| Description
| Silver casket containing the document giving Sir Henry Shanks Keith the freedom of Hamilton on the occasion of the opening of the New Town Hall & Lesser Halls, 25 October 1928. Silver with beautiful intertwining Celtic designs, silver handles and the Burgh of Hamilton Crest on the lid. The words "SIGILLVM BURGI HAMILTONII COMMVNE" (Latin, "The seal of the Burgh of Hamilton") are embossed in a circle around the crest. The front face has the inscription "Presented to Sir Henry Shanks Keith LL.D, on the occasion of his receiving the Freedom of the Burgh of Hamilton, 25th October 1928". The rear has a stylised intertwining of the letters "H S K", the initials of the recipient. Henry Shanks Keith was a local businessman, lawyer and a former provost of Hamilton, who commissioned the building of the Keith Building on Cadzow street which opened in 1903. This sits on the opposite side of the Cadzow bridge from the Town Hall and library and operated as a shop for many years.
Presentation caskets such as this were issued to the great and the good of the land 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. |
