Nevertheless, Margaret Gow still managed to re-enter the public eye. In July 1878 both wards of the poorhouse were taken on an excursion to Perth. As they walked in procession to Craig Pier and the packet boat, crowds gathered to see the famous Mag Gow, with the brave thrusting out to shake her hand or give her money. Sensible of the possibility of disorder, the police called a cab and placed her inside. As so often before, a gaggle of boys followed, cheering. Gow’s last appearance was in 1885 when the poorhouse allowed her a day’s liberty, but she was unable to restrain her old impulses and drank herself into a stupor.
Tightening Drinking Laws
Margaret Gow was only one of a huge number of people in Dundee to whom drinking was a way of life so, naturally, much of Dundee’s petty crime centred on the public houses. There were probably hundreds if not thousands of instances throughout the nineteenth century, but most followed the same sordid pattern of ordinary people causing trouble through drink. For example there was a brawl in a pub in the Overgate on Sunday 17th September 1821. When the town officers arrived they found most of the combatants were women and arrested four sorry-looking specimens, heavily marked with the bruises and cuts of battle.
Drunkenness was prevalent throughout the century, but the 1820s seem to have been particularly bad. For example, one week in June 1824 a group of drunkards wrecked a Hilltown pub while five drunks destroyed another pub in the Nethergate. In November that same year William Shand was fined for causing trouble in a pub and on the same day the Excise Court was crowded with people charged for selling whisky and ale without a licence. Even worse was the number of people who infested the town selling what they claimed was smuggled brandy and whisky but was in reality a compound so vicious it could literally kill the drinker.
In late summer 1841 the Superintendent of police ordered that all pubs should be empty by twelve at night, which was another step toward a more regulated system. Many publicans, not surprisingly, disagreed. Some young gentlemen thought it daring to visit the mildly dangerous pubs of Dundee’s less savoury areas, but not all came away unscathed. In April 1843 two gentlemen spent some time in the Red Lion, one of the Overgate’s less appealing places of refreshment. The men regretted their daring shortly after when a couple of local ladies robbed them of most of their money. That same year there were 500 places in Dundee where drink could be bought and some councillors hoped to cut that number by half.
Lord Cockburn had commented on the behaviour of Dundee women, and some of the Police Court figures bear this out. For example, in Bailie Moyes’ first appearance as a judge in the Police Court in December 1843, seventeen of the twenty-seven people who appeared before him were women and most were accused of drunkenness and riotous behaviour.
Sometimes the publican was heavily involved in the trouble, as in November 1845 when Patrick Devlin was playing cards with a weaver called Taggart in Devlin’s Overgate pub. They argued, Develin first ejected him then attacked him in the street. He was promptly arrested. When the case came to the Police Court, Develin was fined but vanished before the fine was paid, so his licence was revoked.
By the 1850s the laws against unlicensed public houses were being tightened. Known colloquially as ‘cheeping shops’, or more commonly as shebeens, these places were scattered throughout the town; they often sold raw illegal whisky, often caused a disturbance to the immediate neighbourhood and cost the town valuable revenue. In order to end this practice, the finance committee of the Dundee Police Commission paid women 2/6d to find the cheeping houses and act as a witnesses when the case came to court. Bailie Spankie and Bailie Jobson disagreed with this procedure, with Jobson saying that only the lowest type of women would take such a position.
With spies and entrapment not popular the courts tried other methods to stem the tide of drunkenness. In January 1861 Margaret Downfield from the Overgate pleaded guilty to being drunk on the Sabbath. When she said she had abstained for the past fourteen months, Bailie Ower set her free on the condition she took the pledge of total abstinence. To ensure Downfield kept her word, the Bailie handed her to Mr McLean the Temperance Missionary.
Despite numerous Acts of Parliament, drink remained a major problem in Dundee, as in most places in nineteenth-century Britain. The police and courts continued to hunt for shebeens, which, if anything, increased after the 1859 Forbes Mackenzie Act that furthered official control of public houses. During the 1860s Dundee held special courts purely for shebeens. In one court held in May 1861 Margaret Gilbert, Jane Morris, Mrs Low and Harriet Macdonald were jailed for six weeks for having a shebeen in their Peter Street house, while Peter Bock and Ann Lindsay of Fish Street, Henry Coleman and Catherine Crow of Pullar’s Close, Murraygate, Lewis and Bridget Devlin of Chapelshade and Mary Brymer of Seagate were fined £7 each. In June 1863 Isabella Forbes or Smith was given six months or a £30 fine for having a brothel and shebeen in Couttie’s Wynd.
The Public House Act of 1862 did not alter the opening hours for public houses, but restricted hotels to only serving drink to genuine travellers on Sundays. The police were given new powers that allowed them to enter any premises purely on the suspicion they may sell alcohol. A fine of 40/- or two days in jail could be imposed on anybody who refused to leave a pub when the police ordered, and a 5/- fine or 24 days in jail for anybody found drunk.
In the Police Court held on 8th May 1883 a carter named Francis Johnston and his wife Bridget pleaded guilty to selling whisky without a licence from their house in Miller’s Pend. Bailie Bradford fined them £7. The following month Francis Reilly senior from Horsewater Wynd was charged with the same offence, but many people in Dundee in the late 1880s knew that the largest shebeen in Dundee sheltered behind a facade of respectability; the Kincardine Literary Club hid many secrets. In 1885 Dundee had 448 premises licensed to sell alcohol, with 229 pubs, 211 licensed grocers and eight hotels. There was also Ballingall’s Brewery at the Pleasance and the Albert Hotel and Brewery. Some of these establishments could bear comparison with anywhere in the country and many were filled with character. Russell’s Royal Hotel in Union Street had been upgraded in mid-century and boasted the best billiard room and smoking room in Scotland. The Eagle Inn, opposite Horse Wynd at 42 Murraygate was a coaching and a carrier inn, while the John o’ Groats at the Cowgate had the alternative name of Heaven and Hell. It stood at the corner of St Roques’s Lane and was situated immediately below the Wishart Memorial Church. Yet despite all the efforts of government and the police, the Dundee drinking culture continued to blight the lives of far too many of the citizens. Drink and crime marched hand in hand through the streets of the industrial city.
15
The Bonnet Came First: Family
Disputes and Other Acts of Violence
Domestic Disturbances
The bonnet came first, flipping from the window to land on the bottom step of the Bell Street close. The crutch came next, clattering down the common stair to rest accusingly on the cobbles. Finally the owner appeared, yelling as his wife, Margaret Finlay, helped him out of his house and down the stairs to the street below by hauling him by the hair of his head.
Husband beating was not uncommon in nineteenth-century Dundee. In this case in March 1866, Mrs Findlay had accused her husband of being too friendly with other women. He had slapped her for her suspicions and she had retaliated with interest. The bailie at the Police Court found her guilty of assault, said her conduct was ‘very unbecoming, especially as her husband was a cripple’ and gave her five days in jail or a five shilling fine to help her mend her ways.
Perhaps spouse beating is one of the hidden crimes; for once a man and a woman enter a marriage they retreat behind the curtain of matrimony. Nobody except themselves knows the full truth of their lives, or the pressures and tensions that cause a union, once based on mutual affection, turn to anger and violence. Having said that, there were few secrets in nineteenth-century Dundee with the majority of its citizens living in overcrowded tenements separated from their neighbours only by
a thin partition wall. People knew if a marriage was troubled by the voices coming from next door, and in a town of one- and two-roomed houses, disagreements that started inside were often continued in the common close or in the street outside.
Sometimes arguments were very public indeed, and it is difficult to feel anything but sympathy for the individual in the dock. In August 1893 Helen Hackney of Gray’s Square, Hospital Wynd, stood accused of assaulting her husband Charles and another man named Edward Quin. When Mrs Hackney appeared in court she was described as a ‘slatternly looking woman with a voluble tongue’ and it seemed that it was to this tongue that her husband most objected. As she stood facing the judge at the Police Court, she called her husband an ‘outlaw’.
As the couple were questioned, some of their story emerged. There was a history of unhappiness in the marriage, with years of bickering. On this occasion Helen had attacked Hackney, so he pushed her outside, whereupon she struck both him and Quin with a key. Hackney said she ‘annoyed’ him wherever he went, and because of her he had already been imprisoned for fourteen days.
At that point Mrs Hackney proved the power of her tongue by screaming the fourteen days in jail were for deserting his children to live with another woman in Monifieth, and now he was not only living with another woman, but she had eight children. It is not difficult to imagine Mrs Hackney’s anger as she loudly informed the judge, the court and the world at large that her husband had also taken their two children to a ‘bad house’ from a Thursday night to a Saturday and he was keeping low company with the even ‘bigger blackguard’ Edward Quin.
Uncaring of her audience, Mrs Hackney continued to scold when Quin was called upon to give evidence. She finished her work by telling him to go and get a job. ‘You cannae work and you winnae work. Go awa’, ye scoondril!’
When all the evidence was completed, the Bailie obviously sympathised with the bitter-tongued but obviously hard-used Mrs Hackney and only admonished her.
Although Dundee women were more than capable of standing up for themselves, most cases of domestic abuse concerned husbands assaulting their wives. Sometimes the end result was tragic. By February 1870 Charles Taws already had two convictions for assault but his third and last was his worst. He came home to his house in James Street, Maxwelltown, punched his wife, burned her face with a candle and began kicking her about the body. She died nine days later but Taws only got five years’ penal servitude for assault. John McIntyre, a Dundee carpenter got seven years transportation at the Circuit Court at Perth in April 1836 when he kicked and punched his wife Allison, and dashed her against a wall. She died of her injuries.
Other cases were equally brutal but received more attention, possibly because they had elements of drama that was lacking in the sordid murders of Mrs Taws and Allison McIntyre. The attack on Julia Ann Hutcheson was one such.
Julia Ann had not long been married to the baker Robert Hutcheson when they moved into a top flat in Seagate. On Saturday 29th December 1883, eighteen months into their marriage, Robert Hutcheson got drunk, staggered up the four flights of stairs, charged into the house and began to shout at Julia Ann. After calling her every name he could think of, he told her he did not care if this was her last Saturday. He was obviously savagely angry and followed up his verbal assault by punching her face and head. Julia Ann backed away but Hutcheson kicked her legs, grabbed her by the throat and threw her to the ground. As she lay there, rolled into a ball for protection, Hutcheson picked up a washing board and cracked it against her back. Rather than lie still and be assaulted, Julia Ann struggled to her feet and ran to her neighbour, Thomas Rhynd.
Neighbours in nineteenth-century Dundee seemed to have an open door policy, with keys and locks not used, for Hutcheson followed into Rhynd’s house, grabbed Julia Ann by the hair and dragged her screaming back to her own house. It is unclear what his intentions were, but he thrust her into a chair, knelt on her and tried to tie her hands together. Fighting free, Julia Ann dived for the door but Hutcheson grabbed her again and dragged her to the window. Holding her firmly, he opened the window and threw her onto the roof outside.
‘You haven’t got another hour to live!’ Hutcheson promised, and for a while it seemed as if his prophesy was correct.
Four stories up on the steeply sloping slates of a tenement roof on a dark December evening, Julie Ann would have been terrified. Grabbing the gutter of the window, she lay there, calling for help as the Seagate traffic rumbled past far below her. It was about an hour before Constable Alexander Scott appeared, opened the window and eased her back into the house. By then Julia Ann was shivering with cold, terrified, battered, sore and bleeding from the mouth, but her husband was completely unrepentant, claiming she had gone onto the roof of her own free will. Sensibly, Constable Scott guided her away from Hutcheson and into the house of another neighbour, Mrs Fisher, where Julia Ann was examined and found to have bruises and injuries on her face, legs, hands and other parts of her body. Even when the case came to the Sheriff Court on 15th January she was so weak she had to sit while giving evidence.
Sheriff Cheyne listened as Hutcheson denied he had ill-treated his wife, claiming she had hit him with the washing board and then climbed out the window herself. When he heard the testimony of the neighbours and the police, the sheriff had no difficulty in deciding that Julia Ann was telling the truth. He gave Hutcheson sixty days with hard labour.
Domestic assaults were so common throughout the century that even to list them would take many pages. Some of the cases were sickening in their brutality, all were sordid, many were drink-related and probably most were caused by a combination of stress, frustration and alcohol. A few examples out of the hundreds will be enough to give a flavour and an idea of the extent.
In July 1824 a drunken man began to wreck his own home in Dallfield Walk. When his wife tried to stop him he attacked her instead, but the noise they made drew a crowd who saved the woman and carried the man bodily to the lock-up house. The following month an Irishman from East Port came home drunk at two on a Sunday morning to find his wife waiting up for him. Although she was heavily pregnant he beat her so badly she nearly died. In December a man protested he had the right to beat his wife because she was having an affair, a story she emphatically denied. That same month a painter called George Ingram attacked his wife with an axe and an iron bar. Despite her severe wounds he was only fined.
January 1825 started the same way with a flax dresser named Alexander Kidd fined seven guineas for assaulting both his wife and another woman who tried to protect her. It continued with Mrs Clark of Tindall’s Wynd running to the police office with a claim her husband threatened to murder her. The court bound him over with a £10 penalty for his future good behaviour. That month a woman who lived in the Wellgate was thrown into the Town House jail for six days on bread and water for attacking her husband. The same Police Court fined a labourer 5/4, not for assaulting his wife, but for beating up an old woman who tried to protect her when he was hitting her.
And so it continued: sordid tragedy week after depressing week. In February 1826 a scavenger named John Hughes was charged with two assaults on his wife but dismissed as there was no evidence. In March a seaman named Innes was found guilty of a brace of assaults on his wife; in August 1826 a carter who lived in the cesspit of Couttie’s Wynd was fined for assaulting his wife. In one court at Christmas 1828 there were seven cases of wife beating, in another in October 1829 there were three.
The 1830s followed the same pattern with, for example, a case in August 1837 when a flax dresser named James Whyte attacked his wife Elizabeth Wilson and her sister Sarah in his Small’s Wynd house. He spent the next thirty days in jail. A month later another flax dresser named William Cruden hit his wife Elizabeth Pert with a besom. Cruden was jailed but it was neither his first or last offence. In 1839, when the couple lived in the Upper Pleasance, Cruden was released from jail and came straight home. When Elizabeth saw him she ran out of the house and tried to hide with a neigh
bour, locking the door behind her. Forcing his way in, Cruden found her and, with no provocation at all, attacked her. He was arrested again and faced the judge at the autumn Circuit Court, who finished Cruden’s wife beating career by sending to Australia for seven years.
This decade also saw the case of Robert Bain, the Overgate weaver who on a July Friday in 1835 arrived home drunk and demanded tripe. When his wife said she had none, he changed his order to whisky, but again the cupboard was bare so he attacked her. She tried to escape out of the window but he hauled her back in and kicked her up and down the house, making so much noise that the neighbours called the police. When he stood before the court Bain faced his bandaged and bruised wife and said she had attacked him with a poker and her wounds were self-inflicted.
‘It must have been a very soft poker,’ said the judge, and gave Bain sixty days.
The 1840s were no better, with, for instance, the shoemaker Robert Stewart of Fish Street fined twenty shillings in July 1840 for coming home drunk, pulling his wife out of bed and kicking her. Then there was Thomas Cadger the flax dresser and George Crabb the carpenter who both appeared at the Police Court on 8th June 1843 for assaulting their wives, and the ugly case in October 1843 when a hawker named Connor stabbed his wife Helen several times.
The pattern did not change as the years passed. Most cases were men attacking their wives, but there were always a few when the woman was the aggressor. There was another serial wife beater in the 1860s when Alexander Peebles, a weaver, seemed to specialise in attacking his wife. In 1862 and again in 1863 he appeared in court for punching and kicking his wife, the second time ending in jail for thirty days.
A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee Page 23
