Whisky, Wars, Riots and Murder

by Malcolm Archibald

  In December 1889 the Excisemen were busy in Sutherland. They raided Flinchary, a few miles west of Dornoch, and found a coil and still in the house of a crofter. The equipment was taken to the excise headquarters at Dornoch. A couple of days later they found a still capable of producing forty-five gallons of whisky at Clashnagrave, again not far from Dornoch. The parishes of Dornoch and Creich were still noted for whisky smuggling in the 1890s. However, unlike the earlier decades when the Excisemen arrested culprits, the courts now only imposed small fines that were no deterrent, as friends and family quickly collected the amount so there was no time spent in jail. In October 1896 Inspector Willis of the Brora district subjected the areas to a vigorous scrutiny. He was aided by three excise officers from Bonar Bridge, Andrew Harper, Donald Mckenzie and William Brown. After many hours of intense searching and after probing dozens of people for information, they found a complete still, with a copper still hidden in the woodlands above Skibo Castle.

  There is still illicit whisky being made in the Highlands, but not on anything like the scale of the nineteenth century. The old days of smugglers rising en masse against the Excisemen or ambushing them with muskets are in the past and history has cast a romantic gloss over those days. Now whisky is a major and legal industry and a large employer. Times have changed.

  3

  Theft and Robbery

  Although the large-scale whisky smuggling of the nineteenth century was a distinctively Highland crime, robbery is a generic condition to the entire human race. The Highlands had their share of theft and robbery of different types, from simple theft to an international robber who targeted guests at hotels. Even the quietest roads and the most innocent of travellers could be at risk.

  Highway Robbery

  The Reverend David Wilson must have been a happy man. It was Tuesday, 3 October 1809 and he was bowling along from Perth to Crieff in his gig. The Reverend was the minister of the Associate Congregation of Antiburghers at Balbeggie, which was a very independent-minded sect who refused to believe in any union between Church and State. He was not alone in his gig, for along with him were two young ladies, who must have felt secure in the company of a distinguished and respectable churchman. However, nobody was ever entirely safe on the roads in the early nineteenth century.

  The two ladies were family friends, Helen and Barbara Barlass, daughters of the Reverend James Barlass of Crieff, and they were enjoying the Highland countryside as the horse clipped along past the wood of Cultoquhey, near Gilmerton. All three were completely at ease until a man appeared from the shelter of the wall that protected the trees. He wore a greatcoat, had a hat pulled well over his face and carried a rolled umbrella. As the gig rolled past, the man seized the reins of the horse and thrust a pistol in Wilson’s face.

  The girls may have screamed but the highwayman was only after money. Wilson handed over a shilling, which was a pretty meagre reward for a crime that could result in the gallows, and the highwayman grabbed Wilson’s watch, leaped over the wall and disappeared among the trees. Wilson drove on, probably a little shaken up but otherwise unharmed by his brief brush with the underworld. He reported the matter to the authorities, no doubt the girls told everybody else and for a while life carried on as normal. Then at the end of the month came the news that a man had been arrested on suspicion of the crime.

  The man was Alexander Campbell, a twenty-year-old deserter from the 42nd Highlanders who now worked as a weaver in the nearby village of Kenmore. The robbery of Mr Wilson was not the only crime of which he was accused. Campbell had fallen out with his previous employer, lost his job and retaliated by stealing his employer’s watch, which he pawned in Glasgow. His intention had been to raise money for a gun, but instead of buying one he travelled to Stirling and stole a pistol with a spring bayonet, a supply of lead balls and a cast for moulding more. Suitably armed, Campbell set on his new career of crime. As well as the robbery of the Reverend Wilson, he was also suspected of robbing a man on the road between Cumbernauld and Glasgow. The description and method of attack were very similar but it was a completely different type of crime that ended his brief career.

  Campbell had come to McLellan’s New Inn in Dunfermline in Fife on 14 October 1809, distinctively dressed in a long tartan coat and light-coloured pantaloons. He stayed overnight and when he left the next morning he carried away various articles that did not belong to him, including a pair of greatcoats and a saddlebag. Next morning one of the coats and the empty saddlebag were found in a plantation of new trees beside the nearby mansion of Hillhouse.

  James McBean, a King’s Messenger from Dunfermline, was ordered to hunt him down. It was not too hard to ask questions about a man who wore such a distinctive coat, so McBean followed the trail and caught Campbell on the road between Charlestown and Limekilns. Campbell came quietly and McBean brought him to Dunfermline Jail, tucked him in a nice dark cell and locked manacles around his legs. That should have been enough, but Campbell proved more resourceful than expected. He unfastened his legs from the manacles, removed the bar from the cell window and was about to lower himself to freedom when Thomas Ingles, the jailer, walked in and stopped him.

  The case came to the High Court in December and Campbell was face-to-face with Wilson and the Barlass sisters. While Wilson was unable to identify Campbell because of the hat that had shielded his face, the sisters were adamant he was the man who had robbed the gig. Campbell had already tearfully admitted the theft from his former employer and the robbery on the Cumbernauld Road, so the jury had no difficulty in finding him guilty. Nevertheless, a string of witnesses testified to Campbell’s weakness of mind and recommended mercy, so he escaped the gallows if not the long stretch in jail. Other robbers were more successful.

  Robbing the Dunkeld Bank

  Dunkeld is one of the most picturesque and historical towns in Scotland. It sits at the very gate of the Perthshire Highlands, with a Thomas Telford built bridge over the River Tay and a cathedral that was built on the site of a Culdee church. It is the centre of a splendid area of tall trees and beautiful hills, yet crime could strike even such an idyllic place.

  Village of Dunkeld

  © Author’s Collection

  On Sunday, 13 October 1822 thieves struck at the Dunkeld branch of the Commercial Banking Company. They forced one of the windows, broke through the reinforced interior shutters, prised aside the iron cross guards and grabbed a box full of banknotes and gold, silver and copper coins. The thieves carried the box as far as the east end of the bridge, where they forced it open and fled with the contents. The chief suspects were Charles Brown, a chapman or peddler, and his wife, who both vanished shortly afterward. They were never caught. Other robberies were more violent.

  Robbery with Violence in Inverness

  Angus Fraser was a respectable man who worked as a porter, a man who carried bags and baggage from passengers at the Caledonian Coach Office in Inverness. When he was not at the coach office he often waited at the door of Bennet’s Hotel in case a guest wanted him to carry his luggage.

  On 14 September 1823 a gentleman named William Cameron travelled by coach from Rothiemurchus to Inverness with a large trunk including his clothes, personal papers and a number of documents and bills. When he arrived in Inverness it was a dull evening with no moonlight and only the oil-fed streetlights that reflected from the fast-flowing River Ness and gave a flickering yellow illumination to the streets. Cameron left the trunk at Bennet’s Hotel and asked Fraser to carry it off to his lodgings in Church Street. Fraser added the trunk to the other bag he was already carrying and set off.

  When he left the hotel, two men lurched from the lobby and offered to help, but he turned them down. Instead he handed the smaller item, the bag, to John Fraser, whom he knew, hoisted the weighty trunk onto his shoulders and set off. As he staggered toward Cameron’s lodgings the two men again approached him and offered their services. Again Fraser turned them away and continued, with the trunk seeming to get heavier with every step he took.
The very moment he arrived at Cameron’s lodgings, somebody dragged the trunk from his shoulders. The force of the attack knocked him to the ground. He scrambled to his feet, but one of the men pinned his arms to his sides while the other disappeared with the trunk.

  The man with the trunk shouted out, ‘Come away, we have a spoil,’ and handed the trunk over to a man that Angus Fraser recognised as being William McTaggart. Angus Fraser staggered as the man who held him released him. He recovered and saw his attacker make a grab for the bag that John Fraser carried. Angus Fraser lunged at the thief and called out ‘Murder!’, which was the generic shout for help at the time. On this occasion the cry worked as John Callander, the guard from the Duke of Gordon coach, rushed up to help. Between the two of them they managed to subdue and hold the attacker. He was identified as James Robertson and the man who stole the trunk was Robert Simpson. For a while there was no trace of either Simpson or the trunk, but Callander and Fraser searched around and found the trunk abandoned in a nearby lane later that night; the lock was broken open and the contents missing, except for a mess of scraps of paper.

  Callander whistled up a man named David Mackay and asked him to help arrest Simpson, who was hiding in the house of a man named Bernard Woods. McTaggart was also arrested. He was a soldier of the 1st Foot, the Royal Scots, and until that day was believed to possess a good character.

  The case came to the High Court in Edinburgh but the Lord Advocate said that there had not been enough violence in the crime for it to be called robbery. However there was little doubt as to the theft by Robertson and Simpson. He added that there may be some doubt as to the part McTaggart played. The defence did not try and deny that Robertson and Simpson had taken the trunk, but said it was just ‘to torment the porter’, in other words, a practical joke. The jury found Robertson and Simpson guilty of assault and theft but asked for mercy, while the case against McTaggart was found not proven. Despite the jury’s plea the judge, Lord Gillies, ordered both to be executed in Inverness on 21 February. As Simpson left the court he declared his innocence: ‘I saw the robbery and Angus Fraser observed me standing at the jail, but I had no hand in it, as I shall answer to God.’

  Animal Theft

  With the Highlands being a largely rural area, livestock was often targeted by thieves. In May 1833 Margaret Dunbar of Elgin was found guilty of horse stealing. She was a young woman in her twenties, but she had taken a fancy to a black mare that belonged to James Young, a farmer from Dallas, a few miles to the south. She tried to resist the temptation but her friends persuaded her that she could get away with it. Instead she was transported to Australia for seven years.

  At the same court the same judge, Lord Moncrieff, sentenced a man named Gustavus Sutherland to nine months in jail for sheep stealing. That sentence seems benign compared to the spring Circuit court at Perth in 1820 when Alexander Reid was sentenced to death for the same crime.

  Robbing a Deaf Man

  George Boyne was the watchman on duty in George Street, Inverness, on Sunday, 24 May 1835. The day had passed as quietly as Inverness Sundays normally did, but around quarter past three he saw a deaf and dumb man named Alexander Whyte walking toward the vennel, otherwise known as Drum’s Lane. Boyne thought nothing of it until about half an hour later when a woman ran up to him and reported that he was wanted in the house of Elspet Jack in the Vennel.

  Boyne and another watchman named Roderick MacLean entered Elspet Jack’s house. As well as Jack there were two other women, including Ann Brebner, a young man named Alexander Gibb and Alexander Whyte himself. As Boyne entered, Whyte was running around the house, obviously agitated.

  Boyne asked, ‘What’s the to do?’ and Jack told him that Whyte had stormed in ‘raging about a pocketbook’ but she knew nothing about it. Jack must have known Whyte well to understand the agitation of a man who could neither speak nor hear. She said that Whyte had seen some coppers lying beside the fireplace and tried to pick them up until Jack said they were hers and she had no more.

  When Whyte saw that Boyne was a policeman, he pinioned his arms and pointed to Gibb. For a moment Boyne was nonplussed, but he realised that Whyte was indicating that Gibb had held him in that manner. Once he was sure Boyne understood, Whyte lifted a long knife from the kitchen table, and then loosened his breeches. Again, Boyne was unsure of the purpose of the pantomime, until Whyte pulled out his pocket and made a sawing motion with the knife. Boyne worked out that Whyte meant Gibb had used the knife to cut a hole in his pocket. When Whyte made a clasping movement with his hands and pointed to Elspet Jack, Boyne guessed that he meant Gibb had robbed him of a purse with a mouth that opened and closed and held money.

  Boyne decided it was best to make further enquiries, so he ordered everybody present to the watch house and searched Jack’s home more thoroughly. All he found was a straw hat and a few pennies and halfpennies until he scrabbled about in the straw of the bed, where there was a purse with five shillings in silver. He also found a pocketbook. When he was shown both items, Whyte indicated that the purse was his but showed no interest in the pocketbook.

  The case came to the Circuit court at the end of September 1835, where a number of witnesses helped unveil the mystery of the stolen purse. The first witness was a woman named Catherine Teal, who saw Jack holding Whyte by the arm and forcing him up the stairs to her house. Whyte was obviously reluctant as he tried to hold onto the wall and the railings. Jean Allan lived in the same vennel; she heard ‘a great struggling and crying’ that lasted, she claimed, ‘for about an hour’. People’s perceptions of time could be elastic at such occasions. It was a woman who shared the same room who ran to fetch the watchman.

  The court called upon a number of people who emphasised that Whyte understood the necessity to speak the truth; they said he knew the concept of right and wrong, and the punishment for people who lied when under oath. After that Whyte gave his oath and Robert Taylor, teacher at the deaf and dumb institution, acted as interpreter for him as he was questioned.

  Whyte indicated that he was walking along the street sometime after three in the afternoon. A woman approached, took him by the arm and brought him to a house. He smoked for a while there, offered her some money and tried to leave. As he stood up, Jack grabbed the tails of his coat and hauled him backward. Gibb held him by the elbows from behind and Jack cut the pocket from his trousers and stole his purse and his money. He indicated that there had been five shillings in his purse and that Ann Brebner had not been involved in the robbery.

  The jury had no difficulty in finding Brebner innocent and Gibb and Jack guilty, but when they asked for the judge to show mercy ‘considering the peculiar circumstances of the case’, Lord Moncrieff, the judge, voiced his confusion. He said the only peculiar circumstance was the robbery of a poor deaf and dumb man but promised to take the request into consideration. He thought eighteen months’ imprisonment for Gibb and Jack was appropriate, and Lord Medwyn agreed and gave that sentence.

  The Silver Snuffbox

  For centuries St John’s Town of Perth was a frontier town. It is situated on a crossing point of the River Tay and was an important port in the Middle Ages. It was a walled town, and with reason, for English armies besieged it more than once and the wild Highlanders were only a few miles away. In the nineteenth century the threat of siege had long gone, but the Highland hills still threw their shadows over the crowded streets. Sometimes the roads north and west were the scenes of crime.

  Toward the end of December 1843 Colin Drummond welcomed two visitors into his inn, a few miles west of Perth on the Crieff road. They had a couple of drams of whisky, but when Drummond requested payment, they produced a silver snuffbox and asked if he would like to buy it. Drummond had a close look at the box and realised that the name engraved on it was that of a near neighbour. When the men asked if wanted it or not, Drummond said he had no need of it just then, but he knew a man who might want to buy it.

  The men said they were quite happy to meet this possible buyer a
nd waited patiently when a messenger ran off to fetch this third party. Naturally, the newcomer was the owner of the box; he grabbed it and immediately pocketed it. The two men demanded it back, claiming they had bought it honestly. The dispute became loud as tempers rose and there were threats of violence. Quite by chance, two Perth detectives – then called criminal officers – happened to be passing and they arrested the supposed thieves. They ended up in jail for theft.

  A Dram for the Redcoats

  The army had an ambiguous part in the Highlands. On the one hand, they were the redcoats who had taken part in the suppression of the Jacobites in the eighteenth century and who supported the sheriff officers and police in evictions as well as hunting for whisky smugglers. On the other hand, there was intense pride in the exploits of the Highland regiments in the various wars of the Empire and against France and Russia. However, the feelings of the soldiers themselves were rarely considered. For a man from a city to be stationed at one of the isolated outposts in the Highlands, subjected to inclement weather, lack of facilities and a difficult terrain, life must have been hard.

  That was the situation in which a detachment of the 27th Foot, the Inniskillings, found themselves during the early months of 1847. The main force was stationed in Fort George, east of Inverness, but a unit of a sergeant, a lance corporal and six privates were ordered to garrison Fort Augustus, halfway down the Great Glen. This small detachment remained in Fort Augustus from March to September before being recalled to Fort George.