Hambrough was related to New York bankers and had a fortune due to him on his twenty-first birthday from his grandfather’s estates. Monson found him a post as lieutenant in the 4th Battalion Prince of Wales Own Yorkshire Militia. His father had been in the Isle of Wight Rifle Volunteers and hoped that his son would have joined the Hampshire Militia. A London financial agent named Tottenham had introduced Monson to Hambrough’s father, but Tottenham was also a man on the edge of respectability.
Cecil Hambrough came from and was heir to Steephill Castle, a castellated mansion built in 1835 by his grandfather, John Hambrough. The mansion was near Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, and Hambrough was fast approaching his twenty-first year. His father was the Justice of the Peace for Hampshire and lived at Houghton, Stockbridge.
Ardlamont House
© Crown Copyright: RCAHMS. Licensor www.rcahms.gov.uk
Monson was lucky, for Hambrough’s father, Major Hambrough, could not have checked his background very thoroughly. The salary for the mentoring position would have come in immensely handy, as he was on the cusp of destitution. Monson seems to have enjoyed living the life of a gentleman, but had not the resources to support it, or to support his wife. A few weeks after accepting the position as tutor, Monson was declared bankrupt.
Leaving his Harrogate home to rent a property named Risely Hall, Monson paid merely with empty promises until he was challenged, then borrowed money and headed north. His charm had worked on Hambrough, for despite his father’s newfound scepticism, he remained as Monson’s ward. Monson hired out Ardlamont, depending on his undoubted charm and the reputation of an English gentleman for honesty and integrity, in lieu of the more usual rental of actual cash. Monson forged the signature of a man named Jerningham, with a footman as the witness. Cecil Hambrough, twenty years old in 1893, would have gloried in the life at Ardlamont for the season, which was a common way for the wealthy to spend the late summer.
Monson had a little bit of paperwork to do and asked Hambrough to sign a number of forms and documents that insured his life. The young man seemed completely under Monson’s spell and did as he was asked, but it is doubtful if he understood anything that was going on. However, by 8 August they were both safely ensconced in Ardlamont. Hambrough had invited a group of his friends to join them as paying guests.
In August a man named Edward Scott arrived. He was also known as Edward Sweeney, and sometimes as Edward Davis, but now posed as Edward Scott, an engineer. He was about twenty-seven years old, delicately built with narrow shoulders, about five foot nine tall and dark-haired. Sweeney was a bookmaker’s clerk and would not take part in any shooting but would carry the guns and take home whatever game they bagged. He was a friend of Monson’s and had not met Hambrough before he arrived at Ardlamont.
On 9 August Monson hired a boat from local man Donald McKellar. Monson and Sweeney took it out on Loch Fyne in the morning, after which Sweeney left on a mission of his own. Loch Fyne is a spectacular arm of the Firth of Clyde, whose waters caress the shore of Ardlamont Estate. That same evening, Monson and Hambrough took the boat out in Ardlamont Bay on the loch. For some reason the boat began to leak and capsized. Both men were thrown into the sea. Monson was fairly safe as the summer seas were calm and warmed by the Gulf Stream, but Hambrough was a non-swimmer. Luckily they were not far out at the time and managed to struggle ashore safely.
In the early morning of 10 August, a day of high wind and driving rain, Monson sent the gamekeeper away on an errand before he, Sweeney and Hambrough walked out to the woodland. It was about six o’clock. The three men spread into a line, as people did when they were out shooting. However, only Monson and Hambrough carried guns, and Sweeney was in the centre with the game bag. While Hambrough carried a long-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun, so was presumably after birds or rabbits, Monson had a short twenty-bore.
Running around the edge of the plantation was a drystane dyke about two and a half feet in height, covered in turf and with a ditch at the side. Once they reached the trees the men split up, and that was the last that Hambrough was seen alive. If any local workers heard the sound of a shot, they would have expected it and took no notice.
A few moments later they heard the sound of running men and saw Monson and Sweeney dashing down from the trees. There was no sign of Hambrough. The two men retreated into the gun room. James Wright, the butler, looked in to see if all was well. Wright was a self-effacing man of around twenty-two. Monson and Sweeney were busy cleaning the guns but were unhappy, with Monson in particular seeming upset. The butler asked if everything was all right and if Mr Hambrough would be along later.
Monson told them that they had separated in the woods and he heard the sound of a shot. He had shouted out, asking Hambrough what he had killed, but there was no answer so he had hurried over. Hambrough was lying in a ditch with a gunshot wound behind his left ear and his brains on the ground beside him. It was obvious that there had been a tragic accident and Hambrough had accidentally shot himself while climbing over the dyke. The blast from the shotgun had smashed into his head and he was already dead when Monson found the body, apparently on top of the dyke.
At first the estate was in shock and then people wondered how he had managed to shoot himself in the back of the head, and what happened to Hambrough’s gun. All the same, they called for help and Dr McMillan came from Tighnabruaich. Around the same time as the doctor came, Sweeney left Ardlamont house in a pony and trap. He said he had business to ‘take him away’ and would leave a forwarding address at the Central Station Hotel in Glasgow. The policeman at Tighnabruaich approached him as he waited for the ferry and asked him not to leave, but without authority to hold him, they could only watch when Sweeney caught the boat.
The Procurator Fiscal in Inveraray sent Sub-Sheriff Sharp and Mr Naughten, the deputy Procurator Fiscal, to investigate the case, but he had no doubt about Monson’s version of events. He even reported sympathetically that Monson would now be in financial difficulties as his employer was dead. Two weeks later, Monson travelled to Inveraray and reported to the Procurator Fiscal that Hambrough had insured his life for £20,000, with the Mutual Insurance Company of New York. There was also talk of another policy for £10,000 with the Scottish Provident. Monson’s wife was the beneficiary. That led to some suspicion, particularly as the last of the forms had only been completed two days before the death.
The story gradually emerged. Monson had attempted to obtain insurance with a number of companies but most had turned him down when he mentioned the size of the amount he wanted to insure Hambrough for. Monson had discovered that Hambrough was about to inherit a fortune on his twenty-first birthday, and he invented a story that he wanted to buy the estate of Ardlamont. Parts of the family estates on the Isle of Wight had been sold during an agricultural depression and the money would be paid to Hambrough very shortly. Until his money came through, Mrs Monson would lend him the money and the life insurance ensured that she could do so. Monson’s story was a lie, but like the best lies, it was based on truth.
The police visited Ardlamont and began to question the staff. Sweeney had vanished and was never seen again. When they heard about the near drowning incident on Loch Fyne, the police suspicions increased and they inspected the boat. There was a small hole drilled in the hull. That in itself could be innocent enough; it might have been made to help drain the boat, for every open boat takes in water from spray or large waves, but if so the hole would have a bung. There was nothing in it; the hole was open for the sea to enter and to judge by the state of the wood, it had been recently bored. The police suspected that Monson had tried to drown the non-swimming Hambrough.
They also inspected the spot where Hambrough’s body had been found and wondered anew how a man with a long-barrelled shotgun managed to shoot himself behind the ear. They also wondered how nearby trees, particularly a rowan over six feet away and a lime tree seven feet away, could be riddled with shotgun pellets. It was possible, they surmised, that Hambrough could ha
ve been shot by somebody else from a distance away, hence the spread of the shot. If he had shot himself at close range the shot would not have had time to spread. However, the woods were often used for shooting so the scars could have occurred at any time. The police busied themselves experimenting with different types of shotgun to test the effects of gunfire on trees from different ranges.
In the meantime, Hambrough’s body was taken south and buried at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight. The burial was a splendid affair, with all the pomp and ceremony the Victorians lavished on the dead. Strangely, there were rumours that the missing Sweeney accompanied the coffin, but the police did not pursue him. The stories were false, as the mystery man was the Ardlamont factor, a man named Steven. Monson was also at the funeral and met Major Hambrough. Hambrough was buried in a brick grave near the family vault. A few days later he was exhumed in the presence of McCulloch, the Procurator Fiscal; Dr Littlejohn from Edinburgh; Dr McMillan; and a couple of London surgeons. Littlejohn was a major figure at the time, being the medical officer for health in Edinburgh and a man whose advice helped convict Dr Pritchard, the Glasgow poisoner, and Laurie, the Arran murderer. The autopsy merely confirmed that Hambrough had been shot in the head. There was the usual crop of rumours concerning the case. On 25 September the Aberdeen Journal carried the story that a poacher had seen the whole thing. Most stories were either exaggerated or completely false.
Suspicion, however, spread. Monson was placed under police surveillance and tried to live as normally as possible while two police stalked him everywhere. On 28 August Chief Constable Fraser of the Argyllshire Police drove a pony and trap from the Royal Hotel at Tighnabruaich towards Ardlamont. About five miles into his journey he met Monson, who was also driving a pony trap, with a guest at his side and his constant escort, Police Sergeant Ross sitting in the back of the trap. Fraser said he had some business with Monson, who passed the reins of the horse to his companion and transferred to the captain’s trap. Sergeant Ross followed him and the guest drove on alone. As soon as Monson was in Fraser’s trap, Fraser drove back to Tighnabruaich. ‘You may consider yourself under arrest for the death of Mr Hambrough,’ he said.
Rather than act upset, Monson coolly asked to see the warrant, which he read through word for word with a show of unconcern. From Tighnabruaich Monson was bundled into the Lord of the Isles steamer and taken to the jail at Inveraray. Shortly afterward, he appeared before Sheriff-Substitute Shairp at the sheriff court. He pleaded not guilty to the charges of attempted murder and murder, and was lodged in the cells at the courthouse pending a full trial. His previous calmness had gone by that time and he appeared agitated. While in the cells he lived as a gentleman, with meals brought to him from the George Hotel.
Mrs Agnes Monson became something of a celebrity, with her movements being watched and commented on. When her husband was arrested and placed in Greenock Prison she sailed north in Cecil Hambrough’s splendid steam yacht, built for him on the Clyde but never paid for. She visited her husband and stayed at the Argyll Arms Hotel and the Western Temperance Hotel. In September the forging of Jerningham’s signature came to light when Major Lamond, the owner of Ardlamont House, asked him for the rent that was due. Naturally, Jerningham knew nothing of the case, and said he did not even possess a footman.
The case came before the High Court in Edinburgh with only Monson at the bar. It was a high-profile case, with the Lord Justice Clerk presiding and possibly Scotland’s premier defence lawyer, John Comrie Thomson, acting for Monson. Police guarded every entrance to the court. There was a crowd in Parliament Square but Monson was held in a cell beneath the courthouse and taken directly to the court. He arrived dressed very smartly, even flashily, but he looked pale. He spoke with his wife for some time before two tall policemen escorted him to his position before the judge. On his first hearing when he was accused of attempting to drown Hambrough and with murdering him by shooting, Monson said, quietly but firmly, ‘Not guilty.’ He left the courthouse in a cab for Calton Jail, with crowds watching for a glimpse of what was really a celebrity murder case. Sweeney was summoned but did not appear for his trial.
One of the witnesses for the crown was the Edinburgh forensic scientist Dr Joseph Bell, who was the prototype for his townsman Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Dr Bell informed the jury that, in his opinion, Monson was guilty of murder. There were doubts, though. There was no proof that Monson or Sweeney had bored the hole in the boat, and no witnesses to the actual death. More crucially, the insurance policy would not be paid to Monson but to his wife, who was not even slightly implicated in the killing. There were expert witnesses who testified to the type of powder in Hambrough’s cartridges and others who had been with him on previous shooting expeditions who stated he always carried his gun carelessly, even when negotiating fences and walls, and a gentleman named Philip Day, who testified that Hambrough had once shot a fox terrier by accident. A Colonel Tillard testified that when snipe shooting he had once stumbled and shot off part of his own ear, so Hambrough’s death could well be an accident. The defence also asked what could possibly be the motive. After ten days of intense scrutiny, the jury failed to reach a verdict and the result was not proven.
That was not the verdict that Hambrough’s friends wanted. Year after year on the anniversary of Hambrough’s death they tried to rebuild interest in the case by having the following notice published in the national press:
Sacred to the memory of Cecil Dudley Hambrough, shot in a wood near Ardlamont, August 10th 1893. ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ saith the Lord.
The case left a feeling of unease among many in the country. To an extent it exposed the hollow mockery of many of the supposed upper-class of society who posed as superior beings while they lived on charm, non-existent funds and the charity of friends and money-lenders. The fabric of Victorian society was looking porous in the closing years of Her Majesty’s reign.
The following year, Monson was again in court, this time as he sued Madam Tussaud’s waxwork museum for erecting a model of him carrying a shotgun outside their Chamber of Horrors. The court ruled in Monson’s favour and awarded him damages of one farthing, quarter of a penny. The legal profession used this as a test case of ‘libel by innuendo’. In 1898 Monson was in court once again, being jailed for five years for fraud, but the mystery of what happened that sunny day in Cowal has never been satisfactorily resolved.
Epilogue
There is still crime in the Highlands and probably always will be. The area has changed a great deal since the nineteenth century. Gaelic is spoken less and there are many incomers from other parts of Scotland and from other countries. The threat of mass eviction has gone and there are no more convoys of whisky smugglers wending over the hills. Murder is not common but still occurs, but there is a new worry about drugs in communities from Arran to Wick and the usual Scottish problem with alcohol abuse remains a worry. Child abuse is as hidden as always, the driving can be atrocious on narrow Highland roads and fishermen have been known to participate in the Black Economy rather than follow the perhaps too-stringent EU regulations.
The events of the nineteenth century cast long shadows: many of the glens remain desolate despite the struggles of the tenants to retain their land. The population of the Isles is in decline as the youth seek better opportunities elsewhere. Inverness grows and thrives as one of the fastest growing cities in Europe, but more people may lead to rising crime rates in future.
The tourist trade, which spawned hotel robberies, Rose’s murder and steamboat races in the nineteenth century, ebbs and flows; the large estates continue to host shoots for deer and game, and crofters farm as assiduously as ever. There is more prosperity than before but there are still pockets of poverty in the small towns and deep in the remote glens. Second homes have drained the vitality of many communities, but incomers have also brought new ideas.
According to the Northern Constabulary’s own Public Performance Report for 2011 and 2012, their detection rate is 67 per
cent, which is 12 per cent higher than the Scottish average, and they had the lowest level of domestic housebreaking, with the Western Isles particularly safe. Glenlivet now produces legal whisky; there are no pitched brawls in the streets of Wick, and windsurfers play in Gott Bay where the Tiree Expeditionary Force landed to enforce the law. However, the police are still vigilant and fight a daily battle against both residents and visitors who have criminal tendencies.
The Highland hills remain, watching, as the people live out their lives in the blue shadows and along the seething coast. The countryside looks passive beneath a summer sun, but there is always the chance of an eruption if something raises the spirit of the indigenous population, for that is the Highland way.
Select Bibliography
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Barrie, David. Police In the Age of Improvement: Police Development and the Civic Tradition In Scotland, 1775–1865. Devon, 2008.
Burt, Edmund. Burt’s Letters from the North of Scotland. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 1754, 1998.
Caledonian Mercury.
Cameron, Joy. Prisons and Punishment in Scotland from the Middle Ages to the Present. Edinburgh: Canongate, 1983.
Chesney, Kellow. The Victorian Underworld. London, 1970.
Cochrane, Lord. Circuit Journeys. Edinburgh, Hawick, 1888, 1983.
Cochrane, Lord. Memorials of His Time. Edinburgh, 1856.
Devine, T. M. Clanship to Crofters’ War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Donnelly, Daniel, and Kenneth Scott (eds.). Policing Scotland. Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2005.
Fenton, Alexander. Country Life in Scotland: Our Rural Past. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987.
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