While the case of the Carnoustie pedlar seems to have been forgotten, on 17th March the Sheriff Depute tried them for a robbery at the shop of Mary Cowie in the Townhead of Montrose, and of resetting the proceeds, five pieces of checked cloth and a length of corduroy. Of course they pleaded not guilty. It was a nine-hour trial in front of a packed court, but it seems to have been fair, with Mr Duff speaking for the prosecution and the more than capable Mr George Kinloch for the defence, but the jury nevertheless found them guilty of reset.
All three were consigned to the Dundee gaol on a debilitating diet of bread and water until 1st August, and then banished from the county for life. If Rose Bruce returned to Forfarshire she was to be imprisoned on bread and water for ten months; if Wallace or Gray were seen again they were to endure two months in jail followed by a whipping through the Dundee streets. There was a solemn warning that ‘This punishment to be inflicted as often as they are found within the county.’ The sheriff also ordered that their friends could not bring them food.
Not surprisingly, the prisoners reacted with defiance. Throughout the trial they had looked with indifference at the judge, sworn at the witnesses and refreshed themselves with small beer – a mixture of beer and water. When the sentence was read, Gray, mingling insult with foul language, said that he thought some of the court authorities would make good executioners while Wallace bluntly told the sheriff to ‘Go to Hell!’ Battered by life and authority, Bruce told the Sheriff that the next time she stole it would be from him.
It was a Monday morning in August when Wallace, Bruce and Gray were released, and at half past eleven the next evening Wallace was back under arrest. Together with a rogue called Robert McKenzie and the notorious ‘Thiefy Doig’ he was charged with rioting in the Blackness Tollhouse. However, in Wallace’s case the court was kind. As he was arrested at half past eleven, and he was under orders to be out of the county by twelve, the judge merely ordered him to be returned to the tollhouse so he could leave the county; the others were fined five shillings each.
Despite the absence of Peter Wallace, the rump of the gang continued to annoy the respectable people of Dundee for a while. In September Scott gave the policeman John Chaplain a hard chase before he was again arrested for returning from banishment. In March 1827 Rose Bruce’s luck finally ran out and she filed onto the London smack on her way to join Gardiner in Australia, but Peter Wallace seems to have vanished from history. Perhaps he found himself a steady job elsewhere in the county, or maybe he did join the Army, but he does not appear again in Dundee, at least not under his own name.
8
Not Quite a Murder
Murder is a premeditated killing of one human being by another. Murder makes the headlines as arguably the most atrocious of all crimes. But humans can kill humans without any malice and sometimes humans intend to commit murder but fail. These not-quite-murders all have their own morbid fascination.
Death by Horse and Cart
When the first motorcar grumbled onto the roads of Scotland, the authorities were quick to issue regulations that restricted their speed to the pace of a man walking with a red flag. The horseless carriage with an internal combustion engine was viewed as something terrible, a monster that would devour all pedestrians in its path, scare the milk from cows and no doubt cause serious concern in nervous women. Yet, the horsed carriages were no paragons of innocence, either. The records of the Dundee Police Court are speckled with instances of what was then known as furious or reckless driving. Then as now, there were four main causes for such behaviour: drunkenness, youth, rivalry and pure carelessness.
In a period when drinking was more of a way of life than a social pastime, it is hardly surprising some cart or coach drivers would hit the road after imbibing too much. To give a couple of typical examples: in April 1829 a well-known character known as Piper Gray appeared in the court charged with drunken driving along the Shore, where he had knocked down the stand of a fishwife. Four years previously two carters were fined ten shillings each for ‘furiously driving their carts along the Shore’. Carters were frequently in trouble, possibly because they were on the road all day, probably because of the competition for trade. Children in particular tended to fall victim to the screeching wheels and iron-shod hooves of carts and carriages, but adults could also be hit and, occasionally, killed. In the autumn of 1877, such a case reached the Circuit Court.
Joseph Calder of Scouringburn was a carter; he spent much of his working life on the driving seat, negotiating the often-crowded streets of Dundee with a laden single-horse van. On Saturday 23rd June 1877 he was driving along Victoria Street when he knocked down Mary Leaden, a millworker of Kemback Street. Leaden fell heavily, fractured her skull and on 7th August she died. Calder pleaded not guilty to the charge of driving ‘in a reckless and furious manner’.
There were many witnesses but as so often their evidence only clouded the issue. The first to be called was David Anderson, a baker of Erskine Street. He stated that at half-past seven that evening he saw Calder driving his van eastward along Victoria Street. Mary Leaden was standing ‘in the water channel’ – the gutter – with her back to the van. She was speaking to her father who stood on the pavement. According to Anderson, the van was very close to the water channel, despite the road being about forty feet across, and he was travelling at nine or ten miles an hour. Calder did not shout a warning and the van hit Leaden ‘about the middle of the body’. As Leaden fell, her head smashed against the kerb of the pavement. Thinking that Calder was drunk, Anderson grabbed hold of him until the police arrived.
James Elder, who was also a baker, agreed with everything Anderson said, but added that Calder was driving recklessly and had no need to be in the water channel when the street was wide and virtually empty of traffic. A selection of other witnesses substantially agreed; Mrs Dick was watching out of her Victoria Street window and thought the wheels of Calder’s van were on the kerbstone of Victoria Bridge. She also said that Calder was driving furiously while Mrs Stark of Lyon Street said it was the shaft of the machine that knocked Leaden down.
Mary’s father Thomas was a hammer-man who lived in Princes Street. He agreed he had been talking to Mary when the cart hit her. Admitting she was standing in the water channel, he saw the van coming and said he tried to pull her clear but the shaft of the van knocked her over. When he visited his daughter in the infirmary she did not recognise him. However, Thomas Leaden also introduced a little doubt when he said that he, his daughter and a fourth person, a woman named Agnes Martin, had been drinking, although Mary was sober. It was the first indication that there might be some fault on the victim’s side.
Mrs McKenzie of Lyon Street added to the confusion. She saw Calder’s van on Victoria Street and saw it approach the father and daughter while they were talking loudly with the second woman, Martin. McKenzie said that Thomas Leaden asked Mary for money and she stepped back into the road just as Calder’s cart roared up. Mrs McKenzie also said that the wheel of the van was not in the water channel when it hit Mary Leaden. Possibly more significantly, she thought the Leadens and Martin were all drunk.
The evidence of John Miller, a confectioner in Victoria Street, also tended to support Calder’s case. He said that Calder was quite sober when he visited his shop, about twenty-five yards from the accident. Miller also said although he did not see the accident, he did not see Calder driving furiously.
The penultimate witness was one of the closest to the accident, and a woman who might be expected to support Mary Leaden. Agnes Martin was actually talking to Mary when the accident occurred. She admitted that they had been drinking in a number of public houses during the day and she was drunk by half past seven. According to Martin, Mary stood at the edge of the pavement and had plenty of time to see the van coming, for it was ‘not driven at a furious pace’. She also said the van had hardly left Mr McKenzie’s shop so there was hardly time for it so build up speed, and she reiterated that Mary Leaden was the worse for drink.
So the dispute lay squarely around drink. Mrs McKenzie and Agnes Martin thought Mary Leaden had been drinking and had stepped in front of the cart, while others claimed Calder had been driving furiously and Constable McCleary swore Calder was drunk. Wherever the blame lay, there was no doubt about the result. Mary Leaden had been hit by Calder’s cart; she fell and cracked her head. Dr McCosh, the medical superintendent of the Dundee Royal Infirmary, confirmed that Mary had concussion of the brain and a fractured skull. She died without regaining consciousness.
Lord Craighall, the judge, gave the jury both sides of the case, and they found Calder guilty of culpable and reckless driving, but recommended leniency. The courtroom applauded when Lord Craighall sentenced Calder to four months in jail. Although drunkenness was not in itself a major crime, it is obvious there could be serious consequences. The next case was far more premeditated.
‘I Didna’ Shoot You’
For anybody leaving Dundee by the Coupar Angus Road, the gloomy fastnesses of Templeton Woods loom on the right-hand side. On the opposite side spreads Camperdown Park, now open to the public but in the nineteenth century the private policies of the Duncan family, descendants of the Admiral Duncan who defeated the Dutch in one of the most savage naval battles of the eighteenth century. As an area of parkland close by a large urban centre, Camperdown was prone to poaching, but in the autumn of 1842 it sprang to public attention in a case of attempted murder as cold blooded as any in the area.
Despite the advent of industrialisation, in the early 1840s agriculture was of vital importance to Scotland. Of the dozens of agricultural fairs, many were of local importance, such as the Keith Fair, the Timmer market in Aberdeen and the Aikey Brae, while the Falkirk Tryst was of national importance. Drovers would herd their cattle from the most remote Highland glens to Falkirk to sell to buyers who came from as far away as the deep south of England, but there were also many local agreements. In the summer of 1842, James Duff of Whitefield, near Kirkmichael in Strathardle, Perthshire, sold a large number of cattle and sheep to Alexander Mackenzie, a cattle dealer from Drumhead in Glenisla, in the Angus Glens. The price came to something over a thousand pounds, which was an enormous amount of money at the time, and when Mackenzie re-sold the animals at the Falkirk Tryst, Duff followed, expecting to be paid his money.
He was disappointed. Mackenzie was charming and evasive, giving Duff excuse after excuse, eventually stating he was due to be in Glasgow in a short time. Duff listened, but he knew that Mackenzie had sold his animals at a suspiciously low price, so it was unlikely he would raise the thousand pounds he owed. He also doubted that Mackenzie was going to Glasgow so second-guessed him by taking the Edinburgh train. Farmers would rendezvous in well-known spots and sure enough Duff bumped into Mackenzie in the capital.
No doubt Mackenzie was surprised to see Duff again, but he pretended friendship and when Duff demanded he pay his debts, Mackenzie made a firm promise to settle at Blairgowrie. Duff agreed, and ensured there was not another attempt to abscond by sticking with Mackenzie every yard of the way. On the Thursday morning, both men caught the ten o’clock train from Edinburgh, crossed Fife and boarded the ferry across the Tay. At four that afternoon they arrived in Dundee and ate at Mrs Wallace’s Inn at Barrack Street, where Mackenzie once again began his delaying tactics. While Duff urged him to catch the five o’clock train to Newtyle, Mackenzie claimed urgent business that took him on various errands throughout the town. Not surprisingly they missed the train and Mackenzie said they could spend the night at a small property called the Meadows of Auchterhouse, which he owned. It was only about a six-mile walk, so Duff agreed.
It was still light when they left Mrs Wallace’s at about six that evening. They walked up Barrack Street and Constitution Brae, passed over the Law and from there through Dryburgh Farm and onto the Coupar Angus turnpike near the gate to Camperdown. It would probably have been better to follow the turnpike up to Auchterhouse, but Mackenzie chose a shortcut through a field of potatoes and followed a drystane dyke until they came to a break that allowed access to Camperdown Wood.
Until that moment, Duff had followed blindly, trusting to Mackenzie’s knowledge of the area, but he pulled back as they entered the wood. Handing his hat to Duff, Mackenzie said he would check the route and plunged alone into the gloomy trees. He returned after a few moments, told Duff he knew where they were and invited him to follow.
They walked through the wood and onto a grassy path, when Mackenzie politely stepped aside and allowed Duff to walk in front. As Duff did so, Mackenzie pulled a pistol from under his cloak and fired a single shot before ducking away. Duff staggered, with a bullet between his left shoulder and his spine. Terrified that Mackenzie would fire again, he dropped his hat and fled, limping through the estate of Camperdown, past the eastern fields of St Mary’s and came to the cottar town of Baldragon. By now it was full night and he was in pain, bleeding, dripping with sweat and exhausted, but a friendly light beckoned to him and he banged on the door for help.
The cottage belonged to a farm servant called James White and as soon as he saw the state of Duff he told Mr Patullo, the farmer. Within the hour Patullo had informed the police and sent for Doctor Cocks who dressed Duff’s wound. After that, things moved swiftly. Superintendent Mackison came out from Dundee, arriving just after midnight in a flurry of horse-hooves and officialdom. Afraid that Duff might die, for Doctor Cocks had not found the pistol ball, Patullo wrote down Duff’s statement of what had happened as the police began their search for Mackenzie. A quick examination of the potato field found Mackenzie’s footprints heading back toward Dundee, so the police scoured the town. They arrested Mackenzie as he waited for the Arbroath train and brought him to the police office.
Denying everything, Mackenzie claimed he was innocent, until the police told him that Duff was still alive, when the colour drained from his face. When the police searched him they found £257 in bank notes as well as a deposit receipt for another £72. There was little doubt the events had happened just as Duff stated: one of Lord Duncan’s keepers found Duff’s hat just where he said it was, and an Edinburgh pawnbroker described Mackenzie as the man to whom he had sold a pistol.
Even so, Mackenzie said, ‘You know, James, I didna shoot you.’
The jury at Perth Circuit Court, however, took a different view and found Mackenzie guilty.
Although completely different, these two cases do illustrate something of the variety of crime in Dundee. People could die because of a relatively minor misdemeanour, or could be nearly killed by a man who had planned a murder. Either way, death was always a threat.
9
‘Kill the Buggers!’:
Early Police 1824–1860
At first it had appeared an easy enough arrest for the watchmen of the new Dundee Police Force. It was 1825, late at night on the last Saturday before Christmas and a drunken man had been annoying people in the High Street. The watchmen arrested him, discovered he was John Gordon, a plumber’s apprentice, and were escorting him to the police office when he suddenly lay down on the street and refused to move any further. As the watchmen lifted him and began to carry him away, a crowd gathered, shouting and pushing at the officers. Battering through to the police office, the watchmen deposited Gordon in a cell but when they returned to the streets the crowd was waiting, reinforced by others who emerged from the pubs and shebeens.
A shower of stones forced the watchmen back to the police office and some began to grumble that they would be better in a job with more money and less trouble. Mr Hume, the superintendent, gave them a rousing talk and ordered them back out to clear the crowd. Rather than facing them head on, the watchmen slipped out the back door, probably intending to take the rioters by surprise, and moved forward in a compact body. Immed
iately after the watchmen appeared, the barrage began again, with people hiding in the entrances to closes and leaning out of windows to throw whatever came to hand. This time, however, police watchmen from other parts of the town rallied to aid their comrades and dispelled the crowd.
But not for long. When the police chased the crowd from one street they reassembled in another, so Dundee echoed with the raucous cries of battle, the clatter of stones on cobbles and the crack of police truncheons on the heads of rioters. The trouble continued past twelve o’clock and into the small hours of Sunday morning, with stones weighing as much as three pounds and even a length of iron railing used as weapons. There were casualties on both sides with one police watchman, Daniel Mackay, badly injured by a stone thrown from a window in the Overgate. There were also twenty-six people arrested for rioting or refusing to go home before the police finally restored quiet to the streets.
Fifty-eight Men to Police Dundee
Although this riot was quite extreme, there was no doubt that a uniformed police force was not universally welcomed in Dundee, or indeed throughout the nation. Many believed that the police had been formed to protect the respectable from the unfortunate, or even to keep the poor under control. Having the police dressed in blue uniforms was a deliberate attempt to avoid any resemblance to the military but they were still a disciplined, uniformed body of men whose duty was to enforce laws that often seemed to victimise the underclass. With their long, tailed greatcoats, top hats and hand-held lanterns, the police were quite distinctive and were soon to be a familiar sight in the streets of Dundee.
A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee Page 13
