Deadlier Than the Male

by Douglas Skelton

  But, for centuries, advances in medicine in Scotland were held back by the iron grip of the Kirk. It held to the belief that the body was governed by four elements – blood, phlegm and black and yellow bile – and that all maladies and distempers were rooted in one or more of these ‘humours’. Any attempt to push the medical envelope was not just frowned upon but actively discouraged. Probing the mysteries of the body was considered a mortal sin and anatomists, who dissected human corpses, faced excommunication. According to the Church, the body had to be whole if it was to be resurrected come Judgement Day.

  These religious scruples prevented would-be doctors from obtaining the raw materials they needed to explore and study the mysteries of human anatomy. Because many people believed there would be no afterlife if the body had been in any way violated, the medical profession was severely restricted with regard to the flesh and blood to which it was allowed to turn a scalpel. Students would practise their cutting techniques on the carcasses of animals but, obviously, this was not a perfect solution. They were also allowed the corpses of executed felons but really there wasn't enough of these cadavers to go round so they were often cut into separate sections to allow different students to practise various procedures on a single body. Naturally, this slice-and-dice school of surgery was far from perfect.

  In Edinburgh in 1694, things were opened up a bit. Surgeons were allowed to use the bodies of foundlings who ‘dye betwixt the time they are weaned and their being put to schools and trades’. They were also allowed the corpses of infants who had suffocated at birth, in addition, of course, to people who had found themselves at the wrong end of the gallows rope. A few years later, Aberdeen also allowed its surgeons the use of bodies of those who had died friendless and in the poor house.

  However, as the number of medical students grew, so too did the demand for cadavers. Finally, students took matters into their own hands and adopted more covert ways of obtaining study tools. Some students did their own dirty work, creeping into graveyards in the dead of night armed with shovels and sacks. After some back-breaking digging, a recently interred corpse would be slung on to a cart and taken off to the dissecting rooms. However, the deceased's clothes were left behind because, although the lifting of a body was frowned upon, it was not exactly a crime – but removal of clothing would be considered theft.

  Others, though, balked at the prospect of these midnight forays and found themselves forging unholy alliances with a new breed of criminal known as sack-em-up-boys, susie-lifters or resurrectionists. The bodysnatching trade had been born. However, not all of these entrepreneurs restricted themselves to stealing the bodies of the dead. Some looked among the living for their subjects and the first case of this kind to come before the Scottish courts involved two women.

  It was in the summer of 1751 that Edinburgh needlewoman Helen Torrence first offered a surgeon a cadaver. On this occasion, she was turned down as she was not a regular supplier and the young medical student, acting as a physician's assistant, did not fully trust her. However, he later regretted his decision – after all, a cadaver was a cadaver and even well-dressed and well-educated beggars could not be choosers – so, some months later, he offered to treat some sores on Torrence's leg in return for a body to be used for dissection. Torrence agreed, promising to have something for him the following day as her neighbour, Jean Waldie, was to perform a vigil over a dead child that very night. They would bribe the mother to let them take the corpse.

  It all sounded very plausible and the student agreed. The only fly in Torrence's ointment, though, was that the child was not actually dead yet. Eight-year-old John Dallas was certainly sick, no doubt about it. He had suffered from the glandular condition, scrofula, for four years and the infection had left him deaf, speechless and so weak that he was unable to leave home. But he was improving. His hearing was gradually returning and he was even learning to communicate through sign language.

  His father really had no interest in anyone but himself and tended to leave the care of the child and the rest of the family to their mother, Janet Johnstone. Janet, though, was a drunkard and her judgement could be easily swayed by the liberal application of strong drink. It was this weakness that would lead to the death of her son.

  With the Dallas boy rather inconsiderately remaining in the land of the living, Helen Torrence realised she had been a touch hasty in her promise of a corpse by the following day. When she did not show up with the agreed cadaver, two students turned up at her home in Fairlie's Close and demanded payment. She fobbed them off by telling them that the grieving mother had refused to part with her son's body and promised them another soon. The next day, Jean Waldie was recruited to tell the students that she and Torrence had possession of a body which was being stored in her home, also in Fairlie's Close. But she was under suspicion, she said, and needed some cash to leave the city until the heat died down. The students gave her some cash and visited Helen Torrence again and she assured them of the existence of the body but – wouldn't you just know it – she could not get into Jean's home.

  Of course, there was no body and, by this time, the women were aware they had talked themselves into a corner. A body would have to be found and preferably a young one.

  Helen Torrence hit on the notion that young John Dallas be taken from his home in Stonielaw Close and carried to Fairlie's Close. In his condition, she reasoned, he would be dead before the journey's end. So the two women hatched a plot to keep the boy's mother occupied while Jean Waldie kidnapped the child. Janet Johnstone had asked Torrence to make a shirt for her youngest son and was offered a drink when she came to collect it. Just to be sociable, she accepted the proffered grog. And another. And another. She was a very sociable person. Jean Waldie, meanwhile, had pleaded illness and retired to her own room upstairs so Helen, good friend that she was, felt duty bound to check on her every now and then, leaving Janet alone with the bottle. On one of these ‘trips upstairs’, Torrence nipped over to Janet's rooms to check that the coast was clear for Waldie to snatch the lad.

  With Torrence once more back keeping the bibulous Janet Johnstone company, Waldie enticed John Dallas from his bed and into the night. As Helen predicted, by the time he reached Fairlie's Close, the weak little boy was dead.

  The women had agreed a deposit of 2 shillings and 10 pence for the body, plus a further 3 shillings when the students came to collect it. However, they were unable to hide the corpse safely so Torrence – a big, strong woman – wrapped it in her apron and carried it herself to the room of the physician's apprentice, Andrew Anderson. It was stored under the bed and she received another sixpence for her trouble. All in all, it was a profitable night's work for the two women.

  Meanwhile, Janet Johnstone had weaved her way home and found the youngster's bed empty. Her husband was furious when he heard she had been out drinking with cronies, while their son was being spirited away, and threw her out. Naturally, she turned to her pal Helen Torrence who, fine Christian woman that she was, took her in.

  It was while she was staying with Torrence that the worried mother witnessed an argument over money between her hostess and Jean Waldie. Torrence spun her a yarn about making an apron, paid for by Waldie's husband, but Janet Johnstone, her mind now clear, remained unconvinced. She began to make some discreet inquiries and discovered that Waldie's husband had never paid up front for an apron. But, more damning, was a neighbour who had spotted Torrence near Stonielaw Close on the night young John had disappeared – and had actually had a conversation with her.

  Word spread through the tenements that Helen Torrence had kidnapped the Dallas boy although no one yet knew he was dead and lying under the bed of a medical student. It was not there for long though. The physician's apprentices moved it to an empty room in the Cowgate where it was laid on a slab and prepared for dissection. By the time news of the abduction and Torrence's alleged involvement reached the doctors and students, they had already sliced the little body open along the lower abdomen and were preparing fo
r further probing. They realised they had been party to child murder so they hastily sewed the guts together again before dumping the corpse somewhat unceremoniously in a close off Libberton's Wynd.

  Torrence and Waldie were quickly arrested and promptly blamed each other for the murder. This did them no good whatsoever as they were both found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang. Torrence attempted to escape the noose by claiming she was pregnant but close examination by a team of midwives proved this to be a ruse so she and her accomplice were led to the gallows on the Grassmarket on 18 March 1752.

  On the scaffold, Waldie repented her crimes but continued to heap the blame on her erstwhile pal's shoulders. She said she had been drunk when Torrence talked her into the plan, claiming the young Dallas boy must have smothered under her clothes as she carried him through the streets. However, she agreed her execution was warranted since she had been responsible. Torrence, though, merely warned the spectators against the perils of ‘drunkenness, bad company and uncleanliness’. The noose was then placed around their necks and the first two convicted bodysnatching killers were launched into eternity.

  The death of John Dallas and the execution of the two women were tragic and the case shocked Edinburgh. However, the real horror was to come nearly eighty years later (see ‘Distaff of Legend’, pp. 77–96) but a family scandal and a daring escape from the notorious Edinburgh Tolbooth would rock Scotland first.

  5

  HISTORY WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA

  Katharine Nairn, 1765

  He stood on the gallows platform, a chill breeze plucking at his clothes and his hair. Despite the cold, despite the stares of the gathering crowd, he held himself proudly and looked back at the people who had come to this place to see justice served and to gawp at his final moments.

  But, if they were expecting to see him flinch or to turn craven, they were to be disappointed – for he was a soldier of the Crown, an officer and a gentleman. And, in his own mind, he was something more important – he was innocent of the foul crime of which he had been convicted.

  However, if he entertained any thoughts of escape or of being liberated by his messmates, then he was the one who was to be disappointed for the authorities had his regiment penned up in Edinburgh Castle until due process of law had been observed. His co-accused, at that moment sitting in a cell in the city's Tolbooth, had other ideas, though. She had been found guilty of murdering her husband and of enjoying an incestuous relationship with the proud officer standing on the gallows. But there would be no death procession to the Grassmarket for her, no anxious moments on the platform as the noose was draped around her lovely neck, no gasps from the crowd as she was turned off to jerk and strain at the rope. Pregnancy had already granted her a respite and she planned a more permanent liberation. However, for the man facing the drop that morning – proclaiming his innocence to the mob – death was inevitable. But not swift.

  At nineteen, Katharine Nairn was a beauty much admired by many men in and around her home at Glen Isla in what is now Angus. It was said that her charms had proved painful for at least one suitor but fatal for another. One story tells of two young men who had fought a duel for her favours, their swords clanging in the crisp air as the object of their desire looked on. A passing shepherd said that, when one of them fell to the hard earth and the winner refused to finish him off, Miss Nairn herself stepped forward and plunged a dagger into the poor man's back. The swordsman, still standing, tried to stop her but was himself attacked for his pains.

  This wounded lover did not die but another would-be husband was not so fortunate – he was found dead at the foot of a cliff. It is possible that this romancer had been rebuffed by the beautiful young woman and, in a fit of dramatic remorse, had thrown himself off the precipice. Or, given later events, we may wonder if he had got in the way of her ambitions. In other words, did he fall or was he pushed? However, it was the mysterious death of the man who finally did win her hand that brought lasting notoriety for Katharine Nairn.

  There was great surprise in 1765 when Katharine agreed to marry Thomas Ogilvy, Laird of Eastmiln. Given the vast interest in her hand from other, younger, men it might seem strange that she chose to marry the forty-year-old landowner. But life was different in those days and daughters were required to marry well. If there was affection between the two parties, then all the better but it was not a prerequisite. Sir Thomas Nairn, Katharine's father, was no different. Ogilvy of Eastmiln was settled and he came from good stock – although one brother had committed suicide and another, Alexander, had the effrontery to marry ‘beneath him’ by taking the hand of a porter's daughter. Despite this, it was felt that Thomas Ogilvy would be a steadying influence on Sir Thomas Nairn's somewhat headstrong, some may even say wayward, lass.

  And so, on 30 January 1765, Katharine Nairn became Katharine Ogilvy and took up residence in the family home near Forfar. Although the family had money, they were not grand lairds in the accepted sense. Eastmiln House was not a large mansion and was comprised of only two floors. At ground level, there were two rooms – a parlour and the kitchen where the servants not only worked but slept – and, on the upper floor, there were just two bedrooms. At first Katharine settled easily and even willingly into her new role as wife and lady of the house. Her husband seemed to be in poor health and she dutifully ministered to him. Her influence was good and it was noted that Ogilvy cast off the shabby clothing he was in the habit of wearing and became, if not dapper, at least smarter in appearance. But it was not long before things began to change.

  William Roughead's account of the case pinpoints the date of change to the day Ogilvy's cousin, Anne Clark, arrived at the house. According to Roughead, her character was not what you might call exemplary. In fact, he calls her a downright liar and of dubious virtue although he couches it in his own elegant fashion by saying that ‘her private character and professional pursuits, if known, would necessarily have excluded her from decent society’. Those professional pursuits had been of late shared with Alexander Ogilvy, the family's black sheep. Some of them, it has been suggested, may even have been of an incestuous nature. In March 1765, she arrived at Eastmiln, ostensibly to engineer a rapprochement between the two brothers although she may have had a more sinister motive. Alexander was in need of cash but there was little likelihood of him inheriting the family fortune. For one thing, now that Thomas had taken himself a young and vibrant wife, there was every chance he would have a son. And, even if there was no issue, there was Patrick to consider.

  Patrick was another Ogilvy brother serving as a lieutenant with the 89th Regiment of Foot. He had recently been invalided back to Scotland from India and been given one of the two bedrooms at Eastmiln. Anne, meanwhile, bunked with Lady Eastmiln in a box-bed in the parlour. Patrick would already have caught the eye of his brother's beautiful Katharine, whose own recent past revealed a weakness for good-looking young men. Perhaps Anne, with a sixth sense for such chemistry, hit on the plan to bring the two young people together, thus preventing any future son and heir – and discrediting Patrick at the same time.

  Whatever the truth, whispers began to slide around the corridors of Eastmiln that the young mistress's affections for her brother-in-law were something more than sisterly. Always at the hub of these rumours was Anne Clark, like a gleeful spider tugging at the strands of a web. She claimed to have solid evidence proving Katharine's indiscretions – although, given the cramped nature of the living environment, they were unlikely to consummate their affections in the house itself. But there was plenty of room on the estate – and a barn was always a popular place for a roll in the hay.

  Despite her gossiping, Anne apparently befriended Katharine and claimed the young woman confided in her that, not only did she have no love for her husband, she also actively wished him dead. According to Anne, Katharine more than once expressed a desire ‘to give him a dose’ – not of some sexual disease, which would have been bad enough, especially in the days before penicillin, but of poison. She inquir
ed as to where she might buy some substance, perhaps on the pretence of poisoning rats (a poisoner's favourite) but Anne, it seems, offered to have her own brother in Edinburgh obtain it. This was never done but, eventually, Katharine and Patrick would take matters into their own hands.

  Meanwhile, the Chinese whispers regarding his wife's infidelity had reached the ears of the laird and, when Patrick raised the subject of a family allowance, Thomas hit back by accusing his brother of cuckolding him under his own roof. Enraged or embarrassed, Patrick stormed out of the house and took up residence with friends close by. The laird, obviously not convinced by cousin Anne's rumour-mongering, soon thought better of this hot-headedness and asked his young brother to return but Patrick refused. In fact, he was already taking the first steps towards the gallows. At Katharine's request, he obtained laudanum from a doctor friend and almost an ounce of arsenic – the former for Katharine's use and the latter, ostensibly, to put down some dogs that were playing havoc with the local sporting life by being let loose to harass game. When Patrick's brother-in-law, Andrew Stewart, declared his intention to visit Eastmiln, Patrick, after rifling through some articles in his sea chest recently delivered from Dundee, gave him a small glass phial of liquid and a paper packet of ‘salts’ and asked him to hand them directly to Katharine.

  Katharine, in the meantime, was continuing her dialogue with Anne Clark, confiding in her that Patrick had obtained the necessary poisons and was sending them to her. Anne said she did her best to dissuade the young woman from this homicidal course of action. Katharine, though, was apparently heart-set on doing away with the now inconvenient Mr Ogilvy and setting up house with the dashing young officer – if not at home, then perhaps abroad.