Deadlier Than the Male

by Douglas Skelton

  After his initial bout of illness just after Christmas, John Gilmour apparently rallied and felt well enough to travel with his young bride to visit her family farm in Dunlop on New Year's Day 1843. But, following their return on 2 January, the sickness returned – and from then on he grew steadily worse, experiencing tremendous pain in his stomach and bringing up copious amounts of green and yellow slime. After a few days, a doctor was brought in but he was apparently still celebrating the New Year and was somewhat the worse for drink. He diagnosed ‘an inflammation’, bled Gilmour and ordered him to be rubbed down with turpentine to bring down the fever.

  Servants had earlier found a black silk bag in the boiler house near the farmhouse. It contained a small parcel of white powder with the word ‘POISON’ printed on it and a phial containing some sort of liquid – possibly scent. Servants recognised the bag as belonging to Mrs Gilmour and took it to her. She accepted it from them without a word but it was never seen again. A Renfrewshire druggist testified that on Saturday 7 January he had sold Mrs Gilmour a quantity of arsenic and that she had given him a false name for his records.

  A friend of Gilmour visited him on the weekend before he died. He told the court he had known John to be in good health before the marriage but, on this day, his face and eyes were swollen and he was complaining of sharp pains in his chest and side.

  Friends spoke of Gilmour's own suspicions about his illness. They told of Gilmour's express wish to be ‘opened’ (dissected) after his death and they talked about one bout of severe pain when he cried, ‘Oh, if ye have given me anything, tell me before I die!’

  Although they admitted Mrs Gilmour was extremely attentive to her husband during his illness and that there was no want of kindness, they did recall that she had often stated she was married against her will and that she would have preferred John Anderson as her husband.

  The crucial evidence, gleaned by doctors and scientists from the organs taken from Gilmour's corpse, stated that the skin of the cadaver was green in many places over the chest and abdomen and that, although the muscular substance was setting into a glutinous state, the fibres were still intact. It went on, ‘The right side was more livid than the left. The chest and abdomen having been laid open, the intestines exhibited a blush all over the external surfaces … The lungs were normal. The heart was normal.’

  Once their examination was complete, the surgeons were of the opinion that Gilmour had

  died from the effects of an acrid poison, which produced the inflammation of the stomach and bowels … and that from the yellow particles on the lining of the stomach, and the yellow patches and streaks in the substances of the stomach and bowels, we suspect that acrid poison to have been arsenic.

  The details of the surgical examination, read out coldly and clinically, turned more than a few stomachs but there was worse to come. A succession of grisly exhibits was produced in court and paraded before the judge and jury in glass jars. These included half of the contents of the dead man's stomach, as well as part of his liver, kidney, spleen, oesophagus and the stomach itself. Once this organ recital was over, it was clear to all that John Gilmour had, indeed, been poisoned. But did his wife administer the fatal dose?

  At the end of the first day of the trial, the accused's declaration was read to the court. In it, she said that her husband had never told her what he thought had caused his illness but she did claim that he had said that ‘I had broken his heart. I suppose he said this because I had told him that he had broken mine: and that I could not feel for him as a wife should do, having been, as was well known, in a manner forced to marry him.’

  She admitted buying the arsenic and giving a false name. She admitted dropping the black bag that had been recovered by a servant. She also admitted getting Mary Paterson to buy arsenic on a prior occasion but that she had burned it when she had learned of the effects it would have had. She claimed she had no intention of using the poison on her husband. The arsenic, she said, was to use on herself. She did not love her husband, she was unhappy with her life and she wanted to end it all. However, her mother had found the poison in her pocket and burned it. She also denied feeding Gilmour food and drink laced with the substance and professed to have no idea how it came to be found in his body.

  In his summing-up, the Lord Advocate, Duncan McNeill, the Crown Prosecutor, told the jury that Gilmour's death by poisoning was ‘as clear as ever had been elicited in any case where a charge of murder was involved’. Someone – either the deceased himself or another person – must have administered the poison. The Lord Advocate felt that sufficient proof existed to implicate the accused. Trapped in a loveless marriage – on her part at least – she had bought the arsenic secretly and admitted possession.

  Thomas Maitland, the advocate for the defence, said the case was a matter of life or death for Mrs Gilmour but he disputed whether there was strong legal evidence for a guilty verdict. The evidence was purely circumstantial and, before the jury could be satisfied of her guilt, they had to be convinced that she had harboured feelings of remorseless hatred against her husband. Had she shown such feelings? Had any witnesses testified that she had shown such feelings? He thought not.

  He underlined the woman's good character, pointing out she had come from a respectable family. He reminded them that one witness had said she was ‘innocent and blameless’. He said she had behaved quite properly and responsibly throughout her husband's illness. Witnesses had further stated she had displayed no excitement or confusion during the crisis. She had never complained of any unkindness on her husband's part in an attempt to justify any action she might have taken. Further, she had placed no restrictions on visitors. Surely, then, the woman deserved the benefit of the doubt?

  The fact that John Gilmour kept arsenic in the house was also vital. He used it to kill rats on the farm and, when his new wife took up residence, had his supply removed from the kitchen and placed in a chest in his room. He had already threatened suicide once – when she had refused to marry him. Had Christina's apparent coldness forced him to follow through that threat?

  Lord Moncrieff, one of the judges, in his own summing-up, said the jury had been placed in ‘one of the most solemn situations in which men could be placed’. He continued:

  It was not only a charge of murder, but it was a charge of murder under circumstances which rendered its perpetration fearful and atrocious. The prisoner was accused of a crime which could only be explained by that depravity of human nature, the mystery of which Man cannot penetrate.

  A fearful, more unnatural deed was never laid to the charge of a human being.

  He then went on to advise the jury on the legalities of the case, going over some points of evidence. His remarks were generally impartial but some statements did seem to lean slightly towards Christina Gilmour's innocence. The jury was out for an hour.

  Journalists were prevented by a court order from reporting on the trial until the following week, when the Glasgow Courier stated:

  On Friday she sat for hours with a cup of water in her hands. Under the circumstances there was a remarkable degree of coldness or listlessness about her; and she heard the verdict of the jury – which to her was life or death – without the slightest sensible emotion.

  There was a breathless hush as the Clerk read out the verdict. ‘The jury, after a careful and mature consideration of the evidence brought before them in this case, are unanimously of the opinion that John Gilmour died from the effects of arsenic.’ Then there was a pause, deepening the tension already felt in the courtroom. Eyes turned to the dock where the black-clad Mrs Gilmour sat stock-still. The Clerk continued, ‘But find it not proved against the prisoner at the bar, as libelled.’

  Spectators in the public gallery erupted in approval at the verdict. The cheering reached such a pitch that the judge was forced to quieten them by wielding threats of contempt.

  Christina Gilmour left the courtroom with the same blank expression she had shown throughout the trial. She displayed no
sign of relief, no sign of victory. The mask she had donned the day she was arrested never once slipped. She left Edinburgh that night on the 10 p.m. train, arriving in Glasgow at midnight. From there, she returned to Ayrshire.

  She did not marry John Anderson but wore the widow's weeds until she died at the age of eighty-seven in Stewarton, Ayrshire. The not proven verdict is often seen as relaying the message that ‘We know you did it but can't quite prove it so go away and don't do it again.’ Perhaps John Anderson feared that, if he ever stepped out of line or if Christina discovered that she did not love him quite as much as she thought, he too might suddenly take ill.

  Thirteen years later, in Glasgow, another attractive young Scotswoman created excitement when she faced charges of murder by arsenic. She was Madeleine Smith and the prosecution claimed that she had laced the hot chocolate of her former lover, Pierre L'Angelier, with the powder after he became something of an embarrassment to her. Her case was also found not proven.

  Perhaps Christina Gilmour read of this in her Ayrshire home and smiled.

  MOTHERS’ RUIN

  Scots law took a dim view of immorality. Killing or robbing someone was bad enough and the law, as we have seen, lost no time in exacting payment. However, there was nothing like sex for getting the populace hot and sweaty – and not necessarily in a good way. Morality was dictated by the Church, be it Roman or Reformed, and the twin evils of adultery and fornication were stamped on heavily. Church laws were made by Man and enforced by men. In Scotland, their rigid disciplines were a whip wielded by an iron hand to scourge the backs of the unworthy, the unchristian and the immoral.

  Prior to the Reformation, Roman Catholic bishops were entitled to seize the goods and lands of any man caught doing the wild thing with a woman who was not his wife. Of course, if that person made a generous donation to the Church, then they could happily forget all about those sins.

  After the Reformation, other punishments were introduced. Fines were levied, for they were a lucrative way of raising funds for Kirk or Crown. As we have already seen, guilty parties could be forced to don sackcloth, sit on the ‘cutty stool’ in front of the congregation or hang from the ‘jougs’ (neck manacles bolted to the exterior of churches) for all to see. If they refused to plead for forgiveness for their sins, they could be excommunicated, which meant they could not work, marry, baptise their children or, ultimately, have a decent burial and their misdemeanours could also be referred to the courts for criminal charges. They could be banished from the town or city for a set period of time, put in the stocks with their heads shaved or have their flesh pierced and burned, their backs flayed and scourged and their bodies abused and beaten. They could also be hanged.

  And, if a woman was unlucky enough to fall pregnant ‘without benefit of clergy’, the repercussions could be dire. For, in the eyes of the Kirk, the unmarried mother – and she alone – was responsible and the resultant damage to her reputation was catastrophic. Women could be publicly rebuked and reviled either on the cutty stool or at the pillar – a raised area at the front of the church. And the disgrace and associated danger to their livelihoods was such that many tried to hide the signs of any pregnancy and even the birth itself. In those days, having a baby was a risky enough business even with the aid of experienced midwives and doctors. Without such assistance, the chances of a miscarriage or stillbirth increased significantly. The temptation to avoid disgrace, not only by hiding any signs of pregnancy but also by murdering the child, was evident.

  In 1690, an act was passed against Concealment of Pregnancy. Basically, it stated that, if a woman hid her condition and if the child was later found to be dead or missing, the punishment was death by hanging or at the stake.

  Prior to that, in 1614, Janet Brown appeared in Edinburgh after hiding her newly-born child in a dry-stone wall near Biggar in Lanarkshire. The charge was that she had strangled the baby but she claimed that it had been stillborn. It did not matter much anyway, for she was still guilty of concealing her pregnancy. She was hanged on Castle Hill and all her goods were forfeited to the Crown.

  In 1690, Kirk ministers reportedly enjoyed the sight of three women being hanged for child murder. One, Margaret Inglis, appeared unrepentant. The second, Bessie Turnbull, had already shown remorse and had actually brought her crime to light by confessing. The third, Christian Adams, had kept the fact she was ‘with child’ a secret for fear that it would ruin her lover, as he was a married man. To protect him – and herself – she had smothered the child and buried it in a field.

  In Aberdeen in 1752, former servant Christian Phren threw her newborn child on to a fire. She was caught and driven in a cart to the gallows – then sited on a hill near to what is now Pittodrie Stadium – with the scorched remains of her victim in an apron. Her body hung in chains until anatomy students took it away for dissection.

  In 1763, Jean Cameron, servant to a Dundee excise officer, found herself pregnant to soldier Alexander MacGregor. Out of fear of losing her job, she hid her condition and then murdered the baby. She was hanged in Perth on 19 October.

  In the same year, Margaret Douglas, servant to a Captain John McKenzie in Ross-shire, was called before the Kirk session for being ‘debauched’ by another servant, Alexander McKenzie – the second time she had been caught for such an offence. This time she actually gave birth while walking along a road and later said that she had not known whether the bairn was alive or dead when she had wrapped it in linen and hidden it under a stone. However, on returning to her employer's home, it was deemed obvious that she had indeed given birth, a fact confirmed by a midwife. Margaret was arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. On the gallows at Inverness, she confessed to a previous murder – that of the son of a previous employer. No one at the time had suspected foul play and she said that she had done it just because she had taken a dislike to the lad.

  But not all murdering mothers were executed. In 1736, sisters Helen and Isobel Walker were living with their widowed mother in Kirkpatrick Irongray, Dumfriesshire. Isobel fell pregnant but hid the fact from her family and drowned the newborn babe in Cluden Water. However, as luck would have it, heavy rains gorged the river and the little body was washed ashore. A handkerchief round the tiny corpse's neck was identified as Isobel's. The authorities forced her to undergo the Ordeal by Touch, in which an accused person was forced to touch their alleged victim to see what happened. Isobel did not disappoint them. As the dead child was laid on her knees, she threw a fit and was arrested immediately.

  Her sister, a devout Christian, was asked to swear on the bible as to whether she had known Isobel was pregnant. With her hand on the Holy Scripture, she could not lie – not even for her sister whom she loved – so she answered truthfully in the negative. However, while Isobel lay in the Edinburgh Tolbooth awaiting execution, Helen walked to London to appeal for a pardon. She managed to find the ear of the Duke of Argyll, who was so moved by her impassioned speech that he spoke to the king and arranged a royal pardon, on the guarantee that Isobel would leave Scotland and never return. The gallant Helen Walker was the inspiration behind Sir Walter Scott's character, Jeannie Deans, in his novel The Heart of Midlothian. He later arranged for a stone to be erected over her grave in Kirkpatrick Irongray churchyard.

  In 1803, the penalty for concealing a pregnancy was reduced to transportation but the shame of illegitimacy lived on throughout the century and well into the next. In 2002, evidence came to light of a tragic situation on the Orkney Islands when workmen renovating a house in Harray recovered the bones of three infants. The children were believed to have been drowned by their grandmother. The practice, it seems, was fairly common on the islands. In fact, when the case reached the national press, it was claimed that workmen over the years often used to find bones buried in cellars and simply reburied them. In this particular case, it was believed that these children, all illegitimate and born in the early part of the twentieth century, were not allowed to draw much of a breath before being consigned to
buckets of water by grandmother Tomima Gray. Their mother, Violet Gray, was said to have been a prostitute who returned to her mother's cottage whenever she fell pregnant. Here the family shame was always treated in the same way – although it is possible that the children had been stillborn.

  But Violet's fourth childbirth proved complicated and, because a doctor had to be called, the baby, a boy called Gordon, was saved. He had to spend the first few years of his life locked away in the attic, for fear that Grannie Tomima might wish him harm, and he did not learn his early history until Violet told him about it on her deathbed in the 1950s. Gordon died in 1995. Although forensic evidence failed to link the bones of the three less fortunate infants conclusively to the Gray family, the Grays were allowed to have them buried.

  But not everyone took such drastic steps to cover up a pregnancy. Putting illegitimate children up for adoption became a common occurrence in Scotland and beyond and, naturally, it was not long before the more enterprising individuals realised that there was a profit to be made from this. They called the trade ‘baby farming’ and, in the late 1880s, a woman in Edinburgh made the business public when she was accused of not one child murder but three.

  9

  KING'S EVIDENCE

  Jessie King, 1887–9