As late as 1693 we have some records of the lepers of Kingcase. On the 11th March of that year a complaint was lodged by the procurator-fiscal “anent the intruding of the lepers of Kingcase upon the priviledges only propper to the burgess and freemen (of Prestwick) by there resorting to the shoar, and taking up certain timber and other wrack, and casting greater quantities of peats and turf off the common and moss, &c., which, being seriously pondered by the magistrates, &c., they ordained that none of the said lepers of Kingcase do so under the penalty of ane hundredth pund, _toties quoties_, to be paid by ilk ane (each one) of them in caise of failyie (failure).”[129] The disease appears to have continued in the northern islands of Scotland long after it had disappeared from the mainland, and, indeed, all other parts of Great Britain. In Shetland it has been known for centuries. I have already made a quotation from Brand to show that it was at Lerwick as late as the latter part of the seventeenth century. In some districts of Shetland it continued still later. Apparently most of those there affected either belonged to or were sent to the Island of Papa. I have in my possession a MS. extract from the Session-books of Walls, showing the expenses incurred in keeping the lepers at Papa from 1736 to 1740. Four of them appear to have died during these years, and two of the entries are for the “tobacco”[130] used at their funerals. In 1742 there is a long entry in the Session Records of Walls, earnestly enjoining a day of public thanksgiving for the supposed total deliverance of the country from the effects of the leprosy. The disease, however, was not eradicated entirely. Mr. Jack, the resident clergyman, who wrote the account of the parish of Northmaven for the Statistical Account of Scotland, published in 1798, seems to have seen what he terms several miserable cases of the disease, and adds, that in many instances there is reason to suspect a hereditary taint.[131] Dr. Thomson urged his pupil, Dr. Edmondston of Lerwick, to trace out the history of the disease in the north, and that gentleman has made the following observations upon it in his work on the Zetland Isles:—