly quiet work most of the time. You spend a lot of hours looking at details that most people would skip over.
After a few years I went freelance. Now I get sent all sorts of things, charters, estate papers, copies of copies, usually with some question attached to them. I try to ignore the story that comes with it and just look at the document itself first.
Lately I have been working quite a bit with older Highland charters, pre-seventeen hundred. They tend to be messy, different versions, missing bits, later edits. I keep notes on anything that stands out, ink, margins, layout, small changes. I prefer documents that have not been over-restored, once they are too clean it is harder to tell what is original.
Casework
Open files.
Selected anonymised summaries of recent freelance work on Scottish charters, estate papers and copies of copies.
Your archive. To go.
Archive.
The bench, the long table, the quiet reading room. The places the work actually happens.
Breakthrough
Pre-1700.
Highland charters before seventeen hundred. Messy, layered, often quietly edited. Where most of the current work sits.
Move fast.
Methods.
Paper before ink. First pass without notes. Plain English reports. What the bench does and what it refuses.
Visit the bench by appointment, or write to casework. Independent work. No televised cases. No stolen material.