| Description
| Presented to ex-Provost Archibald Robertson J.P., 23rd of April 1975, granting him freedom of the Burgh of Hamilton. Five other former provosts were made Burgesses that day. The casket is decorated silver banding with celtic patterns and the Hamilton Burgh Coat-of-Arms. It contains invitations and programmes from his own ceremony, the Cameronians freedom ceremony the following month, a dinner menu from the Hamilton Quincentenary, and two medals - one from the Hamilton Quincentenary and another from the Hamilton Rotary Club.
Presentation caskets such as this were issued to noteworthy people in acknowledgement of their services to the area or the country as a whole. Usually caskets were a decorative box in which to hold the scroll which conferred freedom of the burgh to the person or "burgess". The origin of this ceremony is centuries old. In medieval and early modern Scotland, a person had to be made a burgess by the local burgh in order to own property or operate a business. They would be presented with a scroll which acted as a legal document acknowledging this fact. The South Lanarkshire collection has local examples which date back to the 1700s, when these scrolls served a legal purpose. By the late 1800s, at the height of Victorian civic pride, being made a burgess had become a symbolic event recognising the achievements of a particular person or group. Caskets and scrolls were particularly prevalent in Scottish burghs, although freedom of the burgh was not confined to Scotland. Some English towns or cities presented caskets as well, with similar laws having existed in various forms across medieval western Europe - whether they were English boroughs, French bourgs or German burgs. Freedom of a town or city still exists in many European cities as a result of this tradition and the ceremony has spread across the world. |
