A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee

by Archibald, Malcolm

  Often the punishments seem ludicrously small when the nature of the assault is detailed. In September 1873 James Hendry of Albert Street in Lochee was given thirty days in jail for wife assault. He had come home, locked the door and pocketed the key, punched his wife Sarah in the face, cracked her over the head with a walking stick so the stick broke, hit her again and dragged her around the house by her hair. Unable to escape by the door, Sarah had to open the window and jump into the street. Thirty days seems very little for putting his wife through such an ordeal. On other occasions the court probably got it right. On Christmas Day 1874 John Fox of Miller’s Pend, Scouringburn, attacked his wife with an axe, inflicting wounds on her head and shoulders. The judge and doctor at the Criminal Sheriff deemed him insane and ordered him detained in prison at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

  Wives, too, were capable of extreme violence. In July 1857 Margaret Hurley of Highland Close, Overgate took a knife to her husband John and sliced off part of his nose. Although a doctor sewed it back on, he remained disfigured for the rest of his life. On 11th September 1866 an elderly couple from the Beach in Broughty Ferry fell out, possibly over another woman. Mrs Mooney took a knife, cut her husband’s throat and slashed him across both temples. As Mooney’s daughter and a neighbour jumped to save her father, Mrs Mooney tried to cut her own wrists. The knife was wrested from her but she ran away. A doctor attended to Mooney and the police caught Mrs Mooney after a chase through the streets of Broughty.

  The Price of an Affair

  Third parties and extra-marital affairs were responsible for quite a few domestic disputes. For example, in 1872 Euphemia and Archibald White of Arbroath separated. They had eleven children, but married life was not always smooth. Archibald was a drinking man and when his bouts became increasingly obnoxious, Euphemia left him. The children had always supported their mother in the marital disputes, so accompanied her when she moved to Dundee.

  Despite their differences, the Whites remained on relatively friendly terms, with Archibald doing his bit to bring up their children. One by one the children left home to create their own lives until only the eldest daughter, Charlotte, remained. Things jogged along peacefully until March 1875, when Euphemia met another man and then her behaviour altered. She began to drink, and then she emptied the house of chairs, bedclothes and everything else she could wrap her hands around.

  When Charlotte informed her father of her mother’s behaviour, Archibald followed Euphemia to her home in Littlejohn Street, by Dudhope Crescent. Rather than persuade her to return, Archibald began to reclaim the family’s possessions, but Euphemia would have none of it. Lifting a carter’s whip that happened to be lying around, she thumped Archibald on the head with the handle and threatened to kill him if he carried anything away.

  Charlotte did not see the assault and this time did not take anybody’s side. She was so sick of her drunken parents she wanted to leave them both and move in with her siblings. When the case came to court, Bailie Edward found it not proven but said both parents should be proud of their daughter Charlotte for telling the truth and remaining sober and hard-working.

  In the case of Michael Bourke of Bog in Lochee, it was mother-in-law trouble that caused him to assault his wife. That was in October 1886 and he had argued with his wife, who retaliated by throwing a boot at him, while his mother in law skelped him with the lid of a kettle. Bourke retaliated by hitting them both, but Sheriff Campbell Smith did not show any sympathy. Bourke had already appeared in court nine times for assault, so the sheriff gave him four months.

  It was sometimes the case that a husband who abused his wife also turned his drunken anger onto his children. James Couper, a labourer from Hilltown was one such. He was in the habit of coming home drunk on Saturday nights and throwing his two sons out of the house. One Saturday in August 1882 he also threw out his wife. Somehow she returned back inside and spent the night hiding under the bed, but the two teenage boys remained in the passage outside until six the following morning. When the case reached the Police Court Couper was fined 15/-.

  Mothers could be just as unpleasant to their children as fathers. Mrs Burns lived in a single room in an attic in Miller’s Pend, four floors up and facing onto the Scouringburn. She was a respectable woman who earned a precarious living sewing sacks, and was busy with her needle on a Monday afternoon in June 1889 when she heard a girl screaming. Within seconds there were feet rapidly pounding up the stairs and a young teenager burst through Mrs Burns’ unlocked door and begged for somewhere to hide. When Mrs Burns saw a drunken woman chasing the girl she closed the door, locked it from the outside and stood guard to protect the child. Rather than withdraw, the drunken woman attacked Mrs Burns. A neighbour, Mrs McGinnes, tried to help but the woman slapped her across the face. Meanwhile, the girl, hearing the commotion, opened the skylight window and climbed onto the roof. Four stories above the bustling streets and too terrified to move, she clung to the slates.

  The sight of a young girl balanced on the roof attracted a crowd, who pointed to her and gave advice, but eventually Constable Jack appeared, rescued her and arrested the drunken woman. It had been a domestic quarrel between the drunk, Margaret Carr, and her daughter. While the mother was locked in jail for fifteen days, the child was sent for sanctuary to the poorhouse.

  Assault Outside the Family

  Violence, of course, was not just confined to family disputes. Sometimes only the victim was found, as happened at the end of March 1824 when a man was found lying bleeding in the Nethergate. His arm was broken and there were extensive injuries to his back. He died a few days later without anybody ever knowing what had happened, but it was suspected a gang of footpads had assaulted him. A few days later four men attacked a lone man near the Butterburn on the Strathmartine Road. One of the attackers was captured but the others escaped. Such attacks on travellers were fairly common throughout the century.

  Sometimes the attackers escaped with valuables, as happened at the end of November 1824 when a brace of men and their dogs set upon a countryman in the Fairmuir, knocked him down and rifled his pockets. They escaped with his watch and a packet he had been carrying. At other times the reward was hardly worth the risk, as in the assault just off Crichton Street in September the same year when four men attacked a lone pedestrian at two in the afternoon. After a brief scuffle they ran off with his umbrella and his hat, closely pursued by a large crowd.

  Although the image of Victorian violence is usually coloured by images of Jack the Ripper or the garrotting scares of the 1860s, the range of perpetrators was quite wide. Dundee was no exception. For instance in November 1853 in the Overgate, a broker’s wife drew a butcher’s knife on her servant and stabbed her on the arm and the neck. Sometimes assaults by the supposedly respectable members of society were utterly brutal, as in the case in August 1855 when a druggist named John Smith attacked his wife Janet Smith. Although she was pregnant, her husband cut off her clothes, punched her head and face, grabbed her hair and dragged her across the floor of their Princes Street house until her body was a mass of bruises and cuts.

  The Use of Weapons

  Weapons were common in the assaults that marred Dundee’s streets. Wives smashed bottles over the heads of their husbands, men clashed pokers on their wives, belts were wrapped around fists and the buckles used to smash teeth and noses, sticks were common and in the 1860s, a time when many Britons looked over their shoulders in fear of garrotters, there was a rash of knuckleduster crime in the city. In December 1863 a sixteen-year-old apprentice mechanic named Alexander Raffan was arrested for using iron knuckledusters on a plumber named James Rose; he got sixty days for it. Another favoured weapon was simpler: a stone contained in a handkerchief. This was the weapon used by William Murray, a weaver, when he attacked James Fenton in Lochee’s Ann Street. He got thirty days and came out in February 1866. Fists and boots were normal, but Mary Weir broke the mould when she attacked Mrs Christie in Constitution Road. After punching Mrs Christie in the face, Weir drew
a razor and slashed her across the neck.

  However, Robert Cunningham probably deserves the accolade for the most unusual weapon. He was a man with a bad record of violence, with seven convictions for assault, three of which were on police constables, but he was also had a bad leg and in March 1884 he used his crutch to attack two policemen on Victoria Road. Sheriff Cheyne had little belief in his promise to reform if he was treated leniently and gave him four months.

  Overall, Dundee could be a violent place, but compared to other cities, it was relatively peaceful. There were few really violent professional criminals and the organised gang troubles that infested places such as Manchester and Glasgow were notably absent. Drink or domestic disputes seem to have been the root of most of the assaults, and in most parts of the town the streets were comparatively safe.

  16

  The Later Years

  A Policeman’s Lot

  A Victorian policeman’s life was never easy. He worked long hours, walked many miles, mixed with the worst people in the country and had to follow strict rules. The police had one week’s holiday a year. By the 1860s his uniform and equipment was fixed and would remain constant for the remainder of the century. He had a cape with a strap; a staff or truncheon that fitted in a long inside pocket, a belt, one pair of leggings, two great coats and two dress coats, uniform trousers and two reinforced hats, leather neck stocks that gave some protection against possible strangulation, cleaning materials, a rattle, a lantern and a pair of handcuffs.

  The truncheon he carried would be painted and decorated. There are a number of these items held in the McManus museum in Dundee. One is of turned wood with the top and bottom section painted black and nicely varnished. On the top is a painted crown with the letters VR in blue, red and gold and a number, presumably of the officer, at the bottom. At 658mm long and 34mm diameter, it is quite a formidable weapon. An earlier version is similar in size, with the top and the lower two-thirds again painted black and a gold and red crown at the top together with W IV R. These truncheons served both for protection and as a means of identification: warrant cards were not issued until much later in the century.

  Handcuffs were carried in the pocket and were probably of the ‘D’ pattern, so called because they were shaped like the letter ‘D’. They were worked with a large key that screwed into either edge, but the procedure took some time, and once locked they could not be adjusted. If they were too large for the prisoner, he or she could slip free. If too small, they painfully constricted the prisoner’s wrists. Again, there is an example in the museum at Dundee, together with the much less elaborate ‘shangie’, a 330mm-long article with a wooden handle and length of rope that was looped around a single wrist of the offender. The rattle was a large wooden device used to summon help if required; it was carried in a coat pocket and remained in use until whistles appeared in the 1890s. The lantern, of a bull’s-eye pattern that could be used to direct a narrow beam of light, could also burn the policeman’s fingers and often left a film of soot on his uniform and face.

  In 1861 the average height of a Dundee policeman was five foot nine and three quarters; tall for a town where bad living conditions dramatically curtailed growth. That same year saw a number of promotions within the force as Lieutenant McQueen became governor of Dundee Prison and 2nd Lieutenant James Christie took his place as lieutenant; others also took a step up as James Cathro moved from Sergeant Major to 2nd Lieutenant, John Hills from Sergeant to Sergeant Major and William Ruxton became a sergeant. For those at the top, there were also good rewards, with Superintendent Mackay having a salary of £50 a week from 1870. The police were now established and accepted as part of Dundee society.

  Policing Dundee

  During the 1860s the police continued their successes. In May 1862 there was a theft of two silver watches in Blairgowrie and the thief jumped on a train to Dundee. The local police telegraphed the force in Dundee, who caught the thief as he arrived at the station. In June 1863 Constable Wales made a bit of a name for himself by tracing a thief. About half past two on the morning of Tuesday 23rd June he was walking past Doig’s Entry in the Overgate. Hearing something suspicious, he entered the close and followed a paper trail of letters until a man rushed past him and into the Overgate. Wales chased him, joined by a dozen eager Dundonians.

  At that time there was a quarry in Lindsay Street, and as the suspect ran, he threw a screwdriver into it. Wales caught him a minute later. With the suspect safely in custody at the police station, Wales returned to Doig’s Entry and found a portable writing desk still with some letters inside. Some were addressed to Mr Robert Fleming, Airlie Place. Together with Inspector Rennie, Wales examined Fleming’s house. A window catch had been forced, a desk opened and a rosewood writing desk stolen. The man Wales arrested was a seaman from London who called himself Thomas Williams.

  Wales’ success was just a drop in a flood of crime that threatened to engulf the whole country. While the government passed more severe penalties for violent crime, in December 1868 Dundee reeled under a rash of assaults and robberies. There was a man garrotted and robbed outside the Royal Lunatic Asylum, and another attacked in South Lindsay Street, a robbery at Shaw and Baxter’s factory in North Tay Street which ended with the place being set on fire, a couple of robberies in the same night in Long Wynd and a burglary at a spirit shop in Perth Road. The police were more efficient, using the telegraph system, and in 1873 obtaining a prison van to transport the criminals, but the criminal element also knew every trick.

  As well as the opportunist thieves and drunken brawlers, there were bad men who lived their lives on the dark side of the law. Alexander Dow was one of these. He claimed to come from Arbroath but drifted from place to place as the fancy took him. His first criminal appearance was before the court in Aberdeen in June 1861 when he was given three months for theft. The next year the Aberdeen sheriff gave him eighteen months, which either taught him caution or put him on the right side of the law, for it was not until May 1867 that his name next appeared, when he ended in jail for just sixty days. By April 1868 Dow was operating in Dundee, where the Circuit Court welcomed him with an eighteen-month sentence. He was hardly out before he was back in again, this time for police assault. In October 1871 he haunted the crowds that gathered at the grand opening of Balgay Park, but the police caught him stealing a gentleman’s watch and he was back before the judge. With his long record he could not expect any mercy and the April 1872 Circuit Court awarded him seven years’ penal servitude. Dow must have been a hard man to survive this nightmare and come back for more, but in 1882 he appeared before the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh and gained yet another seven years.

  Despite his record, Dow was released early on a ticket-of-leave but rather than try to keep straight, he returned to the only way of life he knew. More a thief than a man of violence, Dow liked to ply his pickpocket trade in the railway stations. His modus operandi was to board a busy train, get off further down the line and mix with the crowd and see whose pocket he could dip before returning to a different carriage in the same train. At that time the train would be of the corridor type, rather than the long, open-plan variety that are used today. Perhaps old age and repeated confinement were catching up with him, or maybe he was never really adept at his job, but a Ladybank policeman saw Dow with his hand in a lady’s pocket.

  Grabbing Dow, the policeman thrust him into a carriage and searched him but found nothing. Certain that Dow was a thief, the policeman held him secure until the train reached Perth, where he was bundled out and arrested. When Dow was again unsuccessfully searched, the police had the carriage thoroughly taken apart. When they removed the door an upended it, a purse fell out; Dow had managed to slip it inside. The judge at Perth Circuit Court gave him eighteen months.

  When he finished that term, Dow was retained in jail to finish the seven years from which he had been released. When he eventually returned to the world, he again reverted to thieving. In 1891 a Dundee detective arrested him at
the Martinmas Feeing Market and in 1892 he was back in the city. In May of that year Dow found a drapery auction in the Hawkhill and stood at the back of the crowd as the largely female audience hoped for a bargain. He had just lifted a fat purse from a Lunan Bay fisher wife when a detective put a heavy hand on his shoulder and arrested him. Maybe Dow was a career criminal, but the police had career officers who also knew exactly what they were doing.

  Compared to the other cities of Scotland, Dundee was very lightly policed. In 1880 Edinburgh had one policeman for every 532 citizens, Glasgow one to every 535, Aberdeen one to every 758 and Dundee one to every 967, but the authorities decided to add another six men to the force. Perhaps it was this slight reinforcement that brought down the crime rate in Dundee.

  Throughout the 1880s police crime statistics saw a constant downturn that indicated they had succeeded in making the city a safer place in which to live. However, there were still enough incidents to make the honest citizens wary. Drunken assaults and common theft continued, and sometimes the theft was not quite so common.

  Safe to Steal

  In the 1880s, the Hawkhill was a busy place. The name covers both an area of Dundee and a long street that runs from the West Port in a roughly south-westerly direction until it meets the Perth Road at a Y-junction known as the Sinderins. As was common to most of the old-established streets in Dundee, there were a number of smaller streets, wynds or closes running at right angles from the Hawkhill. Along the front of the Hawkhill, and often situated at the corners where the main street met the wynds, there were a selection of public houses and shops. One of these shops, at the corner of the Hawkhill and Miller’s Wynd, was owned by David McGavin, who lived in the flat above. At about half-past seven on the night of 6th February 1888, McGavin said farewell to his final customer of the day, turned off the gas, locked the door and carried the keys upstairs to his house. As was normal in such corner sites, the shop had two doors, one in the Hawkhill and the other in Miller’s Wynd.