Classic Scottish Murder Stories

by Molly Whittington-Egan

  Lord Cockburn was on the bench, and his diary reveals that Robb had a snowball’s chance of surviving the flames of his wrath: ‘It is difficult to drive the horrors of that scene out of one’s imagination. The solitary old woman in the solitary house, the descent through the chimney, the beastly attack, the death struggle – all that was going on within this lonely room amidst silent fields, and under a still, dark sky. It is a fragment of hell which it is both difficult to endure and to quit. Yet a jury, though clear of both crimes, recommended the brute to mercy! because he did not intend to commit the murder! Neither does the highwayman, who only means to wound, in order to get the purse, but kills.’

  The cause of death, as discovered by medical experts, was, according to Cockburn, ‘an incipient disease in the heart, which agitation made dangerous but which might have lain long dormant. The violence of the brute, and the alarm, proved fatal.’ Mary Smith, ‘never married, or a mother’ – a polite euphemism – died in the young man’s very grip, as he fully confessed after conviction. The cause could also have been anaphylactic shock, or suffocation. One cannot help wondering if he might have killed her anyway, after the attack, since she could identify him. He was hanged by Calcraft on October 16th, 1849, solemnly denying his guilt except as to rape and not understanding the niceties of the law.

  James Robb may have been just a rascal who got drunk and went too far, but George Christie, perpetrator of the Kittybrewster tragedy better fits the category of brute, or monster. He was a much older man, to start with, aged 51, and he stood out from his fellows, being six feet tall, and of proportionate muscular power. His features were coarse and sensual and his aspect dogged and sullen. Once he had been in the service of the East India Company, receiving a pension therefrom until he was deprived of its benefits around 1850, after being convicted for robbery of silver plate from Murtle House. Since then, he had had to make shift to earn a shilling where he could.

  In October, 1852, he was thrashing corn in a barn belonging to Peter McRobbie, a farmer, or gardener, or both, of Sunnybank Farm, Oldmachar, near Aberdeen. The barn and an adjoining small cottage stood at a distance from the main farm, near the Kittybrewster toll bar. McRobbie had put out the thrashing or threshing of his bear (barley) to a contractor named Humphrey, who was employing two men to help him – James Sayer and George Christie.

  The cottage was let by McRobbie to a widow of good report, Mrs Barbara Ross, who had living with her at that time her grandson, five or six-year-old John Louden. She, too, was in need of every mite that she could get, and undertook light agricultural work such as ‘cow feeding’. Lately, she had been supplementing her income by providing meals for 4Ke bear thrashers. On Saturday, October 2nd, she mentioned to George Christie that she was going to sell two pigs – which represented quite a few shillings. Felonious intent might have germinated at that moment. On the Monday night, after the pigs had been sold, Christie was in Aberdeen. At 8 o’clock, he set out for Kittybrewster, telling an acquaintance in Virginia Street that he was going back for something that he had forgotten.

  At 9 o’clock, McRobbie walked over to the barn through dark fields to see how the thrashers had been getting on. The door was locked. He knew that Barbara Ross held the key and he looked in the window of the cottage, where he saw Christie walking about with a lighted candle. What looked like a woman’s shape was lying in front of the fireplace. He knocked at the door and the light went out. Christie appeared. There was something agitated in his manner. Moaning sounds came from within.

  McRobbie wisely did not challenge the looming giant, but simply asked for the barn key, which he was given. Then he went to fetch a neighbour, William Grant, who lived at Muiryfold, and together they knocked at the door of the cottage. Christie came out again and they asked him to go with them to the barn. They enquired what that groaning was inside the house. ‘The boy has a sair belly,’ he replied. The two men watched him re-enter the cottage, and very soon afterwards he came out with a bundle under his arm, locked the door, and went off, whistling.

  It was now safe to fetch Constable Richardson from Printfield, and he broke the door open and encountered a scene of slaughter. The floor was running with blood and the widow and the boy were lying dead, their bodies fearfully gashed by a bloodied wood-axe which had been left on the table. There were signs of frenzied ransacking. Constable Richardson left several men at the scene and went to inform the Procurator Fiscal, before setting off with Constable Nicol, one of the night patrol, in search of George Christie.

  Humphrey had told them where to find him, and at a house in Lower Denburn, there he was, at half past midnight as large as life, sitting with his woman, drinking hard and muddled in mind. They charged him with the crime and he denied it. He was searched, and a purse containing 14s 6d of silver pig money and a gold ring, soon identified as the property of the late Mrs Barbara Ross, were found on his person. Removed to the watch house at Aberdeen for questioning, he remarked ambiguously, ‘this should have been done long ago’. Bloodstains were discovered on his shoes, the legs of his trousers, and the wristbands of his shirt. He had pawned or sold articles belonging to the widow as soon as he had reached the town.

  In prison, his mien was morose and he continued to say that he was innocent. In court at Edinburgh for trial on December 23rd, 1852, still dark of countenance, he sighed deeply when dreadful matters were adduced, as if he felt something inwardly. His Counsel argued that the real murderer could have left the scene before Christie stumbled upon it and was tempted to steal. The medical evidence, following post-mortem, and based upon body temperature, was that the boy had survived the attack for several hours – that is, he had lain there still alive while Christie, unconcerned, selected the poor widow’s valuables.

  No doubt, this information influenced the minds of the jury, for they returned a unanimous verdict of Guilty. He was sentenced to be fed only bread and water before his execution at Aberdeen on January 13th, 1853. During his last week on earth he tried to starve himself to death but was dissuaded by doctrinal reasoning. He went bravely, a giant dropping like a tree, and someone had loved him to judge by the banshee wail from a woman in the crowd.

  In a confession made to the prison governor, he said that he had been overcome by irresistible rage. He had been, he related, to see Humphrey to collect some outstanding wages, but he had not been at home. Then he had proceeded to the widow’s cottage to collect a flagon and a bag which he had left there. She was milking a cow in the byre. She told him that she would not let him have the articles until he had paid her the money which he owed her for milk and food. He flew into a rage and seized the axe. The little boy tried to shield her and got in the way, which further inflamed him. They fled into the cottage, but Christie pursued them, a bellowing monster with an axe, and swung it again and again with all the strength of his long brawny arms. Today, we would test his brain-waves. He was buried in the precincts of the prison, beside the grave of James Robb.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE NORTHFIELD MYSTERY

  The candles lit, it was the hour before supper, and the Laird of Northfield, clad in a nightgown, was sitting in his great chair with his legs crossed jauntily and a pinch of snuff poised between his finger and thumb. He was in good form, almost his usual jocose self, feeling rather better, thank you. Of late, truth to tell, he had been under the weather. The doctor said it was asthma, with a high fever, whatever that meant.

  Alexander Keith, who was aged 64, was of that familiar old type – a choleric, hard-riding, hard-drinking landowner, with a large estate in the parish of Gamrie, Banffshire. Just once, he had broken rank by taking a second wife who was right out of his class. Helen Watt was a fisherman’s daughter, from the village of Crovie, and family ructions had ensued when he brought her to the big house as his bride, 20 years previously. Relatives refused to speak to the upstart and, in particular, George Keith, the rightful son and heir, the eldest son of the laird’s first wife, who had died, had never relented in his animosity. He had
left home and set up an establishment in the neighbourhood.

  Five children had been born of the new union: in 1756, the second family at Northfield consisted of William (17), Henrietta (15), Elizabeth (13), Alexander (10) and Helen (7). William Keith, the eldest, was his father’s favourite – not George, for obvious reasons. Gradually, as Northfield’s health had begun to break down – and his drinking habits were blamed – the relationship between husband and wife had become less idyllic. There were frequent spats or ‘squabbles’. They were out of temper with each other.

  Elspet Bruce, a close family servant, once saw Mrs Keith flying out of the house in a passion, crying to God that she wished her husband had broken his own neck when he broke his horse’s neck, and then she ‘would not have gotten so much anger by him.’ William Taylor of Darfash, loyal retainer of Northfield, heard Mrs Keith say that if God would not take her husband, she wished the devil would: the trouble was that his master liked a dram and Mrs Keith thought that he was extravagant.

  Yet he was not an undutiful man, because, being told by his doctors that he had not long to live, and being of the same opinion himself, he had recently executed a valid will to make provision for Helen Keith and her children, in the form of certain charges which the estate could easily support. The main inheritance was, of course, to go to George Keith who was angry and waiting and would have no mercy on the interlopers.

  Now, on the evening of November 22nd, 1756, as he sat out of bed and contemplated the affairs of his estate, Northfield felt some remission in his poor health. Perhaps he was not going to die, after all, and the doctors were wrong, as they generally were. Come to think of it, he had not clapped eyes on one of them for eight days. As one finds in these tales, the attending physician was wont to eschew the death-bed if he thought the case was hopeless, and beg not to be sent for again. Northfield’s doctor, Mr Chap, surgeon of Old Deer, had taken Helen Keith to one side and told her that her husband was dying: she should not call him back unless he grew better, and meanwhile, here were two blistering plasters to place to the skin.

  It had not been a bad day for the ailing laird. There had been some visitors and they had had a good laugh. His friend, the Reverend James Wilson, who had witnessed his will, had come to see him. James Manson, the shoemaker, had shaved him, as usual, that evening. Soon it was suppertime and his wife and all five offspring were with him in his room to encourage him, but he was not very hungry and took only two spoonfuls of slops consisting of aleberry (corn boiled in beer) or kail-brose (the scum of a broth of greens mixed with oatmeal).

  Henrietta and Elizabeth went away to their own room and Northfield was now alone with his wife and 17-year-old son, and the two very young children. What exactly happened next comes only from the separate accounts of Helen and William Keith, and they were noted to be consistent. Northfield asked to be helped into bed, and a pair of blankets, freshly warmed, were wrapped around him, since he was complaining of feeling cold. His wife and young Helen and Alexander shared a bed placed at the foot of the big bed. William was, unusually, staying in the room because his father had said something about being afraid that he might die in the night, and Helen wanted him close at hand.

  William threw off all his clothes, except his breeches, and prepared to get into his father’s bed, to warm his back. He put out the candle and as he leant over the side of the bed, he thought that he could not hear his father breathing. In a panic, he called to his mother to get up at once and light the candle, for his father was either dead or dying, and then he ran to the door and shouted for the two elder girls and the maid, Elspet Bruce, who emerged from her bed in the kitchen, which was divided by a timber partition from the bedroom. She had heard no untoward sounds that evening.

  By the light of the candle, while all those present watched, William peered at his father’s face and saw that one eye was shut, and the other open. His lips quivered a little, and he was just breathing. William sent the maid out to fetch William Spence, a servant who was drying corn at the kiln, and when they returned, the open eye was half closed, and the Kleathing ceased. The maid was sent out again, to fetch John and Ann Keith, the laird’s brother and sister. According to Elspet Bruce, when she returned with the two kin, Northfield’s body had already been taken out of bed and ‘streikit upon a deal’ (laid out on a board). According to Helen and William Keith, this was not done until the brother and sister had arrived. It was now about 10.00pm.

  Next morning, George Keith came storming round to look after his inheritance. It is possible that he had not, until then, heard of the provisions of the will, and he was not pleased. Elspet sent him in to view his father’s corpse and the events then became horribly out of the ordinary, with far-reaching consequences. There was a ‘blae mark’ around the neck. This was new to Elspet and she had a look and she, too, saw the blue mark, about the breadth of two fingers, and also a ‘blae spot’ on the breast. Whether or not they were misinterpreting post mortem signs out of lack of knowledge and distress, or whether these were genuine signs that, as William expressed it to the maid, there had been foul play, is the crux of the Northfield mystery. The widow and William were to offer a practical explanation which was not quite consistent, one to each. There is also the possibility that, out of malice, George was deliberately magnifying an innocent occurrence in order to bring down the hated step-family.

  There was ample evidence that the blae marks did exist. William Taylor, the loyal servant, lifted the cloth from his master’s face when he was ‘streikit’ and saw a blue mark on the neck, about the breadth of three fingers, but could not say if it went all round the neck. John Strachan, wright of Gardenstoun, who made the laird’s coffin and put in the corpse, stated that young Northfield turned down the grave-clothes and showed him a mark round the forepart of the neck, but he did not see the back. There was a mark reaching down towards the ‘slot’ of the breast. Both marks were of a blackish blue, like the neck of a fowl newly strangled. James King, Strachan’s assistant, saw a black-red mark round the neck, such as he had never seen before on a corpse. Alexander Hepburn, of Cushnie, who was present, saw some blue spots on the breast, and a ‘blue girth’ that went round the neck, and it was like ‘bruised blood’. On the back of the neck he saw a mark ‘like what is occasioned by a knot drawn strait’. No one else described a knot mark. No doctor was called to the corpse. There was no procedure for certification of death. It was up to lay people to assess when life had ceased, to hover with feathers and mirrors. No wonder that premature burial was a real fear.

  The widow was standing by at the ‘chesting’, and she heard the mutterings. Hepburn considered that she seemed unwilling to have the corpse inspected, saying that there was nothing unseemly to be seen. She helped to put in the body, and as the coffin was rather ‘scrimp’ in length, she pressed the head down into it – an unseemly action, one would have thought. Taylor said that no one was actually hindered from looking at the corpse.

  He, Taylor, now publicly asked the widow what was the meaning of the blae mark. She replied that it was caused by a string tied around the neck in life ‘for holding on a plaister’. William Keith’s explanation, given even more publicly, on a later occasion, was that a blistering plaster had been applied to the back, and when it was taken off, kail blades were put to the same place and tied on with the laird’s garters, which went below the armpits and round the farther sides of the neck. The feasibility of this weird arrangement was never challenged, so perhaps it was in common use: they must have been long garters, going several times round the leg to secure the breeches. Cabbage leaves are still used in country districts for various inflammatory conditions.

  The garters stayed in that position until the grave linen was put on, when William allowed that he did see a blue spot on the left breast, about the breadth of three fingers, but tffire was nothing that he saw around the neck: the whole body was grossly swollen. So there was a denial of the neck mark seen by others and not denied by William’s mother. A ‘string’ is not t
he same as an arrangement of garters.

  That night in the house of mourning, with its strained atmosphere, George Keith was sitting by the corpse. Mrs Keith asked William what George should have for his supper, whereupon, and William Taylor heard this, William Keith, 17-years-old, hospitably remarked that a ‘guid full of the dog’s meat was good enough for him: he had no business there, and little hindered him to take a gun to shoot him.’

  The time came to discuss the day for the burial. There was a dispute: the widow wanted it on the following Thursday, but George Keith wanted to wait until the Saturday. The Thursday it was. On that day, the Reverend James Wilson was placed in an awkward position. George Keith had taken him upstairs for a private word, to tell him that his father had not got justice in his death. He begged the minister to look at the body and advise him how to act, but Mr Taylor declined, pleading ignorance in such matters and bidding him to consult the medical fraternity. Alone with the responsibility of his suspicions – if they were genuinely based – George objected that he had already written to Mr Finlay, surgeon of Fraserburgh, and had heard in return that he ‘could do nothing single’ and advised him to seek the assistance of the two physicians at Banff. Nothing more was heard of Mr Finlay, nor did Dr Chap, who had washed his hands and left two plasters, reappear in any guise.